DISTANCE COUNSELLING

1
DISTANCE COUNSELLING

• Workshop 1
• Conference ICT in Educational and Vocational
  Guidance
• Oct. 6, 2004 Vienna

2
Business card

• Name and number Development of a New Counselling
  Methodology / Catalogue of Methods for Telephone
  Counselling Including a Training Guideline,
  Leonardo da Vinci D/01/B/V/PP 112 405, pilot
  project
• Life span Nov. 2001 to Oct. 2004
• Paternity Bundesanstalt für Arbeit, Mr. Muswieck
• Contributors 13 partners from 8 countries -
  Austria (2x), Czech Republic (2x), Germany,
  Hungary (2x), Liechtenstein, Poland, Romania,
  Slovak Republic (3x)

3
Mainstream actions

• Preparation phase - NEED ANALYSIS
• Enquiry on representative sample of 220 guidance
  workers regarding the national status quo in
  delivery of distance counselling professional
  services and the qualification of the staff

4
Range of subjects covered by counsellors

• General information to get an overview (22.7 )
• Making first ideas more tangible/concrete (14.6
  )
• Counselling for placement (14.3 )
• Backing up already-made decisions (13.1 )
• Weighing/assessing of alternatives (12.9 )
• Questions relating to foreign countries (11.7 )
• Implementation of previously-made decisions (10.7
  )

5
Preparation phase

• NEED ANALYSIS
• For these specific requirements of distance
  counselling little over half of the counsellors
  questioned (56 ) did not feel sufficiently
  qualified, and 9 felt only partially qualified.

6
How often do you provide counselling outside
face-to-face setting?
1400
1200
1201
1000
800
719
Further counselling
600
438
400
236
200
143
144
94
80
60
0
Telephone
Email
Letter/Fax
7
What is your current field of guidance provision?
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Euroguidance network
23
Youth counselling
119
Career counselling for adults
71
Educational counselling
92
63
Others
8
First rank beneficiaries

• Counselling professionals
• Guidance practitioners in educational and
  vocational public organisations
• Call centre agents
• Policy-makers and service managers
• Mobility officers / Euroguidance workers
• Researchers in education and guidance

9
Second rank beneficiaries

• End-users of the counselling services
• Functionally literate individuals
• People motivated to look for a job/ advice/
  professional development
• Persons facing vocational choice or indecision
• Clients aware of the opportunities created by
  extended employment market

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Operational phase 1

• INTEGRATING THEORETICAL APPROACH
• Information Systems Method, by Ertelt and Schulz
• ISM is a cognitive behaviourist counselling
  approach, emphasizing problem-resolution by
  learning processes.

11
Operational phase 2

• COLLECTING BEST PRACTICE
• Critical incidents
• Expert systems of distance counselling and
  quality management

12
Operational phase 3

• HANDBOOK DEVELOPMENT
• Allocating parts of the handbook development to
  individual and joint partners, according to their
  complementary fields of expertise
• Pedagogical design of the handbook (pre-training
  requirements, learning objectives, training
  literature, suggestions for classroom work) for
  each distinct content unit

13
Operational phase 4

• TRAINING OF TRAINERS
• Selecting the participants according to the input
  qualifications (close to half are members of the
  project national teams)
• Recommending readers texts from the manual
• Sorting out trainees expectations via the email
• Methodology design (role plays, video recordings,
  lectures, group work, plenum guided discussions,
  positive feedback)

14
In what field do you need more training?
Other fields
18
Europe-oriented information
78
Education/Training/ Higher ed.
36
Education and Labour market
38
Info about professions
33
38
Language skills
Leading a conversation
47
71
Methodical directions
Telephonecounselling
55
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
15
Operational phase 5

• CARRYING OUT NATIONAL SEMINARS
• Email communication
• Telephone contacts
• In-situ role-plays
• Adapting the training concept to the professional
  needs of trainees
• Valorisation of practical examples
• Development of internal strategies for ensuring
  self-sustainability of the project

16
Controlling phase

• IMPACT ASSESSMENT
• Providing a common understanding of the functions
  and possibilities of distance counselling by
  telephone
• Indirect lobbying on the resource allocation
  policy in educational and vocational guidance
  services, based on the virtues of project
  outcomes

17
Controlling phase

• IMPACT ASSESSMENT
• Producing and disseminating broad-range specialty
  documentation in various formats printed (5
  languages), CD-ROM (4 languages), available on
  national websites (2 partners)
• Putting into act one experimental training
  concept for guidance practitioners
• Integration of the training concept as permanent
  offer in certain partner organisations (DE, PL,
  SK)

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Aspects to further consider

• Provisions for special clients (emotionally
  affected, foreigners, expert referral, etc.)
• Marketing strategy of distance counselling
  services
• Bringing together the goals of both client and
  counsellor when telephonically connecting
• Assessment of output proficiency
• Smoothening the edges of the helping ethics (next
  steps and/or empathy?)

19
Thank You

• Mihaela Chiru
• Institute of Educational Sciences
• Euroguidance Romania