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Children’s Conceptions of Career Choice and

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 Journal of http://jcd.sagepub.com/
Career Development

Children's Conceptions of Career Choice and Attainment: Model

Development
Kimberly A. S. Howard and Mary E. Walsh
Journal of Career Development 2011 38: 256 originally published online 8 December
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DOI: 10.1177/0894845310365851

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What is This?
 Journal of Career Development
38(3) 256-271
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Children’s Conceptions of of Missouri 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0894845310365851

Attainment: Model http://jcd.sagepub.com

Development

Kimberly A. S. Howard1 and Mary E. Walsh2

Abstract
This article describes a model of children’s conceptions of two key career
development processes: career choice and career attainment. The model of
children’s understanding of career choice and attainment was constructed with
developmental research and theory into children’s understanding of allied
phenomena such as their understanding of illness, violence, and ethnicity. The
proposed model articulates aspects of career development during childhood that
have not been addressed in extant vocational models. Six levels of development
of vocational reasoning are described, ranging from magical, association-based think-
ing to reasoning that involves the dynamic interaction of influences at the individual,
relational, and systemic levels.

Keywords
career choice, career attainment, career development, vocational development,
children, youth, career model

1
University of Wisconsin–Madison, WI, USA
2
Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Kimberly A. S. Howard, Department of Counseling Psychology, 305 Education Building, 1000 Bascom
Mall, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Email: khoward@education.wisc.edu

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Howard and Walsh 257

Although many have advocated for a life span perspective in understanding voca-
tional development (Super, 1953; Vondracek, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1986), recent
reviews suggest that existing research has not adequately examined the precursors
for career decisions made during adolescence and early adulthood (Hartung, Porfeli,
& Vondracek, 2005; Watson & McMahon, 2005). Yet, evidence suggests that chil-
dren begin framing ideas and making judgments about the suitability of various
types of occupations for themselves as early as age 4 (Trice & Rush, 1995). As child-
hood ideas about work and occupations are the precursors to adolescent career devel-
opment and later exploration of the world of work, it behooves us to continue to
expand our understanding of career development during the elementary and middle
school years.
Reviews of research in children’s vocational development (e.g., Hartung et al.,
2005; Watson & McMahon, 2005) reveal a clear focus on vocational aspirations and
expectations as well as on the amount of knowledge children have about careers, the
world of work, and themselves. We see much less attention paid to how children
think about or understand career development processes (Borgen & Young, 1982;
Watson & McMahon, 2005). Both areas (i.e., what children know and how they
understand) need to be better understood to support positive career development
of all children and youth (Watson & McMahon, 2005).
To date there is a growing, albeit mostly dated body of literature examining some
aspect of children’s vocational thinking (e.g., Borgen & Young, 1982; Nelson, 1978;
Phipps, 1995; Schultheiss, Palma, & Manzi, 2005; Seligman, Weinstock, & Heflin,
1991; Seligman, Weinstock, & Owings, 1988; Trice, Hughes, Odom, Woods, &
McClellan, 1995). These studies suggest that as children grow older, they are better
able to identify potential future jobs/careers for themselves and recognize the amount
of education required to attain these jobs/careers as well as any special training require-
ments (Phipps, 1995; Seligman et al., 1988, 1991). When asked why they aspire to a
particular job or career, children in the later years of elementary school are much more
able than their younger schoolmates to describe a reason or motivation. Older children
are more likely to offer a specific interest or ability (Schultheiss et al., 2005; Trice et al.,
1995) in their explanation of career choice. Furthermore, when asked how particular
jobs or careers are obtained, young children (ages 3 to 4) demonstrate magical thinking
stating that a person merely assumes the accouterments of a job, whereas children in
the later elementary school years focus on the concrete details/tasks of an occupation
and emphasize the need to practice the required skills (Nelson, 1978; Schultheiss et al.,
2005). Children in the upper elementary grades are more likely than younger children
to identify personal or behavioral factors as influencing this process and identify train-
ing or specific requirements of an occupation (Phipps, 1995). The emphasis on inter-
ests, aptitudes, and abilities appears to plateau around the 10th grade when students
approaching high school graduation emphasize the longitudinal, developmental nature
of a career (Borgen & Young, 1982).
From the integration of these studies emerges a picture of children’s vocational
thinking that begins with magical thinking, gradually evolves to include interests

