Thursday, November 3, 2016

Chaos Theory

  • Emerged from economics, mathematics, biology, and physics
  • Emphasizes wholeness and change
  • Attraction - process used by individuals to organize a coherent self and then maintain and sustain it when change occurs
    • Point Attractor: individuals focus on choosing the best occupation based on a match between their personalities, abilities, and interests
      • Tunnel vision
    • Pendulum Attractor: swings in behavior
      • Likely to engage in either-or thinking
    • Torus Attractor: Routine, habitual, and predictable thinking and behavior
      • Try to control their lives by organizing and classifying people and things
      • Like consistency and routine
    • Strange Attractor: Go towards change and new things
      • Promotes ability to grow
  • Spirituality
    • Connection: How we are interconnected with the human community, world, and the universe
    • Purpose: Human's sense of meaning, purpose, and significance
    • Transcendence: Idea that there is a greater power beyond our understanding
    •  Harmony: How everything fits together into an intelligible whole
    • Calling: Idea that individuals often perceive that what they are doing with their lives is a result of being called
  • Shiftwork
    • Change is as a result of a phase shift

Constructivism

  • 1990s and first two decades of 21st century
  • Individuals construct their own realities - there is no absolute
  • Constructivism: Describes how individuals construct their own ideas about themselves, others, and their worlds as they try to make sense out of their real-life experiences
    • Knowledge is constructed by people (and does not reflect actual reality)
  • Social Constructivism: Interpretations about how the social world is constructed by social processes and relational practices
    • How social or external processes shape the career development of individuals (rather than how individuals shape their career development based on how they view themselves, others, and their worlds)
  • Individuals construct their life using both internal (self) and external (social) processes
  • Requires counselor to enter into the psychosocial sphere of a person's career system
    • Help clients tell their story in their own language
  • Relationship between client and counselor is very important
  • Clients construct their worlds and can therefore deconstruct and reconstruct their assumptions and perceptions

Friday, October 21, 2016

Career Development Transition Model (Schlossberg)

  • Consists of three parts
    • Approaching the transition
      • Transition identification and process
    • Identifying coping resources
    • Emphasizing strategies that can be used to take charge of the transition
  • Approaching Transitions
    • Types of transitions
      • Anticipated (events that occur as part of one's life cycle)
      • Unanticipated (events that are not predictable)
      • Nonevent (events that were anticipated and planned by that did not happen)
    • Must be considered in context for the client
  • Must assess where client is in Transition Process
    • Situation and the self influence transition
  • Support - Must assess assets that the client has in social support
  • Strategies - An individual's ability to cope with transitions depends on the changing interaction and balance of his or her assets and liabilities

Ecological Theory Model

  • Race/Gender based
  • Behavior is a result of a combination of factors at the individual, interpersonal, and broader socioeconomic levels
  • Behavior described as an "act-in-context" - context in necessary in determining the meaning behind an individual's behavior
  • Used in past when considering evolution of women in the workplace
  • Based on ecological theory developed by Bronfenbrenner
    • Microsystem - interpersonal interactions within a given environment (home, school, work, etc)
    • Mesosystem - interaction between one or more microsystems (ex: work and school)
    • Exosystem - linkages between subsystems that indirectly influence the individual (one's neighborhood, the media, etc)
    • Macrosystem - ideological components of a given society (norms, values, etc)
  • Each of these interacts with other systems at all times
  • Clients bring their ecosystems into counseling by conveying how they understand and react to their circumstances

