Vocational guidance in late soviet Lithuania: Its (un)intended outcomes

Abstract

The decisions made by the central government of the USSR in the 1960s were conducive for development of the vocational guidance system in Lithuania during the late soviet period, in about 1960–1990. Following the instructions from the central institutions, vocational guidance was embedded in the educational system collaborating with training and production organizations and applied to children and youth. The second generation of Lithuanian psychologists, educated in 1945–1955 at Vilnius Pedagogical Institute, contributed willingly to the development of the system. In 1964, Leonas Jovaiša created theoretical basis for the system of vocational guidance in secondary school. In 1978, all the municipal centers in Lithuania maintained vocational guidance offices. That was one of the fields, alongside with health care institutions and industry, where the third generation of psychologists, graduates from Vilnius University in the 1970s, could work. [...].