A professor of guidance and counselling, Professor Eric Nyarko-Sampson has called for the professionalization of career guidance by highlighting basic professional competencies needed in career guidance practice.
According to him, this will ensure that career services are delivered effectively.
He however notes that to achieve this, it would require specialization in training and licensing of career guidance professionals.
Delivering his inaugural lecture on the topic Through the changing scenes of life: Finding a fit in the world of work at the University of Cape Coast, he said government and relevant institutions should provide an adequate career guidance infrastructure, address existing challenges and opportunities within organizational set-ups by developing tools and services to enhance the guidance practice.
“Government should clarify the role of career guidance in national development by adopting a multi-sectoral approach to establish a career guidance policy framework that we should not leave issues of guidance and counselling only to the Ministry of Education or to the Ghana Education Service,” he said.
To him, there must be a shift by all stakeholders towards a view of guidance and counselling, that it is not a one-stop shop but a lifelong process.
“When we take that move, it will help us to put in the necessary structures and strategies to support the implementation of lifelong service” he continued.
He also called for the relook at reducing the workload of professionally trained counsellors in schools to be efficient and effective.
He maintained that while many schools do not have guidance and counselling personnel, the few in the system are overburdened with classroom teaching, resulting in adequate counselling services.
In his view, though tertiary institutions have done well in setting up guidance and counselling centres, they should be well-equipped to enable them to work effectively.
Prof. Nyarko-Sampson, who is also the Vice Chancellor of the University of Environment and Sustainable Development further stated that careers are unique, and individuals are regarded as having an active role to play in their own career development.
He said individuals have constructs that embody their occupational identity and desired goals adding that the ability of an individual to choose a career that matches his/her interests, capabilities, and skills is adequate to result in job satisfaction, increased production, and meeting organizational objectives whilst reducing organizational accidents and increased employee turnover.
He said the youth is full of potential for the exploration and exploitation of any country’s resources, human and material, towards national development.
Read also: Young People Need Guidance and Counseling to Fit into World of Work – Prof. Nyarko- Sampson
Source: Anthony Ayisadu Sasu/ATLFMNEWS
