An expanded model of careers professional identity: time for change?

ABSTRACT

The careers profession is challenged significantly by government, employers and potential consumers to articulate its added value to society. Neoliberal discourses such as privatisation, deregulation, flexicurity and a self-help culture are impacting upon arrangements for the design and delivery of all-age careers provision across the UK. In this article, a UK-wide alliance designed to reconceptualise professional formation and identity is examined and critiqued. Findings from experiences in England illuminate the necessity for credible and authentic professional reconstruction. This is challenging work, where boundary maintenance is contested and disconnect with employer networks is prevalent. The article concludes that there is a need for strong leadership and more collective efforts to harness and secure careers professionals’ identity and impact.     

Bartering

Summary

This article examines issues related to bartering arrangements in the context of providing professional mental health services. The risks associated with significant conflict of interest in the professional-client relationship and the potential for exploitation of the client are analyzed by examining the interplay of personal, business, and clinical interests in bartering relationships. Professional practice guidelines are suggested.     

Les dispositifs groupaux à l’hôpital et en EHPAD durant la crise de la Covid-19. Quelles demandes,quelles offres,quels apports ?

IntroductionThe COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the demand for group arrangements dedicated to healthcare professionals and more widely hospital and medicosocial staff.ObjectiveThis article attempts to shed light on the issues at stake in the opening of group settings, between supply and demand, as well as their main organizational and psychological contributions and limitations, through the synthesis of multiple feedbacks from group arrangements carried out by clinical psychologists and researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodSix female researcher-clinicians met to discuss their experiences in setting up group care facilities. The analysis of the feedback used the concepts of work psychodynamics and group psychoanalysis, making it possible to bring out the organizational and psychological characteristics of group arrangements dedicated to professionals in the healthcare sector.ResultsOur results show that the group arrangement, by allowing the sharing of experiences, helps the mutual recognition between professionals, and thus new identifications in order to avoid the fragmentation of work collectives. The most central point seems to be the capacity of group arrangements to deal with the aggressiveness and anger felt when facing the powerlessness to act in crisis situations. The limits of these groups concern their difficulty in allowing individual rather than collective words to be expressed, and the risk of being the site of a repetition of the trauma for the professionals who sometimes attack or flee from these mechanisms, for fear of what they might bring back to the surface.ConclusionSeveral points of vigilance and recommendations from the experiences reported in this article are explained, in order to enlighten and guide future group facilitators when offering group arrangements built with and for professionals in the healthcare field.     

Story telling: crafting identities

ABSTRACT

Career guidance clients are seeking to craft new identities that better position them in their careers. The focus of the present article is on narrative career counselling's potential contribution in providing a meaningful and useful experience for career guidance clients. To illustrate the potential of narrative career counselling, the story telling approach is offered as an example to illustrate how identity can be crafted in contextually and culturally sensitive ways.     

Managing and developing a boundaryless career: Lessons from dance and drama

Abstract

As the structure of employment opportunities has been transformed by economic and technological changes, we have been forced to re-examine our ideas about what careers involve. We expect to make more and different sorts of career transitions and to have to take more responsibility for managing our own careers. It is suggested that information from the pattern of employment and career opportunities in dance and drama can provide useful insights into the skills that many more of us will need to manage and develop our careers in the future. This article uses data from a study of careers and training in dance and drama (Jackson, Honey, Hillage, & Stock, 1994) to identify key features of the ways careers are managed in this labour market. Implications from this analysis are discussed as part of a review of the way careers are changing.     

Spirit breaking: When the helping professions hurt

Abstract

Too often the human services dehumanize and depersonalize those who come to receive services, as well as those professionals who provide physical disabilities and people with psychiatric disabilities are frequently hurt by helping professionals, the phenomenon of “spirit breaking” is introduced. Suggestions for re‐humanizing the human services are made, including new models for clinical interaction that serve to empower rather than disempower service recipients, and the contributions that people with disabilities are making in their own state and national movements for social justice and the right to humane treatment and rehabilitation services.     

Comment on Delgado-Romero and Howard

Abstract

Too often the human services dehumanize and depersonalize those who come to receive services, as well as those professionals who provide physical disabilities and people with psychiatric disabilities are frequently hurt by helping professionals, the phenomenon of “spirit breaking” is introduced. Suggestions for re‐humanizing the human services are made, including new models for clinical interaction that serve to empower rather than disempower service recipients, and the contributions that people with disabilities are making in their own state and national movements for social justice and the right to humane treatment and rehabilitation services.     

