Internationally, various terms such as career guidance, career education, career counseling, and vocational guidance are used to describe students’ career preparation within the school context (Sultana, 2013; Pham et al., 2024). In the literature these terms are often used interchangeably (Hughes et al., 2016). The lack of terminological consensus has led to confusion and research challenges (McMahon, 2014). In the early 20th century, vocational guidance aimed to support students in making occupational choices. Due to changes in the world of work and theoretical approaches since the 1960s, the focus has shifted, and career has been increasingly favored over vocational. The term career guidance now broadly refers to services designed to assist individuals in making career choices and managing their careers (OECD, 2004). In the school context this comprehensive definition includes career information provision, skills assessment and development, and curriculum-based interventions often referred to as career education (Hooley et al., 2015). In this study, we understand career guidance broadly, using it to describe a multifaceted series of career-guidance activities within schools, such as addressing careers in the curriculum, providing information on possible career paths, and conducting guidance dialogues (Dodd et al., 2021).

There is broad consensus that teacher competence is essential for professional success and is an important goal for the professional development of teachers (Cochran-Smith and Zeichner, 2005; Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia et al., 2017; Jentsch and König, 2021). Competence is a multidimensional construct encompassing the learnable individual resources needed to meet specific professional demands, including knowledge, skills, attitudes, and motivational variables (Weinert, 2001; Kunter et al., 2013; Blömeke et al., 2015; Ufer and Neumann, 2018). Teacher competence significantly influences instructional quality and students’ learning outcomes, so developing competencies through teacher education is essential (Kunter et al., 2013; Jentsch and König, 2021). Identifying which competencies are pivotal for effective professional performance is therefore of paramount importance. Shulman (1987) emphasized the necessity of both content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical-content knowledge (PCK) for teachers. However, Baumert and Kunter (2013) argued that knowledge alone does not sufficiently explain differences in teachers’ success (Kunter et al., 2013). They identified three additional core aspects of competence and proposed a multidimensional model of professional competence that includes (1) knowledge, (2) beliefs, (3) motivational orientations, and (4) self-regulation, as shown in Figure 1. According to this model, teachers are considered competent when their professional knowledge is coupled with productive beliefs, appropriate motivational orientations, and effective self-regulation. This model of professional competence has been applied, in particular, to model and measure the competencies of mathematics teachers (Kunter et al., 2013). Due to its generic structure, it is also suitable for research in other subject areas, such as bilingual education (Scherzinger and Brahm, 2023) or education for sustainable development (Lohmann et al., 2021). We therefore assume that Baumert and Kunter’s (2013) multidimensional model of professional competence can be applied to the field of career guidance as well. Whether formally or informally involved in career guidance, teachers require specific cognitive and affective-motivational competencies to support their students (Dreer and Weyer, 2020). Currently, there is a notable lack of theoretical models that specifically address the competencies needed for teacher training in career guidance. Although competence frameworks exist for career-guidance professionals (Cedefop et al., 2021), they are not tailored to the teaching profession. Baumert and Kunter’s (2013) professional-competence model provides a comprehensive framework for integrating various aspects of teachers’ professional competence, making it suitable for systematically reviewing existing empirical findings. In German-speaking countries, this model has already been used to model or investigate teachers’ knowledge and beliefs in career guidance (Dreer, 2013; Fletemeyer, 2021; Lembke, 2021).

In the following sections, we describe the four core aspects of the model in more detail and provide examples of how they apply to career guidance.

The aspect of knowledge is pivotal to teachers’ professional competence (Shulman, 1987; Blömeke et al., 2011). It encompasses content knowledge (CK), pedagogical-content knowledge (PCK), pedagogical-psychological knowledge (PK), organizational knowledge (OK), and counseling knowledge (CoK). In the context of school-based career guidance, content knowledge encompasses understanding adolescent career planning, while pedagogical-content knowledge relates to the ability to design a lesson on a career-related topic. Organizational knowledge includes an understanding of how career guidance is integrated into the overall school framework, and counseling knowledge encompasses coaching techniques that support students in their career-planning process (Dreer, 2013).

Beliefs form the second aspect of teachers’ professional competence; they differ from knowledge in their subjectivity and reliance on perception rather than accuracy (Richardson, 1996). These beliefs, which are shaped by significant social experiences, influence teachers’ pedagogical perspectives and impact classroom practices (Skott, 2015). Various classification approaches have been proposed for outlining the domains of teachers’ beliefs; this review adopted Calderhead’s (1996) classification, which has also been applied in career-guidance research (Fletemeyer, 2021). Additionally, we examined attitudes, which are defined as psychological tendencies toward liking or disliking something (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993). In the context of career guidance, this could mean that teachers have a positive attitude toward careers guidance in schools and hold productive beliefs about supporting students in this area (Fletemeyer, 2021).

