This presentation from the OECD Disrupted Futures 2023: International lessons on how schools can best equip students for their working lives conference looks at Enabling transitions “Toward diversified ways to promote decent work trajectories: career guidance for emergent adults in the informal sector”. Presented by Marcelo Afonso Ribeiro. Discover the videos and other sessions from the OECD Disrupted Futures 2023 conference at https://www.oecd.org/education/career-readiness/conferences-webinars/disrupted-futures-2023.htm Find out more about our work on Career Readiness https://www.oecd.org/education/career-readiness/

1. Toward diversified
ways to promote
decent work
trajectories: Career
guidance for
emergent adults in
the informal sector
Marcelo Afonso Ribeiro
Institute of Psychology
University of Sao Paulo
(Brazil)
OECD Conference DISRUPTED FUTURES 2023
The laborers
Tarsila do Amaral
(1886-1973)
Modernism
PICTURE (www.tarsiladoamaral.com.br)

2. 2004 – PhD in Social and Work Psychology (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
2005-present – University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil – Associate
Professor at the Social and Work Psychology Department
Coordinator of the Career Guidance and Counseling Service
Full member of the UNESCO Chair in Lifelong Guidance and Counseling
Former president of the Brazilian Association for Career Guidance and
Counseling
Consultant of the Brazilian Ministry of Labour and Employment for career
guidance issues
Career counselor practitioner since 1993
Personal Presentation
Professor, researcher, practitioner,
practice supervisor, Master and Ph.D.
advisor, and policy-maker consultant

3. Present and discuss a career
guidance programme for young
people in the informal sector
suggesting that we go toward
diversified ways to promote decent
work trajectories.
Main Goal

4. Educational and Working World in Brasil
International Labour Organization (ILO, 2023). World
employment and social outlook: Trends 2023.
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD, 2022). Overview of the
education system (EAG 2022).
WORKING CONTEXT
15% - College degree
40% - Employment rate
10% - Unemployment rate
40% - Informal work rate
51% - Unskilled workers
Average income – US$570
EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT
53.6% have not completed secondary
education
17.6% over 25 years old have completed
higher education
The labour force in Brazil is low-skilled
CAREER DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT
Career education and career guidance are
generally limited

5. Informal Work
International Labour
Organization (ILO, 2023). World
employment and social outlook:
Trends 2023.
Higher insecurity
Discontinuity
Lower levels of enforceable rights and social protection
Ease of access
Competitive and unregulated markets

6. Represent a fundamental action to invest in people’s
capacity to:
Reduce their entry into the informal economy
Expand decent work opportunities in the formal labour
market
Generate more autonomy and increase the sense of
community
Career Guidance in Brazil
International Labour
Organization (ILO, 2019). ILO
Centenary Declaration for the
Future of Work.

7. Career guidance in Brazil requests contextualised
career education approaches and frameworks to
address institutional limitations, cultural and
socioeconomic backgrounds, and specific youth
contexts
Moving from more traditional models to alternative
models
Career Guidance in Brazil
Ribeiro, M. A. (2020). Career development theories
from the global South. In P. J. Robertson, T. Hooley,
& P. McCash (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of career
development (pp. 1-16). Oxford University Press.

8. MAIN GOAL
Increase autonomy and the quality of work without imposing
a formula but respecting each young person with the values,
resources, and possibilities of their context
A significant support to face the old problem of guaranteeing
the universal right to decent work and the new challenge of
promoting decent work in contexts marked by informality.
Career Guidance in Brazil
Ribeiro, M. A. (2020). Career development theories
from the global South. In P. J. Robertson, T.
Hooley, & P. McCash (Eds.), The Oxford handbook
of career development (pp. 1-16). Oxford.

9. Career guidance
programme
toward diversified
ways to promote
decent work
trajectories
PICTURE (https://www.eaie.org/blog/working-together-promote-placements-abroad.html)

10. The target audience consists of young
people (aged 18-20) working in unregulated
jobs in the informal sector, who were
attending secondary school, and do not have
career development support in their
respective schools
PICTURE (https://www.eaie.org/blog/working-together-promote-placements-abroad.html)
To Whom is the Programme Addressed?

