Understanding and Applying
Emerging Theories of Career
Development
Chapter 3
Characteristics of Emerging
Theories
• Draw upon a solid foundation of research
support
• Attempt to address the career development
needs of diverse client populations
• Reflect two major trends
– emphasis on cognitive approaches
– clients’ active role in career construction
Lent, Brown, & Hackett’s Social
Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT)
• Builds on the assumption that cognitive
factors play an important role in career
development and decision making
• Is closely linked to Krumboltz’s learning
theory of career counseling
• Incorporates Bandura’s triadic reciprocal
model of causality
Self-Efficacy (Bandura)
• Defined as people’s judgments of their
capabilities to organize and execute
courses of action required to attain
designated types of performances
Forces Shaping Self-Efficacy
Beliefs (Bandura)
•
•
•
•
Personal performance accomplishments
Vicarious learning
Social persuasion
Physiological states and reactions
Triadic Reciprocal Model
• The relationship among goals, self-efficacy,
and outcome expectations is complex
• This occurs within the framework of
causality comprised of
– personal attributes
– external environmental factors
– overt behavior
SCCT Career Development
Interventions
• Directed toward
• self-efficacy beliefs
• outcome expectations
The Cognitive Information
Processing Model
• Uses a pyramid to describe the domains of cognition
involved in a career choice:
– self-knowledge
– occupational knowledge
– decision-making skills
• The fourth domain is metacognitions and includes
– self-talk
– self-awareness
– monitoring and control of cognitions
CASVE Cycle
• This is the second dimension of the CIP
approach and represents a generic model of
information processing.
• Skills included are
–
–
–
–
–
communication
analysis
synthesis
valuing
execution
Applying the CIP Approach
• The pyramid model can be used as a
framework for providing career
development.
• The five steps of the CASVE cycle can be
used to teach decision-making skills.
• The executive processing domain provides a
framework for exploring and challenging.
Sequence for Delivering Career Interventions
(Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon)
• Step 1 - Conduct initial interview with client.
• Step 2 - Do a preliminary assessment to determine
the client’s readiness.
• Step 3 - Work with client to define the career
problem(s) and analyze causes.
• Step 4 - Collaborate with client to formulate
achievable problem-solving and decision-making
goals.
Sequence for Delivering Career Interventions
(Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon)
• Step 5 - Provide clients with a list of
activities and resources they need
(individual learning plans).
• Step 6 - Require clients to execute their
individual learning plans.
• Step 7 - Conduct a summative review of
client progress and generalize new learning
to other career problems.
Values-Based Model of Career
Choice (Brown)
• Values with high priority are the most important
determinants of choice from among alternatives.
• Values included in one’s value system are acquired
from society; each person adopts a small number
of these.
• Culture, sex, and socioeconomic status influence
opportunities and social interaction, resulting in a
wide variation of values in subgroups of society.
Propositions of Values-Based
Model (Brown), continued
• Making choices that coincide with values is
essential to satisfaction.
• Life satisfaction is the result of role
interaction.
• High-functioning people have welldeveloped and prioritized values.
• Success in any role depends on the abilities
required to perform the role’s functions.
Applying the Values-Based
Approach
• This approach classifies clients into two categories:
– those making planned decisions
– those making unplanned decisions
• For all clients, counselors must assess whether
– there are important intrapersonal value conflicts.
– mood problems exist.
– values have been crystallized and prioritized.
– client can use values-based information.
– client understands how career choices affect other life
roles.
Clients Making Planned Career
Changes
• Counselors need to assess
– how issues related to intrarole and interrole
conflict may be contributing to client career
dissatisfaction.
– degree of client flexibility related to
geographical location, training opportunities,
and qualifications.
Clients Making Unplanned
Career Changes
• Counselors must assess whether
–
–
–
–
there are mood problems.
there are financial concerns.
existing career opportunities can satisfy values.
clients can make changes to increase the
satisfaction they derive from other life roles.
Hansen’s Integrative Life
Planning (ILP)
• ILP is a worldview for addressing career
development rather than a theory that can be
translated into individual counseling.
• The integrative aspect of ILP relates to the
emphasis on integrating the mind, body, and
spirit.
• The life planning concept acknowledges
that multiple aspects of life are interrelated.
Assumptions of ILP
• Changes in the nature of knowledge support
new ways of knowing related to career
development.
• Broader kinds of self-knowledge and
societal knowledge are critical to an
expanded view of career.
• Career counseling needs to focus on career
professionals as change agents.
Six Career Development Tasks
Confronting Adults
• Finding work that needs doing in changing global
contexts
• Weaving their lives into a meaningful whole
• Connecting family and work
• Valuing pluralism and inclusivity
• Managing personal transitions and organizational
change
• Exploring spirituality and life purpose
Applying ILP
• Career counselors should help their clients
– understand these six tasks.
– see the interrelatedness of the tasks.
– help clients prioritize the tasks according to
their needs.
Postmodern Approaches
• These are theories and interventions that
depart from
– the positivistic scientific tradition that has
dominated social and behavioral science
research and
– most of the normative career development
research (Vondracek & Kawaski).
Creating Narratives
• Career counseling from the narrative approach
emphasizes understanding and articulating the
main character to be lived out in a specific career
plot.
• This articulation uses the process of composing a
narrative as the primary vehicle for defining
character and plot.
• Howard (1989) noted that people tell stories that
infuse parts of their lives with great meaning and
de-emphasize other parts.
Ways in Which Narratives Help
Clients (Cochran)
• A narrative is a temporal organization with
a beginning, middle, and end.
• A story is a synthetic structure that
organizes many pieces into a whole.
• The plot of a narrative specifies what has
been accomplished.
• The structure of a narrative communicates a
problem, attempts at resolving it, and a
resolution.
Ways to Use a Narrative
Approach in Career Counseling
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•
•
•
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•
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Elaborate a career problem.
Compose a life history.
Build a future narrative.
Construct reality.
Change a life structure.
Enact a role.
Crystallize a decision.
Contextualizing Career
Development
• Acts are viewed as purposive and as being
directed toward specific goals.
• Acts are embedded in their context.
• Change plays a dominant role in career
development.
• Contextualism rejects a theory of truth
based on the correspondence between
mental representations and objective reality.
Constructivist Career Counseling
• How can I form a cooperative alliance with this
client? (Relationship factor)
• How can I encourage the self-helpfulness of this
client? (Agency factor)
• How can I help this client to elaborate and
evaluate his/her constructions germane to this
decision? (Meaning-making factor)
• How can I help this client to reconstruct and
negotiate personally meaningful and socially
supportable realities? (Negotiation factor)