Exploring the experiences and strategies of conducting a desirable educational-vocational guidance from University of Tehran students and graduates’ perspective: A phenomenological study

Educational-vocational guidance is a way in which the society need and individual needs are met, hence, undesirable outcomes of the higher education and labor market, can be the result of improper educational-vocational guidance. Therefore, the present study aimed to explore the experiences and strategies of a desirable educational-vocational guidance from University of Tehran students and graduates’ perspective. This study was conducted with qualitative approach using phenomenological method. Research data were collected by semi-structured interviews with nine dissatisfied students with their current academic major, 11 students with experience of changing majors, and five graduates having careers unrelated to their academic major who were selected by purposeful method and data analysis was based on the Colaizzi’s seven-step process. The strategies of conducting a desirable educational-vocational guidance were classified into 22 sub-themes and six general themes of education field, higher-education field, specialization field, family field, socio-political field, and vocational field. In general, according to this fact that the presented strategies in this study are stemmed from individuals’ lived experiences of the challenges of the educational-vocational guidance, so it is recommended that these strategies in the form agenda should be provided to the schools and those involved in the educational-vocational guidance program, so that, to be applied according to the existing platform in the society.