the systems theory framework of career development

The Systems Theory Framework (STF; McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 2006) of career development was proposed as a metatheoretical framework that accommodates the contribution of all theories and offers an integrative and coherent framework of career influences. In this article, the author provides an overview of the STF, outlines its applications for employment counselors, and considers future directions.     

A Relational Approach to Career Counseling: Theoretical Integration and Practical Application

This article reviews the current status of career theory in practice and presents a theoretical overview of relational theory and its logical extension to the career domain. Despite the emergence of literature regarding the interconnectedness of career progress and the quality of relationships in one's life (e.g., D. L. Blustein, 2001; D. L. Blustein, M. S. Prezioso, & D. E. P. Schultheiss, 1995; D. E. P. Schultheiss, H. M. Kress, A. J. Manzi, & J. M. Glasscock, 2001), counseling practice is limited by the absence of a meaningful approach to intervene in clients' relational and career worlds. The relational career counseling approach moves counseling toward a contextually based relational perspective to facilitating career progress. This approach is illustrated with a case example.     

Exploring changes during life and career design dialogues

This article describes the processes of change that occur during career counseling based on the ‘making oneself self’ model (Guichard, 2008; Guichard, 2009). This counseling intervention process forms part of the more general paradigm of life designing (Savickas et al., 2009). The main goal for this counseling is fostering “reflexivity” of individuals with regard to their investment in their various spheres of life. Three career counseling interviews were conducted using both methods of dialogues for life and career design dialogues (LCDD) and self-confrontation (Larsen, Flesaker, & Foundation, 2008; Valach, Michel, Dey, & Young, 2002). Each interview is described with a focus on the changes perceived by the interviewees in relation to their initial reason for consulting as well as on their dialogues with the counselor, who facilitated these changes and provided support for them. The analysis of the dialogues suggests the existence of a three-step evolution supporting the changes. On the basis of these data, the discussion examines the reflexive approach in its theoretical, methodological and practical dimensions.     

Carl McDaniels: A Life of Transitions

Carl McDaniels has made contributions to professional counseling for nearly 40 years. He is well known for practical applications of career development theory such as the Virginia Tech Employee Career Development Program and the Virginia Career Information Delivery System, and for his theoretical formula “Career = Work + Leisure.” In this interview, he reflects on transitions in his career as a counselor and a counselor educator.     

Applying Chaos Theory to Careers: Attraction and attractors

This article presents the Chaos Theory of Careers with particular reference to the concepts of “attraction” and “attractors”. Attractors are defined in terms of characteristic trajectories, feedback mechanisms, end states, ordered boundedness, reality visions and equilibrium and fluctuation. The identified types of attractors (point, pendulum, torus and strange) and their relevance to career development are described. The attractor concept is then applied to major barriers in career development and life transition by a consideration of closed and open systems thinking. It is contended that ultimately the context of human experience is an open system and that career development difficulties arise when closed systems thinking is used in an open systems reality. The practical counseling applications and counseling research evidence using attractors are briefly reviewed. The additional potential contributions of the Chaos Theory of Careers to the career development field are also outlined.     

Applying the Cognitive Information Processing Approach to Career Problem Solving and Decision Making to Women's Career Development

An expanded framework of the Cognitive Information Processing (CIP) approach to career problem solving and decision making is outlined for career counseling with women. The modified framework addresses structural and individual barriers in women's career development and provides practical suggestions for applying and evaluating the CIP approach in career counseling.     

