5. Diagnosis – Definition of career and definition of integrated inclusion pathways

Objective

The objective of this task is for your students to seek new learnings that will let them construct a solid professional project, maximise their confidence and motivation to handle a personal and group process to strengthen autonomy and favour the strengthening of flexible networks to deal as a group with improving their work competences and situation.

Description

Do you remember the knowledge you acquired in Unit 2: ‘Creative thought for designing the activities that make up the Aracne training action’? Well, now is the time to put it into practice. We suggest this dynamic that uses the metaphor of the drawing of a tree to analyse an individual’s level of competences to practice a certain occupation and/or design his or her career.

There is not just one way to implement this technique. The most interesting way of doing it is for each person, each group, to draw their own trees. Our work as trainers will be to facilitate the self-reflection process by providing materials and offering information: what competences are and how they are acquired; what values are; formal and informal learning; the hidden curriculum; talent; skills; identification of projects and achievements, etc.

Use the knowledge acquired in activity 1 on assessing competences, professional objectives and detailing professional interests to run this activity either with a group or an individual. In reality, the tree is a SWOT analysis to contribute to introspection about the basic labour approaches related to self-knowledge. Do you remember the mental maps? The tree is nothing more than a graphic representation of a mental map. By creating their competence trees, students will have reflected on the road they have travelled and where they want to go on it, and it will have helped them to express the most relevant competencies, knowledge and experiences on their curriculum vitae more creatively for a specific job, and then to apply these skills to other areas.

We invite you to try to make your own tree, which you can use as training to then apply this activity during training actions you teach in the future.

Development / methodology:

Basic materials

Follow the instructions described below:

1) Download the attached worksheet and look at each of the parts it describes.  You can reinvent the activity or fill in all information on your competences that will make up the branches, leaves, trunk, roots and external agents… like a SWOT analysis of YOUR COMPETENCES TREE!

The worksheet:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YKVJtBfz4cDOanRH3ojiMiqNb_zbJVLz/view

This is a practical example of how to orient this dynamic to representing a career pathway, where the basket contains your achievements, meaning the competences you can apply to other professional functions. Observe: What are the branches like? Are they dry? Is it pruning time? What care does your tree need so that it bears more fruits? What is your trunk like? Try to facilitate reflection by asking questions like these. This image is an example of how to place the information:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ihJPLwf9StXGI8tAMFVIsYWl3mbFnsSy /view

2) Now we will introduce the competences related to the Aracne+ Model. Specifically, you will identify all the empowerment and entrepreneurship competences stemming from all of your personal and professional experiences that have accumulated on the tree branches. To assist you, we are providing the image again of a graphic representation of competences from the Aracne dictionary you saw in activity 1 of this unit. Here is the link again: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ypfYuh5CkJuN4n6kbdeiXdCulZWKJAl0N_CwdZWSBA0/edit#gid=2106822866

Which competences can you identify? Put them on your tree and you will have the initial evaluation of competences from the Aracne+ Model.

My Aracne+ competences tree

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14AKoNImVPR23h6ZDExNNwCVrh6Ou9I7g/view?usp=sharing

3) Test yourself by answering this question: Which settings and elements make your career easier or more difficult? Just like weather conditions will determine whether or not your tree grows, external agents like: the context, belief system and employability critically influence the development of your professional potential. Reflect on this and try to identify the external agents on your tree.

For further work:

4) And now yes! You are ready to have your students draw their own Competences Tree. If you would like to use this dynamic with a group, we suggest that you introduce it with this Eastern tale:

Story: THE TREE WHO DIDN’T KNOW WHO IT WAS

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fgr0GjpjdtX2Ak9LQp2BtZVexGTkBWk7/view

5) Guide your students to design their own trees using the tree metaphor, first with the curricular content and then by identifying the Aracne competences, which will be used to generate their empowerment and entrepreneurship. 

 If you need inspiration, you can find examples of experiences in other resources on a group of women with low professional qualifications.