Guidance systems across Europe: heritage,change and the art of becoming

Guidance systems exist within learning, working and welfare cultures, which are upheld by prevailing institutions and stakeholders. Implementing a lifelong approach questions rooted codes and idiosyncrasies of the sectors across which guidance is distributed. To support individuals' careers, unlock their potential and increase their contribution to the economy i.e. support their process of becoming, lifelong guidance must strive for effective systems' integration across policy fields, cultures and organisations. This article departs from national experiences and discusses how cultures and institutional contexts generate resistance to change, but can also be the departure point for the successful development of lifelong support to people's careers.     

“All I have to do is pass”: A discursive analysis of student athletes' talk about prioritising sport to the detriment of education to overcome stressors encountered in combining elite sport and tertiary education

ObjectivesIncreasingly, athletes are expected to undertake tertiary education contemporaneously with their sporting careers. However, to do so may prove difficult and stressful. Exploration of the stressors encountered by student-athletes in combining the two pursuits is limited. There is also limited research examining whether combining the two pursuits impacts upon sporting or educational success.Design and methodA discursive psychological approach was employed, examining twenty interviews conducted with Australian athletes enrolled in tertiary education, exploring how athletes integrated sport and education.ResultsWithin the interviews, athletes constructed their primary academic goal as to ‘just pass’. Athletes repeatedly presented themselves as sacrificing educational success to integrate the two pursuits. Moreover, athletes constructed accounts of themselves as prioritising sport, but as passive in decision-making around priorities. In doing so, athletes produced accounts that removed their own agency for their sacrificed academic success. The interviewees also constructed time as a barrier to the successful integration of sport and education. In the dataset time was constructed either as fixed, limited and externally controlled, or as flexible and controllable.ConclusionsThese alternate constructions allowed athletes to remove agency for poor educational outcomes, or conversely, enabled them to present themselves as successfully able to integrate sport and education. Thus, differing constructions of time were used to achieve different rhetorical ends. Implications and interventions for supporting student athletes successfully to combine sport and education are discussed.     

“When you're coming from the reserve you're not supposed to make it”: Stories of Aboriginal athletes pursuing sport and academic careers in “mainstream” cultural contexts

ObjectivesThis project responds to the call for athletic career development and transitions research that centralizes the constitutive role of culture in athletes' experiences (Stambulova & Alfermann, 2009; Stambulova & Ryba, 2014). Within, we explore the cultural transitions of Aboriginal hockey players (14–22 years old) relocated into “mainstream” (Euro-Canadian) cultural contexts to pursue dual careers as students and athletes.DesignThe research was framed as a cultural sport psychology initiative. The project was rooted in a local Indigenous decolonizing methodology, which was brought forward via a participatory action research approach.MethodsMandala drawings and conversational interviews were employed as open-ended data collection processes that enabled the participants to share their stories and meanings through their own cultural perspectives. Vignettes were then used to present their accounts.ResultsThe participants' careers as athletes and students were precariously navigated within larger cultural tensions to: (a) deal with a loss of belonging in the Aboriginal community; (b) break down negative stereotypes and attitudes that Aboriginal people are not able to “make it”; and (c) give back to the Aboriginal communities they relocated away from.ConclusionsThrough a culturally resonant mode of knowledge production, the research uncovers contextual understandings of the cultural transitions experienced by Aboriginal athletes, revealing how this transition intersects with and shapes their dual careers. The project offers insight into the central role of culture in shaping athletes' dual careers, and provides impetus for more idiosyncratic approaches to be adopted in future research.     

Identifying Gifted and Talented Students

ABSTRACT

This article offers a set of recommended best practices in the identification of students who are gifted and talented. The article recommends that school psychologists gain familiarity with gifted children and their families, recognize the multiple manifestations of giftedness and the developmental nature of talent development, link identification to intervention, employ multiple assessment measures, include the assessment of motivation, consider social and emotional needs, and monitor the recommended interventions. The article also reviews recurring issues that adversely impact upon the provision of gifted services in the public schools. These issues include society not viewing the gifted as a high-priority special needs group, definitions of giftedness that vary across states, differing expert opinions on what giftedness represents, uncertainty about prevalence rates, under-representation of certain groups of gifted students, the role of creativity, and whether gifted education should be a part of special education.     

