Introduction

Careers education and guidance (CEG) for rural youth is becoming increasingly important due to the persistent weakness of the nexus between education and work (Cuervo & Chesters, 2019). Despite this tenuous link between education and employment, there is limited understanding of the nature of the work of careers advisors in rural areas (Chen & Doherty, 2021). This is aggravated by a repeated concern in recent Australian education policy reviews that there is inconsistency in the quality of—and access to—CEG for rural youth (Napthine et al., 2019; Parliament of Victoria Economic Education Jobs and Skills Committee [PVEEJSC], 2018).

Careers advising has been positioned as more than just an economic imperative but as a human right (Groves et al., 2023). Careers advisors are important as they provide young people with access to information, guidance and support, and networking opportunities. By working with careers advisors, youth can make more informed decisions about their futures. This is important in rural areas where there can be fewer post-secondary education and employment opportunities (Alexander, 2023; Cook & Cuervo, 2022; Delahunty, 2022).

The issue of quality in relation to CEG has been tied to local relevance (Kilpatrick et al., 2022; Woodroffe et al., 2017). For instance, Kilpatrick et al., (2022, p. 66) have argued that ‘a strengths-based whole of community approach’ is an effective way to engage rural young people with careers education and pathways planning. One element of creating locally-relevant, place-based CEG is understanding how the careers advisor ‘fits into’ the local space. Their utilisation of the local social context has the potential to be a lynchpin to creating quality, relevant programs.

In this article, I unpack how rural Victorian careers advisors create and leverage their social capital to inform their work as advisors. First, I set the research in its context of policy and extant literature. Then, I describe the methodology, providing details of my positionality, the method of narrative inquiry, and approaches to recruitment and data analysis. Following this are the findings and discussion, utilising theories of bridging and bonding social capital as an analytic framework highlighting the risks and opportunities in creating place-based CEG programs. Finally, the concluding remarks argue that these programs are key to ensuring that rural young people have access to quality CEG amidst an uncertain landscape.

Research context

Given that careers education and guidance is understood differently in different contexts, as is the role of a careers counsellor/advisor, this article uses the following conceptualisations and terminology. Careers education and guidance (CEG) refers to a suite of educational activities around post-school pathways and employment options including curriculum-based classes; trial work experiences; excursions and incursions to engage with industries, tertiary education institutions, and employers; and one-on-one planning sessions with students and their families. ‘Careers advisor’ is used as the title for a person working in a school that is involved with developing and delivering elements of CEG. The high degree of variation in title and responsibilities is present in the four participants reported on in this research, who work in neighbouring schools of similar sizes. It is a result of the broad policies around CEG in Australia.

Careers education and guidance-related policies in Australia have been praised for the high levels of autonomy schools have to develop their own programs (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2012). As an example, the National Career Education Strategy (Department of Education & Training, 2019) stresses the importance of developing partnerships in local communities in relation to careers education, especially in rural areas. However, there has not been a cohesive framework for schools to work from nor mandatory benchmarks or requirements (PVEEJSC, 2018). This has resulted in a patchwork of CEG delivery and considerable variation in quality. The role of careers advisors in schools can be significantly different. Recent policy studies found that careers advisors in schools did not have to have any qualifications in careers counselling, may be part-time education support staff, or classroom teachers juggling the role on top of their teaching workload (PVEEJSC, 2018). The space for careers education in the overcrowded school curriculum was left to each school to negotiate (PVEEJSC, 2018), resulting in the scope and time allocated to CEG and the advisor being impacted by the principal’s understanding of CEG (Fuqua, 2021). This loose policy structure is one cause of the unequal access to quality CEG (Groves et al., 2023).