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258 Journal of Career Development 38(3)

and abilities and emphasize the activities or behaviors characteristic of an occupa-

tion, includes an understanding of training requirements, and finally understands
careers as an ongoing, dynamic process. However, in the past 25 years, no concep-
tual model has been offered to organize these results or integrate findings across
studies. Most of the existing literature describes the content of children’s responses,
offering percentages of children at different ages, who responded in particular ways
without providing a framework from which to contextualize the content of children’s
responses or nature of the thinking into a life span framework. Clearly, such a con-
ceptual framework is needed if we wish to expand our understanding of the devel-
opment of children’s conceptualization of career development (Watson &
McMahon, 2005).
At the same time, we must be aware of the fragmented nature of the existing lit-
erature in this area (Schultheiss, 2008) and must endeavor to avoid contributing fur-
ther to this problem. Thus, any model of children’s vocational thinking should
describe children’s thinking in ways that can be readily measured and should be situ-
ated within the broader context of children’s development (Porfeli, Hartung, & Von-
dracek, 2008; Schultheiss, 2008). The purpose of this article, then, is to describe a
model for understanding children’s conceptions of work-related processes. This
model is based in theories of cognitive development, previous work on children’s
vocational thinking, the research examining children’s ideas about how one chooses
and then pursues future jobs/careers, and other models of phenomenological under-
standing (e.g., illness, ethnicity, and schooling). It focuses specifically on two key
processes of career development, namely, career choice and career attainment, as
they are the process dimensions that underlie much of the existing vocational liter-
ature on children’s career development.

A Cognitive Developmental Approach to Vocational

Thinking
Although a multitude of career theories exist, only some of these theories (i.e.,
Ginzberg, Ginsberg, Axelrad, & Herman, 1951: Theory of Occupational Choice;
Gottfredson, 1981, 1996: Theory of Circumscription and Compromise; Roe, 1957;
Roe & Siegelman, 1964: Personality Theory of Career Choice; Super, 1953,
1990: Life-Span, Life-Space Model; and Tiedeman & O’Hara, 1963: Theory of
Career Choice and Adjustment) actually address the career development of children.
These theories describe varying ways for understanding how children develop voca-
tional preferences and vocational identities. While assisting us in anticipating the
changes in the career aspirations of children as they mature and in identifying the
activities that allow children to develop the vocational skills essential to successful
career development, these theories do not, however, provide a description of the
understanding that children of various ages have of work-related processes. By
articulating the evolution of children’s understanding of career development

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Howard and Walsh 259

processes, programs designed to enhance vocational development could be made

sensitive to and relevant to the level of children’s development.

