Career Counseling Theories
Dr. J.N.Williamson
Social Learning &
Cognitive Theories
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Social conditioning, social position, & life events are
thought to significantly influence career choice.
People are thought to be influenced by:
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Genetic endowment & special abilities
Contextual experiences
Learning experiences
Skills learned in managing tasks
Key elements in the career choice process are problem
solving & decision making skills.
Career choice is the interaction of cognitive & affective
processes.
Key points in Social Learning &
Cognitive Theories
Individuals who resort to personal agency or assume
total responsibility for the future model an attitude
others should emulate.
 Individuals are encouraged to develop strategies to
overcome barriers that interfere with choice
implementation.
 Learning is a key element in this group of theories. (i.e.
learning increases range of occupations considered)
 Indecision might be linked to limited educational
background.
 This group of theories addresses faulty thinking that can
obscure rational decision making. Discovering and
unlearning faulty beliefs about career choice and
multiple life roles is a major objective of these theories.
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Krumboltz’s Learning Theory of
Career Counseling (LTCC)
First to propose a social learning theory of
Career Counseling
 Career Development involves four factors:
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Genetic endowment & special abilities
(primarily a factor that can limit learning experiences
& subsequent career choices)
Environmental conditions & events
Learning experiences
(instrumental & associative)
Task approach skills
(note. P39)
Krumboltz’s Learning Theory of
Career Counseling (LTCC)
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Krumboltz & associates emphatically stress that
each individual’s unique learning experiences
over the life span develop the primary influences
that lead to career choice. These influences
include:
Generalization of self derived from experiences and
performance in relation to learned standards.
 Sets of developed skills used in coping with the
environment.
 Career-entry behavior such as applying for a job or
selecting an educational or training institution.
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Krumboltz’s Learning Theory of
Career Counseling (LTCC)
The social learning model emphasizes the importance of
learning experiences and their effect on occupational
selection.
 Career decision making is considered to be an important skill
that can be used over one’s lifespan
 Factors that influence individual preference in this sociallearning model are composed of numerous cognitive
processes, interactions in the environment, and inherited
personal characteristics and traits.
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Educational and occupational preferences are direct, observable
results of actions and of learning experiences involved with
career tasks. (If an individual has been positively reinforced
while engaging in the activities of a course of study or
occupation, the individual is more likely to express a preference
for that course of study or field of work.
Role of Counselor in LTCC
Identifying content from which certain
beliefs and generalizations have evolved.
 Probe assumptions and presuppositions of
expressed beliefs and use this information
to explore alternative beliefs and courses
of action.
 Assisting individuals to understand fully
the validity of their beliefs is a major
component of the social learning model
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(note bullets p. 40).
Krumboltz’s Learning Theory of
Career Counseling (LTCC)
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Observations for Career Counseling:
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Career decision making is a learned skill
Persons who claim to have made a career choice need help too (career
choice may have been made from inaccurate information and faulty
alternatives)
Success is measured by students’ demonstrated skill in decision making
(evaluation of decision making skills are needed)
Clients come from a wide array of groups
Clients need not feel guilty if they are not sure of which career to enter.
No one occupation is seen as best for any one individual
The client is viewed as one who is exploring and experimenting and
should be empowered to take actions that help to create a satisfying
life. Challenges that involve educational opportunities and available
work options, should be approach with a positive attitude that
promotes positive outcomes.
Happenstance Approach Theory
(Mitchell, Levin, & Krumboltz, 1999)
The primary premise suggests that chance
events over one’s life span can have both
positive and negative consequences.
 Unpredictable social factors, environmental
conditions, & chance events over the life span
are to be recognized as important influences in
client’s lives.
 The overarching desirable outcome is to
empower and prepare each client for positive
actions that take advantage of unexpected
events and help them cope with negative
consequences in the future.
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Happenstance Approach Theory
Happenstance Approach Theory suggests that
counselors are to assist clients to respond to
conditions and event in a positive manner.
 Clients are to learn to deal with unplanned
events, especially in the give-and-take of the life
the 21st century workforce.
 Five critical client skills:
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Curiosity
Persistence
Flexibility
Optimism
Risk-taking
Happenstance Approach Theory
Practical Applications
Clients need to expand their capabilities &
interests
 Clients need to prepare for changing work tasks,
not assume that occupations will remain stable.
 Clients need to play a major role in deal with all
career problems not just with occupational
selection.
 Career counselors need to play a major role in
dealing with all career problems, not just with
occupational selection. (many theorists have
suggested that career & personal counseling
should become integrated.)
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note list of other suggestions p.43
Cognitive Information Processing
Perspective
Cognitive Information Processing is applied to
career development in terms of how individuals
make a career decision and use information in
career problem solving and decision making.
 CIP is based on ten assumptions.
 The major strategy of career intervention is to
provide learning events that will develop the
individual’s processing abilities. In this way
clients develop capabilities as career problem
solvers to meet immediate and future problems.
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Cognitive Information Processing
Perspective (chart p.44)
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1. Career choice results from an interaction of
cognitive and affective processes
2. Making career choices is a problem-solving
activity
3. The capabilities of career problem solvers
depend on the ability of cognitive operations as
well as knowledge.