The role of acculturation in the career adjustment of Asian American workers: a test of Leong and Chou's (1994) formulations

F.T.L. Leong and E.L. Chou (1994) provided a theoretical model for understanding the acculturation process among Asian Americans and applied that model to predicting the potential career adjustment problems encountered by Asians in the United States. Several of the hypotheses proposed by Leong and Chou were empirically tested in 2 separate studies. In Study 1, acculturation (R.M. Suinn, K. Rickard-Figueroa, S. Lew, & P. Vigil, 1987) was found to be positively related to job satisfaction (A.H. Brayfield & H.F. Rothe, 1951) and negatively related to occupational stress and strain (S. H. Osipow & A.R. Spokane, 1981) in a sample of 39 Asian American employees from 2 major companies who attended career development workshops. In Study 2, acculturation was found to be positively related to supervisors' performance ratings in a different sample of 27 Asian American employees. These preliminary data suggest that acculturation plays an important role in the career development of Asian Americans. The theoretical, research, and counseling implications of the findings are discussed.     

Pyramid Power in Career Development

Stewart and Nejedlo discuss the use of the Career Development Pyramid as a model for career development and as a practical aid in career counseling. The model graphically depicts the synergistic relations of career choice factors, life-style, self-concept, and the specific job. The authors discuss the relationship between the quadrihedral model and current career development theories. They suggest applied uses of the pyramid and provide a working plan for copy and use by career development counselors.     

Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the 21st century

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new social arrangement of work poses a series of questions and challenges to scholars who aim to help people develop their working lives. Given the globalization of career counseling, we decided to address these issues and then to formulate potentially innovative responses in an international forum. We used this approach to avoid the difficulties of creating models and methods in one country and then trying to export them to other countries where they would be adapted for use. This article presents the initial outcome of this collaboration, a counseling model and methods. The life-designing model for career intervention endorses five presuppositions about people and their work lives: contextual possibilities, dynamic processes, non-linear progression, multiple perspectives, and personal patterns. Thinking from these five presuppositions, we have crafted a contextualized model based on the epistemology of social constructionism, particularly recognizing that an individual’s knowledge and identity are the product of social interaction and that meaning is co-constructed through discourse. The life-design framework for counseling implements the theories of self-constructing [Guichard, J. (2005). Life-long self-construction. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 5, 111–124] and career construction [Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career construction. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counselling: putting theory and research to work (pp. 42–70). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley] that describe vocational behavior and its development. Thus, the framework is structured to be life-long, holistic, contextual, and preventive.     

Integrating Personal and Career Counseling: A Challenge for Counselors

In recent years career counseling has often been viewed as separate and distinct from personal counseling, ignoring a long tradition in the career development field that has consistently recognized the importance of personality factors in the process of choosing and maintaining a career. This paper argues for the use of an eclectic career counseling model that embraces both personality and career development theories. The model requires the counselor to be able to move back and forth between the active and directive role of the career counselor and the facilitative and exploratory role of the personal counselor. A case is presented to demonstrate its application and implications for counseling and training are discussed.     

The Career Human Agency Theory

The authors propose a constructivist theory of career human agency to integrate and update the existing career theoretical models to better address the current postmodern zeitgeist. The career human agency theory (CHAT) represents a metatheory of career psychology guided by the principles of Bandura’s human agency framework and informs career development practice and counseling interventions. CHAT promotes the enactment of personal, proxy, and collective agency in the face of uncertainty and adversity. This article describes 4 pillar principles of career agency and provides concrete examples for career counseling application.     

Mental Health and Career Development of College Students

Little has been written about the reciprocal effects of the mental health and the career development of college students. Nevertheless, college students seeking services in college career and counseling centers often present both types of issues simultaneously. Service providers must, therefore, be cognizant of these potentially interactive issues. This article provides a summary of theoretical foundations and recent research regarding the interaction between psychosocial and career development. Implications for theory, research, and practice are provided.     

An Integrated Model of Outplacement Counseling

There is not a large amount of information on the subject of outplacement counseling. Although there are 3 existing models of outplacement, they do not contain the practical and theoretical elements necessary for a complete and effective model of outplacement counseling. The Aquilanti Integrated Model of Outplacement was developed from various aspects of existing grief and career theories after a literature review of these models to provide a complete approach to outplacement counseling.     