Children’s Cognitive Development

Children’s reasoning about the processes of choosing and attaining future work and
the factors influencing their career preferences can be most readily conceptualized
using cognitive developmental psychology. The cognitive developmental approach
focuses on the ways in which individuals actively construct their understanding of
the surrounding world (Lerner, 2002). As children mature, their meaning-making
processes evolve through a predictable sequence in which earlier constructions are
reorganized and new constructions are integrated. Many developmental psycholo-
gists have described shifts in ways of understanding and organizing information that
take place as cognitive abilities mature. Developmental movement occurs when new
cognitive constructions emerge out of the previous, less sophisticated constructions.
This movement occurs as a result of dynamic interactions between the person and his
or her environment and represent the individual’s efforts to regulate these interac-
tions (Lerner, Freund, De Stefanis, & Habermas, 2001).
According to cognitive developmental theory, young children’s thinking is
marked by rapid growth in representational, or symbolic, mental activity (i.e., lan-
guage). Spatial understanding improves rapidly over this period and with this repre-
sentational capacity, children realize that a spatial symbol stands for a specific state
of affairs in the real world. The thinking of young children is rigid (e.g., dichoto-
mized) and is perception-bound, with reasoning being highly influenced by surface
appearances. Lacking self-other differentiation skills, young children are unable to
distinguish the viewpoints of others from their own. Furthermore, they demonstrate
animistic thinking—the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as
thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions and they may have difficulty classifying
objects hierarchically (Feldman, 2004; Miller, 1999).
With ongoing cognitive development and interactions with their environments,
children begin to use better organized reasoning, in that their thought processes are
more logical, flexible, and organized than they were during early childhood.
Increases in representational ability allow them to make inferences about objects
beyond mere surface appearances. They are now able to classify objects hierarchi-
cally; that is, they can understand and use superordinates and subordinates when
categorizing objects (Feldman, 2004; Miller, 1999).
Adolescents and adults demonstrate complex, abstract reasoning abilities, devel-
oping the capacity for hypothetico-deductive reasoning and proposition thought. For
example, when faced with a problem to solve, adolescents use hypothetico-
deductive reasoning when they start with a theory of all possible factors contributing
to the problem then deduce specific hypotheses (Feldman, 2004; Miller, 1999). Ado-
lescents then test these hypotheses in orderly fashion to determine which fit the prob-
lem at hand. Propositional thought is demonstrated when an individual evaluates the

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260 Journal of Career Development 38(3)

logic of propositions in his or her mind without referring to real-world circum-

stances. Finally, adolescents and adults can reason verbally about abstract concepts
such as morality and justice (Feldman, 2004; Miller, 1999).
The cognitive developmental approach has been applied with children to under-
stand their conceptions of various phenomena such as illness (Bibace & Walsh,
1980), violence (Buckley & Walsh, 1998), fair government (Helwig, 1998), morality
(Kohlberg, 1976), life (Piaget, 1930), death (Koocher, 1973), social conventions
(Nucci, Camino, & Sapiro, 1996), ethnicity (Quintana, 1998), schooling (Buchanan-
Barrow & Barrett, 1996), and social perspective taking (Selman & Schultz, 1990).
This body of research has found that children’s reasoning about these phenomena
follows a developmental sequence. Vondracek et al. (1986) argue that the same should
be true of vocational thinking, as development in this area occurs in dynamic interac-
tion with other aspects of human development. Consequently, we propose that chil-
dren will demonstrate a similar developmental sequence to understanding the
processes of career choice and career attainment. Indeed, further inquiry in this area
will be facilitated by the creation of a useful conceptual model for organizing our
inquiry into children’s vocational thinking (Trice et al., 1995). We provide such a
model in the following section of this article.

Model of Children’s Conceptions of Career Choice and

Attainment (CCCA)
Consistent with the structure of several existing models of phenomenological under-
standing for other domains (e.g., illness), the CCCA model organizes children’s con-
ceptions in terms of three common approaches used by children to reason about the
work-related processes of choosing and securing a job or career. These approaches
have been labeled Association, Sequence, and Interaction, to reflect the predominate
characteristic of thinking evident. Each approach can be subdivided into two levels,
thus yielding six levels in total. In the following paragraphs, we describe the three
general approaches to conceptualizing career development phenomena as well as
children’s thinking about career choice and attainment at each of the six hypothe-
sized levels. Model assumptions are then detailed and a case example is provided
to illustrate the changing nature of vocational thinking as conceptualized in this
model.

Association
Theories of children’s career development suggest that when children begin to
explore their career dreams, their thoughts are characterized by fantasy and imagi-
nation, as are their attempts to picture themselves in various work roles or work
environments (Tiedeman & O’Hara, 1963). Vocational choice is marked by capri-
cious career preferences (Ginzberg et al., 1951) that reflect an orientation to things
that are considered big and powerful (Gottfredson, 1981, 1996). When identifying