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

(Happenstance) Learning Theory Model


  • Krumboltz 2009
  • Factors that influence an individual's behavior
    1. Genetics
    2. Learning experiences
    3. Instrumental learning
    4. Associate learning experiences (observed behavior of others)
    5. Environmental conditions and events
    6. Parents and caretakers
    7. Peer groups
    8. Structured educational settings
    9. Imperfect world (provides opportunities for some and not for others)
  • Fundamental Propositions 
    1. Goal of career counseling is to help clients learn to take actions to achieve more satisfying career and personal lives - not to make a single career decision
    2. Career assessments are used to stimulate learning, not to match personal characteristics with occupational characteristics
    3. Clients learn to engage in exploratory actions as a way of generating beneficial unplanned events
    4. The success of counseling is assessed by what the client accomplishes in the real world outside the counseling session
  • Applying HLT
    1. Orient clients expectations, help them understand that anxiety is normal, that the goal of career counseling is to have a satisfying life - but that that is influenced by unplanned events, and also that identifying an occupation becomes a starting point for exploration
    2. Identify client's concerns as starting point - meet the client where they are
    3. Use client's past experiences with unplanned events
    4. Sensitize client to recognize potential opportunities and help them reframe unplanned events as possible opportunities
    5. Help client overcome blocks to action
      • "What is stopping you from taking action?"
      • "What can you do now to take action to reach your goal?"
  • Our job is not to resolve anything for the client, but rather to make them feel comfortable with uncertainties
    • Being uncertain will lead to new ideas and opportunities
http://wiley-vch.e-bookshelf.de/products/reading-epub/product-id/668821/title/career+planning+for+research+bioscientists.html

Social Cognitive Career Model


  • Lent 2013; Lent, Brown, & Hackett 1994
  • Pro: Helps to explain vocational behaviors of racial and ethnic groups
    • Greater emphasis on contextual factors
  • Three intricately linked aspects of career development
    • a. Development of interests
    • b. Choice of educational and career options
    • c. Performance and persistence in educational and vocational realms
  • Expanded on Bandura's social cognitive theory and Hackett&Bent's career self-efficacy theory
    • "Influence of individual and contextual factors on the socio-cognitive mechanisms of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and goals and their influence on interests, actions, and performance"
    • Self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations predict academic and career interests
  • Focuses on learning process in realizing career goals
    • People may experience more success in certain realms and therefore be more confident in their abilities in that realm, possibly influenced by demographics (sex, race, sexual orientation, etc)
  • Counselor's goal is to examine client's past experiences and set realistic goals


http://career.iresearchnet.com/career-development/social-cognitive-career-theory/

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Holland's Theory


https://www.careerkey.org/choose-a-career/hollands-theory-of-career-choice.html#.V9nwavorLIU

  • Most practical of the theories
  • People can be categorized into 6 personality types (RIASEC model)
    • Realistic
    • Investigative
    • Artistic
    • Social
    • Enterprising
    • Conventional
  • Environments are said to fit each type 
  • Closer one type is to another on the hexagon diagram, the more these types are alike
    • When people identify with types that are close together, they are defined as being consistent
https://www.careerkey.org/choose-a-career/hollands-theory-of-career-choice.html#.V9nwavorLIU
  • Congruence - how well one's environment fits with their personality type
    • Even though an environment may be predominately one type, many different types can be found within every work environment
  • Differentiation 
    • Highly differentiated - closely resembles one type while being much different from others
    • Low - may identify with many different types or no types
  • Identity
    • Holland developed measure for one's identity
    • May be easier to help those with strong identity
    • Can be used to answer questions related to the effectiveness of career counseling and job satisfaction
  • Personal career theories (PCTs)
    • People go to see career counselors when their PCT does not seem to work out
    • Given levels based on how realistic/clear PCT is
      • Validity, complexity, and comprehensiveness

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Super's Life-Span, Life-Space Theory

  • Defined in 1990
  • Developmental view of career choice
  • "Career choice is a process, not an event."
  • Elements of a good vocational theory
    • Individual differences
    • Multipotentiality 
    • Occupational ability patterns
    • Identification and the roles of models
    • Continuity of adjustment
    • Life stages
    • Career patterns
    • Guided development
    • Idea that development is the result of interaction
    • Dynamics of career life
  • Differential psych, developmental psych, occupational sociology, and personality theory
  • People cannot make career choices until they define their self-concept. This can change over time (http://www.careers.govt.nz/practitioners/career-practice/career-theory-models/supers-theory/).

