Study and career counselling in Swedish adult education

ABSTRACT

This article presents and discusses findings from a qualitative study of Swedish adult education, with focus on meetings between counsellors and students and how counsellors translate and enact different expectations from policies and ethical guidelines, as well as from adult students. The results show that counsellors have an important role in the marketised and complex system of adult education in Sweden, both to guide people during the encounter with adult education and to guide and support them as students. A policy enactment emerges where counsellors are in conflict between different guidelines and are forced to compromise between the ethical ideal that they, as counsellors should always start from individual needs, and policy requirements concerning e.g. skills supply and labour-market integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Study and career counsellor
• adult education
• guidance
• counselling
• policy enactment

Introduction

Adult education has a central role in inclusion and opportunities for lifelong learning (OECD, 2020). Sweden has a free and accessible education system, including different adult education institutions. Formal adult education is provided by the municipalities. The municipal adult education (MAE) is characterised by flexibility with many study options but in a complex, marketised system. The focus of this article is guidance and counselling that takes place in this context of adult education, wherein the counsellor becomes a “hub” in the enactment of individualised education for a diverse group of students who need guidance to navigate the system (Muhrman & Andersson, in press).

The participation in Swedish adult education is extensive, with 414,000 students, or 7% of the adult population aged 20–64, studying in MAE in 2021 (Swedish National Agency for Education [SNAE], 2022). MAE includes general and vocational courses corresponding to compulsory and upper secondary school, and Swedish for immigrants (SFI) courses. The flexibility includes a course-based system, where students combine courses in their own study plan. The extensive marketisation means that there are both external, private companies contracted to provide courses; and internal, municipal-owned providers. Here, students might need to combine courses from different providers (Andersson & Muhrman, 2022a; Muhrman & Andersson, 2022). There is a high demand for adult education among immigrants, first to learn the language in SFI, and second to facilitate further integration into society. In 2021, 94% of adult students at the compulsory school level and 46% of adult students at the upper secondary level were foreign-born (SNAE, 2022). A consequence of this complex system of adult education, and the high demand for it among immigrants who are unfamiliar with the Swedish education system, is that study and career guidance and counselling become crucial for applicants and for students.

The Swedish Education Act (2010) states a three-part mission for MAE: personal development and a strengthened position in society; to enable further studies, and to establish a strengthened position in working life. The Act also stipulates that MAE should form the basis for national and regional skills supply. There is also an Adult Education Regulation (2011) and a national curriculum (SNAE, 2017), which are enacted within local organisations and policies established by municipalities. The focus of this article is on the enactment of adult education policy in the work of study and career counsellors, as governed by priorities set by national and local policy decisions. The importance of counselling is emphasised in national policy, but there is a high degree of freedom concerning how to organise counsellors and counselling. Therefore, local political decisions might have a major impact on how counselling is enacted in MAE (Muhrman & Andersson, in press). The article will answer the following research questions:

1. How are meetings between study and career counsellors and adult students enacted?

2. How are policies on counselling in adult education enacted by counsellors?

Context of the study

Adults can participate in Swedish MAE from the year they turn 20, if they are judged able to pass the course. Participation is free, meaning that there are no tuition fees but a system of grants and loans for students who need this for their living. Municipalities must offer all eligible applicants a place in basic courses (compulsory school level), SFI, and upper secondary courses for university eligibility. However, municipalities are not required to offer a place to all eligible applicants to other general or vocational courses. With more applicants than places for the latter courses, those who are assessed to have the greatest need for the course will be prioritised. The course supply should be flexible concerning distance course options, study pace and continuous admission (Adult Education Regulation, 2011). Concerning guidance and counselling, all students should have an individual study plan covering the extent and aims of their studies, which should be established when the student is admitted, and revised when needed (Education Act, 2010). According to the Regulation, the student should also be offered study and career guidance, with information about further study opportunities, competence needs in the labour market, and financial conditions for their studies, at the time the study plan is developed (Adult Education Regulation, 2011).

