Critical perspectives on agency and social justice in transitions and career development

Abstract

For this special issue of the journal, we asked authors to explore critical perspectives in career guidance research with a focus on social justice, equality, power, and emancipation. Approaches that are related to critical theory have developed considerable momentum in the psychological and social sciences in general, and in career guidance research and theory, in recent years. Given this, it is timely that the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling has focused this special issue on critical perspectives as a means of stimulating further discussion of these ideas. The British Journal of Guidance and Counselling is one of the most diverse career development journals in terms of the disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological approaches that it publishes. It has a long history of featuring articles which draw on critical approaches to career development theory and career guidance going back at least to the 1990s (e.g. Bailey, 1993; Sultana, 1990). However, despite the history of engagement with critical theories in the field, there have been limited attempts to consider what critical theory might offer collectively to the study of career development and practice of career guidance and counselling with the special issue of this journal on poststructuralism and the impact of the work of Foucault (Besley & Edwards, 2005) offering an important exception. In this issue, we begin the process of addressing this more widely by bringing together researchers who are using critical theory and encouraging reflection on its use.