2021

CERIC welcomes its 2021/2022 Board of Directors

September 7, 2021By

CERIC is pleased to welcome the members of its Board of Directors for the upcoming year. The volunteer Board guides CERIC in its mission as a national charitable organization to advance career development in Canada. André Raymond, Director, Career Services and Continuing Education at Laval University in Quebec City, returns as Chair of the Board. 

Reflecting a broad cross-section of leaders, the complete list of Board members for 2021/2022 includes: 

  • André Raymond, Laval University, Quebec City, QC (Chair) 
  • Candy Ho, University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, BC (Vice-Chair) 
  • John Horn, BC Pension Corporation, Victoria, BC (Past Chair) 
  • Sue Watts, Employment + Education Centre (EEC), Brockville, ON (Secretary/Treasurer) 
  • Lorraine Godden, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON 
  • Darlene Hnatchuk, McGill University, Montreal, QC 
  • Meghan Lavallee, Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology, Winnipeg, MB 
  • Valérie Roy, AXTRA, Montreal, QC 
  • Rob Shea, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL 
  • Lisa Taylor, Challenge Factory, Toronto, ON 
  • Barbara Wilson, Thrive Career Consulting, Toronto, ON 
  • Donald G. Lawson, The Counselling Foundation of Canada, Toronto, ON (Honorary Director – Ex-officio) 
  • Bruce Lawson, The Counselling Foundation of Canada, Toronto, ON (Executive Officer – Ex-officio) 

Members of CERIC’s three Advisory Committees – Practical & Academic Research; Content & Learning; and Advocacy & Community Engagement – have been appointed by the Board for the next year. Members of these committees play an important role in implementing CERIC’s two strategic mandates: promoting career development as a priority for the public good, and building career development knowledge, mindsets and competencies. 

The focus of CERIC’s work is education and research in career counselling and career development that increases the economic and social well-being of Canadians. This includes funding projects that produce innovative career development resources. CERIC also annually hosts Cannexus, Canada’s largest bilingual career development conference, publishes the country’s only peer-reviewed journal, Canadian Journal of Career Development, and runs the CareerWise / OrientAction news sites.  

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2021

Announcing fall webinars: Anti-racism, Succession, Ethics, Resiliency & Assessment

August 11, 2021By

CERIC along with its partner associations will be offering a variety of webinar series in the next few months to support the career development community on a range of essential topics. Covering critical issues such as ethics in the wake of COVID, career centre succession planning and anti-racist counselling practices, these webinars will give you the latest knowledge you need to succeed. Plan to “head back to school” and refresh your learning this fall.  

The upcoming calendar includes: 

Webinar series cost $119 for members of the partnering association and $159 for non-members. For the webinar series, registered participants will receive a password-protected video recording of each session. The recordings will remain available for one month after the final webinar in the series to allow you to catch up if you miss any weeks. Individual certificates of attendance will be provided to all registered participants who attend the webinars live. 

CERIC partners with associations and organizations across Canada and beyond to present webinars that offer timely, convenient and affordable professional development. Previously, CERIC has also worked with the Canadian Association for Supported Employment, New Brunswick Career Development Association, Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association, Association of Service Providers for Employability and Career Training BC, Ontario School Counsellors’ Association, Experiential and Work-Integrated Learning Ontario, Career Professionals of Canada, Ontario Association of Career Management, Ordre des conseillers et conseillères d’orientation du Québec, Association québécoise des professionnels du développement de carrière, Labour Market Information Council and the US-based National Career Development Association. 

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2021

Free webinar Sept. 9 to share insights into career management in Canada’s public sector

July 26, 2021By

Author Lisa Taylor will be offering a free webinar on Sept. 9 based on her popular new book that supports government managers in developing and engaging employees. Retain and Gain: Career Management for the Public Sector Playbook sold out on Amazon on its launch date and was downloaded more than 2,000 times in the first two months of release, demonstrating that career development, public sector careers and implications for public policy are critical topics in 2021.   

In this interactive webinar, future of work strategist Lisa Taylor will share how the Playbook has been received as she has worked with groups across the country to introduce this unique resource to executives, managers and employees. Having interacted with close to 1,800 public sector employees in a short period of time, Taylor will share some of the “behind-the-scenes” conversations, findings and uses that have been unearthed.  

Aimed at both public sector managers and career professionals counselling Canadians about opportunities in the public sector, the webinar will address: 

  • What career management looks like in the post-pandemic hybrid workplace  
  • How career management strategies can help to advance diversity, equity and inclusion   
  • Shifting demographics and the implications for career management today  
  • Concrete practical starting points for putting career management into action  
  • How public servants at all levels affect the career development of Canadians   

A sought-after expert on today’s fast-changing world of work, Taylor is President of Challenge Factory and the Centre for Career Innovation. She offers invaluable leadership and insights on how to gain strategic workforce and career advantage with a focus on talent equity, demographics and new market dynamics. 

