Visual Orientation: A Systemic Mapping Method for Career Guidance

Context: Visual Orientation is a dialogic Career Guidance method designed in Italy for high-school students and teachers, that can be used also in universities, employment centres, and counselling with students, unemployed, professionals in a career shift. 

Approach: The method employs a visual and systemic approach, utilising personal and not standard images for reflective and metacognitive mapping and for leveraging capabilities for lifelong learning and employability. It uses images semantics to mediate between the individual and the counsellor, and syntactic because the same images are organised in three maps that develop one from the other through narrative, explorative, and systemic stages that reflect three main Career Guidance approaches.  

It is integrated with European competences frameworks, such as the Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, LifeComp, EntreComp, and GreenComp that provide a robust foundation for personal and professional development, ensuring that individuals are well-prepared to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing job market.  
The method is undergoing a process of validation with some European universities for three school levels: middle-, high-school and University. 

Findings: The method has been tested in Italian high schools with teachers, students, and school administrators, and with professionals in an upskilling or reskilling process. Personal images, both singularly and in mappings, have proven powerful tools for identity reinforcement and have guided the person in self-orientation and envisioning multiple futures emerge in the process. 

• Participants embraced the Systems Thinking approach and quickly learned to let personal capabilities and relationships emerge in the maps, in a personal sustainability perspective. 

• Compared to narrative approaches, the mapping process let significant aspects emerge and brought new information to both the students and the teacher, and participants decided to which depth images were described. 

• The mapping is effective both as an individual and collective process. When tested in classes, students participated and were inspired. 

• Social justice: participants with lower socioeconomic backgrounds appreciated being offered a comprehensive view of their capabilities and being provided agency in bridging the gap between their aspirations and the resources needed to achieve them.  

• The method, being mostly visual, is inclusive for individuals with limited language skills (for instance in case of first-generation immigrants). 

Conclusion: Applying Visual and Systems Thinking to Career Guidance has proved an effective approach that empowers individuals to map their future(s), whereas counsellors are provided with a personalised tool to support individuals’ agency and the application of European competences to their career.