Lifespan Lifespace Theory and Career Development

Lifespan Lifespace Theory (Donald Super)

  • Extended Ginsberg's theory.
  • Five stages with substages.
  • Extended the developmental period into adulthood (right through death).
  • Central: Self-concept.
    • Occupational choice as the ultimate implementation of self-concept.
  • Visual metaphors: Arches and rainbows.
  • Developed theory based on the Career Pattern Study:
    • 25-year longitudinal study of 100 males.
    • Career decisions occur much earlier and continue later than Ginsberg suggested.
  • Three Segments:
    • Lifespan (Ladder).
    • Life Space (Rainbow).
    • Self-Concept (Archway of Career Determinants).

Life Career Rainbow

  • Stages on the outer part.
  • Chronological ages.
  • Life roles in chronological order (child, student, leisure, citizen, worker, homemaker).

Segment 1: Stages/Maxi Cycles

  • Five stages: growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline.
  • Mini cycles/recyclings:
    • Occur if there are disruptions.
    • Exploring, establishing, maintaining, disengaging, and growing.
    • May repeat within a maxi cycle.
Growth Stage (4-13 years)
  • Tasks:
    • Developing a future orientation.
    • Recognizing the need to choose an occupation in the future.
    • Developing a sense of personal responsibility.
    • Orienting towards achievement.
    • Developing employability skills and attitudes.
Exploration Stage (14 - early twenties)
  • Tasks:
    • Crystallize.
    • Specify.
    • Implement.
    • Establish career maturity.
      • Readiness to make educational and vocational choices.
Establishment Stage (early to mid-adulthood)
  • Tasks:
    • Stabilize careers.
    • Consolidate choices and developments.
    • Advance in career.
    • Career Adaptability (Mark Savikas):
      • Readiness to cope with predictable tasks.
      • Unpredictable adjustments.
      • Recycling to exploration stage.
      • 5 career changes and many different jobs.
Maintenance Stage (45-65 years)
  • Developmental Tasks:
    • Hold on.
      • Keep up or stagnate.
    • Innovate or decelerate.
    • Recycling.
    • Reinventing new career options.
Decline/Disengagement Stage (66-75+ years)
  • Period of deceleration.
  • Planning retirement.
  • Living retirement.
  • Retirement living as a career.

Ladder Representation

  • Chronological progression through stages.
  • Differences in progression due to modern career types.
  • Increased spiraling and recycling due to:
    • Digital disruption.
    • Globalization.
    • Forces requiring reinvention.
    • Protein or boundaryless careers.

Life Space (Life Career Rainbow)

  • Colors represent different aspects of roles.
  • Roles in chronological order.
  • Maxi cycles/stages, chronological ages.
  • Roles in different theaters: school, community, home, work.
  • Core: Personal determinants (psychological and biological).
  • Outside: Situational determinants (historical, socioeconomic, market forces).

Self-Concept

  • Career choices reflect the tendency to implement or express our self-concepts.
  • Public and Private Aspects:
    • Public: Vocational identity (e.g., academic, plumber).
    • Private: Occupational self-concept (e.g., "I am a good academic").

Archway of Career Determinants

  • Self-concept as the central stone.
  • Biographical factors (personal) at the base.
  • Geographical determinants.
  • Individual factors.
  • Different role self-concepts (mother, worker, partner).
  • Developmental stages building towards self-concept.
  • Internal and External Factors.
Internal Variables
  • Needs:
    • Based on Roe's and Maslow's work.
    • Developed via parent-child interactions in early childhood.
    • Lower needs: met by lower education/status.
    • Higher needs: met by occupations requiring more education/status.
  • Intelligence:
    • Driven by heredity and environment.
    • Affects the level of education and occupational level.
  • Values:
    • Met across life roles (including occupation).
    • Not all values need to be satisfied by work.
  • Interests:
    • Form in middle school and become stable.
  • Aptitudes:
    • Influence roles (work and non-work).
  • Personality/Self-Concept: Unique combination of needs, intelligence, values, interests, and aptitudes.

Counseling Implications

  • Focus on historical contextual influences.
  • Interventions targeted to the developmental stage.
  • Centrality of compromise (internal vs. situational variables).

Goals in Counseling

  • Identify career maturity.
  • Identify deficits in attitudes, skills, knowledge, or accomplishment of tasks.
  • Analyzing self-concepts.
  • Strengthening self-concept.
  • Promoting understanding of career as intersecting life roles.
  • Assist client to select and define roles to meet needs and values.
  • Balance between work and non-work roles.

Assessment Tools

  • Work role salience.
  • Career maturity.
  • Career adaptability (Adult Career Concerns Inventory).
  • Values (Schwalks value survey).
  • Career decision-making (Career Decision Scale).
  • Available at vocopher.com.

Career Development Assessment and Counseling Model (CEDAC)

  • Assessment of client's readiness (Career Decision Inventory or ACCI).
  • CDI: adolescents and emerging adults.
  • ACCI: adults.
  • If not ready, recommend career development activities.
  • If ready, assess interests, abilities, and values.
ACCI
  • Assesses stages: exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement.
  • CDI: assesses attitudes, competencies, and knowledge.

Case Example

  • 37-year-old woman, homemaker, considering returning to college.
  • High scores on crystallization and specification indicate difficulty.
  • Counseling tasks:
    • Develop concrete plans.
    • Clarify occupational goals.
    • Identify necessary steps to reenter the workforce.
  • Use interest inventories and value surveys.

Sample Counseling Session

  • Focus on self-concept.
  • Dynamic process of career development.
  • Questions about past work experiences.
  • Emphasis on values and interests.
  • Consider life roles and balance.
  • Use of life career rainbow.
  • Identify barriers and set goals.
  • Complete value scale.
  • Choose an occupation and major.
  • Clarify aspects of life roles.
  • Address discrepancies between current and ideal life roles.

Modernism vs. Postmodernism

  • Modernism (until late 1990s):
    • Test and tell approach.
    • Logical positivism: truth exists, use scientific methods to reveal truth.
    • Reductionist: reduce human behavior to generalizable traits.
  • Postmodernism (from late 1980s):
    • Social constructionism: social world determines access to knowledge, language shapes perception of reality.
    • Constructivism: internal process of making sense of external events.

Implications for Career Theory

  • Matching is not stable due to constant change.
  • Self is actively constructed and revised through stories.
  • Life themes influence career construction.
  • Focus on people's stories and themes.
  • Career adaptability is essential.

Career Adaptability

  • Concerns about the future.
  • Control: feeling in control of the future.
  • Curiosity: wanting to explore future possibilities.
  • Confidence: expressing confidence in ability to pursue aspirations.
  • Cooperation: recognizing attractions and supporting career plans.
  • Increasing career adaptability is essential.