There have been policy changes in Victoria following the recommendations of the PVEEJSC—for example, advisors are required to complete a career guidance qualification—but there is still a need to understand how careers advisors develop and maintain their professional knowledge. Elsewhere, I have argued that rural careers advisors need to have two types of professional knowledge: decontextualised, ‘technical’ knowledge (such as prerequisites to university courses and the paperwork required for work experience placements), and highly contextualised local knowledge (such as the town’s economic outlook and which employers need apprentices) (Fuqua, 2019). The ‘technical’ knowledge can be built up through individual study and attending professional learning opportunities. While accessing external professional learning opportunities is difficult in rural areas (Glover et al., 2016), Woodroffe et al. (2017) highlight that locally-based professional learning for careers advisors can be effective in increasing knowledge, understanding, and confidence. This sort of regional-based professional learning, specifically for careers advising, has been argued for in the Napthine Review (2019), as one way to build contextualised local knowledge. This is because the local knowledge needed by advisors is deeply tied to their social capital and requires time and effort in their communities; it should be recognised as a crucial aspect of professional development (Fuqua, 2021).

Careers advisors and teachers play a pivotal role in developing the aspirations of rural youth (Kilpatrick et al., 2022). Studies have shown positive relationships with career planning can increase student engagement in school (Plasman, 2018). It is important to expose rural youth to a variety of careers not only locally, but also in other rural and non-rural places (McIlveen et al., 2012). This is often the responsibility of a careers advisor who may be tasked with providing students with internal and external experiences related to different careers. Unfortunately, too often policy and literature refer to ‘raising aspirations’ of rural youth. The notion that rural youth aspirations need to be ‘raised’ is based in metrocentric norms of what ‘success’ is post-school, typically framing ‘good’ jobs as those located in cities (Alexander, 2023). To recognise that a ‘successful’ pathway for a rural young person is in relation to their own personal contexts, the verb ‘develop’—rather than ‘raise’—will be used in relation to the work careers advisors do in exposing students to possibilities locally and elsewhere, and which value their existing funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992).

Careers advisors are positioned to influence youth perception of the post-school dilemma of staying local, leaving for different opportunities, or temporarily leaving to gain further qualifications to bring home. Cuervo and colleagues (2019) highlight three trends in Australian education policy regarding rural youth aspirations: calls for economic and community development to keep young people in rural areas, teachers seen as important communicators of mobility being tied to aspirations, and that policymakers have not considered the tensions between belonging and aspiration. Careers advisors are positioned to identify the economic and work-related needs of both the community and individual (Tieken, 2014), which is particularly helpful when there are tensions between perception and reality (Alexander, 2023). They possess the navigational capital (Appadurai, 2004) to negotiate the academic and practical steps to get to university. This capital is even more valuable in communities that have limited experience with tertiary education and pathways (Woodroffe et al., 2017). However, with this knowledge and their potential for influencing youth aspirations, there is also the possibility of causing harm. Advisors need to be critically reflective of their own biases, blind spots, and relationships across their communities (Fuqua, 2019), considering who is silenced, under-represented, or celebrated. Even the concept of ‘community’ itself requires careful consideration; much like ‘raising aspirations’ is a common but problematic phrase, so too is an oversimplification of ‘community’ that does not account for the multiplicity of various communities in any given place (White, 2021).

While there is a robust and growing body of international scholarship on the barriers and opportunities shaping rural youth aspirations and post-school pathways (for example, see Gore et al., 2022; Stenseth & Bæck, 2021), there is not such a body of scholarship concerning rural careers advisors.

Theoretical framework—bridging and bonding social capital

This research draws on Putnam’s (2000) conceptualisation of social capital, focusing on the collective characteristics, namely the importance of closely connected networks. Putnam identified two dimensions of social capital: bridging and bonding. Bridging social capital refers to ties between groups which facilitate new information and resources flowing between groups. Bonding social capital refers to strong ties within a group where there is co-operation and trust – a focus on the collective rather than the individual. They ‘are not “either-or” categories into which social networks can be neatly divided, but “more or less” dimensions along which we can compare different forms of social capital’ (Putnam, 2000, p. 23). The notion of ‘more or less’ rather than ‘either-or’ is appealing in terms of rural places since it accounts for the blurriness that is often found between educators’ roles personally and professionally in the town.

