From Quebec

The New “Projet Personnel d’Orientation” Course

Five years ago, the Quebec Ministry of Education decided to remove the formal course “Career Choice Training” (éducation au choix de carrière) from the secondary school curriculum and to implement the “Guidance Oriented School” (approche orientante), a more flexible approach that involves teachers and professionals who are interested in organizing activities or making links between a school subject, a profession, the job market and career development.

The Quebec Ministry of Education is now working on a new kind of course called “Projet Personnel d’Orientation” or PPO (Personal Project of Career Development) to include in the secondary school curriculum. The idea of this course is to give students the time (4 periods per cycle) and resources to explore many career options using many concrete toolkits and activities inside and outside the school. This will assist the student in learning more about himself or herself, the career opportunities available, and to learn how to manage in a career development process. Four schools utilized this course with students at a secondary 3 level (grade 9) as part of an experimentation process.

At the moment, many questions are still unanswered. Some guidance counsellors wonder if the teachers selected to teach this course will be prepared enough to guide the students in this kind of personal process which is different from the traditional pedagogy and perhaps closer to counselling skills. Also, some teachers and schools directors would like to know how much it will cost to have enough toolkits to allow the students to explore many different career sectors.

The description of the course is still being developed by a team working on this project for the Quebec Ministry of Education. If everything goes as expected the new course should be approved next Winter (probably February 2006) and will be ready to implement in every school board in September 2007. It is beneficial for counsellors to learn more about this new course so they will be ready to provide support to teachers and students who may require additional assistance as a result of this new approach.

Nathalie Perreault is a career counsellor from Quebec. She graduated from Laval University where she now teaches one course in the “Sciences de l’orientation” bachelor program. She is also the Program and Content Manager for OrientAction.