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Howard and Walsh 261

potential future career options, children engage in little to no self-reflection

(Porfeli et al., 2008) and often lack realistic appraisals of their preferences, abilities,
and opportunities but instead choose future careers based on imagination, fantasy,
and heroism (Ginzberg et al., 1951; Gottfredson, 1981, 1996). Children first concep-
tualize career attainment as a simple process of adorning one’s self in the costume or
acquiring the props of the occupation (Nelson, 1978). Children characterize
career attainment as happening by simply engaging in the activities of the job
(Nelson, 1978).
Thus, in the first category of vocational reasoning, the child’s conceptualization
of occupations and the processes involved in choosing or attaining those occupations
is based on association. The child focuses on specific, usually external, observable
objects, activities, or experiences that are associated with a job/career (e.g., the place
of work or the dress of the worker). Responses of this type reflect little to no differ-
entiation between these external objects or characteristics and the job/career itself.
Young children often cannot identify a mechanism or process by which jobs or
careers are chosen or secured and these two processes are not understood as being
separate. At this level, children either offer no explanation of these processes or sim-
ply assert that a person just ‘‘thinks it’’ or performs the job duties. Even if children at
this level of reasoning are able to identify a way for obtaining a job/career, they can-
not explain how it actually leads to the choice or attainment of a job/career. Choice
or attainment of a job/career occurs merely by assuming the dress of the occupation,
having the ‘‘props’’ of the occupation, or by engaging in the activities associated
with the occupation. Young children appear to be unaware of the qualifications of
career attainment, such as educational or training prerequisites.
There are two levels in the Association category of reasoning. At Level 1 (Pure
Association), the job/career simply exists for the child. His or her conceptualization
consists of a list of statements about the job/career, unelaborated, often confusing
cause and effect. When asked, the child does not offer an explanation of how career
options are chosen but often asserts that people just go to work. When prompted fur-
ther, children often offer potential places that people might work and list the activ-
ities a person in those jobs might do. Children in Level 2 (Magical Thinking)
describe a simple method for job/career choice and attainment but do not explain
a mechanism by which the method they associate with the job/career leads to the
actual choice or attainment of a job/career. When asked how a person gets a job, the
child identifies a particular occupation and then states that getting a job involves
having the right props, such as a squad car for a police officer or a doctor’s kit for
a physician. The child’s focus is on appearances; she or he makes no mention of
skills, talents, or characteristics are part of acquiring and executing a particular job.

Sequence
Theories of children’s career development explain that as vocational choice pro-
gresses, children shift from basing their career dreams on fantasy and imagination

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262 Journal of Career Development 38(3)

to the types of activities and tasks are of interest to them. They exclude any potential
careers that do not meet this criterion. Once they have begun to consider their inter-
ests in relation to career choices, they next become more cognizant of their individ-
ual strengths and weaknesses in particular areas of functioning relative to others.
When choosing a future occupation, they begin to compare their personal abilities
and capacities to those required in various lines of work (Ginzberg et al., 1951;
Nelson, 1978; Schultheiss et al., 2005), thus engaging in what Porfeli et al. (2008)
describe as ‘‘limited’’ reflection on an emerging sense of self. It is not uncommon
for career preferences to be heavily influenced by notions of gender-
appropriateness first and then of prestige and social class (Gottfredson, 1981,
1996). Their understanding of how one pursues and attains a job/career focuses
on the concrete details of an occupation, and practice is seen as being key to this pro-
cess (Nelson, 1978; Schultheiss et al., 2005).
Thus, in the second category of vocational reasoning, children emphasize the
mechanism or sequence by which an agent (e.g., activity, event, situation, or condi-
tion) leads to the choice and attainment of a job/career. Career choice and career
attainment are understood as separate processes and children explain how the two are
related. In this type of explanation, children typically attribute the choice and attain-
ment of a job/career to a specific activity (e.g., interest in the job/career and going to
college) that leads to the choice and acquisition of a job/career. That is, they explain a
mechanism by which this activity or agent leads one to choose a particular job/career
and to the attainment of a job/career, usually in concrete terms, involving direct spatial
contact or temporal sequences (e.g., get a diploma, go to college, and then start the
job). The link described is linear, such that a specific activity leads inevitably to a spe-
cific outcome (job/career). The resulting choice of a job/career and securing of a job/
career are seen as being inevitable and automatic consequences. In the first of the two
levels of Sequence (Level 3: External Activities), children describe a simple process of
learning about jobs and choosing the one they like. They also describe the external,
observable, and learnable skills and/or activities that lead to the securing of the job/
career of one’s choice. A child reasoning at this level might understand career attain-
ment as a vague process that involves finishing high school and going to college but
would struggle to explain how this educational sequence would lead to getting an
actual job. The implication is that going through these steps leads inevitably to the
acquisition of the job. At Level 4 (Internal Processes & Capacities), children describe
career choice as a process of matching one’s self to an existing job. The process often
includes a consideration of job activities, job/workplace characteristics, and personal
interests and abilities. Job/career attainment is understood as being dependent on both
learning the requisite skills and having the physical ability to do the work.