11. It aims to help people understand the place they
occupy in the power structure in which they find
themselves and to become aware of these structures
and seek possibilities to transcend them, fostering
narrative changes and social repositioning through
expanding dialogue, negotiating meanings, and
integrating differences
PICTURE (https://www.eaie.org/blog/working-together-promote-placements-abroad.html)
What are the Main Goals?

12. It is developed and implemented through a
partnership among the Career Guidance and
Counselling Service from the University of
Sao Paulo, and public secondary schools,
and community resources
PICTURE (https://www.eaie.org/blog/working-together-promote-placements-abroad.html)
Who are those Responsible for the
Programme?

13. It is conducted by postgraduate
students from our Service and
supervised by the staff team
composed of career guidance
specialists
PICTURE (https://www.eaie.org/blog/working-together-promote-placements-abroad.html)
Who Carries out Career Guidance?

14. THREE MOMENTS
Welcoming/Holding
In-depth co-
exploration
Co-construction of an
action plan
THREE ACTIONS
Identitary project
Transition
Action Plan
What are the Practicalities of the Intervention?
MAIN GOAL - THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF A PLACE IN THE WORLD
Individual counselling (8 to 10 one-hour meetings)
Group counselling (6 meetings of 2 hours)
Workshops (1 meeting of 2 hours)

15. Key
Theoretical
Framework
PICTURE (https://www.eaie.org/blog/working-together-promote-placements-abroad.html)

16. Relational ontology
Theoretical Framework
PICTURE (https://bradlittlejohn.com/tag/relational-ontology/)
“Relational ontology means
that knowledge is produced by
relationships between different
people from distinct cultural
and socioeconomic
backgrounds in the everyday
life” (Ribeiro, 2018)
Ribeiro, M. A. (2018). Towards diversified ways to promote decent
working trajectories: A life and career design proposal for informal
workers. In V. Cohen-Scali et al. (Eds.), Interventions in career
design and education: Transformation for sustainable
development and decent work (pp. 180-201). Springer.

17. Interculturality and intercultural dialogue
PICTURE (http://dhakacourier.com.bd/news/Column/Multiculturalism:-The-ultimate-goal/3232)
“Culture is understood as symbolic systems
which organize social life through shared
knowledge, values and practices” (Silva et al.,
2016)
“Interculturality demands and assumes, both
mutual recognition of different cultures in a given
cultural space and readiness for dialogue through
processes of co-construction” (Silva et al., 2016)
“The recognition of mutual incompleteness is a
sine qua non condition for intercultural dialogue”
Silva, F. F., Paiva, V., & Ribeiro, M. A. (2016). Career
construction and reduction of psychosocial vulnerability:
Intercultural career guidance based on Southern
epistemologies. Journal of the National Institute for Career
Education and Counselling, 36, 46-53.
Theoretical Framework

18. Narratability
“Each person's ability to
construct a biography or
narrate her/his life history that
is meaningful for her/himself
and the others” (Savickas et
al., 2009)
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, 239–250.
Theoretical Framework

19. Hybridism
Bruno Latour (1993)
PICTURE (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/centaur-hybrid-woman-mythology-6199751)/
The logic of the hybrid allows, in
the first place, to question the
existing hierarchy and to build new
places, positions and possibilities
depending on the context in which
it takes place
Latour, B. (1993). We have never been
modern. Harvard University Press.
Theoretical Framework

20. MAIN GOAL - THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF A PLACE IN THE WORLD
TECHNICAL
UNDERPINNINGS
Counselor acting as an
intermediary
Focus on the process
Counseling as a successive
process of co-construction
TECHNICAL
UNDERPINNINGS
Diatopical hermeneutics
Discursive validation
Communitarian strategies
Critical consciousness
MAIN ATTITUDES
SITUATED KNOWLEDGE AND INTERCULTURAL VIEW
AND ACTION
INTERVENTIONS THAT EXTEND TO THE SOCIAL
LOGIC OF CO-CONSTRUCTION THROUGH
DIATOPICAL HERMENEUTICS
Technical Framework

