Our Journal’s first issue of volume twelve contains a special international section that includes a selection of three contributions from the third International Symposium organized conjointly by the International association for educational and vocational guidance (IAEVG), the Society of vocational psychology (SVP), and the National career development association (NCDA) in San Francisco in 2010. The title of this international symposium was Bridging International perspectives of career development, and several discussion groups addressed topics such as Public policy and career development, Interventions during economic hardships, or International collaboration for research. More specific information about these special sections is provided in an introduction written by the editors of the IJEVG and the Career development quarterly and by the members of the symposium organizing committee.

This special section is followed by two original contributions. The first, “confidence sharing in the vocational counselling interview: emergence and repercussions” by Isabelle Olry-Louis, Capucine Brémond, and Manon Pouliot presents how confidence sharing is a common narrative and discursive act that can take several forms. More precisely, engaging in some self-disclosure or confidence sharing needs an active but sometimes implicit engagement or agreement from both the counselor and the client. The authors claim that they do not know precisely if confidence sharing of aspects not directly linked with vocational issues is adequate within a career counseling setting. I am personally convinced that career counseling needs to take into account all aspects of our clients’ lives, identities, activities, needs, wishes, and abilities, and that an open attitude towards all of these aspects is important. Indeed, personal problems cannot be solved within a purely educational and vocational guidance intervention, but an educational and vocational guidance intervention should take into account the personal problems that constitute barriers for our clients. And, this question deserves certainly more research.

In the second contribution, “the value of failing in career development: a chaos theory perspective,” Robert G. L. Pryor and James E. H. Bright claim that failing cannot be considered as simply the opposite of success. According to their chaos theory of careers, failing can, of course, induce vulnerabilities or have negative consequences, but can also have positive implications. As clearly stated by the authors, successes and failures should be understood and analyzed while taking into account the complexity of a reality influenced by a plurality of identified and non-identified interacting factors, which interact in a non-linear fashion under some conditions. These complex dynamic systems imply uncertainty, but failures can be considered as opportunities to learn and increase creativity, to formulate strategies, and to promote personal and spiritual development. For this reason, the authors make several suggestions about how failures should be addressed within an educational and vocational guidance intervention, such as increasing one’s tolerance for imperfection. This contribution is certainly very original, and will help us rethink the meaning of career failure.

Finally, we also would like to inform you that the articles published in our Journal are now indexed and abstracted the Thomson Reuters products, social sciences citation index, journal citation reports/social sciences edition, and current contents/social and behavioral sciences. This will provide greater visibility for our Journal within the scientific community, and will highlight the efforts and quality of our authors. Being included in these products, our Journal will also receive an impact factor beginning in June 2012. With this recognition and greater visibility and accessibility, we hope to increase the number of high-quality manuscript submissions we receive and continue to improve our standing in the scholarly research community.

We anticipate that you will find a number of new and interesting insights in this issue and that it will contribute to your own professional development. We wish you pleasant reading in the hopes that this issue will stimulate your own thoughts and lead to other contributions to our Journal.