Putnam (2000) has argued that social capital on a societal level contributes to positive outcomes for the community. By working together through social connections in civic life, communities can better address collective challenges, including economic development and social cohesion. A collective approach to such challenges is particularly salient with so many rural communities facing existential crises in the urbanised twenty-first century (Schafft & Youngblood Jackson, 2010). The continued economic and social viability of rural places is related to the work of careers advisors who serve as a connection between youth, education, and employers impacting on the town’s future (Fuqua, 2019). By analysing careers advising through a (local) societal level of social capital, we can better understand their influence on the collective challenges of their communities’ ongoing sustainability. This collectivist approach is in contrast with other conceptualisations such as Bourdieu’s (1986) which underpins social capital as an individual resource. He argued that individuals can use their social capital—such as networks and social relationships—to leverage better social status or access more resources. However, this individualistic sense of social capital may reinforce existing power imbalances and societal inequalities: people with more social capital can access better resources and leverage them for better personal outcomes.

While there are various criticisms and evolutions of Putnam’s original conceptualisation of social capital (1993), the ‘more or less’ dimensions of bridging and bonding capital (2000)—external and internal networks of connections—is suitable for analysing the work of rural careers advisors. For example, Putnam (1993) argued that social capital is built through voluntary participation in civic organisations, horizontal relationships between social equals, not vertical relationships defined through power imbalance and dependency. In this article, horizontal relationships can be seen between the adult members of the town (careers advisors, employers, parents, etc.) and vertical relationships exist between the careers advisors and their students. However, Putnam’s concern for the vertical relationships centred on the patron’s (careers advisors) ability to abandon the relationship, stranding the dependant client (student), and cutting off access to social capital. I would argue this concern is somewhat mediated in the instance of this research because the context of the study is small public schools—students have a lower risk (compared to membership in a voluntary social organisation) of being abandoned and so excluded from accruing social capital.

Putnam’s bridging and bonding dimensions highlight the importance of both strong connections within a group and weaker connections across groups. Rural careers advisors are ‘cogs in their communities’ (Fuqua, 2019, p. 200)—they serve as key figures in their towns at the nexus of various local employers, families, the school (bonding capital) and as connections to the wider world of work and tertiary study (bridging capital). By drawing on this theory to unpack and elaborate on the nature and complexities of the relationships careers advisors tap into, issues of place-based CEG are uncovered. Ultimately, the dimensions of bridging and bonding capital help us to better understand what sorts of local knowledge are most valuable and how careers advisors leverage their personal and professional positions in town to develop place-based CEG programs.

Methodology

My positionality in this research fluctuates on Dwyer and Buckle’s (2009) insider/outsider continuum. In some respects, I was an insider to the topic and participants since I had been my school’s careers advisor for two years, had worked with the participants as regional colleagues, and like most Australian teachers I am a white, middle-class, woman (Rice et al., 2023). I was an outsider since I was not a local to this rural area (or even Australia) and had no training in careers advising. After teaching History for eight years and serving as the Year 9 Coordinator, I was appointed to the careers advising role in part because the then-principal thought I was ‘good at paperwork’. The questions I asked as I learned what the role actually entailed became a core research interest.

To understand the work and roles of careers advisors in their schools and communities, a qualitative approach was used so that rich, context-specific data could be collected that highlighted participants’ own voices (Bryman, 2021). A narrative inquiry, informed by Riessman (2008), was undertaken with the primary data generation method being narrative interview. These unstructured interviews generated people’s stories (Riessman, 2008) and provided participants with more control over what they shared, revealing insights into the elements of their role they considered important. Narrative research does not require a large sample size (Riessman, 2008) and the small sample allowed for deep analysis. This was well-suited for a study that focused on the particularities of individuals and their unique networks of social capital. Each narrative interview lasted between 60 and 90 min. The interviews were de-identified and member-checked before analysis. Coding was first conducted within the broad themes of bonding and bridging social capital, then sub-themes for each were generated. These are elaborated on in the Findings section.

