Narrative identity: writing the self in career learning

We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed way. Creative, expressive and reflective writing practices are described and parallels are drawn between these and existing practices and theories in narrative career counselling. Key exercises in graduate courses for writing for personal development are discussed and a theoretical explanation is given as to why a particular order of approaches and exercises works best to promote career learning.     

The well-being outcomes of career guidance

ABSTRACT

The potential for career guidance to impact on well-being has received insufficient attention in the UK. There are both conceptual and empirical reasons to expect that the impacts may be positive, but a lack of evidence directly testing this proposition. Career guidance has commonalities with therapeutic counselling suggesting analogous effects, and it promotes positive engagement in work and learning, which may be associated with health benefits. There are implications for services in reconciling health and employment objectives. However, the promotion of well-being need not imply quasi-clinical ways of working. A call is made for more research and debate in the career guidance community as to the extent and implications of the potentially important relationship between career guidance and well-being.     

A routine perspective on implementing reflective career conversations in education

ABSTRACT

Reflective career conversations are a necessary instrument in the career guidance of students in vocational education. These conversations help students to learn from their (work) experiences and gain a better understanding of their motives on the labour market. Research shows that in a society in which change seems to become the only constant factor, knowing one’s own motives in work is important. However, the introduction and implementation of reflective career conversations in Dutch vocational education is problematic. In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘routines’ to better understand the nature of these problems. The concept ‘routine’ allows us to understand in much more detail what is required to induce the necessary behavioural changes that are required from teachers, students and management. Recognition of the complexity of this process and the willingness to invest are necessary prerequisites to prevent reflective career conversations from becoming the next ‘trick’ or ‘trendy innovation’.     

The changing relationship between people and their job – the validity of career information

ABSTRACT

An overview of the evolution of career information in light of the changing nature of the world of work is presented. Owing to the constant fundamental changes in the labour market, the distribution of paid work has been also constantly changing. In this article, a more dynamic and – often temporary – interplay between citizens and their professional context is proposed. The case of Hungary has been used to describe the changing nature between people and their jobs. The historical overview helps explain the development of career information from pre-modernity to post-modernity and justifies the need for a more dynamic model of work adjustment and individual career development.     

Towards a strong career learning environment: results from a Dutch longitudinal study

ABSTRACT

To prepare students for the flexible labour market of nowadays, schools are increasingly acknowledging their responsibility to guide students in their career development. The project ‘Career Orientation and Guidance in Secondary Vocational Education’ was developed to encourage Dutch schools to initiate and/or continue the creation of a strong career learning environment for their students. Central in this learning environment is a dialogue with the students, where meaning is attached to concrete experiences with work. This longitudinal study is designed to gain theoretical and practical insight into the influence of the project. Results show that, although the school’s vision on career orientation and guidance is clear to the teachers, it is not supported by all of them. It appears that the renewed vision is imposed on the teachers, and this absence of a shared and widely supported vision appears to withhold the teachers and the project managers to engage in collective action.     

Chaotic careers: a narrative analysis of career transition themes and outcomes using chaos theory as a guiding metaphor

ABSTRACT

In a rapidly changing world of work, little research exists on mid-career transitions. We investigated these using the open-systems approach of chaos theory as a guiding metaphor and conducted interviews with seven mid-career individuals chosen for their experience of a significant mid-career transition. Four common themes were identified through narrative analysis, where ‘false starts’ to a career were a common experience prior to finding a career ‘fit’. Career transitions, precipitated by a trigger state and/or event such as a period of disillusionment, were an important part of this ‘finding a fit’ process. Overall, career success outcomes were shaped by a combination of chaos elements: chance, unplanned events, and non-linearity of resultant outcomes. We discuss implications for future research and practice.     

An individual's work values in career development

This study examined the mediation effect of career decision self‐efficacy in relation to work values and career decision status. The authors surveyed 308 college students about their own intrinsic (e.g., helping others) and extrinsic (e.g., high income) work values and those of significant others, career decision self‐efficacy, and career decision status. The results indicated that the intrinsic and extrinsic work values of significant others were related to the intrinsic and extrinsic work values of the self and that intrinsic work values were more adaptive than extrinsic work values in career development.     