The Playbook, which was released in May, identifies 40+ low-cost tips, activities and actions that public sector managers can take starting today (some in only 10 minutes a day) to attract, engage and retain staff. Written in an innovative “travel guide” format, the Playbook integrates a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) throughout and recognizes the unique context of public sector workplaces. It is available for purchase or can be downloaded for free at ceric.ca/publicsector. This Playbook follows two earlier Retain and Gain editions Career Management for Small Business and Career Management for Non-Profits and Charities. 

 

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2021

Registration open for first hybrid Cannexus conference, Jan 24-26, 2022

July 23, 2021By

The 2022 Cannexus Career Development Conference – to be held as a hybrid event for the first time – is now open for registration. This dual format for the 16th annual conference will offer the best of both worlds, providing an accessible, content-rich and value-packed opportunity for Canada’s career development communities to convene, share and learn. Cannexus22 will take place Jan. 24-26, 2022 both virtually and in Ottawa, Canada with a bonus ​virtual-only conference day, Cannexus Reflections, on Feb. 4.  

Cannexus brings together professionals across the career and workforce development ecosystem to explore research, policy and practice. The conference will continue to reimagine the impact of career development on education, the economy and social justice as pandemic recovery unfolds. In the past, live Cannexus conferences have drawn more than 1,200 delegates and, last year, the virtual conference attracted more than 2,300 participants.  

Two keynote speakers have been announced so far for Cannexus22: Waneek Horn-Miller and Yvonne Rodney. Horn-Miller is a Mohawk Olympian whose keynotes are aimed at bridging the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. A former Director of the Career Centre at the University of Toronto, Rodney describes herself as an unapologetic introvert who is also an author, career consultant, speaker and playwright. She will discuss how to move from languishing to finding joy in the now.  

The Cannexus schedule for both the in-person and virtual portions is available with the program to be posted by the end of September. Content will cover current and emerging hot topics in career development, including: the future of work and workplaces, building mental health and resilience, and post-COVID labour market trends. Whether part of the in-person version or the virtual conference, delegates will be able to access: 

  • 150+ sessions both live and on-demand 
  • Presenters from across Canada and around the globe 
  • Recordings that are available for six months 
  • Networking opportunities 
  • Exhibitor Showcase 

This instalment of Cannexus will continue to offer special Gratitude rates plus deep discounts for groups, students and members of 30+ provincial, national and international supporting organizations. The Gratitude rate ends Sept. 9, 2021. There are also bursaries available to support individuals in attending the virtual portion of the conference. For 2022, the Marilyn Van Norman Bursary will be awarded to 13 applicants from charitable or non-profit community-based organizations. Additionally, the Young Professionals Bursary will support 12 emerging employment and career development practitioners to attend. Application deadlines are September 30, 2021.  

Cannexus is presented by CERIC and supported by The Counselling Foundation of Canada and a broad network of supporting organizations. For more information on the conference and to register, visit cannexus.ceric.ca. 

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Storying: Concepts for future directions in career development research and practice

July 14, 2021By

By Noah Dwain Arney (Cannexus22 GSEP Award Winner)

In her book Pathways for Remembering and Recognizing Indigenous Thought in Education: Philosophies of Iethi’nihsténha Ohwentsia’kékha (Land), Sandra Styres explains that the purpose of stories is to make sense of “one’s place in the past in order to be in the present” (Styres 2017, 50). This use of stories, or storying (Styres, 2011), for people to understand themselves, their relationships and their connections to others, places and concepts is a philosophical perspective that can support career development work.

Storying is more than the person’s self-making (Savickas, 2012), it includes the context the person brings to each experience through responsibility and relationship “to family, community, nations, and the environment” (Firman, 2005, 226-227). Or, as Styres puts it, “storying refers to how we describe in story our experiences through personal, community, national, and global narratives” (Styres, 2008 as cited in Styres, 2011, 718).

When we tell our story (Offet-Gartner, 2011) we learn from our telling. We tell our stories in circles (Little Bear, 2012), where each time we tell the same story we add “depth and dimension” (Styres, 2017, 186) to it. As we tell our stories we are actively building our connections to not only our physical, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional selves, but our connections to our family and communities (Pidgeon, 2014) and all the holistic individuals within those groups, each with their own physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional selves. This, then, is the impact of storying: the construction of the holistic self.

