The professional identity of career counselling and employment practitioners is somewhat fragile. Balancing tensions like meeting targets that exist around funding, whilst attending to the individual needs of the clients they serve, can prove challenging. Maintaining professionalism is increasingly also challenging for practitioners because they…

The Employment Department's invitation to bid for pilot programs for work-based competency training represents a contrast to off-the-job academic training. Informed debate and empirical findings would contribute to the constructive management of these changes. However, Kidd et al.'s research on careers officers' use of theory in guidance…