Organizers of the Conference

Laboratory of research and intervention in vocational guidance

The La.R.I.O.S. Laboratory was created in 1994 with the purpose of pursing research on and training in vocational counseling. The Laboratory organizes a post-graduate Master degree course in career counseling every year and organizes national and international congresses to stimulate the diffusion of scientific knowledge and good practices. It also edits the publication of a vocational counseling journal, GIPO - Giornale Italiano di Psicologia dell'Orientamento [The Italian Journal of Vocational Psychology] and of a series of books specifically on vocational guidance for the series "Percorsi di orientamento [Vocational Guidance Pathways]" (Giunti-OS, Firenze). The La.R.I.O.S. members attach great importance to relationships with international scholars in order to give impulse and stimulation to study and in-depth research. Some of its members belong to the Life Design International Research Group, to the Career Adaptability International Collaborative Group, and represent Italy in the University Network for Innovation in Guidance Erasmus-NICE. Reflections and research studies originated also from these collaborations have been published in the most prestigious journals devoted to this field. Among them a major role has to be recognised to the position paper "Life Designing: A Paradigm for Career Construction in the 21st Century", published in The Journal of Vocational Behavior (75, 2009) considered by The Career Development Quarterly (CDQ) the best contribution on vocational guidance in 2009. The work done at Larios is also appreciated by the international community to the extent that in the introductory chapter of The International Handbook of Cross-Cultural Counseling: Cultural Assumptions and Practices Worldwide, edited in 2009 by L. Gerstein, P. Heppner, S. Aegisdottir, A. Leung, and K. Norsworthy, words of praise are given to Larios for its intense activity both at national and international level.

University of Bologna

The University of Bologna was probably the first University in the western world. Its history is one of great thinkers in science and the humanities, making it an indispensable point of reference in the panorama of European culture. The institution that we today call the University began to take shape in Bologna at the end of the eleventh century, when masters of Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic began to devote themselves to the law. In the nineteenth century a committee of historians, led by Giosuè Carducci, attributed the birth of the University to the year 1088.In the 14th Century, so-called "artists" - scholars of Medicine, Philosophy, Arithmetic, Astronomy, Logic, Rhetoric, and Grammar - began to collaborate with the school of jurists. In 1364, the teaching of Theology was instituted. Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Guido Guinizelli, Cino da Pistoria, Cecco d'Ascoli, Re Enzo, Salimbene da Parma and Coluccio Salutati all studied in Bologna ...(view more)

centre for transition AT work and work to work

CE.TRANS. SRL was created in 1996 based on an idea of Maria Luisa Pombeni (University of Bologna), at the beginning as a project and later as a LTD Consortium (provincia Forlì Cesena, Comune di Forlì, Comune di Cesena, Università di Bologna). From 2007 it becomes a LTD company with single member Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna. Ce.Trans. on the strength of the statute promotes and coordinates experimental and applied research activities with the most important universities and research centres in Europe about training, scholastic and professional guidance, work and psycho - social transitions processes. It plans and manages training activities for guidance workers, and develops, with a multidisciplinary approach, intervention models about guidance, training, transitions to work (employment) and work transitions (unemployment and career development); designs and conducts activities of development of human capital; moreover it provides counselling in projects promoted by Ministries, Regions, Local Authorities, private and union organizations. There are 5 areas of intervention: work, school, training, methodology and research.

Italian Society FOR Vocational Guidance

The SIO was founded in 2004 by university professors and practitioners interested in promoting and spreading the role and specificity of vocational guidance and in giving rules to this profession. The aim was to guarantee its users through developing research in the field, proposing good practices, and promoting vocational guidance as a process of personal realisation throughout the lifespan. The SIO, moreover, pledged to specifically engage in constructing and running a system of accreditation and certification of career counselors' competences. This was prompted by the need to create in Italy, too, some recognised standards to make this profession consistent with the different situations that could be found at European and International level. All SIO members must either have specific post-graduate qualifications granted by an Italian university (or equally valid credentials) or be university professors carrying out their institutional activity in the vocational guidance field. The association gives special emphasis to the diffusion of scientific knowledge and good practices and has organized many monothematic seminars on several topics held by important scholars of renown both for SIO members and other interested parties/professionals. A deontological code has been devised which requires its professional members to avoid, as far as possible, confining themselves to coding and elaborating users' experiences via diagnostic-evaluative modalities, formulating hypotheses and forecasts for them, presenting them with ready-made pathways and choices, and encouraging tendency to passiveness, delegation and externality.
SIO is member of the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance (IAEVG).

GIUNTI O.S. ORGANIZZAZIONI SPECIALI

Founded in Florence in 1950 by Edoardo Abbele, Giunti O.S. Organizzazioni Speciali is the leading Italian publisher of psychodiagnostic tests and tools in terms of catalogue, history and market. Giunti O.S. operates in the psychological assessment sector, developing tests, instruments and methods for intervention in all spheres of application from the clinical to human resource management, as well as the education and guidance sectors. Committed to offering its clients (professionals, public and private entities and institutes) scientifically accurate, high quality and innovative instruments and services relevant to the Italian social-cultural context, Giunti O.S.'s main goal is to satisfy every aspect of the assessment field, whether clinical, scholastic or organizational. Particular attention is devoted to the ethics of testing, both in terms of development and utilization of the instruments, and in accordance with international ethic codes and Italian legislation. Giunti O.S. is the meeting point between market demands, scientific research and users' requirements, establishing itself in Italy as the benchmark for excellence in testing and psychological assessment services. Giunti O.S. is an active member of the ETPG (European Test Publisher Group) and the ITC (International Test Commission).