The participants were former colleagues who had expressed an interest in the project. Since there was a pool of known and available participants, a convenience sample (Bryman, 2021) was used. After obtaining ethics approval by the Victorian Department of Education and my university, I approached public school principals located within the same rural region of Victoria. With their permission, I contacted the schools’ careers advisors to invite their participation. Table 1 summarises their positions within their schools, and includes details from each town’s Community Profile (ABS, 2019), school type, and enrolments for 2017 (year of data collection). All participant names and towns have pseudonyms. Table 1 is adapted from previous work (Fuqua, 2019). It is provided to give the reader a sense of the research context; entries are not intended to be a holistic or nuanced encapsulation of each town.

Table 1 Participant Contexts: Professional Backgrounds, Towns & School Profiles
Full size table

This research was conducted ‘in and for rural communities’ (emphasis in the original, White & Corbett, 2014, p. 1) from a rural standpoint that centres and values the rural for what it is, not what it is not (Roberts, 2014). This is to counter the all-too-common deficit discourse about rurality and to challenge metrocentric norms about ‘successful’ outcomes for education (White & Corbett, 2014). Key ethical challenges were maintaining anonymity of participants in a small, familiar population and managing my prior relationships. The limitations of anonymity were explained to participants with pseudonyms given to people and places; however, they discussed their participation with each other at a professional learning event held after data collection was completed. Managing our previous relationships involved post-interview de-briefs and a member-checking process to ensure assumptions were not made around shared experiences.

Findings

Participant experiences resonated with bonding and bridging capital in their work as rural careers advisors. While the aspects of their role that required bridging capital were typically the decontextualised ‘content knowledge’ of careers advising – such as university course prerequisites, current workplace legislation and policies, and careers education curriculum development – participants greatly valued the aspects of their job requiring bonding capital. These aspects were related to the specificities of their place and the people in the various local communities. The social and economic complexity of their town was reflected in the complexity of their work and efforts to reach, and meet, the wide variety of student needs.

Bridging capital

The elements of the participants’ advising work that related to the bridging capital they had acquired addressed challenges such as ‘knowledge loneliness’ and expectations of sharing this knowledge in the wider community. Importantly, their accrued bridging capital was seen as a benefit to the school and town—their previous life experiences directly impacted their approach to the job, and they were able to use their professional autonomy to tailor relevant incursions and excursions to assist students in building their own bridging capital.

Participants identified that they were often the only source of pathways-related knowledge in their towns. This ‘knowledge loneliness’ is not an uncommon issue for professionals in small rural places (Cuervo, 2016). Unlike larger regional towns and city suburbs, there were no other organisations that could provide careers-related services to adults who were looking for a change of career. This unique position filled a void in services to the wider community, making their professional knowledge of topics like prerequisites for tertiary courses and prospects for the job market highly valuable. Amy reflected, ‘you don’t realise how much information you have got up here [pointed to head] that other people don’t have and that you can help them with’. Having a local person with high levels of navigational capital (Appadurai, 2004) to talk to helped cut through the often-overwhelming amount of information and jargon about careers and pathways. Each participant shared examples of times they assisted students, parents/carers, and community members with clarifications about the vast amount of careers-related information available online, in institutions’ brochures, in tertiary education preparatory publications, and in navigating tertiary education application sites. Amy summarised this additional expectation as: ‘I feel like I'm an employment consultant because you go up the street and people know what you do and either they're looking for workers or they're looking to change their own job’.

This created a tension point for the careers advisors. They are employed by their schools to support the enrolled students; they all expressed concern about not having enough time to properly do that (see Table 1). Other people in town knew they had this skillset and the advisors themselves knew that other community members would benefit from their assistance. If rural schools are ‘the heart of the community’ (Tieken, 2014) with the potential to provide services that are not otherwise available locally, how can this be managed? This complex challenge for advisors who already ‘just feel that I don’t have the time’ (Tessa) and the growing evidence of how many educators feel over-worked (Heffernan et al., 2022) speaks to the larger need to better staff and resource rural places.

