EUN680 Career Counselling and Professional Practice

Unit Outline: Semester 2 2025, Online

Overview

In this unit you will consider and critically evaluate a range of counselling perspectives in order to formulate a position with respect to your own career counselling practice. Career counselling, a key strategy in assisting individuals to understand their career decision-making, refers to an interpersonal process which may be conducted in individual or small group settings. Career counselling adopts methods of personal counselling in exploring career development issues and is increasingly being conceptualised as a learning process, with the career counsellor as a facilitator. You will consider traditional and emerging career counselling processes, develop advanced skills in communication and counselling, and develop relevant aspects of ethical practice. This unit builds upon the theoretical foundations established in EUN670 and will enable you to connect these theoretical frameworks to your career counselling practice.

This unit will be taught via blended learning.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

1. A body of knowledge relating to approaches to career counselling including understanding recent developments in the field (CLO1.1).
2. Cognitive and critical reflection skills to demonstrate mastery of theoretical knowledge of approaches to career counselling and professional counselling practice (CLO2.1).
3. Technical and communication skills to design, evaluate, implement, analyse and theorise about developments that contribute to professional career counselling practice (CLO2.4).
4. Application of knowledge and counselling microskills with creativity and initiative to address issues in career counselling practice and/or for further learning with high level personal autonomy and accountability (CLO3.1).
5. Application of knowledge and skills to plan and execute a substantial research based project, capstone experience or piece of scholarship relating to career counselling practice (CLO3.2).

Content

Learning Approaches

In this unit you will learn through engaging in the following:

• Online modules
• Online discussions
• Readings
• Activities
• Evaluation exercises.

During the unit you will be required to understand, critically reflect, analyse, synthesise and apply the presented concepts to your own practice as a professional career practitioner.

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

You will gain feedback in this unit by participating in regular online discussion forums and collaborative learning activities with peers and the teaching team. You will receive feedback on your contributions which will directly relate to and inform both pieces of assessment. Assessment will receive criteria based grading and comments and the criteria will be considered by the cohort prior to assessment submission.

Formative feedback in this unit will include feedback on your selection of a client group for assessment task 1 and analysis of two related scholarly sources, designed to support your learning and to provide a foundation for both assessment tasks.

Assessment

Overview

Assessment in this unit enables you to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of career development theory as a basis for program development and to apply this knowledge practically.

1. You will write a research paper.  You will identify a specific client group or issue, consider the issues that are pertinent to this group and develop a personal theoretical and practical framework.
2. You will record a video of your delivery of a career counselling interview and provide a written critique of this interview and of the framework used to facilitate this.

Unit Grading Scheme

7- point scale

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Theoretical and Practical Research Discussion

You will identify a client group or career development topic. You will research and discuss the career issues which are pertinent to this group or issue. In response to this research, you will develop a personal theoretical and practical framework to guide your counselling practice.

Relates to learning outcomes
CLOs - 1.1, 2,1, 2.4

This is an assignment for the purposes of an extension.

Assessment: Interview and Self-Assessment

1. You will record a video of your delivery of a career counselling interview in relation to the client group or career development issue you identified in assignment one.
2. You will write a self-assessment of your interview including comment on both your counselling skills and the framework you used. You will Include a copy of your practice framework from assignment one and you will evaluate the appropriateness of the framework for your client and make suggestions about any modifications you would use in your future work.

Relates to learning outcomes
CLOs - 1.1, 2,1, 2.4, 3.1, 3.2

This is an assignment for the purposes of an extension.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is a commitment to undertaking academic work and assessment in a manner that is ethical, fair, honest, respectful and accountable.

The Academic Integrity Policy sets out the range of conduct that can be a failure to maintain the standards of academic integrity. This includes, cheating in exams, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion and contract cheating. It also includes providing fraudulent or altered documentation in support of an academic concession application, for example an assignment extension or a deferred exam.

You are encouraged to make use of QUT’s learning support services, resources and tools to assure the academic integrity of your assessment. This includes the use of text matching software that may be available to assist with self-assessing your academic integrity as part of the assessment submission process.

Breaching QUT’s Academic Integrity Policy or engaging in conduct that may defeat or compromise the purpose of assessment can lead to a finding of student misconduct (Code of Conduct – Student) and result in the imposition of penalties under the Management of Student Misconduct Policy, ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.

Resources

Resource Materials

Recommended text(s)

Arthur, N., Neault, R., McMahan, M. (Eds) (2019) Career Theories and Models at Work: Ideas for Practice. Toronto: CERIC.

McMahon, M. (2017). Career counselling: Constructivist approaches. London: Routledge.

Niles, S.G., & Amundson, N. (2005). Career counselling: Work in progress [DVD]. New Jersey: Merrill/Prentice Hall.

Patton, W., & McMahon, M. (2015). Ideas for Career Practitioners: Celebrating excellence in career practice (2nd ed.). Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.

Patton, W., & McMahon, M. Career development and systems theory: Connecting theory and practice. (3rd ed.). (2014). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Risk Assessment Statement

There are no out-of-the-ordinary risks associated with general participation in this unit. Workplace Health and Safety protocols associated with computer use will apply.