Dr Emma Bolger

One of the modules I’m teaching this trimester at UWS is Career Development Theory, examining the theories that explain how and why people make career decisions. A career decision I often wonder about is “Why would someone choose to be a careers adviser?” I’m not being flippant; I see few reasons why the media representation of the role would influence anyone to become one. From the outside, it’s not a job that gets good press. There is a heck of a lot of bad-mouthing of the careers profession and its purpose, the occasional high-profile media story (nobody mention  Mary Poppins ) and then there’s the section in every celebrity life story ever: “They told me to/not to do it, the clueless adviser, and they were so, so wrong.” We know that high profile TV programmes boost the profile of certain careers.  CSI  led to a raft of wannabe forensic scientists.  Call the Midwife  and  One Born Every Minute  respectively give young people a dramatised and f...

I attended the Character Scotland conference  this week, which welcomed over 250 delegates, all keen to explore how we can integrate character development into our educational practices. This is my first exploratory post into character and career education, information, advice and guidance following this two-day conference.  Before I go onto the content of the seminars and keynotes I took most from in relation to my own practice and research, worth noting was the quality of the delivery of presentations. In Seminar 1  Education (re)design , the panel used the PechaKucha approach: presenters work through 20 slides, each displayed for 20 seconds. This was completely new to me, and talk about keeping folk to time and to the point! I am wondering how I can use this in my own teaching and presentations. As a delegate it kept me engaged and whetted my appetite to learn more about the presenters, their backgrounds, their topics. A second stand-out moment in relation t...