Understanding and Applying Emerging Theories of Career

Development

Chapter 3

Characteristics of Emerging Theories

• Draw upon a solid foundation of research support

• Attempt to address the career development needs of diverse client populations

• Reflect two major trends– emphasis on cognitive approaches– clients’ active role in career construction

Lent, Brown, & Hackett’s Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT)• Builds on the assumption that cognitive

factors play an important role in career development and decision making

• Is closely linked to Krumboltz’s learning theory of career counseling

• Incorporates Bandura’s triadic reciprocal model of causality

Self-Efficacy (Bandura)

• Defined as people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances

Forces Shaping Self-Efficacy Beliefs (Bandura)

• Personal performance accomplishments

• Vicarious learning

• Social persuasion

• Physiological states and reactions

Triadic Reciprocal Model

• The relationship among goals, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations is complex

• This occurs within the framework of causality comprised of– personal attributes– external environmental factors– overt behavior

SCCT Career Development Interventions

• Directed toward

• self-efficacy beliefs

• outcome expectations

The Cognitive Information Processing Model

• Uses a pyramid to describe the domains of cognition involved in a career choice:

– self-knowledge

– occupational knowledge

– decision-making skills

• The fourth domain is metacognitions and includes

– self-talk

– self-awareness

– monitoring and control of cognitions

CASVE Cycle

• This is the second dimension of the CIP approach and represents a generic model of information processing.

• Skills included are– communication– analysis– synthesis– valuing– execution

Applying the CIP Approach

• The pyramid model can be used as a framework for providing career development.

• The five steps of the CASVE cycle can be used to teach decision-making skills.

• The executive processing domain provides a framework for exploring and challenging.

Sequence for Delivering Career Interventions (Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon)

• Step 1 - Conduct initial interview with client.• Step 2 - Do a preliminary assessment to determine

the client’s readiness.• Step 3 - Work with client to define the career

problem(s) and analyze causes.• Step 4 - Collaborate with client to formulate

achievable problem-solving and decision-making goals.

Sequence for Delivering Career Interventions (Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon)

• Step 5 - Provide clients with a list of activities and resources they need (individual learning plans).

• Step 6 - Require clients to execute their individual learning plans.

• Step 7 - Conduct a summative review of client progress and generalize new learning to other career problems.

Values-Based Model of Career Choice (Brown)

• Values with high priority are the most important determinants of choice from among alternatives.

• Values included in one’s value system are acquired from society; each person adopts a small number of these.

• Culture, sex, and socioeconomic status influence opportunities and social interaction, resulting in a wide variation of values in subgroups of society.

Propositions of Values-Based Model (Brown), continued

• Making choices that coincide with values is essential to satisfaction.

• Life satisfaction is the result of role interaction.

• High-functioning people have well- developed and prioritized values.

• Success in any role depends on the abilities required to perform the role’s functions.

Applying the Values-Based Approach

• This approach classifies clients into two categories:

– those making planned decisions

– those making unplanned decisions

• For all clients, counselors must assess whether

– there are important intrapersonal value conflicts.

– mood problems exist.

– values have been crystallized and prioritized.

– client can use values-based information.

– client understands how career choices affect other life roles.

Clients Making Planned Career Changes

• Counselors need to assess– how issues related to intrarole and interrole

conflict may be contributing to client career dissatisfaction.

– degree of client flexibility related to geographical location, training opportunities, and qualifications.

Clients Making Unplanned Career Changes

• Counselors must assess whether – there are mood problems.– there are financial concerns.– existing career opportunities can satisfy values.– clients can make changes to increase the

satisfaction they derive from other life roles.

Hansen’s Integrative Life Planning (ILP)

• ILP is a worldview for addressing career development rather than a theory that can be translated into individual counseling.

• The integrative aspect of ILP relates to the emphasis on integrating the mind, body, and spirit.

• The life planning concept acknowledges that multiple aspects of life are interrelated.

Assumptions of ILP

• Changes in the nature of knowledge support new ways of knowing related to career development.

• Broader kinds of self-knowledge and societal knowledge are critical to an expanded view of career.

• Career counseling needs to focus on career professionals as change agents.

Six Career Development Tasks Confronting Adults

• Finding work that needs doing in changing global contexts

• Weaving their lives into a meaningful whole• Connecting family and work• Valuing pluralism and inclusivity• Managing personal transitions and organizational

change• Exploring spirituality and life purpose

Applying ILP

• Career counselors should help their clients– understand these six tasks.– see the interrelatedness of the tasks.– help clients prioritize the tasks according to

their needs.

Postmodern Approaches

• These are theories and interventions that depart from– the positivistic scientific tradition that has

dominated social and behavioral science research and

– most of the normative career development research (Vondracek & Kawaski).

Creating Narratives

• Career counseling from the narrative approach emphasizes understanding and articulating the main character to be lived out in a specific career plot.

• This articulation uses the process of composing a narrative as the primary vehicle for defining character and plot.

• Howard (1989) noted that people tell stories that infuse parts of their lives with great meaning and de-emphasize other parts.

Ways in Which Narratives Help Clients (Cochran)

• A narrative is a temporal organization with a beginning, middle, and end.

• A story is a synthetic structure that organizes many pieces into a whole.

• The plot of a narrative specifies what has been accomplished.

• The structure of a narrative communicates a problem, attempts at resolving it, and a resolution.

Ways to Use a Narrative Approach in Career Counseling

• Elaborate a career problem.

• Compose a life history.

• Build a future narrative.

• Construct reality.

• Change a life structure.

• Enact a role.

• Crystallize a decision.

Contextualizing Career Development

• Acts are viewed as purposive and as being directed toward specific goals.

• Acts are embedded in their context.

• Change plays a dominant role in career development.

• Contextualism rejects a theory of truth based on the correspondence between mental representations and objective reality.

Constructivist Career Counseling

• How can I form a cooperative alliance with this client? (Relationship factor)

• How can I encourage the self-helpfulness of this client? (Agency factor)

• How can I help this client to elaborate and evaluate his/her constructions germane to this decision? (Meaning-making factor)

• How can I help this client to reconstruct and negotiate personally meaningful and socially supportable realities? (Negotiation factor)