A key question of the longitudinal project digibe is how students decide to follow iVET as their career choice, and what role guidance plays in that process. We aim to allow students to take a self-determined and reflected career decision. Reflection should lead to transforming their perspectives on their career in general and on a VET-career in particular. We rely on the transformative learning theory to describe the quality of the reflection (situational, individual, socially related) and to describe the initial irritating situation that triggers reflection. Transformative learning refers to the qualitative change of an individual's perspective, which allows an individual to think and act differently. 

Reflection is essential, as career orientation confronts young people with the challenge of designing multiple options for action, identifying numerous and often fast-moving changes in the world of work whilst productively shaping the future (Düggeli & Kinder, 2020). It is expected that they develop career competencies that allow them to make the first career choice and lay the ground for subsequent career decisions (Nägele & Schneitter, 2016). In the Swiss collective skills formation system (Busemeyer & Trampusch, 2012), with its competitive and selective apprenticeship market and an education system that opens up for higher and further education for everybody (Stalder & Lüthi, 2020), young people should think about their career prospects as early as possible.

We invite students to engage in a broader and profound reflection through reflection-related and thought-provoking impulses. Reflection helps one become self-conscious about thoughts, emotions, and actions (Silvia, 2021). Reflection can start if the student is ready to engage in career choice processes (Rübner & Höft, 2019) and if a problem is to be solved. An initial irritation or disorientation can lead to a struggle for clarity (Bromberg, 2017).

Open-ended reflection. We see, e.g., in many ICT related or gender-related interventions, the goal, that students change their minds and take another decision. This is not in the main focus of digibe. What comes out as a choice is up to the student. But we expect him/her to be able to justify the choice reasonably. The project is based on a coaching idea (Jordan & Kauffeld, 2019).

There is no expectation that all students will start reflecting. It is part of the project to show whether and to what extent students reflect. Some students will resist reflecting, even if they experience an irritating situation. An example of a typical situation is when a student aiming to become a carpenter is puzzled because he/she presented him-/herself not optimally during the Schnupperlehre.

Transformative learning theory can step in, as it asks for self-determined decisions based on reflecting individual, situational or familial factors that determine career decisions. Students reflecting can develop new perspectives. This is the emancipatory claim of transformative learning theory in enabling people to develop a self-determined career. In this way, transformative learning is similar to the German concept of Bildung (Koller, 2017). They claim that developing and eventually changing a perspective is also in line with topical theories of career development, e.g., in the life-design theory (Savickas, 2012) or theories that focus on agency (Brown & Lent, 2016). Also, the world of work is changing and asks for an agile and flexible workforce. We can expect that individuals who are ready and able to reflect and change their perspectives will better adapt to future changes in the world of work.

In this paper, we will present the theoretical underpinning of our intervention study, its design and present results about irritating situations as they were reported by students.

The longitidinal study runs for four years. We implemented an accelerated longitudinal design. All treatment and non-treatment groups start at the beginning of grade 9, with the base measurement followed by regular evaluations of the status of the career choice process up to three times per semester. The intervention group digibe Plus i has three interventions per semester, digibe Plus s two interventions per semester. The duration of a treatment session is 45’ minutes.

A first sight at the data shows that N = 1’498, 51 % of 1’498 students in the baseline survey (October/November 2021) reported irritating situations. Those are situations that made them reflect or talk about it with others on their career choice process. They covered negative or positive experiences in the world of work, in the family, or at school. It is, for example, the Schnupperlehre (trial apprenticeship) “that was great, what I didn’t expect” or it is a bad feeling because “I was rejected when I applied for a Schnupperlehre (trial apprenticeship)” (LZAFU) or when the student reports on a Schnupperlehre that he didn’t like “because I could not do anything useful all day long” (QCZNG). Or they report situations from the family environment, when a student is irritated because “when I told my grandmother about my vocational plans, she was a bit disappointed” (QYUIL), or when a student “feels pressure (at home) by my mother” (IZDVD). And there are emotional reactions, such as fear, when a student says that she “can’t do anything because I have pressure” (KSRUG). In other situations, the pressure to get good grades is expressed: “When I got bad grades” (OFFJR), which can be decisive for admission to general education on the upper secondary level. There are also irritations originating in the social school environment because a student was bullied because he wanted to become a professional football player (KCGAX). These randomly selected examples show that young people at lower secondary school experience irritating situations. The extent to which these irritating situations led to reflection and their consequences will be part of future analyses.

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