Dr Emma Bolger

The final proofs of my forthcoming book have been checked and it has gone to the printers! A few reflections at this point on how it came about, and why. I wrote The Career Professional’s Guide to Research  primarily to encourage career development professionals to engage in practitioner-led research. Through it, I hope to demystify research, and promote how frontline practitioners are uniquely positioned to conduct meaningful, ethical, and impactful research project. In the book, I explore the full research journey; from identifying and justifying a topic thought to data collection, analysis, and dissemination (sharing your work with the right audiences). I cover what makes a good researcher and topic, explore key skills such as qualitative and quantitative methods, and provide practical tools to support you through the planning and delivery of a research project. Throughout the book you will find practitioner quotes and practical templates to support readers’ learning now an...

*republished today from an earlier LinkedIn post to enable open access* In 2023-24, I was delighted to be a guest editor for Veilederforum , operated by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills . Direct links and summaries of the articles are available here: Career guidance for marginalized groups and below. Many thanks to Mari Thorbjørnsrud for inviting me to take on this role and for the many conversations we had on how to ensure equitable, diverse and inclusive practice in the career guidance sector. The articles: Career guidance throughout the lifespan: Working with clients with dementia , Dr Laura Lebec and Dr Louise Ritchie Practitioner Wellbeing , Dr Gill Frigerio Career guidance for refugees and migrants , Professor Füsun Akkök and Honorary Associate Professor Dr Deirdre Hughes Career development and mental wellbeing , Honorary Associate Professor Dr Deirdre Hughes , Liane Hambly and Dr Chris Percy A note on gender The articles were fully or l...

I have been commissioned by Trotman Publishing to write a book this year for careers professionals. It is an introductory guide for anyone working frontline in the careers sector (in its widest sense) on how to get started with doing research. I am currently seeking careers professionals to contribute insightful comments and help me ensure I have pitched the textbook at the right level for what you need. 📖 About the book Many practitioners want to use their workplace as the basis for research but are unsure of where to start. You might have a specific client group whose needs you would like to better understand, or a project to evaluate. You might want to unpick some fundamentals of practice, or propose a new way of working, but you feel under-confident and do not know where to begin. My book explains why it matters that you conduct research, and guides you through how to plan, deliver and share robust, ethically sound research with the right audience. 📖 How you can get ...

Last week saw the publication of the Support for children and young people with special educational needs report from the UK government’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC). The findings of the report are stark: “The system to support children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) in England is reaching, or, arguably, has already reached, crisis point.” Against this backdrop, receiving a copy of Jenny Connick’s Big Inclusive SEND Careers Handbook to review made for timely reading. The book is written for an England-based audience, but the story is the same everywhere: when it comes to supporting children, young people and adults with additional needs, systems are overstretched and under-resourced. Policy and practice that doesn’t fully meet the needs of the individual? Long waiting times for diagnosis? Repeated attempts before needs are acknowledged? A relentless cycle of paperwork? Being unsure if your client is located in the right system, at the right time and wi...

I've published a new short article on LinkedIn, reflecting on my time as Guest Editor of Veilederforum, where I talk about some of the things that really matter to me as a career guidance professional and academic: continuous professional development; practitioner well-being; domestic abuse; equality, diversity and inclusion and, of course, the gender imbalances in our field. You can access the article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exploring-relationship-between-guidance-practice-self-care-bolger

I have written a new resource for the CDI, on the dissemination of research produced by CIAG practitioner-researchers.  This resource provides information and guidance on how to share and promote your research. It is available here . If you are keen to take your first steps into research as a career development practitioner, I am now leading CPD short courses on this topic at UWS. For further information go to CGD Short Courses Information on the UWS website.

This month will see the publication (in translation) of an article I have written in collaboration with Uuganaa Ramsay , on the importance of addressing unconscious bias and white privilege in career guidance practice, for Skills Norway . In addition we will be delivering a webinar  on this topic on 27th August, for the same organisation.  We will be sharing our work more widely in coming months. Students on the Postgraduate Diploma in Career Guidance and Development at UWS can also look forward to seeing more in relation to race-aware career practice in their learning this year, as we focus on what we can do as a sector to address racism in our society. 

We will be hosting the Career Guidance and Development  CPD Conference Scotland at UWS next week, and as ever have been focusing on accessibility, inclusion and thoughtful design as we plan and deliver this new format conference. The event builds on and amalgamates the CDI Student Conference Scotland with the UWS/ENU/SDS Research Symposium and in addition offers a broad CPD opportunity for selected practitioners in the sector in Scotland. This conference is designed to highlight the latest developments in the sector and is presented by a range of expert keynote speakers and workshop presenters all of whom are leaders in their field. The keynotes and workshops are focused on issues of equality, diversity and inclusion in the careers sector. The final version of the conference programme is available here  (note that workshop rooms will be advised on the day). Our audience will be students undertaking postgraduate studies in career guidance and development in Sco...

A particularly flexible and valuable form of ongoing CPD is to undertake learning via Open Educational Resources, or OERs. These are free or 'open' online learning resources. Popular OER sites include:  FutureLearn OpenLearn edx Coursera   OERu I provide a list of relevant OERs to students on the UWS MSc Career Guidance and Development programme  but it makes sense to present an expanded and contextualised list publicly. In this blog post, you will find a list of currently available resources, and a brief description of why each is useful and relevant to our field. If you have completed any of these OERs or others as part of your flexible work related learning, please post your feedback in the comments section of this post. If there are other OERs you recommend, please contact me and I will add them to the Resources page on this website. OpenLearn: Thinking about how I work with other professionals Note that while this course focuses on early years practition...