14 propositions
  • (3) People have different abilities, interests, and values
  • (6) Roll of self-concept in making career choices, career patterns and career maturity
  • (4) Synthesis and compromise between individual and social factors and work and life satisfactions
  • (1) Work and life interactions

Life Career Rainbow Model
  • Life stages labeled as growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline
    • Maxi-cycles - cycling through stages
    • Mini-cycles - Go through all stages before progressing forward
    • Stages are linear, but are not all experienced at the same time for everyone
  • Life space - homemaker, worker, citizen, leisurite, student, and child

  • Career maturity 
    • Readiness to engage in developmental tasks appropriate to age and level person is at
    • Not able to be reached, rather it is a goal
    • Super suggests term for adults should be "career adaptability"

  • Career Development Assessment and Counseling (C-DAC) model
    • First phase: assessment of importance of the work role in the relaitonship to other life roles
    • Second: identifying career stage and career concerns of client, then finding resources for implementing plan 
    • Third: Interests, abilities, and values are assessed by following trait and factor methodology
    • Fourth: Assessment of client's self-concept and life themes by using qualitative assessment procedures

(http://www.careers.govt.nz/practitioners/career-practice/career-theory-models/supers-theory/)

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Empirical Era


  • Second era, mid-1920s through 1940s
  • Era where career counseling became recognized as actual science, rather than just "vocational activities and intelligence testing"
  • Union of Parson's vocational guidance and intelligence testing created by Binet
  • During this time, a large number of personality and aptitude tests were created
    • E.K. Strong (1927) - Strong Interest Inventory
    • 1930s - Minnesota Ability Tests
    • Minnesota Employment Stabilization Research Institute
      • Formed in response to great financial depression during the time
  • 1933 - Wagner Peyser Act creates United States Employment Service
    • Studied careers and people that excelled in certain areas
  • Army General Classification Test
    • Used for personnel classification
    • ~9 million men tested
    • Problems created when testing such a large sample allowed for huge growth in the field of career testing
    • Gave way to Trait and Factor Theory of the 1940s

  • Trait and Factor Theory (https://youtu.be/Hxk6GCKUiZI)
    • Describes traits rather than explaining them
    • All individuals possess the same traits
    • Divides traits into three categories (cardinal, central, & secondary)
      • Modern career counselors use this to advise in future directions

Monday, August 29, 2016

Observational Era

  • In 1969, Crites separated evolution of career counseling (and development of theories) into three overlapping eras. 
  • First era, covered time from late 1800s to mid-1920s.
  • During Industrial Revolution - first period where career development became prominent part of society and personal identity 
    • Lots of social unrest during this time, led to issues aligning career and personalities
    • Progressive movement [aimed at eliminating corruption in government (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era)]
  • Term "vocational guidance" coined during this time 
    • First efforts by the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association)
    • Lysander Richards (1881) - Vocophy: The New Profession
  • "Used phrenology, physiognomy, and palmistry in their vocational guidance work"
    • Allowed them to look at individual differences 
  • 1900's - people start moving away from pseudoscience and towards techniques that paved the way for current day vocational counseling


  • Frank Parsons - "dominant visionary and architect of vocational guidance" (Herr, Cramer, & Niles, 2004)
    • Opened Vocational Beareau
    • Choosing a Vocation (1909)
    • First gave career counseling its consideration as a science
    • First to consider matching personality to skills (http://www.careers.govt.nz/practitioners/career-practice/career-theory-models/parsons-theory/)
  • Parsons believe that three things were important when choosing a vocation
    • Understanding of your own abilities and interests
    • Knowledge of the requirements for success in whatever you choose
    • Some connection between the two groups
    • Technique later developed into the Trait and Factor Theory of Occupational Choice (http://www.careers.govt.nz/practitioners/career-practice/career-theory-models/parsons-theory/)
  • Parsons got this knowledge by using evaluation through conversing with clients and testing aptitudes
    • Mental tests - with help of Hugo Munsterberg
    • Mental tests gained popularity following WWI - first popularity of intelligence testing
  • Issue stems from matching theory assuming that we are in a stable market. There are many careers that may not be recommended with the current fluctuations in what jobs are actually excelling and which are leading no where (http://www.careers.govt.nz/practitioners/career-practice/career-theory-models/parsons-theory/)