Since the mid-1990s, an increasing number of external, private actors have established themselves in the Swedish education market, and the system is also characterised by internal marketisation with more business-like management of public institutions (Dahlstedt & Fejes, 2019b). This marketisation trend has been particularly strong in MAE. As mentioned, many municipalities contract private companies to provide courses, instead of – or parallel to – their internal, public providers (Fejes & Holmqvist, 2019). In 2021, 51% of MAE was organised by publicly funded, independent providers, mainly owned by private companies (SNAE, 2022). The internal marketisation translates to more extensive quality assurance work and competition with other providers, including public, municipal-owned providers (Andersson & Muhrman, 2022a; Muhrman & Andersson, 2022). However, regardless of provider, the municipality is always responsible for the quality and accessibility of adult education for its citizens. This responsibility is, for example, enacted in guidance and counselling, which with few exceptions is organised by the municipality, even for students working with private providers. That is, guidance and counselling is mainly connected to the admission process, which is a municipal responsibility, and “external” students typically have access to municipal counsellors, who might be centrally located for the whole municipality, and/or circulate and visit each provider on some days. Some municipalities require that contracted providers offer their students counselling, but this is not common, and it still does not guarantee students’ daily access to counsellors, as these providers may run many schools and offer centralised counselling at a distance (Muhrman & Andersson, in press).

Previous research

There are few empirical studies of marketised adult education practices. However, in Sweden, the marketisation of education is widespread, and there are studies focusing on the marketisation of MAE (e.g. Bjursell, 2016; Fejes & Holmqvist, 2019; Holmqvist et al., 2021). In an earlier part of the current research project (Andersson & Muhrman, 2022a), we provided an overview as to how municipalities in Sweden combine internal and external MAE providers and demonstrated the importance of quality control systems when hiring external providers.

There are many constraints on participation in adult education, and political decisions concerning resources have a significant impact on the provision of education. Furthermore, even though it is the individual who decides whether to participate, this is not always fully voluntary. Changes in the labour market mean that adults might be forced to participate in education due to employers’ demands for formal professional qualifications (Desjardins & Rubenson, 2013). Formal education has also been identified as very important in becoming established in Swedish working life, in creating a future, and in becoming a part of Swedish society (e.g. Dahlstedt & Fejes, 2019a).

A dilemma of concern in the work of counsellors is the tension between individual and labour market needs, i.e. between the professional approach of supporting individuals in developing their plans in the process of career choice and transitions through education and training, but also representing society and its needs; e.g. the expressed employment goal and expected need for labour in certain vocational areas (Bergmo-Prvulovic, 2014, 2015; Cort et al., 2015). This has also been described in terms of how “career guidance for social justice” (Hooley et al., 2018) meets and challenges neoliberal market forces (cf. Dahlstedt & Fejes, 2019b).

Issues concerning one’s career are of special interest in guidance for adults, and Haug et al. (2019) identify a special focus in Sweden on the outcomes of guidance targeting migrants. Another dilemma concerns the position of the counsellor, and whether counsellors should maintain a neutral position – or express their own values, which could result in an asymmetrical guidance relationship. This dilemma is specifically discussed vis-à-vis the target group of migrants (Hertzberg, 2015, 2017; Hertzberg & Sundelin, 2014), as are other aspects of guidance that are significant for social inclusion, such as career guidance and development, and the recognition of prior learning and qualifications (Fejes et al., 2022).

Our focus here is on guidance and counselling in an adult education context. Raschauer and Resch (2016) describe three central aspects or functions of educational counselling: guidance counselling for learning, with a focus on the learning process; career or educational counselling, focusing on choices and plans; and financial guidance counselling, focusing on grants, etc. (cf. Käpplinger & Maier-Gutheil, 2015). Here, Haasler and Barabasch (2015) identify the risk that the potential of guidance and adult education in connection with adults’ mid-career transitions could be missed if the system is based on a linear idea of career and does not consider the life situation of adults with “disruptive careers and horizontal mobility” (Haasler & Barabasch, 2015, p. 306). It is also important for counsellors to understand the adult students’ ideas of career. Bergmo-Prvulovic (2013, 2015, 2018) describes and discusses four different “social representations”, or aspects of adults’ common-sense understandings: “Career” could be seen as an individual project of self-realisation, as a matter of social climbing, as a game of exchange, and as having an uncertain outcome. For example, the representation as a game of exchange means that career is seen as the outcomes of certain efforts and that adults’ choices could depend on if the exchange of, e.g. taking a certain course is worth the effort.