21. Intermediary
Practical strategies
The counselor should act as an
intermediary (Ribeiro, 2018)
Ribeiro, M. A. (2018). Towards diversified ways to promote decent
working trajectories: A life and career design proposal for informal
workers. In V. Cohen-Scali et al. (Eds.), Interventions in career
design and education: Transformation for sustainable
development and decent work (pp. 180-201). Springer.
Career
Guidance “must
be forged with
others, not for
others” Paulo Freire

22. Process of co-construction
Practical strategies
“Career counseling is not done through
pre-established strategies that will be
applied in the moment of the
counseling, but to a strategy to be
reconstructed through co-construction
process between counselor and
counselees based on the knowledge
and practices of both” (Ribeiro, 2018)
Ribeiro, M. A. (2018). Towards diversified ways to promote decent
working trajectories: A life and career design proposal for informal
workers. In V. Cohen-Scali et al. (Eds.), Interventions in career
design and education: Transformation for sustainable
development and decent work (pp. 180-201). Springer.

23. Diatopical hermeneutics
Practical strategies
“It refers to the process of
interpretation (hermeneutics) carried
out between persons or groups in
different and unequal sociocultural
positions (di – two and topoi –
positions or knowledge production
places)” (Silva et al., 2016)
Silva, F. F., Paiva, V., & Ribeiro, M. A. (2016). Career
construction and reduction of psychosocial vulnerability:
Intercultural career guidance based on Southern
epistemologies. Journal of the National Institute for Career
Education and Counselling, 36, 46-53.

24. Discursive validation
Practical strategies
“Discursive validation should be
understood as a strategy through
which the counsellor tries to validate
clients’ personal knowledge about
themselves and about their contexts
in order to help them to develop a
career project and make career
decisions” (Ribeiro, 2020b)
Ribeiro, M. A. (2018). Towards diversified ways to promote decent
working trajectories: A life and career design proposal for informal
workers. In V. Cohen-Scali et al. (Eds.), Interventions in career
design and education: Transformation for sustainable
development and decent work (pp. 180-201). Springer.

25. Communitarian strategies
Practical strategies
Career guidance workers use such
community-based action to “help the
persons in socio-occupational
vulnerability to achieve educational and
labour goals through sharing support
and acting as intermediary for the
relationships between them and the
community actors and institutions”
(Ribeiro, Uvaldo, & Silva, 2015)
Ribeiro, M. A., Uvaldo, M. C. C., & Silva, F. F. (2015). Some
contributions from Latin American career counselling for
dealing with situations of psychosocial
vulnerability. International Journal for Educational and
Vocational Guidance, 15(3), 193-204.

26. Critical consciousness
construction
Practical strategies
“Critical consciousness allows people to firstly
experience and understand that social relations
are always political (representing unequal
distributions of power) and cultural (produced
in-between). Secondly, they can realize the
place they occupy in the power relations.
Finally, they try to find possible alternatives to
change his/her situation through constructing
career projects” (Ribeiro, 2018)
Ribeiro, M. A., Uvaldo, M. C. C., & Silva, F. F. (2015). Some
contributions from Latin American career counselling for
dealing with situations of psychosocial
vulnerability. International Journal for Educational and
Vocational Guidance, 15(3), 193-204.

27. Enhancing critical consciousness
Actively engaging in developing resources to cope with life construction
Identifying social supports and possibilities for community engagement
Accessing programmatic resources (public and private)
Seeking help and support in organised social movements
Accessing the experiences of their community of origin
Undertaking actions and changes to make their work decent.
Main Outcomes of the Intervention
PICTURE (https://mundoeducacao.uol.com.br/gramatica/hibridismos.htm)
PICTURE (https://www.newlocal.org.uk/events/putting-community-power-into-practice/)

28. The proposed career guidance programme
Allow contextualizing theories and practices
Expand and diversifying the attended public
Deal with flexible working contexts
Include social transformation projects practices
Conclusion
PICTURE (https://www.quoteslyfe.com/category/judith-butler-quotes)

29. The laborers
Tarsila do Amaral
(1886-1973)
Modernism
PICTURE
(www.tarsiladoamaral.com.br)
HYBRIDITY

30. THANK YOU
VERY MUCH
MUITO
OBRIGADO
Contact

marcelopsi
@usp.br