The Current Status of Women in Professional Selling

Abstract

This article examines the status of women in professional selling careers. First, reasons women have not made more rapid movement into the selling profession are examined. Second, women's progress into professional sales jobs are explored. Lastly, suggestions are made for sales managers on how to attract and retain capable women in selling positions.     

The Inter-Life project: researching the potential of art,design and virtual worlds as a vehicle for assisting young people with key life changes and transitions

ABSTRACT

Careers work in the twenty-first century faces a key challenge in terms of digital technologies: to evaluate their potential for careers work in challenging settings. Given the rapidity of developments, technologies require evaluation in research innovations and naturalistic settings. Virtual worlds offer potential for careers and guidance work, and the therapeutic domain. To illustrate this, we present examples in which young people explore their feelings and ideas, plans and difficulties, while preparing for film-making. During this they develop important life transition skills. We argue that the power of virtual worlds – to support emotional and cognitive engagement – could be utilised in practice settings. We conclude that they are serious candidates as digital tools in the careers and guidance domain.     

Factors impacting carded athlete's readiness for dual careers

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to explore factors impacting New Zealand carded athletes' ability to engage in careers outside their elite sport involvement.Design and MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 carded athletes from eight different sporting codes, followed by inductive analysis of emerging key themes. Modified realist tales were then created from each of these narratives to create a detailed and thorough account of athletes' individual and collective experiences within the carding programme.ResultsAthletes acknowledged that despite the support on offer as part of the New Zealand Academy of Sport's carded athlete programme, they were still restricted in their ability to undertake careers alongside their elite sport involvement. In particular lifestyle conflicts, career stage and the sport environment were all seen to impact athlete readiness to adopt dual careers, with many athletes feeling unable, or actively discouraged from undertaking activities outside of their sport requirements.ConclusionsThis study highlights the need to ensure career assistance programmes actively support and encourage athletes to achieve both personal and athletic success, as well as educate coaches and officials of the benefits of athletes developing interests away from the elite sport environment. Such changes will not only begin to fulfil the sporting potential of gifted athletes, but also achieve the carding system's goal of developing well-rounded individuals who actively engage in dual careers across their sport participation.     

Anxiety-linked attentional bias: backward glances and future glimpses

ABSTRACT

This brief reflection considers some of the important developments in anxiety-linked attentional bias research that have marked the three decades since the launch of Cognition and Emotion, and also identifies several challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. I suggest that the steady increase in our capacity to distinguish differing facets of attentional bias and alternative dimensions of anxiety vulnerability, together with the advent of attentional bias modification techniques that can illuminate causality, has enriched theoretical understanding and created the exciting potential for clinical translation. In order to fully capitalise on this potential, I propose that researchers should address the challenge of enhancing the psychometric properties of our assessment measures, and developing training procedures that not only modify attentional bias more effectively, but that motivate sustained patient engagement. I end with some personal advice to young investigators developing their research careers within this stimulating and rewarding field of scientific inquiry.     

Building a Better World for Transpeople: Reed Erickson and the Erickson Educational Foundation

ABSTRACT

This article argues that through its role as a national clearing house and funding agency, Reed Erickson and the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF) actively directed the course of trans research and contemporary social services and policies effecting trans people. We structure this article around the EEF's three key areas of work in the field of transsexualism: support and referral, advocacy and education, and research and professional development. We show how these three main efforts lead to widespread medical and social change for trans people during the years of EEF operation.     

Marburg ca. 1900–1925: The Treffpunkt of Theology,Philosophy, and New Testament

ABSTRACT

Many of the intellectual giants in the areas of theology, philosophy, and New Testament were faculty members at the Philips University of Marburg during the early decades of the twentieth century. This article chronicles briefly the careers of faculty members of Marburg and their contributions in the fields of theology (Wilhelm Herrmann, Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich), philosophy (the Neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, and Martin Heidegger), and New Testament (Rudolf Bultmann) during that period of time.     

The “post” phase of deviant careers: Reintegrating drug traffickers

Although social scientists have examined the entry, intermediate, and exit phases of deviant careers, few have analyzed the reintegration of former occupational deviants into the conventional society and legitimate economy. For this follow‐up study, 10 years after conducting a longitudinal ethnographic study of upper level drug dealers and smugglers, I returned to the field to see what had become of my former subjects. I describe the directions they have ventured and analyze the social and occupational effects of their years in the drug world on their subsequent lives. For drug dealers, whose careers follow a roughly patterned evolution through ascension, peak, and decline, reintegration serves as the postdealing phase of their deviant careers.