Pedagogical potential of game technologies in career guidance

Abstract

Professional self-determination in adolescence develops at an age when direct information about occupations is less effective than experience lived through action; nevertheless, mass guidance practice still relies mainly on lecture-and-information formats, while game-based tools are used sporadically and without a clear didactic rationale. The discrepancy between the activity-based nature of the choice and the informational character of guidance constitutes the contradiction the study addresses. The aim is to reveal the pedagogical potential of game technologies as applied to career guidance and to organise them as an independent support instrument. The methodological basis comprises conceptual-categorial analysis, classification and structural-functional modelling grounded in the current regulatory framework of general education and the unified model of career-guidance activity. A classification of guidance-oriented game technologies by the dominant immersion mechanism is proposed; a four-component model of game-based support is constructed, in which the target, content, technological and diagnostic-reflexive components are correlated with metasubject outcomes and the levels of the career-guidance minimum. It is established that the guidance effectiveness of a game is determined not by the entertaining form but by the embedded mechanism of trial reflection: the transition from action lived through the game to its comprehension turns an entertaining situation into a means of self-determination, which sets the criterion for selecting and designing game formats within the support system.