Interaction
Theories of career development suggest that adolescents understand the abstract idea
of occupational prestige and the relative value of different occupations.

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Howard and Walsh 263

Furthermore, youth at this level include a consideration of occupational prestige in

their career decision-making equations (Ginzberg et al., 1951; Gottfredson, 1981,
1996), equations that consider their own unique constellation of interests, abilities,
traits, and values (Gottfredson, 1981, 1996). Through these steps, adolescents
increasingly narrow the range of occupational options that they believe are appropri-
ate for themselves, at times forgoing highest occupational preferences for ones that
they deem more accessible to them (Ginzberg et al., 1951; Gottfredson, 1981, 1996).
Career decision making and pursuit is understood as a dynamic interaction that
includes factors at the individual level, such as the development of skills, as well
as the systemic level, such as needs of the system (e.g., community or organization;
Furlong & Cartmel, 1995; Nelson, 1978). Youth at this level are able to engage
in ‘‘extended reflection’’ on their developing sense of self-in-context (Porfeli
et al., 2008).
Thus, in the final level of vocational reasoning (Interaction), adolescents describe
complex and multidimensional processes of choosing and securing a job/career.
They define the act of choosing a job/career as a process that involves an interaction
of personal attributes (e.g., interests, innate abilities, skills developed, and values)
and environmental influences (e.g., availability of job/career, opportunities to
develop requisite skills, and current conditions of the job market) and that has many
potential outcomes. Similarly, the process of attaining a job/career is explained as a
dynamic interaction of personal characteristics, job/career characteristics, and the fit
between the two, as well as the influence of job availability. In Level 5 (Interaction)
responses, adolescents describe a dynamic interaction of multiple causes at the indi-
vidual (i.e., biological and psychological), relational (i.e., interaction with others),
and immediate environmental (i.e., job characteristics and job availability) levels.
Level 6 (Systemic Interaction) responses also include a dynamic interaction of mul-
tiple causes at the individual (i.e., biological and psychological), relational (interac-
tion with others), and immediate environmental (i.e., job characteristics and job
availability) but also include factors at systemic levels (i.e., employment trends, cur-
rent condition of the job market, and the development of new areas of employment)
as well.

Model Assumptions Regarding Human Development and the Role of

Context
This model of children’s conceptions of career development relies on developmental
contextualism (Lerner, 2002) as the organizing framework of human development.
According to developmental contextualism, human development occurs across the
life span and as the result of complex dynamic interactions of genetic/developmental
processes and the environment. Rather than a Traditional Person  Environment
Model, developmental contexutalism views the individual as inextricably embedded
within different ecologies at multiple levels of organization (e.g., Bronfenbrenner,
1979). As such, developmental processes are assumed to be influenced by universal

