Conference Program

Guidance in educational and career choices plays a key role in tackling social inequalities, as it shapes educational and professional trajectories, decision-making capacity, and access to opportunities. In socio-economically vulnerable contexts, the lack of guidance often reinforces existing inequalities, limits the range of perceived options, and pushes individuals toward “probable” paths rather than those aligned with their interests and potential. By contrast, an accessible and integrated lifelong guidance system helps widen horizons and supports the development of agency across the life course.

This contribution presents two complementary experiences: the "Sportello Orientamento di Quartiere - SPOQ" (Neighborhood guidance desk), designed as local hubs for young people and adults in vulnerable situations, and the Choice Funnel Desks, implemented in more than ten upper secondary schools across Sicily. In both settings, our guidance approach combines three key dimensions: self-exploration (interests, desires, values), contextual understanding (education and training pathways, labour market dynamics, rights and services), and the development of realistic yet flexible action plans. Our experience shows that requests for guidance go well beyond school choice: they often involve economic pressures, access to employment, interrupted transitions, returns to education, and the redefinition of life plans. In this sense, guidance helps prevent long-term inequalities by reducing information gaps, strengthening confidence and agency, and framing disorientation as a meaningful step in rethinking one’s future. Rather than pushing students toward early or predefined decisions, we support a progressive clarification of options, allowing uncertainty, anxiety and exploration to become part of the learning process through a gradual focusing that remains open-ended and reversible, while maintaining a strong relational dimension to accompany individuals in exploring possible futures and identifying those they find truly desirable. Hence, the guidance practitioner emerges as a “reflective guide” and “bridging figure” with psycho-pedagogical competencies, networking skills, and updated knowledge of education, training, and the labour market.

A further issue addressed is the fragmentation of guidance services. Positioned at the crossroads of schools, training systems, social services, the third sector, and active labour market policies, guidance often suffers from a lack of coordination, leading to overlaps or gaps in support—especially for those in disadvantaged conditions. Send ETS desks act as bottom-up integration points, identifying needs, translating information, and activating well-grounded referrals to local services and opportunities, thus contributing to the creation of local support networks within an educating community framework.

The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications for integrated lifelong guidance policies, arguing that effectiveness depends not only on the quality of relational practices, but also on the ability to ensure continuity and coordination across institutions, within a rights-based and/or capability-oriented perspective.