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What is the Meaning and importance of vocational guidance?
National Vocational Guidance Association defined Vocational Guidance as “a process of assisting the individual to choose an occupation, prepare for it, enter up on and progress on it”.
Vocational guidance is the guidance provided for occupational choice or profession. It promotes career development by helping a person identify their strength and weaknesses. An individual will get an idea about his capability, the career he wants to choose and where he is able to succeed through the assistance of vocational guidance.
Frank Parsons who we a social and political reformer, developed the concept of Guidance and Counselling in form of vocational guidance. He founded a Vocational Bureau in Boston in 1908. Thus, Frank Parsons is often known as the ‘Father of Vocational Guidance’.
Definitions of Vocational Guidance by Authors
1). According to John D. Crites, “Vocational guidance is a facilitative process, a service rendered to the individual to aid him in choosing and adjusting to an occupation.”
2). For Dale Yoder, “Vocational guidance refers to the inevitable direction given to the care of new employees in the selection process and in their assignment to particular types of work.”
3). Donald E. Super described Vocational Guidance as “the process of helping a person to develop and accept an integrated and adequate picture of himself and of his role in the world of work, to test this concept against reality and to convert it into reality with satisfaction to him and benefit to society.”
4). According to Myers, “Vocational Guidance is the process of assisting the individual to do for himself certain definite things pertaining to his vocation.”
5). According to Crow and Crow, “Vocational Guidance usually is interpreted as the assistance given to the learners to choose, prepare for and progress in an occupation.”
Importance of Vocational Guidance
The importance of vocational guidance are as follows:
1). Gives a sense of direction to an individual for their future.
2). Provides adequate information to the students about the work world.
3). Helps students in making the right choice for their future vocation.
4). Assists students in recognising their interests, talents, abilities, skills, and capability of doing things.
5). Helps students in achieving their goals and reaching optimum success.
6). Gives students an opportunity to try several activities to discover their interests and capabilities.
7). Guides students in making a professional choice that is best and beneficial for them.
8). Helps students understand themselves better and in which profession their interest lies.
9). Promotes career development by enhancing students skills and abilities.
10). Allows students to gain not just theoretical but practical knowledge, experience, and skills to make them career ready.
11). Helps students identify their strengths and weaknesses, and in what they need to work on.
12). Makes students confident about themselves in the field they are interested in.
13). Gives students a sense of direction and necessary guidance in life.
Conclusion
Vocational guidance is given to assist students in choosing a suitable vocation for themselves.No advice given is useless especially when it comes to one’s occupation. Vocational guidance is the advice given to students for making the right career decisions for a successful future. It solves an individual’s problems on vocational planning and occupational choice. Hence, vocational guidance makes an individual “work ready” and face the working life with confidence.