Counsellors’ tasks are thus diverse and complex, but key elements have been identified, and include informing, explaining, activating, facilitating, analysing, and (not least) counselling (Raschauer & Resch, 2016). However, this description focuses on one-to-one counselling, while other aspects of the counsellor’s work might be missing. Such a broad perspective on the role of the counsellor is of particular interest in the complex context of adult education (cf. Muhrman & Andersson, in press). It should be noted that guidance and counselling in Swedish MAE is a local responsibility. However, even with a national system of guidance service its practices could become very diverse when situated in a highly labour-market oriented and diverse educational system, as is described by Hearne et al. (2022) in their study of guidance in the Irish further education and training system.

Our previous analysis of the role of counsellors in MAE shows that their position as a “hub” of adult education does not include only the more direct counselling tasks, including mapping and validating prior learning and being a “map reader” for applicants and students who have become lost in the complex MAE system. Counsellors also have central roles in marketing, admission and quality assessment work (Muhrman & Andersson, in press). However, the present study will focus on the enactment of guidance and counselling per se, and the work of counsellors.

Policy enactment in adult education

The general interest in this study is policy enactment (Ball et al., 2012; Braun et al., 2010) in Swedish adult education (Andersson & Muhrman, 2022a, 2022b; Holmqvist et al., 2021; Muhrman & Andersson, 2022, submitted), with a focus on educational and vocational guidance. From our perspective, the connection between education policy and practice is not a rational process of implementation, but a complex and messy process of enactment including the interpretation and translation of policy into local practice (Ball et al., 2012; Maguire et al., 2015). Thus, policy enactment is about how different actors connected to an institution interpret, reinterpret and use institutional policies, within the degree of freedom that exists. In the local contexts of schools and local authorities, multiple actors, e.g. politicians, school leaders, principals, teachers, and study and career counsellors, are involved in complex processes, where policies are interpreted and translated, and enacted in local contexts in certain ways (cf. Godden, 2022; Hooley & Godden, 2022). It is not only the actors who work directly with the institution who are important for policy enactment, but also the context around the education system. This context includes, but is not limited to, influences from society as well as cultures and historical traditions that are embedded in the organisation. This means that policies are interpreted and reformulated in different ways in different environments and contexts. According to Ball et al. (2012), the relationships between society and local culture that prevail in an environment can both enable and hinder actions. Different policies might be contradictory, with the consequence that their enactment within a local educational context might be messy and incomplete. Furthermore, less prescriptive, general policies include a certain degree of freedom for local translation and enactment. In this article, policy enactment is examined with a focus on study and career counselling in MAE. The policy for study and career counselling in Swedish MAE states that the municipality needs to work actively to reach people with short previous education who need basic knowledge, and that adults with the greatest need for education who meet the conditions necessary to pass the course must be prioritised, and this policy should be enacted during student selection. The policy also states that students in MAE should have the opportunity to strengthen their position in working life and society, as well as promote their personal development, and that study and career guidance play an important role in these opportunities (Adult Education Regulation, 2011).

In addition to these descriptions, study and career counselling is only described very briefly in national policy texts governing MAE, which provides an extensive degree of freedom for interpretations regarding the work of counsellors. This means that local actors within municipalities can interpret and translate policies around counselling to fit them into their own models of adult education. While the description of the guidance is vague in the policy for MAE, our previous studies show that the marketisation of MAE, with its many external providers, together with the requirement for flexible and individualised opportunities involving different study paths, indicate an extensive need for guidance within MAE (Muhrman & Andersson, in press).

Methodology

This article is part of a larger study of the enactment of MAE in Sweden in terms of political decisions; the procedures used to enrol external providers and their work with quality assurance, admissions and guidance; and how all of this affects adult students, teachers’ work, and the classroom situation. Here, the focus is on how adult education is enacted in study and career guidance provided for applicants and students.

