Professional Development and Training of Careers Educators: A Practitioner’s Model for In-service School Teachers

Abstract

Careers Education is an effective strategy to empower individuals with greater self-knowledge of interests, abilities, and prospective career choices. With reference to the extant international and national literature and policy perspectives, the requisite for developing adolescents’ ability to acquire skills-based and market-oriented education (for competing in the AI-led technologically advancing global world) can be driven through the provision of careers education at the middle and secondary level educational institutions. This article reports on some of the pertinent findings from twenty-six in-service middle and secondary school teachers’ Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) that signify the importance of career education and necessitate developing a support network to implement career-related learning in educational settings. The transcribed and coded verbatim was analyzed by using the reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019). The study findings underlined the role of in-service teachers as Careers Educators that has been supported with references to multiple theoretical and contextual perspectives. Subsequently, a proposed model (that supports in-service teachers in developing understanding and strategies to implement career education interventions) is presented and deliberated for its application at Pakistan's middle and secondary school levels.