Third, motivational orientations are crucial for psychological functioning and significantly influence behavior and intention maintenance. These orientations can be operationalized in different ways; this review focuses on the control and self-efficacy beliefs of career-guidance teachers. The self-efficacy construct covers teachers’ beliefs regarding their ability to support and enhance students’ learning and behavior (Bandura, 1977; Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy, 2001). In the context of career guidance, this could mean that teachers feel confident in supporting students throughout the career-planning process.

The fourth aspect, self-regulation, has a specific meaning in Baumert and Kunter’s (2013) professional-competence model that differs from its use in the context of student learning (Kunter, 2013). Self-regulation encompasses the ability to maintain engagement while controlling one’s own behavior and developing adaptive strategies for stressful situations. It allows teachers to manage personal resources and balance involvement with disengagement (Klusmann et al., 2008). In the context of career guidance, self-regulation could mean that teachers manage stress factors such as limited time or students’ unrealistic career aspirations (Stalder et al., 2023).

This systematic review was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of what is empirically known worldwide about teachers’ competencies in career guidance. The following research questions (RQs) guided the study:

Given the multitude of terminologies used in the research field (McMahon, 2014), it was crucial to employ a broad definition of career guidance in this study and to use a range of search terms. A narrow understanding could have resulted in the exclusion of relevant studies. The search terms, including their combinations and derivatives utilized in the electronic-database search, are presented in Table 1. Slight modifications were made to the search terms to align them with the functionality of each database.

The boundaries for the systematic review were set by defining inclusion and exclusion criteria. These can be seen in Table 2. Studies were included if they met the following criteria: (a) publication in a peer-reviewed journal, (b) availability in English or German, (c) application of a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods approach, (d) focus on academic or vocational teachers at the secondary school level, and (e) investigation of at least one core aspect of professional competence as outlined by Baumert and Kunter (2013). Studies were excluded if they focused on higher education or primary school levels, special education contexts, pre-service teachers, or the assessment of students’ opinions or performance. No restrictions were placed on the year of publication, resulting in a coverage of articles published from 1972 to 2022. In our study, we concentrated on teachers from secondary schools, including upper secondary levels such as programs for vocational education and training (VET), because in some countries such as Germany or Switzerland with a dual-education system, adolescents enter vocational programs at a relatively young age (Masdonati, 2010).

The search was conducted in major electronic databases in April 2023, including PsycINFO, ERIC, Web of Science, Scopus, and PSYNDEXplus. Additionally, the German database Education Research Portal was searched. Figure 2 provides an overview of each stage of the selection process and the search results. The search returned 4,768 records. In the first step, the first author screened all the abstracts for eligibility based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. After the availability of full text was checked, this screening resulted in 43 studies. 15% of the abstracts were independently coded by a second author. The interrater reliability was good (Cohen’s Kappa = 0.85). The few discrepancies were discussed until mutual agreement was reached. In a second step, the full text of the remaining studies was examined, resulting in 31 eligible studies for our review. Reasons studies were excluded from the review are, e.g., wrong focus. Finally, 31 studies met all inclusion criteria. A descriptive summary of study characteristics is provided in Table 3.

The data were extracted from the results and discussion sections of the studies. Special care was taken to ensure that any additional interpretations in the discussion section of a study would not influence the results. To analyze both qualitative and quantitative data, we adopted a content-analysis method (Elo and Kyngäs, 2008). The MAXQDA 2022 software package (VERBI Software, 2021) was selected due to its flexibility, especially when subcoding was needed. In the first round, the data were analyzed by employing deductive content analysis based on the predefined categories from the theoretical framework outlined by Baumert and Kunter (2013). To structure the findings within the main categories, an inductive content analysis was carried out in a second round, in which the subcodes emerged from the data. This process aimed to create a manageable set of subcategories that accurately represented the diversity of topics covered within the data. To ensure transparency and replicability, two authors independently performed all the coding. They held regular meetings to address coding queries, to resolve any disparities in their analyzes, and to maintain the code book. If necessary, a third author was consulted to resolve disparities.

