As its the end of the year I thought that I’d have a look at what people have been looking at on this blog over the last 12 months. I published 156 posts during the year and the blog had 36,000 visitors with the most popular countries being the UK, Canada, USA, Australia, Norway, Finland, Ireland and Sweden.
So what has everyone been reading?
- What is radical education? A perennially popular post looking at emancipatory forms of education that I wrote back in 2014.
- Introduction to career theory – a self-study course. A post introducing people to a collection of videos that I made on different aspects of career theory.
- Sign an open letter to Gavin Williamson for a Career Guidance Guarantee. Part of a campaign that I participated in to try and put pressure on the UK government to fund career guidance properly as part of its pandemic response. I also signed an open letter to Gillian Keegan later on in the year as this campaign developed. The blog became quite a vehicle for campaigning with me writing posts like The youth labour market is a ticking timebomb: Government needs to act now! and What is to be done to avoid a meltdown of the youth labour market? As well as contributing to An emergency career development plan to maintain employment, productivity and progression post-Covid-19.
- Creating e-tivities for career learning. A short film that I made talking about how to create e-tivities.
- Career guidance and Covid-19 (presentation to the CDI student conference). I’ve been giving a lot of presentations this year on Covid and career guidance. This was one of the earlier ones that I gave to the CDI student conference. I also wrote some things about this including Why a social justice informed approach to career guidance matters in the time of coronavirus and Navigating the storm: the role of careers services during a pandemic.
- We need to start using the C word! Why career guidance needs to be at the heart of our response to Covid-19. A blog that I wrote for the Institute of Employment Studies, making the case for the importance of career and career guidance.
- £32 million for careers. But, what did Rishi really serve up? My analysis of the Chancellor’s announcement about new funding for career guidance.
- Black lives matter, black careers matter. Away from Covid, there was also a lot going on during this year about racial justice. I tried to make a positive contribution in this post.
- The dangerous lure of careers smurf. Another classic from the vaults. This time from 2013. In this post I argue against basing careers work on types which assume stable and innate personality traits.
- Profession by Issac Asimov. Finally, I wrote a review of an Issac Asimov story back in 2013 which people looking for the story are still finding it seems.
So, that’s a sort of enhanced top 10 of what people have been reading on this blog. I remain amazed that anyone ever looks at it, but there you go. Hopefully I’ll carry on producing new content throughout 2021 and beyond.
Adventures in Career Development 