Applying the social cognitive model of career self-management to career exploration and decision-making

We present two studies applying the social cognitive model of career self-management (Lent & Brown, 2013) to career exploration and decision-making outcomes in college students. In the first study (N = 180 college students), we developed a new, brief measure of career exploration and decision-making self-efficacy for use in subsequent model testing. The measure yielded two factors, decisional self-efficacy and coping efficacy, with adequate internal consistency reliability estimates. The decisional self-efficacy factor related strongly to an established measure of career decision self-efficacy and produced theory consistent relations with measures of outcome expectations, social support, conscientiousness, exploration goals, prior engagement in career exploration, decisional anxiety, and level of career decidedness. In the second study (N = 215 college students), we re-examined the factor structure of the new self-efficacy measure and used it to assess the tenability of the self-management model in a path analysis predicting exploration goals, decisional anxiety, and career decidedness. The model fit the data well overall, though certain predictors were linked to the criterion variables only indirectly via mediated pathways. Implications of the findings for the social cognitive model as well as for future research and practice are considered.     

Narratives at work: the development of career identity

Well-developed career stories are becoming increasingly important for individuals as they navigate an unstable and unpredictable labour market. Existing narrative approaches in career guidance do not yet clearly identify the learning process by which career stories are created. In this article, a model of transformation-through-writing will be introduced to help explain the learning process that occurs when narratives are used for constructing career stories. We propose that this learning process occurs stepwise in four cognitive stages: sensing, sifting, focusing, and understanding. To progress through these stages, an internal (with oneself) as well as an external (with relevant others) dialogue is needed. The case study used to illustrate the process is a story of unemployment and effectively shows how narratives can be created through expressive and reflective writing and how such a process may foster career learning in response to a boundary experience.     

Narrative career counseling: My career story and pictorial narratives

The present article addresses the questions of what changes during narrative-informed career interventions and what prompts client reflection. We interrogated two case studies that both used the interventions of Pictorial Narratives (Taylor & Santoro, 2016) and My Career Story (Savickas & Hartung, 2012). Being heard and validated were elements that prompted client change through increased reflexivity and agency. And, reflexivity and agency were fostered by encouraging clients to consider the contrast between problem and preferred pictorials and to connect the perspective from early recollections to possibilities in a reconstructed career narrative. This pair of contrasting symbols prompted deep sense-making and new realizations that primed purposeful actions in the real world to reconstruct career and life. In addition to addressing the questions posed by the organizers, this article describes how the Pictorial Narrative methods, when used in career counseling, can been integrated with the My Career Story workbook to enhance client reflection and agency. The two case examples illustrate this unique integration of constructionist career counseling interventions.     

Career counselling intervention efficacy with South African university students

This exploratory study examined the efficacy of a brief career counselling intervention with South African university students (n?=?54; female?=?59%, male?=?40%; black?=?77%, Indian?=?27%, coloured?=?1%, white?=?3%; age range 17 to 19 years). The students completed a brief career development workshop and focus group discussion to address their career self-efficacy, career uncertainty, and anxiety post intervention. Findings suggest the students to have experienced a higher awareness of individual career assets and career self-management competencies from the counselling intervention.     

Professionalising teachers in career dialogue: an effect study

As a result of the changing notions of work, schools are increasingly acknowledging that they have a strong responsibility in guiding students not only in their academic growth, but also in their career development. This paper presents the results of a study about the effects of teacher training on career dialogues promoting career competency development in students. For the quantitative part of the study, a quasi-experimental research design was used to measure effects among 2291 students. Video recordings of conversations were used to do qualitative research. The results show that only when off-the-job training is followed by on-the-job coaching, the professionalising of teachers proves to be effective as measured on student level. Students notice that the guidance conversations are more appreciative, reflective and activating and that they focus more on self-image development, work and career action. The observations made with regard to the guidance conversations also show that these conversations become more career related.     