The 31 included studies involved a total of N = 4,872 participants. There were 3,166 participants in the quantitative studies, 230 participants in the qualitative studies, and 1,476 participants in the mixed-methods studies.¹ The studies were conducted in the United States (11), Europe (9), Asia (5), Africa (3), and Australia (3). Fifteen studies were published between 2011 and 2022, six between 2001 and 2010, one between 1991 and 2000, another six 1981 between 1990, and three between 1971 and 1980. Thirteen studies had a quantitative design based on surveys, eight studies had a qualitative design based on interviews or focus-group interviews, and ten had a mixed-methods design, most of which included both interviews and surveys, sometimes in combination with additional data-collection methods such as group discussions. The studies examined the experiences of secondary- (24) and middle-school (2) teachers, and four studies covered multiple levels. Five studies targeted vocational teachers, and four included mixed samples of teachers and educational staff.

Six quantitative and mixed-methods studies, plus one qualitative study, assessed teachers’ knowledge and skills in career guidance based on self-reported data. These studies offered little theoretical clarification on the specific kinds of knowledge and skills teachers should possess to adequately fulfill their roles in career guidance. No findings related to pedagogical-psychological knowledge emerged. Two studies focused on general career-guidance knowledge: In a German study by Dreer and Kracke (2011), 135 teachers estimated that 54% of their peers had the necessary knowledge to provide career guidance, but “necessary knowledge” was not defined. Gross and Kaplan (1975) discovered that teachers were less informed about career education than about drug, ecology, and sex education, with lower-level teachers feeling less knowledgeable than their higher-level counterparts.

While 11 studies referred to a concept of attitudes, none explicitly formulated a research question referring to the concept of beliefs. Five studies mentioned beliefs when presenting results (Mittendorff et al., 2008; Irving, 2009; Watermeyer et al., 2016; Karacan Ozdemir and Aydın, 2022; Karacan Ozdemir et al., 2022). However, a substantial number of studies analyzed teachers’ perceptions or views on specific aspects of career guidance.

Five studies coded to the category “control and self-efficacy beliefs” demonstrated that while most teachers felt confident in providing career guidance (Myrick and Carrow, 1987; Fuller et al., 2014), their confidence diminished when delivering information, advice, and guidance beyond their specialization and experience (Fuller et al., 2014). The qualitative evidence highlighted that vocational teachers’ confidence came from up-to-date professional knowledge and employer connections, which surpassed that of guidance counselors (Krei and Rosenbaum, 2001). Karacan Ozdemir et al. (2022) and Draaisma et al. (2018) studied the impact of training programs on teachers’ confidence in career guidance. The former used a pretest–posttest design to evaluate a training intervention and found increased self-efficacy in 48 teachers after training on topics like career development and motivational interviewing. Draaisma et al. reported (2018) that vocational teachers felt more confident in career dialogues after training, though some found it hard to express how their skills had improved.

None of the 31 studies provided direct results on teachers’ self-regulation skills in managing their resources in school-based career guidance. However, according to Baumert and Kunter (2013), research on the experience of strain and challenging work situations is relevant to the aspect of self-regulation, as these factors can affect teachers’ self-regulation skills. Understanding which areas of their work teachers find particularly demanding is a first step toward exploring how they cope with these demands. Therefore, within this review, it seemed valuable to document which specific aspects teachers perceive as stressful in the context of career guidance as a related theme. While we did not find specific results on teachers’ self-regulation skills, we can at least identify and discuss areas of strain in career guidance. These have been depicted as a related theme in the extended professional-competence model in Figure 3 and are further described below.

To address RQ1, results related to teachers’ knowledge were identified in seven studies, revealing significant gaps across all domains of professional knowledge about career guidance. Furthermore, nine studies highlighted a need for additional training and information.

Regarding RQ2, 26 studies reported findings related to teachers’ attitudes and beliefs, indicating that teachers generally held a positive attitude toward school-based career guidance. Findings related to teachers’ beliefs emphasized the importance they placed on the central role of family in students’ career planning and the significance of providing students with direct exposure to a variety of career opportunities for making informed choices. Furthermore, the results indicated that teachers struggled to fully comprehend the concept of career guidance; they often interpreted it through familiar frameworks rather than recognizing its overall significance. Research on teachers’ beliefs about their roles in career guidance revealed a range of viewpoints, from informal to formal engagement.

Regarding RQ3, five studies reported findings on teachers’ confidence in engaging with students in school-based career guidance, indicating that teachers generally exhibited confidence, although this was closely related to their specialization and experience. Training programs aimed at boosting self-efficacy showed positive results.

Regarding RQ4, none of the studies specifically addressed teachers’ self-regulation skills, although 12 studies highlighted challenges such as limited resources, inadequate institutional support, and difficulties in delivering career-related support.

This review has limitations, including a narrow focus on English- or German-language studies. Despite the authors’ comprehensive search across various databases and efforts to minimize publication bias by including a wide array of publication criteria, it is possible that pertinent studies were overlooked.