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264 Journal of Career Development 38(3)

genetic dispositions, whereas the content, direction, and rate of development are
assumed to be shaped by contextual influences at both proximal (e.g., family prac-
tices, media exposure, academic experiences, and cultural beliefs) and distal levels
(e.g., family leave policies and child care regulations) of organization. Indeed,
development cannot be fully understood without an understanding of the environ-
ment in which it occurs. Developmental contextualism also posits reciprocal rela-
tions between and among levels of and domains of development. Thus, a change
in one domain of development (e.g., cognitive development) has the potential to
influence changes in another domain (e.g., vocational development; Lerner, 2002).
Within the developmental contextualism framework, then, career development is
understood as being affected by (and affecting in return) development taking place
in other life domains. Although cognitive developmental theory may help us to
understand vocational thinking and reasoning, an appreciation of the cultural, aca-
demic, and historical contexts can help us understand the content of career choices,
the type of career associations being made (Association levels), the steps identified
as being key in the processes of career choice and career attainment (Sequence lev-
els), and the factors believed to be involved in the dynamic interactions that result in
career choice and career attainment (Interaction levels). To illustrate the application
of the application of the CCCA model, the case of Zoe is offered.

Case Example
Zoe is a Caucasian, able-bodied girl growing up in a Midwestern city. When Zoe
turned 4 years old and was asked what kind of job she would like to have when she
grew up, she responded that she wanted to be a doctor. When asked about how she
decided on that particular occupation, she talked about her pediatrician Dr. Russell
whom she indicated was nice and gave her stickers. Coincidently, Zoe had just com-
pleted her 4-year checkup that went well in her estimation because she was given
‘‘no shots.’’ Being oriented to size and power, it is common for children in the Asso-
ciation level of vocational reasoning to choose an occupation such as ‘‘doctor’’ that
represents powerful people in the child’s life. Zoe’s decision that she wanted to be a
doctor immediately following her 4-year checkup demonstrates the role that context
can play in shaping the content of one’s careers choices. Her response is also con-
sistent with the Pure Association (Level 1) level because the specifics of the career
were in accordance with her direct experience with her doctor and did not reflect
essential elements of being a doctor.
At the age of 5, Zoe was asked again about the type of occupation she would like
when she grew up, and she again expressed the wish to be a doctor. During the holi-
days following her fourth birthday, she received a children’s ‘‘doctor’s kit,’’ with
which she enjoyed playing. When asked how she decided to be a doctor, she
answered that doctors were ‘‘good because they help people get better and take your
temperature.’’ When asked how she might get the job of ‘‘doctor,’’ Zoe once again
asserted that you help sick people and take their temperature. Consistent with

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Howard and Walsh 265

Magical Thinking (Level 2), Zoe associates the career of doctor with two
activities—healing and taking one’s temperature. The content of her career interest
remained the same as it had been on year earlier, as this interest was reinforced at
home using toys and imaginative play. Zoe is not yet able to identify a method for
attaining the occupation of doctor.
By the time Zoe was 9 years old, her ideas about the type of job she would like
and her understanding of jobs had changed. Zoe enjoyed school and talked often
about her teachers. When asked about what she wanted to do when she grew up she
indicated she wanted to be a teacher because they help people learn and do fun proj-
ects with their students. When asked how one becomes a teacher, Zoe explained that
you have to finish high school with good grades and then complete college. When
asked further about going to college, she indicated that both her parents went to col-
lege and that they told her that she would need to go there and study to be a teacher
before getting a job. Zoe’s reasoning is consistent with the External Activities (Level
3) level in the Sequence category of reasoning. Her understanding of career choice
has begun to be based on something she enjoys, going to school, and her explanation
of attaining that job focuses on completing a simple set of steps (high school and
college).
At age 11, Zoe’s ideas about her future career were more consistent with an
understanding of her skills. For the past year, Zoe and her mother had volunteered
at the local humane society shelter. During this year, not only did Zoe learn how
to care for animals but she also received a great deal of praise from shelter staff about
her ability to work with the animals. When asked about her career goals, she indi-
cated she wanted to be a veterinarian because she wanted to care for animals and she
enjoyed her experiences with the veterinarians who came to the shelter. When asked
about how a person attains that job, Zoe indicated that one of the shelter veterinar-
ians told her to do well in school and college, particularly in her math and science
courses. Learning math and science would help her when she was in vet school and
when she has that job in the future. Zoe’s response is consistent with Internal Pro-
cesses and Capacities (Level 4) because she is beginning to evaluate careers by
matching her skills to the requirements of the job. The role of context in shaping
Zoe’s reasoning is also clear. By volunteering at a humane society shelter, Zoe was
able to develop her skills and her perceived competence in caring for animals. The
veterinarian’s encouragement to focus on science and math resulted in Zoe working
harder in these areas and getting higher test scores.
At 14, Zoe knew she wanted to pursue a career in science. She was excelling in
her science classes and found that she enjoyed learning how things work, including
the human body. When asked about a specific career, she indicated that being a doc-
tor would be good because she felt she would be good at it, she would enjoy the
work, and it she would feel good about helping other people. During her visits with
her pediatrician Zoe had asked how to become a doctor and as a result she under-
stood that pursuing such an occupation involved excelling in college so that one
could be accepted into medical school, which was a competitive process. Zoe

