Background and goals
The work of the Chair aims at reflecting on different models of support and accompaniment in lifelong career guidance, implementing the principle of responsible designing of active life, as well as at the diffusion of valuable innovations in this field, the dissemination of the results of the activities carried out, the implementation of modern solutions and the elaboration of recommendations for the further development of lifelong career guidance and counselling in different geographical and cultural zones.
Life designing is a general framework for interventions supporting “individualized individuals” of contemporary “liquid societies” in their active life’s directing. Today’s deleterious global crisis (which some aptly call the “Capitalocene crisis”) has led to this general framework being completed by emphasizing that such “designing” of individual active lives can be viable in the short or medium term, only if everyone (individuals and collectives) introduced within their reflections the fundamental imperative summed up by Hans Jonas’ “Imperative of Responsibility” (1984, p.37): “Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life”. An imperative whose correlate in the field of support to the active life’s construction is the principle of responsible designing of active life. The UNESCO Chair and its UNITWIN Network have outlined supporting interventions concretizing this principle (in referring to the sustainable development goals of the UN 2030 agenda, the decent work imperatives of the ILO and by articulating concepts (forms of life, active life, capability, action model, etc.) operationalizing this general framework.
These interventions aim to help individuals and collectives find their answers to the following question: What direction and form should I (should we) give to my (our) active life(ves) so that the form of life of each human being be economically (ecologically) sustainable and humanly equitable?
The specific aims of the Chair are:
- to create a publicly accessible platform for the exchange of good practice – methods, techniques and tools used in career guidance and counselling;
- to create conditions for the exchange of information on methods used in career counselling, through the organisation of open lectures, seminars, training courses, regular scientific meetings and international conferences;
- elaborating and developing training programmes for career counsellors and in-service training of career guidance professionals/practitioners;
- coordinating research projects and programmes, conducting doctoral theses and organising visits of researchers to various institutions related to the Department;
- scientific and didactic exchange of students;
- working closely with UNESCO in the framework of relevant programmes.
