Ch. 3 Understanding and Applying Recent Theories of Career Development

What are the most recent career development theories? (5)

1) Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) by Lent, Brown, & Hackett

2) Cognitive Information Processing theory (peterson, sampson, reardon, lenz)

3) Career construction model (Savickas)

4) chaos theory of careers (Pryor and Bright)

5) integrative life-planning model (Hansen)

Trends in recent theories of career development

-the rise of cognitive theories

-growing realization that career interventions must fit the client (not the other way around)

-clients are active agents in the career construction process

Characteristics of Emerging Theories

•Have evolved to address cognitive and meaning-making processes that people use to manage their career effectively within a global and mobile society

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

•Reflect a "postmodern" approach which stresses the client's subjective experience (stories rather than scores)

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' 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 reciprocal causality comprised of

•personal attributes (e.g. predisposition, gender, race)

•external environmental factors (e.g., culture, geography, family, gender-role socialization)

•learning experiences.

SCCT Career Development Interventions

These interventions are directed toward:

self-efficacy beliefs and

outcome expectations

Applying SCCT

•Card sort exercise in which clients sort occupations according to:

• (a) those they would choose,

• (b) those they would not choose, and

• (c) those they question.

•Occupations placed in the first two categories (relating to self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations) are then examined for accuracy in skill and outcome perceptions.

•Clients can be helped to modify their self-efficacy beliefs by exposing them to personally relevant vicarious learning opportunities

Evaluating SCCT

•Overall SCCT has generated substantial research supporting the efficacy of SCCT-based interventions for specific diverse populations

•Choi, Park, Yang, Lee, and Lee (2012) found that career decision-making self-efficacy correlated significantly with self-esteem, vocational identity, and outcome expectations

Four Assumptions of the Cognitive Information Processing Approach (CIP)

•Career decision making involves the interaction between cognitive and affective processes

•The capacity for career problem solving depends on the availability of cognitive operations and knowledge.

•Career development is ongoing and knowledge structures continually evolve.

•Enhancing information processing skills is the goal of career counseling

CIP Approach DImensions

The CIP approach to career intervention includes several dimensions:

The pyramid of information processing,

CASVE cycle of decision-making skills, and

The executive processing domain.

CIP Approach- Information Processing

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

CIP Approach- CASVE Cycle

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

•Skills included are

•C-communication

•A-analysis

•S-synthesis

•V=valuing

•E-execution

Executive Processing Domain

•This domain involves metacognitive skills such as self-talk, self-awareness, and control.

Applying the CIP Approach

•The CIP approach uses the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI) (Sampson, Peterson, Lenz, Reardon, & Saunders, 1996) to identify clients with dysfunctional career thoughts

•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.\

•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.

Savickas' Career Construction Theory

•Comprehensive career theory (explains what, how, why)

•Career is socially constructed as individuals implement their ideal self-concept as the protagonist within their life story

Career Construction Theory key concepts

•Vocational Personality (Self as Actor)

•Career Adaptability (Self as Agent)

•Life Themes (Self as Author)

Career construction theory- Vocational Personality

•Values, Abilities, Traits reflect how a person narrates what stage they would like to perform on, what they believe they have the ability to do, and what interests they have formed

•Holland's Typology RIASEC re-conceptualized as preferences and possibilities, not predictions

Career construction theory- Career Adaptability

•Incorporates Super's work

•Address the attitudes, beliefs, competences (ABC's) individuals need as they face career transitions, work traumas, career decisions- both anticipated and unanticipated

Career construction theory- Life Themes

•Reoccurring themes throughout individuals lives and work roles (e.g. helping others)

•Draws on narrative and how individuals construct their experience

•Individuals are believed to "actively master what they have passively suffered" (Savickas, 2005)

Career Construction Counseling

•Helps clients clarify and articulate the private meanings they attach to their career behavior- how they are striving towards self-completion

•Utilizes the Career Construction Interview (CCI) formerly known as the Career Style Interview

Career Construction Interpretation

-Early role models

-early memories

-motto

-favorite story

-TV shows, websites, books, school subjects

Does CCT work?

•Research studies reveal that counselors perceive the CCI to be helpful; and participants have a positive experience with the CCI

•More treatment outcome data and research studies directed toward theory validation are needed- especially with regard to diverse client populations.

•Many people overcome painful life experiences by creating meaning to their suffering through work (e.g. Mike Walsh- tracks down killers after son Adam was murdered)

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.

•Career professionals need to help students, clients, and employees develop skills of integrative thinking

•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 according to ILP

•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 can utilize the Integrative Life Planning Inventory

•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

Evaluating ILP

-useful framework to help counselors encourage clients

-more research is needed in how to apply it

Post-Modern Approaches

•Emphasize the subjective experience of career development.

•Embrace multicultural perspectives and emphasize the belief that there is no fixed truth- that reality is socially constructed

•Stress personal agency

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.

•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: 4 factors

•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)

Constructivist Career Interventions

•Techniques include the laddering technique, the vocational re-test, and vocational card sorts

•Outcome measures for constructivist interventions are based on "fruitfulness"

•Career development interventions are framed as "experiments" that are directed towards helping clients, think, feel, and act more productively in relation to their career concerns

Chaos Theory of Careers

•Chaos theory of careers highlights nonlinearity in career development and suggest it is more important to examine patterns across time

Chaos theory- Attractors

•Chaos theory identifies four types of "attractors" that influence career behavior:

•Point: Tendency of a system to move towards one fixed or single point

•Pendulum: Systems regular swing between two places, points, or outcomes

•Torus: Tendency to engage in repetitive behavior over time

•Strange: Tendency for systems to repeats themselves, and yet never exactly repeat