The impact of college on sex-atypical career choices of men and women

This study sought to identify the college environments and experiences associated with changes in sex-atypical career aspirations among men and women. A sample of 17,637 students attending baccalaureate institutions across the country was surveyed upon college entry and again 4 years later. The findings revealed that aspects of the college environment, including the peer culture, faculty interaction, and curriculum, all contribute to shifts to or from nontraditional career choices.     

Development of a measure of home-career conflict related to career motivation in college women

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a measure of Home-Career conflict (H-C) for college women. Data from two studies are presented. Subjects for the first study were college women enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes (N=163) at a large midwestern college. Subjects for the second study were fifty student teachers enrolled in Traditional female college majors (i.e., a majority are women) and fifty engineering students in Nontraditional female college majors (i.e., a majority are men). Findings from the first study indicated that high negative affect scores on the H-C measure were significantly (p<.05) related to low career motivation scores. Findings from the first study were used to revise the measure. Using discriminant analysis results from the second study obtained significantly different (p<.02) patterns of scores for Traditional college majors compared to Nontraditional college majors. Traditional majors wrote more stories depicting mothers as primarily homemakers and described more negative affect in their stories. Reliability estimates and validity data are provided. Suggestions for refinement of the measure are discussed as well as possible counseling uses.     

Supporting dual career in Spain: Elite athletes' barriers to study

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to analyze whether a Career Assistance Program (PROAD) facilitates the dual career.Design and methodA cross-sectional, prospective and quantitative design was used. A questionnaire was sent to all of Spain's elite athletes from Olympic sports. Of the 2378 elite athletes, 575 (332 men and 243 women) completed the 29-item questionnaire. The overall response rate was 24.2%.ResultsMost of the athletes perceived the dual career as difficult. Their most significant barriers are related to time management. The PROAD athletes and the non-PROAD athletes encountered the same barriers to studying. In general, the PROAD program seemed to have a positive effect on the academic level an athlete achieves. The athletes enrolled in the PROAD were more informed than the non-enrolled athletes. PROAD athletes were more proactive in demanding help and they had a closer relationship with the Spanish Sport Council than the non-PROAD athletes.ConclusionsStudent-athletes have several problems with the normalized educational system. Sport psychologists should reinforce the athlete's strengths, and they should seek the opportunities the sport context provides to athletes. The barriers could be minimized by adopting certain strategies. The PROAD program seems to be useful in terms of providing information, in ensuring elite athletes work or study before the end of their sports career, in making them responsible and autonomous, and in being more active.     

父母教养行为、自主与大学生职业生涯探索的关系

该研究以676名大学生为被试,采用问卷法考察了大学生的父母教养行为、自主与职业生涯探索的关系。结果表明：（1）父母教养行为显著预测大学生的职业生涯探索。其中,父亲和母亲情感温暖和理解、母亲监控与保护、父亲监控维度为正向预测,而父亲和母亲惩罚严厉维度是负向预测;（2）自主对大学生的职业生涯探索有明显的预测作用。投射调控、认同调控和整合调控在其中起着主要的作用,且认同调控的解释率最高;（3）父母教养行为通过自主间接影响大学生的职业生涯探索,其中,自主在父母情感温暖与理解、母亲监控与保护与大学生职业生涯探索的关系间起完全中介作用。     

Gender,Disability and Career Maturity Among College Students

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between gender, disability and career maturity among 180 college students enrolled in a university in northwestern Pennsylvania. A multivariate analysis of variance yielded a significant main effect for gender, no significant effect for disability, and no significant interaction effect. As compared with males, females demonstrated higher overall levels of career maturity, as well as higher levels of career development knowledge, including knowledge about decision making and the world of work.     

Use of narratives and collage in the exploration of the self and the meaning of a career

ABSTRACT

A methodological challenge during my doctoral research led me to use collage to reflect upon my own life and career. The insights it allowed me into the relationship between who we are and what we do led me to conclude that such methods can also illuminate these connections for clients of career counselling. In this paper I argue that such constructivist approaches allow the examination of that psycho-social space within which career is shaped and understood, allowing access to both the conscious and unconscious meaning made of a career and life story. I further argue that in times of increasing complexity such methods will be an important tool for career counsellors to meet the holistic needs of clients.