The data consists of qualitative, semi-structured interviews with MAE leaders in 20 municipalities and study and career counsellors in 6 municipalities. A sample of 20 municipalities was made based on survey data gathered in an earlier part of the larger study (Andersson & Muhrman, 2022a), and on official statistics on Swedish municipalities, to obtain a sample covering different types of municipalities and ways of organising MAE. In the next step, a more extensive study was conducted in six of these municipalities, including in-depth, qualitative interviews with 12 counsellors, to gain a deeper understanding of how guidance in MAE is enacted locally. In both steps, principals and school leaders were also asked about their views of the counsellor’s work in MAE. The interview questions concerned, among other things: how study and vocational guidance is organised overall in the municipality and at the individual school; how the counselling itself takes place; whether the counsellors have any role in the admission process and whether they work with validation; how the counsellors work with follow-up of student results; if there are priorities when advising on courses and programmes; if they have any role in the school’s quality work; and if there are any difference between private and municipal providers. All interviews were conducted in Swedish, and the quotations that are used to illustrate the findings have been translated into English.

The qualitative data consisting of recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed thematically (e.g. Braun & Clarke, 2006). Braun and Clarke’s model for thematic analysis includes six steps that involve finding initial codes in the data that can be categorised and combined into themes that capture phenomena in relation to the study’s purpose and questions. All interviews with school leaders from the 20 municipalities and the counsellors from the six municipalities were analysed together, codes were generated and gathered into themes with associated subthemes. Those themes were in the next step analysed in relation to the policy of MAE to find out how policies concerning counselling in MAE are interpreted, translated and enacted in local contexts. The focus in the analysis was, in accordance with the research questions, the enactment of counselling. Following the perspective of policy enactment (Ball et al., 2012), we understand the enactment as a complex, institutional process including interpretations and translations of policies. Thus, the latter concepts were also employed as sensitising concepts in the analysis of the accounts of MAE leaders and counsellors, but the focus of the findings is the enactment of counselling in practice in the local context of MAE.

The study follows the guidelines from the Swedish Research Council (2017) concerning good research practice, which include matters such as information provided to interviewees, consent, confidentiality and the use of data. Thus, we have handled the data confidentially and have been careful to ensure that it should not be possible to trace empirical examples to individual municipalities. Interviews were also handled confidentially, we have anonymised respondents, and we have not reported which municipalities were included in the study.

Findings

This article focuses on the study and career counsellors’ work in guiding students in Swedish adult education, both when adults apply for MAE and when they are enrolled as students. Challenges in enacting study and career counselling in adult education are described and discussed, as well as other responsibilities that could become part of counsellors’ work in this context. Firstly, the findings concern the meetings between counsellor and student, both in connection with application to and during education at MAE. Secondly, the focus is the approaches of the counsellors in guiding adult students to the “right” education or profession.

The meeting between counsellor and student

To be able to guide students, students must first get in touch with counsellors. This can happen in different ways, and meetings between counsellors and students depend partly on which organisation the municipality or school has chosen for its study and career counsellors, and partly on what type of communication students prefer.

Meetings when applying to MAE

The policy for MAE in Sweden states that municipalities must work actively to reach people with less previous education who lack basic knowledge. In counsellors’ stories, policy enactment appears where they spend a lot of time marketing MAE through participation in various fairs. The first meeting with study and career counsellors is thus for many adult students in connection with, for example, an education fair arranged by the municipality, or via a labour market fair arranged by the Swedish Public Employment Service.

The municipality is also, by policy, obliged to ensure that those who intend to study at MAE are offered study and career guidance. Before applying, many students book a meeting with a counsellor to get advice on various courses and plan their studies. Municipalities often offer physical meetings with counsellors as well as telephone or video meetings. Despite the alternative forms of meeting, demand for contact with counsellors is often high, which means that the queue can be long and lead to some applicants being “lost”.

Counsellor: Mm, we have a fairly long waiting time to book a call with us, it’s about three, four weeks. And in those three or four weeks, things happen in their lives.

To avoid errors in the application, the policy in some municipalities is that all applicants must meet a counsellor to get help with choosing courses and submitting their application. But there are also many who make the application on their own, usually those who already have good insight into the Swedish education system and apply for single courses to supplement their eligibility for university. According to counsellors, it seems to be a generational question as to what extent or how applicants choose to contact counsellors. Counsellors describe that younger people more often submit their application themselves or, in cases where they need help, choose to receive guidance via email instead of by phone or via a physical meeting. Counsellors also say that it is becoming more common to hold digital meetings in the form of video calls for those applying for MAE.

