EDUCATION FOR WORK AND VOCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: CONTRIBUTIONS TO A JOB SHADOWING METHODOLOGY

Abstract

Vocational guidance plays a key role in the development and integration of young people into the job market, being understood as an extremely valuable tool that will help them make informed career decisions, promoting their professional growth, as well as their personal growth. Job shadowing emerges as an important vocational development technique, by providing young people with the opportunity to explore different career options, a greater knowledge of the profession(s) of interest to them, preparing them for the future, because, being armed with greater knowledge and more information, they will have the bases to make decisions about their career. The study sought to assess the impact of job shadowing on the vocational development of students in the 1st year of the Degree in Translation and Interpretation in Portuguese Sign Language (TIPSL) at the School of Education (SE) of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto (PIP). The descriptive study follows a quantitative research approach, in which nine students participated. Through the results obtained, it is concluded that job shadowing has a positive impact on the vocational development of students in training for TILGP, whether in terms of vocational decision-making, career attributions and attitudes regarding the professional future.