Styres concept of storying is “circular, iterative, and relational” (Styres 2017, 38). When it applies to career development, storying requires three parts: story, circularity and awareness of relationships. Story, or narrative, is a core aspect of modern career development practice (McIlveen & Patton, 2007) and Peavy has identified how we link our experiences together through stories and create “an evolving biographical narrative under continuous revision” (Peavy, 1995, 1-2). For Anishinaabek (Peltier, 2018) and Niitsitapi (Marule, 2012) peoples as well as many other Indigenous peoples, the story is not just a narrative but is derived from observation and critical reflection.

Circularity, or iterativeness, is embraced by Western career development professionals who focus on experiential learning (Kolb & Kolb, 2009, Jarvis, 2006). It is a concept that is especially important for career development because we learn from the telling, and learn again from the retelling later (Styres, Haig-Brown, & Blimkie, 2013); with every revisit to the story the person brings their prior experiences to bear (Styres, 2017) on the retelling. This circularity (Akan, 1999) enables a great deal of reflection and personal growth.

The awareness of relationships is an aspect which is not centred as much as it should be in career development. Krumbotlz (2009) and others touch on the importance of relationships to clients, but it is rarely with the complexity and centrality of relationships that is seen in the Indigenous paradigm (Kovach, 2020, Peltier, 2018, Held, 2019). From Saulteaux (Akan, 1999), to Oneida (Antone, 2003), Okanagan (Cohen, 2001), Mi’kmaq (Pidgeon, 2014) and Mohawk (Styres, 2017), the “self-in-relationship” (Styres, 2017, 56) concept is central to the understanding of humans for Indigenous peoples in what is now Canada. From this perspective the relationship is not simply of a familial or romantic nature, but a relationship with the land, nature, our family, community and nation, and those who came before and those who will follow (Chartrand, 2012, p. 148).

The exploration of storying as a career development method, and the Indigenous philosophical paradigm, may open future directions for career development and counselling research and practice.

Noah Arney is a Master of Education student in Educational Research at the University of Calgary. He is a Certified Career Development Professional with over 10 years of experience in student affairs. He is a Career Services Co-ordinator with Thompson Rivers University. His research focuses on Indigenous students’ perception of work-integrated learning.

References

Akan, L. (1999). Pimosatamowin Sikaw Kakeequaywin: Walking and talking. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 23(1), 16–39.

Antone, E. (2003). Culturally Framing Aboriginal Literacy and Learning. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 27(1), 7–15.

Bear, L. L. (2012). Traditional knowledge and humanities: A perspective by a blackfoot. Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 39(4), 518–527. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6253.2012.01742.x

Chartrand, R. (2012). Anishinaabe Pedagogy. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 35(1), 144.

Cohen, B. (2001). The Spider’s Web: Creativity and survival in dynamic balance. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 25(2), 140–148. Firman, B. (2005). Renewing Aboriginal Education through Relationship and Community (Issue July). UBC.

Held, M. B. E. (2019). Decolonizing Research Paradigms in the Context of Settler Colonialism: An Unsettling, Mutual, and Collaborative Effort. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 18, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918821574

Jarvis, P. (2006). Towards a comprehensive theory of human learning. London: Routledge.

Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2009). The learning way: Meta-cognitive aspects of experiential learning. Simulation and Gaming, 40(3), 297–327. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878108325713

Kovach, M. (2020). Conversation Method in Indigenous Research. First Peoples Child & Family Review, 5(1), 39–48. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.7202/1069060ar

Krumboltz, J. D. (2009). The happenstance learning theory. Journal of Career Assessment, 17(2), 135–154. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069072708328861

Marule, T. R. (2012). Niitsitapi Relational and Experiential Theories in Education. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 35(1), 131.

McIlveen, P., & Patton, W. (2007). Narrative career counselling: Theory and exemplars of practice. Australian Psychologist, 42(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/00050060701405592

Offet-Gartner, K. (2011). Rewriting HerStory: Aboriginal women reclaim education as a tool for personal and community, health and well-being. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 30, 1499–1506. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.10.290

Peltier, C. (2018). An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing: Indigenous Research Methods With Participatory Action Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918812346

Pidgeon, M. (2014). Moving Beyond Good Intentions: Indigenizing higher education in British Columbia universities through institutional responsibility and accountability. Journal of American Indian Education, 53(2), 7–28.

Peavy, R. V. (1995). Constructivist career counseling. ERIC Digest. ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Student Services Greensboro NC., Canadian Guidance and Counselling Foundation Ottawa (Ontario)., 1–6.

