Academic and vocational guidance: perception of labor market from the Spanish Autonomous Offices of Education

Abstract

The combination of labor market unfavorable to young people and the implementation of an academic and vocational guidance model, focused on the vocational dimension, portraits a context that raises important questions about how they connect with each other. Consequently, we consider it important to know how the relationship between both factors is perceived during the vocational guidance process in the Spanish educational system. To achieve this general goal, we have set the following sub-objectives: to analyze the image assigned to the labor market according to the socio-educational context; to understand how the function of academic and professional guidance is perceived according to the socio-educational context, and to build a typology of academic and professional guidance models according to the socio-educational context. The chosen technique is the interview oriented in a induced way. The analytical style focuses on the cases. Emphasis is on the exposition and interpretation of the stories on a per case basis, following a two-fold logic: the logic within each case and the cross-case analysis. In addition, an analytical strategy is applied, related to the Constant Comparative Method, which allows to discover concepts and relationships and organize them in explanatory theoretical schemes. The results leads to speculate that there are three perceptions of the labor market based on the perceived relationship between the labor market and the education system according to a given socio-educational context, and that these interpretations influence the process of academic and vocational guidance.