There Has to be More Than One Way - How the Learning Experience of People with Disabilities Can Inform Career Guidance

Abstract

This research explores Inclusion in the Career Guidance relationship and how Universal Design (UD)and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) might be applied to Career Guidance or Guidance Counselling. The research considers Inclusive Career Guidance relationships from the perspective of disability. The research designed and adopted an Inclusive Bioecological Emancipatory Framework influenced by Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1994), UDL (Rose & Meyer, 2002) and Freirean (1970) approaches as it reviewed the relationship between people with disabilities and Career Guidance professionals. Adopting this framework ensured that the voice of the person with a disability was central to the exploration of Inclusive Career Guidance relationships. Thus, the concept of inclusion permeated through the study. This research was first informed by a literature review focused on disability, UDL and Career Guidance. Eight people with a disability, who had succeeded by virtue of their educational attainment, shared their experience of Career Guidance, and together with the literature review informed a Delphi study that engaged with twenty-three international experts over three rounds. Consensus was reached and overarching findings identified that Inclusive Career Guidance is powerful finding that: i) career conversations have power, ii) capability can be overshadowed by disability, iii) a knowledge of inclusion in both learning and work is necessary for Career Guidance professionals, iv) the Career Guidance professional has the power to redefine the role and work in terms of inclusion, v) and an understanding of inclusion in context of Career Guidance is necessary for Inclusive Career Guidance relationships. The findings of this research could be used to inform research, policy, and practice and make a valuable contribution in the public policy context.