The use of different channels to meet applicants demonstrates a policy enactment that promotes increased access to study and career counselling. Even people who would otherwise have had difficulty getting to a meeting with a counsellor can be reached through digital meetings. These could include people who live abroad but plan to move to Sweden, as well as people who work, or people who have difficulty attending physical meetings due to small children living at home, etc.

Guidance during education at MAE

Once students have begun their studies in MAE, there are often counsellors available at the schools. Counsellors have an important role in the students’ entry into MAE, where they participate and provide information on everything from study structure and study financing to how the students can progress after MAE.

Booked appointments or spontaneous meetings. At the schools, students can book a meeting with the counsellors, or visit spontaneously to get help with various questions. Study and career counsellors who are located at schools say that it is important that they are also visible in the corridors, are in the school canteen, have coffee with students, and so on. Many students take the opportunity to talk to counsellors about different issues when they meet them spontaneously at school. Although it is stated in the policy that it is the individual’s responsibility to contact counsellors when they study, it can be a threshold for some students to book a meeting, which is why the counsellors present a policy enactment wherein spontaneous meetings in the corridor are an important part in capturing students who need guidance and help with various issues.

Counsellors say that when students in adult education contact them for a meeting, it is a question they have been thinking about for a while, which means that it is usually a “sharp situation”, something the counsellors describe is a difference from work with adolescents:

Counsellor: In upper secondary school or compulsory school I could sit with the door open and then a student could walk by three times and then the fourth time just say “I have a question”. And here when someone comes in, it is like now it is “sharp mode”. Like now it happens. Because as an adult you may have thought about the consequences or that you have gone and dragged on a bit, because you are afraid to start school again for various reasons.

Counsellors as an “intermediary” for teachers, employment services and social services. Although policy states that it is the individual’s responsibility to contact counsellors, a policy enactment appears where counsellors assume great responsibility in following up on students’ study results. Many counsellors describe how they work in outreach – to contact and meet students – when they receive signals from, for example, teachers that a student needs support. However, it happens that students do not want to have contact with counsellors. In these cases, teachers often seek out a counsellor to get support regarding questions concerning students. Some counsellors say that there is therefore sometimes more need for them to contact teachers than counsel students.

Counsellor: Teachers need to meet someone to talk to, and sometimes I can experience that it gets a bit fussy for us. That there is more focus on teacher contact sometimes […], more than student contact. The teacher wants the students to meet us counsellors but the student does not want to.

Outreach activities appear to be extensive, but there is a risk that students at external providers “go under the radar”. A principal describes how municipally-employed counsellors do not have the resources to follow up on students who have problems with their studies at external providers. Many courses within MAE are also so short that it is not considered meaningful to implement any measures.

Principal: The counsellors do not follow up students who have problems at external providers, we have too many students, we cannot have that management. Most people read all courses in five weeks; it is too short a time to be able to take repetitive measures. […] If they mess up, there is often not much to do.

In addition to contact with teachers, counsellors have contact with both the employment service and social services regarding people who are to apply for or are already studying at MAE. The policy for counsellors contains ethical guidelines that state that counselling conversations should always be voluntary. This policy sometimes conflicts with policies set by authorities and municipalities that require contact with counsellors. One counsellor said that people are sent to them from social services or the employment service, even though the student does not want to meet with a counsellor. The counsellors describe how it is a very different starting point for conversation if students seek them out of their own free will compared with a situation in which they are forced to contact them.

Counsellor: We have our ethical guidelines as a counsellor to relate to, such as, for example, that we should be independent, the guidance call is always voluntary so that you can leave here if you do not want to join. But it is always a starting point in the guidance conversation as well. It could be the social service that is compelling them, they can say, “go on guidance talks, otherwise you will not get money”. Yes, and then we get to talk about it and they absolutely don’t want to talk about stuff that concerns guidance or talk about what is ahead.

Counsellors are very careful to emphasise ethical guidelines that they must adhere to and point out that if they meet people who have been “forced” by different authorities to visit them, they say during the conversation that it is always voluntary to talk to them and that the counsellor cannot force them to attend any studies or take other actions if they do not want to.

