Knowing what works

10 evidence based principles for the delivery of career

development services
Tristram Hooley (Professor of Career Education)
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Evidence: A play
in four thrilling
Acts
Act 1: Why do we do what we do?
Act 2: Is evidence just academic?
Act 3: Is this really MY problem?
Act 4: A way forward.

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Act 1: Why do we
do what we do?
In which our protagonist
flatters you to get on your
good side.
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Summarising the impacts

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Act 2: is
evidence just
academic?
Our hero shows his darker
side.
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What is evidence?
1. Information that informs practice. This might include
LMI, research about graduate and employer attitudes
etc.
2. The available and publicly accessible body of facts that
can support propositions about careers work.
Question: How much of what you do it really evidence
based?

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So why care about evidence?

Focusing on evidence and evaluation can help us to
learn from what has gone before
examine what we do
think about how we can improve it
decide on whether it was worth doing
provide others with a summary to help them to
understand what was done.

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Learning from the past

If I have seen farther than
others, it is because I stood
on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton

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What do we know? (10 ELGPN principles)

Focus on the individual

1) Lifelong guidance is most effective where
it is genuinely lifelong and progressive.
2) Lifelong guidance is most effective where
it connects meaningfully to the wider
experience and lives of the individuals who
participate in it.
3) Lifelong guidance is most effective where
it recognises the diversity of individuals and
relates services to individual needs.

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What do we know?

Support learning and progression

4) Lifelong guidance is not one intervention, but many,
and works most effectively when a range of interventions
are combined.
5) A key aim of lifelong guidance programmes should be
the acquisition of career management skills.
6) Lifelong guidance needs to be holistic and wellintegrated into other support services.
7) Lifelong guidance should involve employers and
working people, and provide active experiences of
workplaces.

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What do we know?
Ensure quality
8) The skills, training and dispositions of the
professionals who deliver lifelong guidance
are critical to its success.
9) Lifelong guidance is dependent on
access to good-quality career information.
10) Lifelong guidance should be qualityassured and evaluated to ensure its
effectiveness and to support continuous
improvement.

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Focus on the
individual
1) Lifelong guidance is
most effective where it is
genuinely lifelong and
progressive.
2) Lifelong guidance is
most effective where it
connects meaningfully
to the wider experience
and lives of the
individuals who
participate in it.
3) Lifelong guidance is
most effective where it
recognises the diversity
of individuals and
relates services to
individual needs.

Support learning
and progression
4) Lifelong guidance is
not one intervention, but
many, and works most
effectively when a range
of interventions are
combined.
5) A key aim of lifelong
guidance programmes
should be the
acquisition of career
management skills.
6) Lifelong guidance
needs to be holistic and
well-integrated into other
support services.
7) Lifelong guidance
should involve
employers and working
people, and provide
active experiences of
workplaces.

10 evidence-based principles for the design

of lifelong guidance services

Ensure quality
8) The skills, training
and dispositions of the
professionals who
deliver lifelong guidance
are critical to its
success.
9) Lifelong guidance is
dependent on access to
good-quality career
information.
10) Lifelong guidance
should be qualityassured and evaluated
to ensure its
effectiveness and to
support continuous
improvement.

What will it not do

Career guidance will not give your mouth
sex appeal.
Career guidance will not get rid of the
nubs.
Career guidance willl not make you look
five pounds
thinner
Career guidance will not fight the germs
that may cause bad breath.

[With apologies to Gil Scott-Heron]

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Popular careers ideas with ????

around the evidence
The idea that the labour market and organisations
were once stable and are now boundaryless
Learning styles
MBTI
NLP
The importance of matching personality type to job
roles
Career plans
LinkedIn profiles
Generational differences
Etc, etc., etc.

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So is evidence academic?
We know a lot about the impacts of careers work
We know a lot about what to do to make careers work
effective

But, we also know that careers work cant do everything

and
that not everything that is done is based on evidence.

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Act 3: Is this
Really my
problem?
Things turn increasingly
nasty.
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Take a long hard look in the mirror

What in your practice is
evidence based?
What in your practice is
not evidence based?
What evidence would you
like?
What do you think works
and why?
Whose job is to get you
the evidence you need?

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Lack of resources is not an excuse

We run the risk of

confusing activity with
impact.

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Remember, remember
Your practice is only as good as the evidence that
underpins it.
There is no point in being really good at doing something
that has no impact.
Your job and your profession are vulnerable where there
is no evidence.
There arent many professional career education and
guidance researchers.
Research takes some skill, but it isnt rocket surgery.

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So

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Act 4: A way
forward
Redemption is offered for
those who will take it.
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The research informed practitioner

The evidence based service

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What is evaluation?
When people seek to evaluate what they are doing as part of an
attempt to learn and improve, they are usually undertaking a
formative evaluation, so called because it is undertaken to inform
what is done while the activity is still in progress.
We would like to find out how to do these things better

When people evaluate to make a judgement on the value of a

particular activity and to draw out what has been learnt, it is usually
a summative evaluation; so called because it attempts to create a
summary of what has been achieved and what the impacts have
been.
We would like to find out how well these things work
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The lifelong guidance policy loop

Understanding what is
known about the
efficacy of lifelong
guidance
Monitoring
implementation and
checking efficacy

Developing new
policies and services

Implementing new
policies and sevices

The researcher practitioner

What do you want to know?

What people are thinking?
What they think about your service?

Impacts on employment?
Impacts on happiness?

What do your stakeholders want to know?

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Levels of impact (See Kirkpatrick)

Results
Behaviour
Learning
Reaction
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Common data sources

Surveys
Interviews
Focus groups
Observations
Reflective journals
Online data
Service monitoring data

Be clear what you are

collecting and for what
purpose.
Proliferating data types can
make analysis more difficult

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Write it down
My main reason for writing is simple: I do not know
what I think until I have written it. In conversation
one can get away with loose, exploratory thinking,
but in writing it down one has to weigh up the
arguments and the evidence, and decide what it all
means and where one stands. It is hard work, but
important; and if published, it adds to the body of
knowledge on which others can draw.
Tony Watts
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Publish or perish!

Blogs
Infographics
Self publication
Books and sector reports
Journal publication
Partnership with
academics
Using external consultants
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Our other shows

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Other useful things Im involved with

British Journal of Guidance and Counselling

Dent, P., Garton, E., Hooley, T., Leonard, C., Marriott, J. and Moore, N. (2013). Higher
Education Outreach to Widen Participation: Toolkits for Practitioners. Evaluation, 2nd.
Edition. Bristol: HEFCE.
Hooley, T. (2014). The Evidence Base on Lifelong Guidance. Jyvskyl, Finland:
European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN).
Hooley, T., Marriott, J. and Wellens, J. (2012). What is Online Research?: Using the
Internet for Social Science Research. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Hughes, D., Bowes, L., Hartas, D. and Popham, I.(2001). A Little Book of Evaluation.
Sheffield: CSNU.
iCeGS
NICEC
Taylor, A.R. & Hooley, T. (2014). Evaluating the impact of career management skills
module and internship programme within a university business school. British Journal
of Guidance & Counselling, 42(5): 487-499.

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You have been

watching

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egs

Tristram Hooley
Professor of Career Education
International Centre for Guidance Studies
University of Derby
http://www.derby.ac.uk/icegs
t.hooley@derby.ac.uk
@pigironjoe
Blog at
http://adventuresincareerdevelopment.wordpress.com

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