Chapter 3 Understanding and Applying Emerging Theories of Career Development

Career Development Interventions
Fifth Edition
Chapter 3
Understanding and
Applying Emerging
Theories of Career
Development
Copyright © 2017, 2013, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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’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 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
• Directed toward
– self-efficacy beliefs
– 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-basedinterventions 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
• 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.
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
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) (1 of 2)
• 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) (2 of 2)
• 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.
Evaluating CIP
• Although research investigating CIP theory is not extensive, the
numbers of studies based on CIP theory is growing
• Successful use with military families coping with transitions to new
jobs
• Increased career decidedness, career planning, career exploration,
and vocational identity
• Higher levels of trauma in college students relate to dysfunctional
career thoughts, vocational identity, and development work
personality
• Students with disabilities have more negative thoughts than
nondisabled counterparts
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
• Vocational Personality (Self as Actor)
• Career Adaptability (Self as Agent)
• Life Themes (Self as Author)
Vocational Personality
• Vocational personality (Values, Abilities, Traits reflect how
a person’s 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 Adaptability (1 of 2)
• 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 Adaptability (2 of 2)
• Concern
• Control
• Curiosity
• Confidence
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 Interview (1 of 2)
• Who did you admire growing up? (Name three, not parents-
fictional or non-fictional) How were you like him/her? How
were you different?
• What are your favorite magazines, websites, YouTube
videos? What do you like about them?
• What are your favorite TV shows? What do you like about
them? Who is your favorite character, actor, actress in the
show? What is it you like about them?
• What are three of your favorite school subjects? What are
your least favorite?
Career Construction Interview (2 of 2)
• What is your one of your favorite stories?
• What is a saying or motto you live by?
• Name 3 of your earliest memories. How did you feel? Who
was present? How you title your memory? (e.g. Girl scared of
losing)
Career Construction Interpretation
• Early Role Models- together make up the client’s ideal self - who
they wish to be/construct in the world and how they seek to
overcome their insecurities, pain, or struggles
• Early Memories: Reflect core problem in childhood, reveal Adlerian
strivings, are connected to current career problem (narrative), pain
one has passive suffered
• Motto: Advice currently to oneself
• Favorite Story: Reflects theme in current struggle
• TV shows, websites, books, school subjects- Reveal vocational
personality- interests and perceived abilities
Evaluating Career Construction Theory
• Research studies reveal that counselors perceive the CCI to be
helpful; and participants have a positive experience with the C
CI
• 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
• 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 utilizing 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
• ILP appears to be a useful framework from which counselors
can encourage clients to consider important life issues with
respect to their career decisions
• More research of ILP is needed in terms of the mode’s concepts
as well as the ways in which the model can be applied
effectively in career development interventions
Postmodern 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
• 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
reptest, 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
• Seventy percent of research participants reported that their
career development was influenced by unplanned events
• Chaos theory of careers highlights nonlinearity in career
development and suggest it is more important to examine
patterns across time
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
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Career Development Interventions

• Builds on the assumption that cognitive factors play an

• Step 1 - Conduct initial interview with client.

• Step 5 - Provide clients with a list of activities and resources

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