Career Counseling Theories

1. Career Counseling Theories Dr. J.N.Williamson

2. Social Learning & Cognitive Theories • Social conditioning, social position, & life events are thought to significantly influence career choice. • People are thought to be influenced by: • 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.

3. 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.

4. Krumboltz’s Learning Theory of Career Counseling (LTCC) • First to propose a social learning theory of Career Counseling • Career Development involves four factors: • Genetic endowment & special abilities (primarily a factor that can limit learning experiences & subsequent career choices) • Environmental conditions & events (note. P39) • Learning experiences (instrumental & associative) • Task approach skills

5. Krumboltz’s Learning Theory of Career Counseling (LTCC) • 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.

6. 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 social-learning model are composed of numerous cognitive processes, interactions in the environment, and inherited personal characteristics and traits. • 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.

7. 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 • (note bullets p. 40).

8. Krumboltz’s Learning Theory of Career Counseling (LTCC) • Observations for Career Counseling: • 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.

9. 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.

10. 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: • Curiosity • Persistence • Flexibility • Optimism • Risk-taking

11. Happenstance Approach TheoryPractical 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.) note list of other suggestions p.43

12. 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.

13. Cognitive Information Processing Perspective (chart p.44) • 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-memory-load task • 5. Motivation

14. Cognitive Information Processing Perspective (chart p.44-45) • 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.

15. Cognitive Information Processing Perspective (chart p.44-45) • 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.

16. Cognitive Information Processing Perspective (chart p.46) • Career problem solving is primarily a cognitive process that can be improved through a sequential procedure known as CASVE: • 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.

17. CIP cont. CASVE • 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.

18. CIP—CASVE—Problem Solving • 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: • 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)

19. 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.

20. SCCTBandura’s model of Casuality • The triadic reciprocal (bidirectional model) • 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.

21. SCCTKey theoretical constructs • The personal determinants of career development have been conceptualized as: • Self-efficacy • Outcome expectation • Personal Goals • The “big three” are considered to be building blocks within the triadic causal system that determine the course of career development and its outcome.

22. SCCTSelf-Efficacy • 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.)

23. SCCTOutcome Expectations • 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 self-directed 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).

24. SCCTPersonal Goals • 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.

25. SCCTInterest 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. • Values are preferences for particular reinforcers (i.e. money, status, autonomy).