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)