Career counseling meets motivational interviewing: A sequential analysis of dynamic counselor–client interactions

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a client-centered communication style with the aim to resolve client ambivalence within a change-related counseling. Its potential benefit for career counseling has been discussed by several scholars but no empirical research has investigated MI in this context so far. The current study used process measures from MI to investigate dynamic interactions within a career counseling intervention. Overall, we analyzed two videotaped sessions of 14 unique counselor–client dyads. Verbal behavior of counselors and clients were coded with two observational coding schemes from MI (one for counselors and one for clients, respectively). Behavior profiles of counselors were compared with benchmarks of good MI. Furthermore, client verbal ambivalence was compared between sessions. Finally, we conducted lag sequential analyses to analyze temporal dynamics between counselor behavior and immediate client verbal responses across N = 6883 behavioral events. Our results showed, first, behavior profiles of career counselors did significantly differ from recommended counseling benchmarks of good MI practice. Second, as assumed on the basis of past studies, client ambivalence decreased across sessions. Third, MI consistent counselor behaviors showed a positive sequential association with client positive career talk, whereas MI inconsistent counselor behaviors showed the reverse pattern. Our results suggest that counseling behaviors recommended from MI are facilitating career interventions. We discuss how trainings in MI could amend career counseling interventions and provide ethical implications when integrating MI into career counseling programs.     

Occupational Wellness: The Integration of Career Identity and Personal Identity

Historically, career and vocational counseling have served as cornerstones to the counseling profession. Still, there are several survey studies that indicate that interest in career counseling among counseling professionals has eroded. Conversely, there has been an overwhelming response from counselors to the idea of wellness. The intent of this article is to encourage practicing counselors and researchers to consider career development as a key ingredient in the conceptualization of wellness. Furthermore, it is imperative that we begin to assist clients in achieving this aspect of occupational wellness through the integration of career identity and personal identity.     

Emotion: An Absent Presence in Career Theory

This article couples a review of some of the recent UK literature on careers and career interventions with arguments for greater attention to be given to the role of emotion in career development. In the United Kingdom, changes in the employment context have led career theory to become more concerned with understanding adult work-role transitions, and somewhat less emphasis is now given to initial occupational entry. Accordingly, the aims of career interventions have been extended to promote “career management” skills as well as career decision-making skills. It is argued that ideas from the literature on emotion can be employed to elaborate current notions of career management to take more account of the feelings and emotions underlying career transitions. In particular, examining sequences of cognition, affect, and behavior seems to be a promising way forward in further understanding changes to individuals' psychological contracts with their employing organizations. The literature on emotion generally and on emotional labor also has potential in understanding the dynamics of career counseling and in developing narrative approaches to counseling. An examination of the provision of career interventions in organizations shows how attending to the emotional dimensions of practice highlights some of the challenging political issues inherent in this context.     

Perspectives actuelles du conseil psychologique en orientation

The relation between psychology as a discipline and career counseling has always been difficult to precisely define in France. Sometimes they are considered as very close; sometimes they are seen as independent. The history of career counseling is full of this ambivalent relationship. Nowadays, current transformations in organizations and in the world of work, together with an increasing number of counseling demands, bring practitioners and researchers to reconsider this relationship. The present article explores the conditions of a psychological perspective of career counseling in France. The comparison with English speaking contexts serves as a starting point. Practical, theoretical and epistemological issues are explored in order to define propositions concerning a psychological perspective of career counseling in the French context. The strategic professional role of the psychologist is presented as a core competence in the practice of interviews. A holistic perspective, centered on the interaction between the context and the individual, from the point of view of an ecological development of well-being, is described and discussed.     

Training School Counselors in Singapore: First Impressions of a Multicultural Challenge

Since the publication of 2 important articles, by E. Tan (2002) on career counseling and by W. H. Chong (2005) on group counseling in schools, changes have taken place in the school counseling field in Singapore. In this article, the authors review these articles and describe the development of the school counseling profession in Singapore based on the American model of counseling.