Evaluative Advice in Educational Counseling: The Use of Disagreement in the "Stepwise Entry" to Advice

Abstract

This article analyzes advice giving in counseling within labor market training. A stepwise entry to advice has previously been studied in settings in which profession-als display expert perspectives on “officially ” recommended courses of action. In these settings, elicitation of the advisee’s perspective enables the professional to fit their advice with it, create alignment between the perspectives, and minimize resis-tance. This article shows how the pattern works in a setting in which the counselor’s role is that of a facilitator of learning; 2 variations of the pattern are discussed. The 1st shows how it is used to establish a point that justifies advice concerning the stu-dent’s career-related decisions. The 2nd variation, the main focus, shows how the counselor uses the pattern to evaluate the student’s plans, thus gaining an argumen-tatively advantageous position for the advice. In this article, I examine a particular sequence structure, stepwise en-try to advice, in which advice is prepared with a question–answer se-quence. The sequence appears in counseling encounters in a Finnish adult education setting in phases in which counselors and students discuss stu-