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266 Journal of Career Development 38(3)

explained that her pediatrician told her that her test scores in math and science were
quite good and that if she kept at it she should do well on the exams needed to enter
college. Here, we see more complexity of thought being demonstrated in that Zoe is
evaluating her skills in areas specific to the occupation being considered, is pursuing
and internalizing feedback from others, is seeking out a more complete understand-
ing of her career of interest and the factors involved in pursuing such an occupation,
and is using this information to generate a more complex understanding of what she
wants to do. This is consistent with Interaction responses at Level 5.
At age 16, Zoe was exploring her career options by completing formal interest
assessments and using an online career information system to evaluate possible post-
secondary options. She now understood that becoming a doctor was a very expensive
endeavor, and that while she did like science, she was not sure how she would afford
all of the post–high school education needed become a doctor. She also explored dif-
ferent types of medicine and vacillated between going to veterinary school or med-
ical school. When asked about her career goals, she indicated three options,
pediatrician, geneticist, and veterinarian. In comparing the three, she realized each
one had different academic pathways. Zoe explained that she also needed to consider
how one finances each option and how far away from home she would need to go to
pursue each option. Her parents and school counselor were encouraging of all three
options and indicated that for now financial issues and living away from home
should not deter her from pursuing her goals. Zoe knew she had an important exam-
ination coming up called the Pre-ACT (American College Testing) that would pro-
vide her with more information about whether she was ‘‘cut out’’ for college. Even
though her parents, school counselor, and teachers were being supportive of her, she
wanted more information before making a choice. Zoe knew that it would be less
expensive to go to college in her home state and that her test scores and grades would
need to continue to be high, if she was to have a chance to go to whatever college on
which she ultimately decided. Zoe’s reasoning reflects the Systemic Interaction level
(Level 6) because of the complexity with which she is evaluating her career options.
Although fortunate to have support from home and school, she is now aware of the
challenges and competition involved in preparing for her postsecondary phase of
education, which at 16 feels daunting and overwhelming to her.

Discussion
The CCCA model described in this article is consistent with and rooted in the find-
ings of previous research (i.e., Borgen & Young, 1982; Nelson, 1978; Phipps, 1995;
Seligman et al., 1988, 1991). As the case example provided illustrates, reasoning
about careers is shaped by a dynamic interaction of both developmental and contex-
tual determinants. Early evaluations of the model are promising (Howard & Walsh,
2010). If further evaluation continues to support the accuracy and usefulness of this
model, several implications for practice and research can be inferred.