4. Career problem solving is a high-memoryload task
5. Motivation
Cognitive Information Processing
Perspective (chart p.44-45)
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6. Career development involves continual growth
and change in knowledge structures.
7. Career identity depends on self-knowledge.
8. Career maturity depends on one’s ability to
solve career problems
9. The ultimate goal of career counseling is
achieved by facilitating the growth of
information-processing skills.
10. The ultimate aim of career counseling is to
enhance the client’s capabilities as a career
problem solver and a decision maker.
Cognitive Information Processing
Perspective (chart p.44-45)
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Using these assumptions, the major strategy of career
intervention is to provide learning events that will
develop the individual’s processing abilities. Client’s
develop capabilities as career problem solvers to meet
immediate as well as future problems.
The stages of processing information begin with
screening, translating, & encoding input into short-term
memory; then storing it in long-term memory; and later
activating, retrieving and transforming input into working
memory to arrive at a solution. The counselor’s principal
function is to identify the client’s needs and develop
interventions to help clients acquire the knowledge and
skills to address those needs.
Cognitive Information Processing
Perspective (chart p.46)
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Career problem solving is primarily a cognitive process
that can be improved through a sequential procedure
known as CASVE:
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Communication (identifying a need)-receiving, encoding, and
sending out queries
Analysis (interrelating problem components)- identifying and
placing problems in a conceptual framework)
Synthesis (creating likely alternatives) formulating courses of
action
Valuing (prioritizing alternatives) judging each action as to its
likelihood of success and failure and its impact on others
Execution (forming means-ends strategies) implementing
strategies to carry out plans.
CIP cont. CASVE
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This model emphasizes that career information
counseling is a learning event.
This model is unique to other social learning theory &
cognitive models because the role of cognition is a
mediating force that leads individuals to greater power
and control in determining their own destinies. The client
is viewed as one who has a career problem or a gap
exists between the client’s current situation and a future
career situation. Counselors are to seek out the
problems and factors involved in this gap.
Once the problems are identified the counselor develops
problem-solving interventions. Problem solving and
decision making are valuable skills that can be used
throughout the lifespan.
CIP—CASVE—Problem Solving
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Problem Solving is considered to be a series of thought
processes that eventually lead to solutions of problems
and remove the gap between a current situation and a
preferred one.
The accomplishment of this goal (problem solving)
involves information processing domains such as:
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self-knowledge,
occupational knowledge, and
decision making skills.
In the decision making process, the individual uses:
The strength of this theory is in its practical application
to solving career problems.
Note the seven-step sequence for career delivery service
(p.47)
Social Cognitive Career Theory
(SCCT)
SCCT is embedded in Social Cognitive Theory which
blends cognitive, self-regulatory, and motivational
processes into a lifelong phenomenon.
 SCCT’s major goals are to find methods of defining
specific mediators from which learning experiences
shape and subsequently influence career behavior.
 The aim is to explain how all variables such as interests,
abilities, & values interrelate and more important how all
variables influence individual growth and the contextual
factors (environmental influences) that lead to career
outcomes.
 The term personal agency is also emphasized. This term
reflects how and why individuals exert power to either
achieve a solution, such as career outcome, or adapt to
career changes.
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SCCT
Bandura’s model of Casuality
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The triadic reciprocal (bidirectional model)
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Personal and physical attributes
External environmental factors
Overt behavior
All three interact to the point of affecting one
another as causal influences of individual’s
development.
 Using this logic, SCCT conceptualizes the
interacting influences among individuals, their
behavior, & their environments to describe how
individuals influence situations that ultimately
affect their own thoughts & behaviors.
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SCCT
Key theoretical constructs
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The personal determinants of career
development have been conceptualized as:
Self-efficacy
 Outcome expectation
 Personal Goals
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The “big three” are considered to be building
blocks within the triadic causal system that
determine the course of career development and
its outcome.
SCCT
Self-Efficacy
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Self-efficacy is not viewed as a unitary or fixed
trait, but rather as a set of beliefs about a
specific performance domain.
 Self-efficacy is developed through four types of
learning experiences
Personal performance accomplishments
 Vicarious learning
 Social Persuasion
 Physiological states & reactions
(Self-efficacy is strengthened with repeated success and
weakened with repeated failure.)
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SCCT
Outcome Expectations
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Outcome expectations are also
regarded as personal beliefs about
expectations or consequences of
behavioral activities.
 Some
individuals are motivated by extrinsic
reinforcement (i.e. receiving a reward)
 Some individuals are motivated by selfdirected activites (i.e. pride in oneself)
 Some individuals are motivated by the actual
process of performing the activity (i.e. reading
a book or playing a ballgame).
SCCT
Personal Goals
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Personal Goals are considered guides
that sustain behavior.
 While processing personal goals,
individuals generate personal agency that
interacts with the three building blocs
which shape self-directed behavior.
SCCT
Interest Development /Values
Individuals develop interests through activities in
which they view themselves as competent and
generally expect valued outcomes.
 Interests fail to develop when weak and
negative outcomes are expected from an
activity.
 Values are subsumed in the concept of outcome
expectation.
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Values are preferences for particular reinforcers (i.e.
money, status, autonomy).