The New Careers: A Book Review

Book reviewed in this article: The New Careers: Indiuiduat Action & Economic Change by Michael B. Arthur, Ken‐ Inkson. and Judith K. Pringle     

A Videotape Module to Teach Assertion Skills1

A LifeSkills© video module to teach assertion has been developed that uses dramatizations of the effective and ineffective ways to respond to a provocation. Normal volunteers were randomly assigned to watch the assertion video (n= 50) or a control instructional video (n= 53). Participants completed pre‐/post‐assessment batteries that tested their knowledge of the steps of assertion and their ability to apply this knowledge in response to 3 written scenarios. The answers were scored for both the presence of aggression and the use of assertion. Participants randomized to the assertion video showed larger increases in assertion and decreases in aggression compared to controls, indicating that a video dramatizing the use of assertion can be a practical and effective means of improving assertion skills, with decreased aggression a potential added benefit.     

Reviewing Videotape in Supervision: A Developmental Approach

The authors review the extant literature on the use of videotape technology in supervision and, on the basis of an empirically supported developmental model of supervision, offer guidelines to supervisors on the use of videotape feedback. Suggestions are also offered for future research in this area.     

Trauma Exposure and Health: A Review of Outcomes and Pathways

A growing body of literature has established robust relations between trauma and a variety of adverse physical health outcomes. In both retrospective and prospective research, adults with a history of self-reported or court-substantiated maltreatment report significantly more health concerns than those without maltreatment histories, in both clinical and community samples, whether health problems are self-reported or physician-diagnosed. Two pathways by which poor health outcomes are theorized to occur include the biological pathway, which largely implicates severe stress and subsequent dysregulations in central stress-response systems as the underlying cause of health problems, and the behavioral pathway, which suggests that health risk behaviors are largely responsible for the relations between trauma and health. This article reviews the research evaluating the relations between various types of trauma, particularly physical and sexual abuse in childhood, and three such health outcomes: pain, gastrointestinal disorders, and cardiovascular disease. Evidence to support the biological and behavioral pathways is also reviewed.     

The Pathways Between Socioeconomic Status and Adolescent Outcomes: A Systematic Review

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a significant risk factor for negative adolescent development outcomes. Identifying the pathways between SES and these outcomes may inform interventions for adolescents from this demographic. We conducted a systematic literature review of eight databases for studies investigating pathways between SES and adolescent psychosocial outcomes. A total of 59 articles met inclusion criteria. Significant risk factors identified include economic stress, chaos in the home, and violence in the community. These risk factors appear to be mediated through parent depression, conflict between parents, parenting practices, and adolescent resilience. Interventions focusing on the identified risk factors are recommended.     

Computer-Assisted Careers Counselling: A New Approach

This paper describes the outcome of a research and development project concerned to construct a computer aid for careers advisers and career decision-makers which differs in basic philosophy and design from others currentiy in the field. The resulting Careers Decision Aiding System (CDAS) is principally concerned with improving the quality of the decision-making strategy employed by clients by raising their awareness of the way in which their career choice is made, ratherthan with employing computer technology to attempt to match people to careers. The use of the CDAS by clients and careers advisers is illustrated by two case-studies.     

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 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.     

The Careers Service and Schools: A Changing Relationship

The changing relationship between the Careers Service and schools is examined. From a base-point in the 1960s and early 1970s, the implications of the changing context are explored: notably the much greater difficulties which young people have experienced in entering the labour market, the advent of new transition programmes, and the political pressures associated with the economic recession and the growth in unemployment. The effects of these changes on careers education in schools, and on the activities of the Careers Service, are described, as are their implications for the relationship between the Careers Service and schools. Finally, a typology for defining this changing relationship is outlined as a basis for further research.     

Gender Role Attitudes and Careers: A Longitudinal Study

Data from the Monitoring the Future Study were used to examine the impact of early gender role attitudes on later career outcomes for women and men. We also examined the impact of marriage, children, and labor market outcomes on changes in gender role attitudes. Women’s early gender role attitudes predicted their later work hours and earnings. Women’s work hours predicted their later gender egalitarianism. Children were negatively associated with later gender egalitarianism for both women and men. Findings indicated that gender role attitudes influence subsequent behavior, but they may also be adjusted to accommodate to situational constraints.     

A Health Careers Program to Improve Employability of Low-Achieving Youth

Applicants to a high school health career orientation program were followed for three years after graduation. There were 235 participants and 271 in the control group. Groups were fairly matched in age, grade level, prior exposure to health work, and interest in health occupations. Controls were above-average academically. Participants served in a 6-week summer program, worked under close supervision in 35 health career areas in hospitals and health-related agencies, took field trips, and received supplementary guidance. Participants showed low drop-out rates and high levels of expressed satisfaction; were likelier to engage in extracurricular health-related activities; studied and trained more; explored more before making an employment choice; showed higher levels of job satisfaction, higher earnings, and less turnover.     

The Case for Diversity in Computer-Aided Careers Guidance Systems: A Response to Watts

Watts (1993) has started an important debate about the future of computer-aided careers guidance (CACG) systems which recognises that there are political and economic concerns as well as technical and professional ones. As a contribution to this debate, an alternative view is offered, based on the case for diversity. It (a) reviews UK experience of CACG systems; (b) comments on the development of PROSPECT which Watts uses as a case-study; (c) identifies strengths and weaknesses of existing research; and (d) sets out a research agenda.     

Videotape reconstruction of emotions and cognitions related to shyness

This study tested predictions of the self-presentational approach to situational and dispositional shyness within a broader perspective. Forty subjects who were high in self-rated dispositional shyness and 30 subjects who were low in self-rated dispositional shyness watched videotapes of their interaction with a confederate of the experimenter in various situations, including apprehension of evaluation and positive feedback provided by the confederate. The subjects' free verbal responses to particular events during these situations were content-analyzed. Compared with the group lower in shyness, the shy subjects (a) recalled more fear of social evaluation (including fear of positive evaluation) but did not more often report other kinds of fear, (b) had more negatively biased thoughts about the impression made on their partner but not more impression-related thoughts in general, and (c) showed more negatively biased reactions to the positive feedback of their partner. These results support the self-presentational view that fear of being socially evaluated is pivotal to dispositional shyness. However, some unexpected findings suggest that social evaluative situations also arouse fears of having to evaluate others; this would limit self-presentational explanations of situational shyness in these situations.     

Technology Affects Careers: A Proposal for the Year 2000

Technology has caused changes that created gaps in the careers of many individuals. A proposal is suggested to develop a counseling system for individuals to begin at the formative years of their careers.     

Careers education and counselling in Northern Ireland: A historical outline

Vocational guidance services have been developing in Northern Ireland for about thirty years. Recently the careers service has been transferred from an education to a manpower services base, while the schools have been given greater opportunity, and responsibility, for the provision of careers education. The changes have given considerable impetus to careers teacher training, and to the appointment of schools' careers staffs. The possibility of further development of the partnership between careers officers and careers teachers is examined.     

Under Pressure to Change: The Professional Identity of Careers Officers

The professional identity of careers officers is no longer secure. Their role as independent providers of vocational guidance has been challenged and they have been urged to accord employers and placement a higher priority in their work. The resistance to such proposed changes encountered during a study of careers officers in Midtown appeared to be motivated more by a genuine concern for vulnerable clients than simple professional inertia or calculated self-interest. Any imposition of change could prove counter-productive and provoke a serious dislocation in the provision of vocational guidance.