Counsellors supporting students with special needs. In addition to general problems with the studies, many teachers contact counsellors to get guidance regarding students who have problems with their studies due to special needs such as various forms of neuropsychiatric disabilities. According to the informants in the study, this has become an increasing group of students in MAE over the past decade. A policy enactment emerges where counsellors sometimes are assigned responsibilities which serve to compensate for the lack of special educators in MAE. They describe how they may handle issues that should actually be handled by a special educator, because the special educational resources in MAE do not correspond to the student group’s needs.

Counsellor: Teachers often contact me to discuss students who need extra support. We have plenty of people who have diagnoses of various kinds or concentration difficulties or dyslexia, so then we talk a lot with the teachers about how to be able to provide support in the best way.

To help students who have difficulties with their studies, counsellors also say that it is common for them to book tripartite conversations where the student, the teacher and the counsellor all collaborate in discussions about different ways of supporting the student. A principal describes that counsellors also are important supports for students in that they can supplement the support the teachers can give, because they have a different relationship with the students.

Our counsellors can have a slightly different kind of contact with the students than the teachers have. For the teacher, then it is always student contact towards course goals and knowledge requirements. The counsellor, as we have seen, has the opportunity to step in and support the students in a different way than [the teacher], which we have seen was nice for motivating students to continue studying.

Sometimes students’ difficulties are not about having a diagnosis, but about having difficulty completing the studies on their own during remote learning. One principal says that they have counsellors who specifically work with students who study at a distance. These counsellors are aware that they often have an important role to play for distance students, who they believe often seek them out in the absence of teacher contacts, something that can result in feelings of ambivalence:

Counsellor: It’s a two-sided coin in some ways, sometimes it can be a bit like this, to meet a counsellor and you get to talk to someone. Although you may not primarily need a counsellor, but you need a person you can talk to sort of … 

How do counsellors guide students to the “right” education/profession?

There are certain challenges in the study and career counselling in adult education. Counsellors meet with a heterogenous student group, whose expectations do not always reflect the professional ideals of counselling. In addition to this, there are policies that counsellors are expected to translate and enact in their work, and these policies could be contradictory in certain aspects.

When individuals seek out study and career counsellors to receive guidance on study and/or career choices, the amount of information the counsellors have about the individual prior to the meeting may differ, as can how much time they have had to prepare. Counsellors say that some students come to them as a “blank sheet”, in which counsellors know nothing about the student’s previous experience, gender, or age. Some students have a clear goal; others want the counsellors to tell them what it will be like “when they grow up”. Meeting individuals who are a “blank sheet” is described by counsellors as a special challenge.

In many cases, there are limitations in the previous experiences or grades of those that counsellors encounter, which means that only certain paths are open when it comes to studies or work. But sometimes counsellors meet people who have all the prerequisites to choose what they want, but do not know what alternatives there are to choose from. For these people, the conversations will be different, and in-depth guidance with several conversations may be needed before they arrive at a suggestion.

Do not want to control the individual’s choices even if an expedited path to work is requested

In recent years, an increasing focus on the labour market has become visible in the policy for MAE, including investments in short vocational programmes. The counsellors say that many who come to them demand “the fastest way to work”. In policy enactment, however, counsellors’ ethical guidelines appear to be stronger than conflicting adult education policy targeting the needs of the Swedish labour market. The counsellors describe that it is important for them to adhere to their own ethical guidelines and that they are careful to ensure that it is the individual’s own desire concerning what to study that governs their decisions. They try to avoid directing or advising the individual toward any particular educational or vocational orientation. However, it often happens that the counsellors meet individuals who want them to provide answers as to what they should study. A counsellor relates:

Yes, it is always based on that it is voluntary to come here, and you start from that person’s wishes. I think you can sometimes experience that the expectations of a mentor can be that you must find out what to … become something when you grow up. They want you to tell them. So it’s a bit about clarifying what we can help with, or what guidance is … 

Counsellors say that there is more focus on which programmes lead to direct employment among adults than in young people they meet. Adults often want answers concerning which vocations or professions currently have jobs. Although counsellors at MAE do not want to steer people towards certain occupations, they say that they stay up to date as to what is happening in the labour market both locally and nationally, through, among other things, contact with the employment service.

