Key competencies or key incompetencies?

Abstract

Hughes, Burke, Graham, Crocket, and Kotzé (2013) have claimed that school guidance counsellors' work "relates directly to the core mission of schools as expressed in the key competencies and values" (p. 14), namely for young people to experience psychological wellbeing as implied by the descriptors "confident and connected" envisioned for them by The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 8). However, youth mental health research statistics reflect a psychopathological vocabulary that is used both by young people themselves to describe their own subjective/embodied experience and by others to describe young people. This disparity is explored in this article via a more problematised and politicised view of the key competencies as a conduit between our neoliberal sociopolitical context and that of compulsory education. While this view rethinks one of Hughes et al.'s claims, it augments another: the importance of school guidance counsellors' contribution lies not in how it complements the key competencies but in counselling work that makes visible, and thus revisable, the effects of key competencies' transfusion of neoliberalism's humanist ontology into young people's lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of New Zealand Journal of Counselling is the property of New Zealand Association of Counsellors and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)