Lifelong Learn. 2016, 6, 7-31
On Evaluation of Career Education Courses
Career counselling services in the Czech Republic are not a frequent subject of empirical research and a similar situation is in the case of career education courses. The aim of this empirical study is to provide empirical evidence on which evaluation of the career education courses provided by university counselling centres could be based. Empirical evidence, on which we base evaluation process proposal, is represented by results of qualitative research on the topic of meeting the learning and educational needs of clients of university counselling centres through career education courses. The empirical survey was conducted using grounded theory design, but for the purpose of this article, we only work with statements of 32 students of three public universities in Brno who, in the course of their studies, attended at least one career education course. First, the needs and situations that led the students to the decision to participate in career education courses are described in the text. Further ways of meeting the learning and educational needs are described and attention is paid also to factors that influence meeting the needs. Subsequently, with reference to the existing approaches to evaluation of career counselling services and discovered links between the outputs and impact of the courses, a proposal of career education courses structure which combines evaluation focusing on the process and evaluation focusing on the outputs of the career education processes is presented. The proposed structure of the evaluation process may become an inspiration for the approach to career education courses evaluation as well as for their innovation.
