Assessing Attitudes towards Career Guidance in Public Girls’ Schools in the United Arab Emirates: Practices and Challenges

Abstract

This study explores the impact of career guidance in preparing Emirati female students for the job market in Dubai. We explore the extent to which public schools are preparing students, highlight some of the challenges in the quality of services for career selection, and the role of the school social worker in the preparation phase. School Social workers have an important role to play in ensuring that students are well equipped with the right knowledge, skills and competencies to select a career path. Findings and recommendations are based on the feedback from the school social worker and students with the intention of improving career guidance in girls’ schools. Implications include recommendations in adopting a structured and coherent curriculum, providing tailor made career guidance sessions in addition to motivating and encouraging the recruitment of more female career guidance officers. The findings highlight the need to improve collaborative efforts between the Ministry of Education and schools in order to redesign career guidance programs at the higher education level to address the shortage of career guidance officers in schools, in addition to raising awareness amongst parents, which would mean encouraging more enrolments to higher education specializing in career guidance. Strategies such as shadow work, work experience placements will give students exposure to work in real life work environments and creating web-portals to provide online career guidance services. Such implications are important as they may contribute to the preparation of Emirati girls’ for the job market and to successfully serve their country.