Participants identified their knowledge and experiences with the world of work beyond the local town were not just core business of the careers advising role, but were, in part, why they were appointed to the position. While the precise expectations and responsibilities of their careers advising role differed from school to school, it was fundamentally a role that served as a window to potential pathways leading away from home: a role with a remit to expand horizons. Georgia cited her previous work as a vocational instructor, involvement with various local councils and community organisations in two states, and life on a local farm as experiences she drew on explicitly when discussing pathways with students and their families. She used her own work history to demonstrate the flexibility and options young people will face in the workforce (Cuervo & Chesters, 2019), which was helpful to ‘parents from generational farms who might think “you can’t stick to anything” instead of trying new jobs to find the right one’. This was an example of the role of careers advising expanding beyond the student to educating their families about modern trends in the workforce, bringing in new information to the town.

A core aspect of their roles as careers advisors was to engage students with a variety of pathway possibilities locally and elsewhere. One way the advisors did this was through organising incursions and excursions. Participants discussed a variety of incursions: university outreach programs, visits from the armed services, and ‘employers out there that really want to come and talk to the school… we’ve never said no’ (Tessa); and different excursions: such as regional and state-wide careers expos, Work Experience (locally and in Melbourne), and visits to local industries. However, Amy identified challenges engaging enough students with these opportunities. On occasion, excursions were cancelled at the last minute because not enough students returned permissions slips and with some incursions she had to ‘drag them to a classroom… it’s difficult for them to get engaged in wanting to learn about what's out there’. Similarly, Peter described significant challenges with Work Experience camps. These camps in Melbourne (five nights in a hostel with supervising teachers) created opportunities for students to engage in work and city life in Year 11. Only two of the schools still ran these camps, Peter’s and Tessa’s, because of the increasing costs, coupled with lagging interest from young people in moving to Melbourne since ‘cost-wise the regional unis and accommodation are a lot cheaper, but also it's this lack of connection with the capital city which a lot of our families have’ (Peter). Organising the camp was a significant time-burden and depended on the connections the advisors had in Melbourne with various employers and industries. These advisors and their school leadership considered the various costs worth it for those students who wanted the opportunity. The reluctance of students to engage with pathways that led away from home aligns with Cuervo’s (2016) assertion that some rural youth want to stay in their communities. This reinforces the importance of careers advisors’ bonding capital which is necessary to make information from ‘elsewhere’ relevant ‘here’.

Bonding capital

The knowledge of elsewhere and the associated connections that contribute to rural careers advisors’ accumulated bridging capital needed to be contextualised to their specific place and for their people. The knowledge of specific place and people is fundamental to Putnam’s (2000) conceptualisation of bonding capital and what makes careers advising programs place-based. Gruenewald (2003) argued that place-conscious approaches to education challenge the growing place-less trends of modern education, specifically those that promote uniform outcomes; this is relevant to the work of rural careers advisors at a time when rural youth transitions to adulthood are becoming increasingly complex (Cook & Cuervo, 2022). The participants in this study built their bonding capital over long periods of time with deliberate efforts which resulted in them being deeply interconnected ‘cogs’ in the community (Georgia) with many positive relationships. However, these extensive connections across their communities were not unproblematic. Participants reported blurry lines between their personal and professional boundaries, risks to their reputations, and a reliance on ‘favours’ for key elements of their work. Despite the challenges, the careers advisors valued and prioritised strengthening their local connections.

