Activation of the vocational and personal development (ADVP): an innovative educational orientation methodology.

Progress in orientation educational practices in Italy has led to the emergence of several methods designed to help the development of personal and career aims. The several evaluations, which have been carried out, show that changes are first cognitive and specifically involve professional representations: experimental subjects used more descriptors and different descriptors to represent an occupation which interests them. These changes are also cognitive with participants stating that they have been involved in experiences and in activities, have sought information, etc. These initial results once again raise the question of instruments needing to be developed for such evaluation, that of the pertinent variables to be included and finally, more generally, that of a more clear-cut definition of desired aims. This project, carried out in a school on the Sicilian territory, during the school year 2013/2014, makes use of one theory: Activation of the vocational and Personal Development (ADVP). Activation of the Vocational and Personal Development (ADVP) is based on Guilford’s model of intellect and aims to develop individual intellectual abilities and cognitive attitudes through vocational “developmental tasks”. These developmental tasks consist of four steps: exploration, crystallization, specification, and implementation. Exploration: this procedure involves an active search for novelty and change, observation and curiosity, the elaboration of hypothesis and risk-taking. This step uses the “creative thinking” to explore information. At this step, adolescents should be able to grasp all the possible aspects of a situation or all the elements of a problem. Crystallization: after the exploration process, adolescents accumulate several experiences and different information. They must clarify and organize their perceptions in relation to professional roles. Adolescents then have to reduce their field of preferences in order to reach a general preference which embraces a certain number of activities. In this step the student uses the “categorical conceptual thinking” to organize information. Specification: adolescents specify their preferences in this step. This step could be viewed as a point where personal values intersect with the possibilities provided by environment. The ability used in this step is the “evaluation thinking” to differentiate between what is desirable and what is probable. Implementation: At the last step of developmental tasks, adolescents must commit themselves by enrolling in a program of studies or by finding a job in their chosen occupational field by using the result of the previous steps. Thus, this step requires the abilities of planning and elaboration which could be called “implicative thinking”.