Gleanings: Workshops of the Karlsruhe symposium on vocational and academic orientation for secondary school teachers in the afternoon of 22 June 2017

In the afternoon, the organizers offered two-hour workshops in which the participants developed practical solutions for everyday school life. Topics included what roles school subjects will play in the study and career orientation process in the future, how existing or planned school concepts need to be supplemented, simply adopted or revised in order to keep up with the content of the guidelines, how parents can be involved as experts in the process and what elements would be needed for an updated methodological case. A workshop was offered especially for the school management.

Workshop 1: Study and career orientation at grammar school in SEK II - How can this requirement be implemented meaningfully from the point of view of the school management?

In this workshop, the members of the school management were first intensively informed about the position of vocational and study orientation in the 2016 education plan. Afterwards, the relevant current administrative regulations were discussed and the concept of an online continuing education programme for colleagues was also presented. Afterwards, there was time, especially for members of the school management, to jointly design and discuss possibilities for a meaningful implementation at the schools.

The main topics of the workshop were

• the role of school management in implementation
• Career orientation as a topic in the Teachers' Conference
• Involvement of parents and out-of-school partners
• the role of various student councils in the implementation of concepts
• Crediting possibilities within the framework of pool hours
• Transparency of the concepts

Workshop 2: Leading Perspective on Vocational Orientation - What can the different subjects contribute to the implementation of the guideline?

Vocational orientation (BO) as a guiding perspective in the new educational plan is not only the task of individual colleagues - all subject teachers should contribute to it. Ideally, the entire teaching staff should work towards a common goal through coordinated contributions.

The aim of the workshop was to jointly develop ideas and concepts on how the various subjects can contribute to career and study orientation and how these contributions can be integrated into an overall school concept. A further topic was how individual subjects, especially in view of the different starting conditions in schools, can support or take over guideline modules for vocational and study orientation at course level.

Workshop 3: Parents as experts? - Involving parents in the process of study and career orientation

Good, tried-and-tested concepts for parental work in the field of career and study orientation already exist: Workshop 3 used these to examine the opportunities and challenges of parental work in more detail on the basis of selected aspects - regardless of whether these are projects that are firmly integrated into regular school operations or larger-scale cooperative initiatives within the framework of regional networks.

The participants of the workshop outlined - also by including their own experiences - concepts for the implementation of a target-oriented, constructive parental work in which the parents can provide positive support and relieve the burden. Special attention was paid to the guidelines for vocational and study orientation at the course level. Here, too, the prerequisite was to do justice to the special conditions at the schools and in the associated regions.

Workshop 4: What do we have already? What else do we need? - Transferability of the previous BOGY concepts to the contents of the guide Vocational and academic orientation

Workshop 5: BESTOR method kit - What kind of teaching units and didactic building blocks do teachers need for their future BO lessons?

(Dr. Florian von Dobeneck, Ute Benninghofen)

This workshop by our BESTOR partner from Freiburg was based on the well-known BEST training on career and study orientation. In the sense of a "Best of BEST", individual elements from the training courses are to be extracted, optimised for school lessons and made usable for the individual modules of the guide to career and study orientation and thus for future BO lessons. Enriched with other teaching units that have already been tried and tested in practice (from the Guide to Career and Study Orientation, from the study guidance provided by universities or by teachers), these should result in a BESTOR method kit that teachers can use in the concrete planning and preparation of their BO lessons.

The participants of the workshop participated in the design of the construction kit and discussed first exercises and materials together. The BESTOR team used the workshop to find out directly from teachers which sources they usually use for BO lesson preparation and how teaching units need to be designed and sorted in order to provide a well-filled and easy-to-use method kit.

The symposium in Karlsruhe was the first of four symposia in the regional councils of Baden-Württemberg. These not only serve as a platform for the exchange of information between teachers regarding the implementation of the Guide to study and career guidanceThey should also help to identify the needs of teachers with regard to extended career guidance competence - also with the help of a multi-stage accompanying evaluation process. Based on the inputs from the conference and the evaluation results, an online course on study orientation for teachers of secondary level II at grammar schools (OLGA) arise. The OLGA project is also a component of the initiative "Education Chains".