One much-repeated insight indicating how strongly the rural careers advisors felt woven into their local communities, was their high usage of ‘our’—as in ‘our kids’, ‘our community’, ‘our future’. Georgia summarised her approach to her work as trying ‘to guide them as I would my own children’. She used a ‘cog’ metaphor to elaborate on the local support apparatus for youth and she discussed at length her concerns for the economic and social sustainability of her town. Tessa, from generations of local farmers, described ‘we’ve been born and bred here… There are some students that I’ve known since they were babies’. Peter had seen the demographics of his school change over decades and expressed concern for the increasing disengagement of some students and parents. To him, the farming community was ‘very aspirational’ while the ‘kids whose parents were attracted to the region because of cheap housing’ were less so. As a result, he changed his approach to careers advising, equating it to being a ‘social worker managing cases’ to better support these students and local employers with the hope of more positive outcomes. As longtime residents and people intending to remain local, they had personal and professional interests in trying to encourage positive outcomes for their youth, and so their towns.

From a foundation of horizontal, personal relationships with adults in the town (as friends and/or family members), the careers advisors also deliberately built up their professional relationships (as employers and/or parents of students). Peter emphasised the importance of making time in his workday for this relationship-building: ‘Employers like you to turn up and have a bit of a yak, not just about careers, but just about life in general’. However, cultivating these professional relationships was not contained to school hours, with Amy reporting approaching business owners to discuss work placements and opportunities for her students on the weekend during her son’s footy games. Similarly, Georgia found herself catching up with parents while at the hairdresser’s and grocery store. After-hours engagement with parents is not unique to careers advisors—many teachers struggle with this as well (Heffernan et al., 2022)—but these examples highlight both the extensive local networks careers advisors have and the blurriness of the lines between their school-appointed role and wider community expectations.

Participants identified their local network of relationships as being useful to their role as careers advisors in several ways, namely building trust. Trust was important to have between them and students, parents/carers, principals, and local employers. This trust was set in their specific socio-cultural context and contributed to the building of social capital (Kilpatrick et al., 2022). With students and their parents/carers, trust was necessary when providing advice to stay or leave, and when discussing the emotional and economic costs of post-school pathways (Fuqua, 2019). Participants identified that they needed to be known and have a good reputation within the town; they needed to be active local citizens. Their ‘heavy involvement with the community’ (Tessa) resulted in ‘good rapport with the kids’ (Amy) and ‘that extra relationship that we build in a small town can really benefit the students in giving them a leg up’ (Georgia). This helped to build trust with various stakeholders, particularly those who were not part of their personal social networks.

However, Amy and Peter reported tensions and some mistrust from their principals about the flexible nature of their role which hindered their ability to do their jobs. Amy stated that she did not tell her principal about much of the community-focused advising she did, and Peter cited tensions with his principal about the amount of time he needed to spend off-campus with employers during school hours. He also described a misunderstanding with the regional network of principals about the importance of hosting a local careers expo which was resolved through greater communication between the groups. Notably, these tensions with principals did not stop the advisors from doing what they considered to be important elements of their role. The impacts of misunderstandings with school leadership around rural careers advising have been unpacked elsewhere (Fuqua, 2021).

Nurturing these inter-personal relationships also resulted in the careers advisors developing their knowledge about local economic and social conditions. This strengthened the interactional infrastructure (Kilpatrick & Loechel, 2014) across the various local communities which helped the advisors to better match skills and training that the town would need in the future and as a way ‘keep up-to-date’ with local societal changes. This allowed the advisors to have a better understanding and ability to anticipate what sort of work might be needed locally—for example, Tessa mentioned the increasing amount of machinery and efficiency of agriscience resulting in fewer workers needed for farms and Peter observed ‘our labour market up here changes fairly slowly in relation to what happens in the city’. Youths’ personal factors—such as family histories and social dynamics—that influence pathways decision-making have often been overlooked in the wider ‘aspirations’ literature (Alexander, 2023; Cuervo et al., 2019). Each of the participants shared powerful stories of instances when knowing deeply personal information about a student resulted in a ‘good outcome’ for the young person. Georgia partnered with a business owner, and they strategically supported an at-risk young person to obtain hospitality qualifications, resulting in the opening of the only vegan café in town. Amy learned that an ex-student’s mother had passed away from cancer and she reached out to the student, assisting her to develop local charity work and go on to study nursing at university. In both examples—and in the many others shared during interviews—the knowledge of ‘who needed more support’ came through established trust with the individuals and with the wider communities.