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Howard and Walsh 267

Implications for Practice

An understanding of the types of reasoning about career development processes
commonly used could inform our career education and exploration efforts with chil-
dren and youth. First, the CCCA model could be used in combination with existing
theories of career development to shape the developmental activities and interven-
tions provided. For example, educators could use Super’s theory to identify the
age-appropriate tasks to facilitate exploration in programs of career education, the
theories of Ginzberg et al. and Gottfredson to identity sources that could potentially
limit children’s views of desirable future careers, and the CCCA model to tailor the
method of providing pertinent career information. Furthermore, the CCCA model
could offer guidance as to the type of learning experiences that could be provided
in the home, school, and community contexts that could support developmental
‘‘movement’’ from one level of reasoning to another. Children using vocational rea-
soning at the Association levels could be provided with opportunities to expand the
range of occupations with which they are familiar, through classroom-based activi-
ties or after-school/community programming. Parents, teachers, school counselors,
and other youth serving professionals could help children develop a basic under-
standing of the types of tasks and work done by professionals in a variety of fields
and of the need for some preparation or training prior to entering various occupa-
tions. Once children are reasoning about careers at the Sequence levels, career devel-
opment activities could focus on the exploration of interests, values, goals, and needs
and how this knowledge of self informs the career choice process. Furthermore, the
process of preparing ones’ self for a range of future career opportunities could be
explored to facilitate children’s understanding of the basic skills that are required
across fields as well as some occupation-specific skills. Finally, when youth reach
adolescence they could benefit from opportunities to explore the influences at both
proximal and distal levels of the environment that have shaped their current career
interests and their ideas about what is possible for them. They may be particularly
open to and able to benefit from an examination of the evolving nature of the world
of work and of strategies for preparing ones’ self for occupations that do not yet exist
(Howard & Walsh, 2010).

Implications for Research

In a recent evaluation of the CCCA model, it was found that levels of reasoning
about careers are associated with grade in school and level of cognitive development
(Howard & Walsh, 2010). Older children and children who were able to use more
complex cognitive reasoning strategies were found to also use higher level reasoning
strategies about careers. Future research could investigate whether exposure to
career development activities in elementary school can facilitate changes in levels
of career reasoning. Being exposed to career development activities that help chil-
dren learn about the range of careers available, the skills required by various

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268 Journal of Career Development 38(3)

occupations, and the pathways one must follow to enter those careers could provide
the foundation students need to think in increasingly complex ways about career
choice and career attainment. Future research could also use a longitudinal design
so as to follow the natural progression of reasoning about careers beginning in pre-
school and extending through high school. Longitudinal research could help explain
how reasoning about career development processes becomes more sophisticated and
whether career choice and career attainment processes become more complex at
roughly the same rate or with one appearing to precede the other. Finally, if future
research continues to support this model, it may be useful to expand it to include
other aspects of career development, such as job changing and professional
development.

Conclusion
To reiterate, this article describes a model describing children and youths’ concep-
tions of vocational development. Being based on principles of cognitive develop-
ment, it is sensitive to the changing ways that children and adolescents conceive
of career choices and career attainment and the influence of the environment in shap-
ing one’s vocational thinking. The model includes six levels of reasoning. Each level
involves an increasingly complex formulation of career choice and attainment that
shifts from a focus on the external, observable objects or activities of an occupation
to the steps taken to choose and enter an occupation to the dynamic consideration of
multiple factors that are involved in the pursuit of a job or career. It incorporates the
magical thinking demonstrated by young children and the abstract, sophisticated
thinking characteristic of older adolescents and adults. Thus, it has the potential for
application with a broad range of individuals, including K-12 youth, adults, and indi-
viduals with developmental disabilities.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this
article.

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Bios
Kimberly A. S. Howard received her PhD in Counseling Psychology from Boston College in
2001. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin–Madison, where she teaches courses in vocational psychology, school
counseling, and research design. Her research interests include the examination of the career
development process for diverse and low-income youth. She is interested in factors that pro-
mote vocational development and resilience, as well as in the reasoning processes used by
children and youth to understand career choice and career attainment. In her leisure time, she
enjoys spending time with her young children, gardening, and reading.

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Howard and Walsh 271

Mary E. Walsh received her PhD in Clinical-Developmental Psychology from Clark Univer-
sity. She is the Daniel E. Kearns Professor in Urban Education and Innovative Leadership in
the Department of Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology, in the Lynch
School of Education at Boston College, as well as the Director of the Boston College Center
for Optimized Student Support. Her research interests include the social–emotional, health,
and other nonacademic challenges to learning in urban students; the implementation and eva-
luation of systemic interventions that enhance students’ academic, social–emotional, and
healthy development; and the psychosocial development of homeless children and families.
In her leisure time, she enjoys spending time with her husband on Cape Cod.

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