Career assessment and creativity: potential complementarity or a contradiction in terms?

ABSTRACT

In this research we investigated whether creativity and career assessment are a contradiction in terms or whether, through creative thinking, their potential complementarity in career guidance and counselling can be realised. The research demonstrates the creative application of the systemic Integrative Structured Interview (ISI) for the Self-Directed Search (SDS) with a South African female mid-life career changer. Results indicated that the ISI positions clients as storytellers who create rich systemic stories about their quantitative SDS scores. The constructs of story telling are evident throughout an interview about quantitative scores; the scores become unifying themes across the stories. In sum, the ISI can assist mid-life career changers to make meaning of their career transition; and by embedding career assessment in a systemic story telling process creativity is evidenced as a multilayered process.     

Examples,practice problems,or both? Effects on motivation and learning in shorter and longer sequences

Research suggests some sequences of examples and problems (i.e., EE, EP) are more effective (higher test performance) and efficient (attained with equal/less mental effort) than others (PP, sometimes also PE). Recent findings suggest this is due to motivational variables (i.e., self-efficacy), but did not test this during the training phase. Moreover, prior research used only short task sequences. Therefore, we investigated effects on motivational variables, effectiveness, and efficiency in a short (Experiment 1; four learning tasks; n = 157) and longer task sequence (Experiment 2; eight learning tasks; n = 105). With short sequences, all example conditions were more effective, efficient, and motivating than PP. With longer sequences, all example conditions were more motivating and efficient than PP, but only EE was more effective than PP. Moreover, EE was most efficient during training, regardless of sequence length. These results suggest that example study (only) is more effective, efficient, and more motivating than PP.