Learning by teaching: possible model for career learning?

I'm doing a project at the moment that is looking at a teaching methodology called "learning by teaching'. It suggests that one of the best ways to get students to really understand any material inside and out is by asking them to run the teaching session. It was originally used for language teaching, but its impact has now been tested in a range of disciplines at different levels in educational settings, and in professional contexts with doctors and managers.

It's based in part on the thinking of Vygotsky, who did a lot of work on the relationship between language and thought, suggesting that when we start to speak, our thoughts are not yet fully formed. Instead we have with a fuzzy, vague notion in our heads, and then it's only as we start to talk and put the notion into words that we refine and crystallise our thoughts. It's almost as though our thoughts and our words are collaborating and working together. From an educational perspective, the implication is that for students to understand a topic properly, they need to talk about it.

The learning by teaching method then takes full advantage of this process by making the student put all their thoughts about a particular topic into words, which allows them to develop a really thorough understanding of the topic.

I'm interesting in this in my role as a lecturer, but I was wondering if and how we could apply it to career learning? My first instinct is that clients might feel a bit short changed. If they are coming along to a specialist workshop intended to enhance various aspects of their career decision making ability, then they might be expecting some more traditional didactic input from the career practitioner. But is my response a bit defensive, and does it suggest a lack of professional confidence? If  there is evidence it works, then surely we would be letting our clients down if we didn't try it?

So how would it be then, if we arranged a series of career workshops all around learning by teaching? Could we conduct sessions that essentially ask participants to provide all the content? Would it work? Would it be credible?

We might have to think about how the approach fits with career learning topics, but I think with a little imagination, we'd find some creative ways to apply the methodology in a career context.

We could, for example, get participants to research career areas, and then tell each other about them (this might work better with a slightly homogenous group - for example, students from the same University course). We could put participants in small groups and get them to present to each other all about their own strengths, and talk about a time when they really excelled at something. We could get them talking about a time when they made a good decision, and get a dialogue going about exactly how they made that decision and what was so good about the process.

The evidence suggests that it gets students engaged with the subject matter and leads to deep level cognitive learning. I think it might be worth a try.