Savickas, M. (2012). Life design: A paradigm for career intervention in the 21st century. Journal of Counseling and Development, 90(1), 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1556- 6676.2012.00002.x

Styres, S. D. (2017). Pathways for Remembering and Recognizing Indigenous Thought in Education: Philosophies of Iethi’nihsténha Ohwentsia’kékha (land). University of Toronto Press.

Styres, S. D. (2011). Land as first teacher: A philosophical journeying. Reflective Practice, 12(6), 717–731. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2011.601083

Styres, S. D., Haig-Brown, C., & Blimkie, M. (2013). Towards a pedagogy of land: The urban context. Canadian Journal of Education, 36(2), 34.

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Counselling and the new world 

July 13, 2021By

By Zoée St-Amand 

A year ago, I woke up in a new reality. Without warning, a virus showed up, disrupting everything in its path. Across the globe, all of us have been affected personally. The labour market has undeniably been shaken up and will undergo an unprecedented transformation. Workers have had to adapt thus far, but they will need to continue doing so, as it is very difficult to predict what the labour market of tomorrow will be like. 

This transformation was well under way even before the pandemic, but it will certainly accelerate the changes. In 2019, the International Labour Organization (ILO) issued a document stating that many factors could have a profound impact on the labour market. The ILO predicts that, within a few years, automation, artificial intelligence and technology, among other things, will have effects that will impact millions of workers across all sectors.  

Today, the effects of the pandemic have already being felt heavily in the restaurant, tourism and health-care sectors, among others. Why is this so important? Because people’s jobs, professions and occupations are a major part of their lives. In 2007, Mercure, Vultur and Fleury conducted a research study involving 1,000 young Quebec workers. The study showed that at least seven out of 10 young people rank work as one of the most important values in their lives. They also reported that work is very important for older workers. Moreover, Dionne and Girardin (2021) note that a person’s profession plays a much more significant role than simply providing an opportunity to earn a living. It has an impact on identity development, social integration and general well-being. 

I went to my mailbox yesterday morning and picked up my copy of l’orientation magazine (February 2021), a publication of the Ordre des conseillers et des conseillères d’orientation du Québec. In it, I read a critique by President Josée Landry of the public’s lack of awareness of the value of the service and the expertise that career counsellors offer in the labour market and in training. I began to think about my future as a professional in the field. I had a feeling that the coming years could be defining moments for the profession: an opportunity for the field to take its rightful place and for employment counsellors to finally demonstrate their relevance in the social sphere. In fact, a study conducted by professors and researchers Milot-Lapointe, Savard and Le Corf (2018) demonstrates the effectiveness of individual career counselling in reducing career indecision and psychological distress. Considering the myriad upheavals in the labour market, I imagine that there will be many challenges and that employment counsellors could be of great help to the clients who meet with them. 

I was in class today, and my professor was speaking about advocacy, both for the client’s well-being and for recognition of the profession. I wholeheartedly agreed, and I put up my hand. Yes, I want to be part of the collective effort to make our profession better known to the public, because I feel that in the years to come our relevance and expertise could help a great number of people. It is such an exciting time for counselling, and it is up to us to seize it, to use it to our advantage and, at the same time, to guide our clients through this unknown future to the best of our abilities. 

Zoée St-Amand, master’s in counselling student, Université de Sherbrooke. Coming from an administrative background, I had a strong desire to work with people that led me to retrain in the field of counselling. I have a keen interest in understanding the changes in the world of work and their impact on individuals, sociology and humankind. 

References 

Dionne, P. et Girardin, V. (February 2021) Travail et suicide : au-delà des chiffres [Work and suicide: beyond the figures]. l’orientation, 22-24. 

Landry, J. (2021, février) L’orientation n’est pas un luxe [Counselling is not a luxury]. l’orientation, 4-5. 

Mercure, D., Vultur, M. et Fleury, C. (2012). Valeurs et attitudes des jeunes travailleurs à l’égard du travail au Québec : une analyse intergénérationnelle [Work Values and Attitudes of Young Quebec Workers: An Intergenerational Analysis]. Relations industrielles, 67(2), 177-198. doi: 10.7202/1009083ar 

Milot-Lapointe, F., Savard Réginald, & Le Corff, Y. (2018). Intervention components and working alliance as predictors of individual career counseling effect on career decision-making difficulties. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 107, 15–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.03.001  

Rani, U. et Grimshaw, D. (2019). Introduction – Travail, emploi, société: que nous réserve l’avenir? [Introduction – Work, employment, society: what does the future hold for us?] Revue internationale du Travail, 158(4), 633-650. doi: 10.1111/ilrf.12141  

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