School Career Guidance as an Educational Practice: Epistemological, Pedagogical, and Methodological Implications Based on the Work of Spiros Krivas

Catherine Haliotou, Greece

ABSTRACT

School career guidance is most commonly conceptualized as a decision-making support mechanism oriented toward facilitating educational and vocational choices through information, assessment, and planning. While such approaches may be effective in adult guidance contexts, their uncritical transfer to school settings raises substantial conceptual and pedagogical concerns. Schools are not spaces of decision optimization but institutions of education, formation, and socialization, within which developmental processes unfold over time. This paper reconceptualizes school career guidance as an educational practice embedded in the pedagogical mission of schooling. Drawing on the theoretical work of Spiros Krivas, it advances an epistemology of formation in which guidance is understood as a mediated, developmental process supporting meaning-making, reflexivity, and students’ evolving relationships to learning and future trajectories. The paper situates this framework within international guidance theory through critical dialogue with career construction, life design, and policy-driven approaches. It further examines guidance as a site of educational power, addressing normalization, regulation, and emancipatory potential, and outlines methodological implications for educational research that resist simplistic outcome-based metrics.

Keywords

School Career Guidance, Educational Practice, Epistemology of Formation, Pedagogical Mediation, Educational Power.