06/01/2005

Joint Project for NCDA and IAEVG

by Raoul Van Esbroeck and Mark Pope

The idea of an IAEVG activity in the US first took root at the IAEVG conference in Berlin in August 2000. In particular, the fact that IAEVG in its 50 years of existence had never had one single activity in the US was seen as unacceptable. With so many US scholars and practitioners playing a key role in the development of IAEVG, there was a strong incentive to fill the gap.

In 2002, after a long period of reflection, and having explored a number of options, Spencer Niles suggested having a joint IAEVG-NCDA International Symposium adjacent to the annual 2004 NCDA Conference. The two boards, IAEVG and NCDA, picked up this idea and immediately started the discussion on how to implement such an activity. More especially the IAEVG president, Bernhard Jenschke, Mark Savickas, as IAEVG board member, Laura Ward, NCDA president in 2002-2003, and Spencer Niles, NCDA president in 2003-2004, played an active role. The boards proposed to organize a symposium in San Francisco about "International perspectives on career development".

Both associations considered the publication of proceedings to be an important issue. Several options were explored, leading to the proposal to use the Career Development Quarterly and the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance to publish the proceedings. The respective editorial boards warmly welcomed this proposal and the idea of two companion special issues of the journals to be published simultaneously was approved. There were a number of obvious advantages. For a start, this approach would make it possible to communicate the results of the Symposium to the associations' memberships and in addition bring them to the attention of much larger international audience. But more important, this would be another joint project underlining the mutual efforts of both associations, NCDA and IAEVG, in stimulating international understanding and cooperation.
In order to facilitate the coordination of the publications, a guest editorial team was appointed, that would take responsibility for both special issues. The team consisted of Mark Savickas, Ed Herr and Raoul Van Esbroeck. They were assigned the difficult task, taking into account the technical limitations of the journals, of finding a way of splitting the available material into two homogeneous and attractive units.

This was by no means an easy task since the format of the Symposium was slightly different from that of traditional conferences. Evidently, there were some keynote presentations. The rest of the symposium, however, was built around discussion groups involving a limited number of specialists, academics and practitioners, who engaged in a six-hour in depth discussion of a specific theme. Within these groups, a few selected papers were presented, as lubricants for the discussions, but the real goal remained the discussion itself and its outcome. The Career Development Quarterly presents the general outcome of the activities in the Discussion Groups, while the International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance publishes a selection of the papers presented in these groups. The keynote presentations are divided between the two journals.

Taken together the two issues will give a good overview of the results of the discussions, while at the same time providing enough in-depth material. The content of the two journals is described at greater length by the guest editorial team in their Introduction to the Special Issue. Also, a Table of Contents of the two special issues is available in the two journals.

In order to facilitate easy access to the two issues for IAEVG and NCDA members each association has set up a system that allows its respective members to order a copy of the journal they would not normally receive as part of their membership benefits. NCDA has posted on its home page instructions on How to Order Special CDQ & IJEVG September Issues . Obviously, IAEVG and NCDA were keen to reduce the cost of this extra copy to a minimum. We sincerely hope that many members will make the most of this unique opportunity to read the two issues.

We wish you pleasant reading and hope the special issues will contribute to the development of closer international understanding and contacts.

Raoul Van Esbroeck is Editor of IAEVG's International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance.
Mark Pope is Editor of NCDA's Career Development Quarterly.