Adaptation of the Career Orientation programme
Upon request of The Hungarian Province of the Piarist Order, we completed the version of the programme of Career Orientation adapted for learners with special educational needs last year. The exercises and toolkits of the new version were modified and made applicable for young people with learning disability, psychological developmental disorder, autism spectrum disorder, disabled and for hearing and visually impaired. Specialists with high expertise in the specific areas, actively participated in the development process and a significant part of the activities was tested by participants affected during the elaboration.
The most important aim of the adaptation was to make the activities accessible for children with special needs. In some cases, the modification concerned the wording of text guides and splitting the paragraphs into short units. In other cases, the materials were made more visual, or on the contrary, visual items were deleted to avoid confusing participants visually impaired. Sometimes activities needing cooperation were changed into individual ones when the special needs required that. Written activities were transformed into oral ones, sometimes. Handwriting was substituted by typing on the computer. The specific needs of children in wheelchairs were also taken into account where possible.
The programme comprises six major areas as follows: health and social affairs, craft, tourism and catering, mechanics, trade, business and management. They contain ten detailed exercises each with multipliable toolkits and guidelines. With the help of the programme, skills, interests and strengths of 13-14-year-old participants can easily be identified. The guidelines of the programme also include
The adapted version is used by Kilátó – the Development Centre for Career Orientation and Labour Market of Piarist Order (Kilátó – Pályaorientációs és Munkaerőpiaci Fejlesztő Központ) offering the programme for schools and other organizations as a service agency. For more details see https://www.kilato.piarista.hu (E-mail: kilato@piarista.hu)
A few examples from the exercises of the programme (in Hungarian):
- Measuring blood pressure (Health and Social Affairs, individual practical exercise, 02)
- Gift wrapping (Commerce, individual practical exercise, 01)
- Mounting shelves (Craft, group practical exercise, 04)
- Which direction does it revolve? (Mechanics, individual theoretical exercise, 05)
- Handling complains (Tourism-catering, role play, 06)
- Sending parcels by post (Business-management, individual theoretical exercise, 03
Notes:
The numbers listed next to the content areas denote handicapped learners’ target groups as follows: (01) learning difficulties, (02) learning disability, (03) hearing despaired, (04) autism spectrum disorder (05) limitation of motion, (06) visually impaired.
The modified programme was first arranged Kilátó Centre for the Primary School of Visually Impaired, in December 2018.