To counsel people without taking over and directing them toward certain choices, counsellors describe how they must both work to create an atmosphere of trust with the people they meet and sometimes work on their own prejudices. Many students who meet counsellors have a foreign background, are not familiar with the Swedish education system or what different opportunities exist for them. One counsellor says that they often meet people who have “heard” from friends and acquaintances or from the employment service that they should apply for a certain programme because it leads to a job. Counsellors also say that they meet many individuals who are “easy-going” and just want to choose courses that are offered in the city where they live or want to study as much as possible at a distance and in the shortest possible time. To be able to guide these people and make them aware of different opportunities, counsellors have “guidance tools” from their own training which they can use. One counsellor related the following:

We have our guidance models that we follow. Toolboxes and our various filters or whatever you should call this: gender, class, ethnicity, and respect for the individual’s background and that you know nothing about the individual when sitting here. You must work quite a lot with prejudices in yourself, of course. I must actively ask my brain to be quiet until I know enough about this person to be able to challenge that person based on their experiences.

The counsellor in the quote above describes how he works actively to not allow his own ideas take over without allowing the individual to “speak” and describe a background. Important here is the ability to help the individual to “see themselves”, which counsellors say they often do through “guidance tools” that are used to reflect what the individual says. For the individual to be able to make well-thought-out choices, counsellors say that they often meet with a person several times. In these cases, relationship building becomes an important part of guidance.

I work a lot with relationships. Because I notice that, when I get frustrated then we need to build up the relationship more. I have an example of such people who have come to me several, several times and we know each other very well. My mission with them is that if I can gain their trust so that we can talk more about who they are and if they are afraid of anything – then we can probably get to the core in some way, that they can make a choice.

Counsellors point out that counselling should really happen on an individual basis and can look different for everyone, so it is important to show the different paths that exist. But people’s backgrounds also affect how receptive they are to guidance. Counsellors meet many people who have fled war, or who have school failures in their “baggage”, all of which affect their self-image. According to counsellors, these people may need more time before they find their way to study or to work.

In the counsellors’ stories, a policy enactment emerges where counselling looks very different for different individuals and requires counsellors to use different tools that they have brought with them from their own training. To be able to adapt counselling to the individual, and base it on where the student is in terms of knowledge, the counsellors, in addition to guidance tools, also have access to different level tests to determine at which level students should begin. Validation of prior vocational learning can also be done by those who provide vocational training.

Counselling in adult education is complex

Counsellors describe that much more information is needed for counselling in adult education compared with compulsory or upper secondary school. The reason for this is that MAE is complex, with lots of different educational paths and providers, and counsellors need to provide information about all the different opportunities that exist. One difference from guidance in compulsory/upper secondary school, which is also described by the counsellors, is that in adult education, the nature of the guidance talks is affected by the labour market situation. When there is a boom, more people want to supplement their university eligibility, while during a recession more people have become unemployed and wonder what they should do to get a job.

The complexity of being a counsellor in adult education compared to compulsory and upper secondary school also lies in the incredibly heterogeneous groups of individuals that counsellors meet in their work. This heterogeneity comprises a large age range, as well as variations in educational background and different nationalities. A counsellor says:

It is complex to work as a study counsellor in MAE because we span so many different areas here, so we meet everything between, yes, sometimes 18-year-olds up to 65-, 70-year-olds. And we don’t always know much about them before they come here, if yes, foreign-born, academics, illiterates, that is, yes, everything.

Counsellors say that the complexity of adult education can sometimes result in offering more information than actual guidance during meetings with students. One counsellor says that during their training they “weighed the pros and cons” concerning this and learned that it is important not to get caught up in providing information but offer guidance instead. However, the counsellors say that there is a difference compared to when it is a 15-year-old that you guide; then it is much more about making them aware of themselves and encouraging them to make good conscious choices. According to the counsellors, they of course try to do this in MAE, as well, but there is such a great complexity and so many people in MAE who just want information about how to proceed to different educational programmes, so more often they end up in purely informational conversations than ones based in guidance.