An encapsulation of how participants leveraged their personal and professional relationships within their careers advising work was their role in local work-placement programs. In Victoria at the time of data collection, there were three formal types of career exploration programs students could be involved in: Work Experience where all Year 10 and/or Year 11 students spend a week in a workplace to ‘try out’ a career, work placement as an ongoing part of a vocational education pathway, or school-based apprenticeships which led directly into employment after secondary school. While students were required to source their own placements, the participants provided varying levels of support to secure and maintain them. Groves et al. (2023) found work-placement programs were a significant use of careers advisors time and resources. Peter stated, ‘we're always relying on the goodwill of local employers… which is pretty common amongst [rural] careers teachers’. This was a time-consuming part of their job that often required a great deal of trust and for them to be off-campus during school hours. Amy described the importance of recruiting new employers into the program such as a large agribusiness company, while Georgia was frustrated with the local mechanic who would not take on female students for placements. Participants expressed deep and ongoing concerns about any particular student ‘burning bridges’ with employers which would further reduce the available sites for placements. Many of the work placements were based on a series of ‘favours’ between local residents, which included the careers advisor. Georgia reported keeping track of who she felt she owed favours to and who owed her favours regarding taking on placements. Amy summarised the personal risks involved in the favour-market of work placements:

It's frustrating putting kids in jobs locally when I know the employers personally and they [students] let them down… It's really, really awkward when they [placements] go sour, luckily it doesn't go sour often, and then you see them [employer] on a personal basis and have to say ‘sorry about that one’.

The careers advisors were at the nexus of a number of key economic and social relationships across communities. While there is the potential for great benefit for the students, employers, and town generally if the advisors can use their local knowledge and connections for a strong, place-based CEG program, it is not without professional and personal risks to the advisors, particularly those who live in the same town.

Discussion

To summarise the work of rural careers advisors using Putnam’s (2000) conceptualisations of bridging and bonding social capital, the advisors served as a source of new possibilities and pathways for students through their connections with the wider world—building bridging capital—and use of their accrued bonding capital—knowledge of their context and relationships with its people—to make programs place-based and locally-relevant.

Putnam (2000) argued that bridging capital brings new information into a network of relationships and spans different social groups. The work of the rural careers advisors in this research does this in several ways. First, the outward-facing nature of careers advising is a mechanism to counter the potential for isolation and insulation in these small towns. Their job is to help people see potential futures for themselves that might be located elsewhere or require training elsewhere. Corbett (2007) has long argued that uncritical place-based education practices have the potential to stagnate and further entrench local inequalities. The participants in this study have developed careers exploration programs that expose students to possibilities at home and elsewhere. They shared instances of trying to update understandings and possibilities of traditional local jobs.

The advisors also identified that part of their work involved updating the pathways knowledge of parents and other adults, thereby bringing new, outside knowledge into the community for their benefit. When Amy described being the only source of careers information in her town and her desire to help others who do not have the resources to access assistance, this exemplifies Putnam’s (2000) contention that bridging capital can help to alleviate social segregation within a community. The stories from each of the participants demonstrated their efforts cut across various social groups—from the always-university-bound students to the students requiring ‘favours’ to secure a work placement. However, these efforts also require self-reflection and careful consideration of all groups in the local communities—there is room for improvement. For example, none of the participants shared stories about local First Nations Peoples or the recent influx of re-settled refugees to the region. The nature of careers advising is to assist people in their exploration of possibilities for the future—this requires someone with adequate bridging capital to draw on and enough acquired bonding capital to make it relevant.

