VET, and especially iVET, serves different values, based on national or regional traditions and the design of the educational different system. In some countries, VET is mainly seen as an educational offer to integrate people with low skills, which are hard to educate and train or who have physical or mental handicaps. In other countries, it is the first choice for most students, also for the very talented. In general, VET has the potential to integrate young people as well as lay the ground for a sustainable career for the very talented (Stalder, 2012). It is therefore not surprising that the standing of VET depends on a multitude of factors and differs significantly between countries and regions (Billett et al., 2022).
Students transition into VET either after the lower secondary or the upper secondary level. It is always a transition from school to VET. It is, therefore, important to look at how students move from school into VET. There is a plenitude of scientific work doing this with different perspectives (policy, economy, sociological, psychological perspectives etc.). An often-neglected topic is the role of teachers at school in career education. This discussion is often left to career counsellors, or teachers are asked to behave like career counsellors.
First, we will introduce the concept of career education in its historical context and how it relates to sustainable careers.
Second, we ask about the role of teachers in career education. We know that teachers either have no role at all in career education or that they are asked to help students find an occupation. The latter brings them into a role as career counsellors, which should not be the aim. Teachers remain better educators and do not become counsellors because this would overarch their professional role. However, it is surprising that in many papers on youth transitions into iVET or VET, teachers are explicitly or implicitly assigned to the role of a counsellor. We want to question this view and propose alternatives, also based on a model of how students move from school to work (Nägele & Stalder, 2017). We will discuss the role of teachers in career education.
Third, if career education becomes a goal for schools, what competencies should students develop? Often, the main question a student asks is, “What do I want to become?”. Is this a good question? Should it not be: “How do I learn to think and build a sustainable career?”. It is about sense-making and reflection, concepts borrowed from career counselling (Savickas et al., 2009) that need to be adapted to the educational context.
We will present the voices of students from within a system that serves, on the one hand, to integrate disadvantaged students into VET, as well as offer opportunities to the very talented students that would head towards general education in many countries. How does career planning in individuals start on the lower secondary level on how come they conclude to follow vocational education and not to go into general education? And what is the role of teachers in that process? We need to reflect on career education, and on how teachers can support their students in learning how to design their careers. This is a very different task from career counselling.

Data to illustrate our line of reasoning stems from two studies run in Switzerland. In Switzerland, students need to decide on the lower secondary level whether they want to continue their education and training in the vocational or general education track at the upper secondary level. Most students head towards VET on the upper secondary level. Study one is Informationssetting BL (Nägele et al., 2018), where students heading towards general education on the upper secondary level have to reflect on their decision, and they are asked to argue for and against their envisaged solution in comparison to VET, vocational education ion the upper secondary level. This study is running since 2018, N = 7’000 students. Study two is digibe an accelerated-longitudinal intervention study on reflection and transformative learning in career education at the lower secondary level from grade 9 to grade 11, N = 2’900 students.

Building on the results from both studies, we will show and discuss a model of career education at school. In both studies, students were asked to reflect on their career planning. We will present results to show whether this happens at all and what they are reflecting. We have seen that some students resist reflecting because they tell us that reflection is unnecessary. It is not needed because they have known since long that they want to become the same as the father (farmer, electrician, carpenter ...) as a boy or that they want to head towards a caring profession as a girl.

Billett, S., Stalder, B. E., Aarkrog, V., Choy, S., Hodge, S., & Le, A. H. (Eds.). (2022). The standing of vocational education and the occupations it serves. Springer Natur. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96237-1 Nägele, C., Rodcharoen, P., Hell, B., & Armoneit, C. (2018). Eine erste Einschätzung: Online-Self-Assessment zur Reflexion über die Wahl einer weiteren Ausbildung auf Sekundarstufe II als Teil des Informationssettings Kanton Basel-Landschaft. Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Pädagogische Hochschule und Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Hochschule für Angewandte Psychologie. Nägele, C., & Stalder, B. E. (2017). Übergänge in die Berufsbildung – ein Arbeitsmodell. In M. P. Neuenschwander & C. Nägele (Eds.), Bildungsverläufe von der Einschulung bis in den ersten Arbeitsmarkt (pp. 21–36). Springer Fachmedien. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-16981-7 Savickas, M. L., Nota, L., Rossier, J., Dauwalder, J.-P., Duarte, M. E., Guichard, J., Soresi, S., Van Esbroeck, R., & van Vianen, A. E. M. (2009). Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the 21st century. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 75(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2009.04.004 Stalder, B. E. (2012). School-to-work transitions in apprenticeship-based VET systems: The Swiss approach. In S. Billett, G. Johnson, S. Thomas, C. Sim, S. Hay, & J. Ryan (Eds.), Experience of school transitions: Policies, practice and participants (pp. 123–139). Springer Science + Business