Concluding discussion

Initially, we asked the following questions: (1) How are meetings between study and career counsellors and adult students enacted? (2) How are policies on counselling in adult education enacted by counsellors? The study shows that meetings between counsellors and adult students are enacted in different ways, depending on organisational conditions and the demands and needs of students. The provision of counselling is thus characterised by the flexibility and individualisation that are described as central policy discourses in Swedish MAE. In their approach to counselling, counsellors must balance their own ethical guidelines, which are part of the general policy on counselling, with policies on adult education (cf. Bergmo-Prvulovic, 2014, 2015; Cort et al., 2015). Ethical guidelines, on one hand, state how counselling should be voluntary and focus on social justice and the individuals’ desires concerning their future. The adult education policy, on the other hand, is not only about individualisation and flexibility, but also about employability, skills supply and (labour market) integration. The latter include expectations on guidance to e.g. vocational programmes with high labour demands, and expectations placed on individuals to see the counsellor. Here, findings show that counsellors seem to keep to their own guidelines, despite demands for more governing guidance, but they are willing to meet the demands from individuals concerning, e.g. the need for information rather than counselling, in cases when the individual already has a plan for their future.

It is also evident that the role of the counsellor in adult education is complex. They are not only a “hub” with many different work tasks beyond counselling (Muhrman & Andersson, in press). Their meetings with students also concern things other than future-oriented study and career counselling. As Raschauer and Resch (2016) describe, this is one central aspect of counselling. But there is also the guidance counselling for learning, which here turns out to be an extensive part of the work. Counsellors in MAE become involved in educational processes where they support students and teachers and compensate for a lack of special educators and even a lack of direct contact with teachers in the case of distance education. The third function described by Raschauer and Resch (2016), financial guidance, is also visible in the findings, but in a less prominent role. Thus, the present study contributes to the picture of the broad nature of counselling work in adult education which includes more than one-to-one counselling (cf. Hearne et al., 2022; Muhrman & Andersson, in press; Raschauer & Resch, 2016).

We have also identified some experienced differences concerning the counselling of adult students compared with adolescents. The group of adult students is much more heterogenous than a group of younger students, when it comes to age, educational background, nationality, etc. Therefore, adult students are more often “blank sheets” to the counsellors, who know little to nothing about the students’ backgrounds, especially when compared with the more homogenous group of students in upper secondary school. Neither do the counsellors know how the adult students understand the “career” that counselling is about, e.g. if they have a clear goal and a certain self-realisation project, and what efforts they consider reasonable for a possibly uncertain outcome (cf. Bergmo-Prvulovic, 2013). Thus, counsellors often do not know who they will meet, but the meetings are “sharp” situations where the students have less time and know what information they want, rather than wanting to engage in more open-ended counselling before making a choice. Another more general difference described by counsellors is that the expectations on counselling are cyclical and depend largely on the economic situation. This is one aspect of the marketisation of adult education; the strong labour-market orientation to its provision.

In other cases, the marketisation of adult education refers rather to the extensive contracting of external course providers (Andersson & Muhrman, 2022a; Muhrman & Andersson, 2022). Here, our findings show that even an organisation with municipal counsellors for students at external providers (Muhrman & Andersson, in press) creates challenges when it comes to follow-up of studies and counselling of students in short courses, particularly when these are organised by external providers. This was described as students going “under the radar”.

This study shows how policies concerning Swedish adult education are general and somewhat contradictory, which means that these policies have to be interpreted, translated and enacted in a way that serves as a compromise between conflicting ideas. This becomes particularly evident when it comes to counselling, where policies mean that counsellors must meet and handle requirements concerning, e.g. skills supply, labour-market integration and compulsory participation in counselling. Our findings indicate that counsellors manage to do this without sacrificing their ethical ideals in a way that still focuses on the individual student. However, the organisational enactment with external providers and central counsellors might cause problems when it comes to providing equal counselling opportunities to all students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under Grant number 2017-03603.

Notes on contributors

Per Andersson

Per Andersson is a professor of education at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University, Sweden. His research interests focus on recognition of prior learning, professional development among teachers in vocational and adult education, and marketisation of adult education.

Karolina Muhrman

Karolina Muhrman is an associate professor of education at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests focus on the teaching of mathematics in vocational education, and marketisation of adult education.