The participants’ positioning as support ‘cogs’ in their communities, as vital elements of the local interactional infrastructure (Kilpatrick & Loechel, 2014), not only assisted in building bonding capital, but suggests a more collectivist approach to rural community life and so careers advising. Putnam (2000) argued that the tight networks embodying bonding capital are mutually beneficial to the group and the individual. The nature of bonding capital builds trust within the network because it requires support and co-operation—i.e. collectivism rather than individualism. In the data, this came through most clearly in the ‘our kids’, ‘our community’, ‘our future’ language from participants. This sense of collectivism is at odds with recent trends in careers education and guidance literature in Australia and internationally, where the focus has increasingly been on neoliberal, individualistic expectations (Irving, 2018). Given the importance of the elements of their work that rely on bonding capital, the evidence in this study strengthens the call for careers education and guidance to be more socially just (Irving, 2018) and supports a ruraling of careers advising (Fuqua, 2021), that is, advising that is more attuned to place and people.

Finally, while bonding capital and its tight networks can assist rural careers advisors in developing place-based programs, it is not without its own challenges and shortcomings. Some of the personal and professional risks—broad expectations, out-of-hours work, leveraging personal relationships—were discussed above. There is also a risk of advisors, and researchers, slipping into an idealised conceptualisation of ‘rural community’. There are many communities in every rural place with issues of exclusion and marginalisation in each—the too-common simplification to ‘a’ or ‘the’ community is problematic (White, 2021). To accept the notion of community unchallenged and uncritically, is to do disservice to the complexities of rural places and people.

With every town having historically marginalised groups and disengaged students and families for various reasons, careers advisors do not have equal access to all residents. They may have their own personal biases or blind spots across the communities that inadvertently shape their approach to advising—as seen here with the silence around recent migrants and First Nations Peoples. There is a risk of the advisors reinforcing existing inequalities, injustices, and harmful relationships. This echoes critiques of Putnam’s (2000) conceptualisation of social capital. People outside of bonding capital networks lose access to that capital and while bridging capital may be framed as a way to promote diversity within networks, Gelderblom (2018) argues that diverse bridging networks can only exist once diversity is accepted in the community. Ultimately, while careers advisors are in a position in communities to effect positive change, it is also a position that can cause harm.

Concluding thoughts

This article contributes to the research that is required to better understand the role and influence of rural careers advisors. Nevertheless, there are limitations that create a jumping-off point for further research. The data included here is a snapshot in time—the socioeconomics of the towns continue to change, new policies are in place around careers advising, and there has been a global pandemic with its many rippling effects on society. There are avenues for rich follow-up conversations with participants around their length of time in the role of advisor and their time in their current town in terms of developing and leveraging their social capital. It would be prudent to explore in more depth advisors’ sense of reflexivity and how they navigate the complexities of the socio-cultural dynamics of their students, towns, and wider world. The effects of the relatively new mandate for public school careers advisors to have a formal qualification also requires exploration considering a common complaint of rural teachers undertaking professional development is that it tends to be too metrocentric and difficult to access (Glover et al., 2016). Participants in this study who had previously undertaken such a qualification reported it was ‘a waste of time’ (Peter), while others would undertake it to keep their job, but would approach it with heavy scepticism and begrudgingly (Georgia). Hopefully, the recommendations of the Napthine Review (2019) to tailor such learning regionally, are followed. The negative effects of having under-prepared educators with extreme demands on their time and poor access to professional learning are already well-established (Heffernan et al., 2022), as is the threat these challenges pose to a profession experiencing ongoing shortages.

Place-based careers education and guidance requires careers advisors to make use of their bridging and bonding social capital. This is a significant, positive opportunity within the high levels of autonomy in developing Australian careers education programs. Their bridging capital brings in new ideas and possibilities of pathways to the communities while their bonding capital builds necessary trust through shared goals of ‘our future’. This aligns with Putnam’s (2000) ‘more or less’ conceptualisation of social capital. The elements of their work that rely on bridging capital may be more visible (university prerequisites, workplace legislation, etc.) and so perhaps are more easily understood or seen as practical by those who are not rural careers advisors. However, the participants in this study, those at the coalface, see the importance in the elements of their work relating to bonding capital which is what is needed to make their programs truly place-based. So, it is not ‘either or’ but ‘more or less’ of both dimensions which are needed in the development of locally-relevant, place-based CEG programs.