Career Portfolio: Curriculum based  

Dr. L. Beekman

Activities in the Career Portfolio Activity Books for Grade 8-9 and 10-12 have been designed according to the learning outcomes for the domain of career choice and world of work in the National Curriculum for the learning area “Life Orientation” in South African schools. 

The Grade 8-9 workbook covers initial self- and career exploration needed for career field choice and subsequent subject choice.  This workbook is more visual with pictures of different occupations to assist those learners who are not proficient in English.

The Grade 10-12 workbook is comprehensive and covers the career developmental process from initial exploration for career choice to planning for a future career.  After completion of all the activities, the learner will have a portfolio with sufficient information to use throughout his or her transition from school to the world of work.  

The Grade 10-12 workbook is more academically with checklists because all South African learners in these grades should have an English proficiency level that allow them to understand the written text. 

Use of the Career Portfolio

The activity workbooks have been designed to facilitate self- and career exploration through activities, which can be used by Life Orientation educators, parents, counsellors and psychologists for individuals as well as for groups in classrooms.   The rationale for the compilation of these workbooks was to provide Life Orientation educators with a career choice and planning activity based workbook they can use for a whole class during Life Orientation contact sessions.

• In Life Orientation classes

The Life Orientation educator, counsellor or psychologist schedule the sessions according to the programme guidelines for Life Orientation and facilitate the learners through activities during the time allocated on the timetable.  Activities should take about one contact session of 40 minutes.  Learners have sufficient time between contact sessions to do some individual thinking, talk to friends and family, incubate and crystallize their thoughts.

• Career counselling groups

Many counsellors and psychologists do groups of learners in a private capacity outside the classroom setting.  It should take at least 5 hours to work through the Grade 8-9 or 10-12 workbooks.  Learners are facilitated through the activities one by one with sufficient explanation and clarification.  Individual assistance is given to each group member in order to interpret the result of the activity.  Groups of 10 can be readily handled by one counsellor or psychologist.  Bigger groups will need additional career assistants to assist individual learners with the interpretation of the results of each activity.  The Grade 8-9 workbook is ideal for this kind of counselling.  The Grade 10-12 book can better be replaced with the general Career Portfolio Activity Workbook for counsellors and psychologists.  It does not follow the national curriculum but cover all the important aspects related to career decision making, which is important to counsellors and psychologists.