Theories of guidance Basic foundations and changing practices

1. Theories of guidanceBasic foundations and changing practices Triin Hannust

2. Traditional approaches Donald Super’s theory   • Each individual has a unique set of interests, abilities, and personality traits • Each occupation requires a particular pattern of interests, abilities, and personality traits • The closer the chosen occupation is to self-concept, the more meaningful the choice, i.e., the needs of individuals must be taken into acount • Likes, desires and abilities are not static – with time and experience changes can occur.

3. It is important to narrow down choices. • For that end, the following is needed: • Information about different fields of occupation • Find out where the clients skills and wishes overlap with the proffessions requirements. • Help the qlient to assess his/her compatability with a specific profession • As a result of the search inappropriate fields should be discarded ! Care must be taken to avoid guiding in a too narrow career direction.

4. The occupational choices are usually made between the ages 17-29. • In the renewal stage at ages 35-45 individuals may reconsider earlier decisions, which initiates a mid-life career change • Individual’s background can influence career options • Earlier roles can influence later life-style and career

5. David Tiedman’s theory • Career development involves matching one’s personality with society • Vocational development consists of a period of anticipation (exploration, crystallization, choice, specification) and a period of implementation and adjustment (induction, transition, maintenance). • Counselling is more important during the first stage, disstisfaction with previous choices may also require assistance.

6. Implications for use 1. Assess client’s skills, abilities, and interest based on previous experiences and test-results. 2. Exclude the following areas: • Client lacks the necessary skills • Client is not interested in them • Jobs are not based on client’s strenghts. • Stress values that the client does not hold. 3. A few professions that match client’s expectations, interests, abilities and other characteristics 4. The client has sufficient knowledge about oneself to choose amongst suitable professions.

7. Sociological approach. Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas • Career-counselling is a socio-political activity that requires knowledge about contextual factors. • Labor market institutions prioritize the damnds of labor market, education-based counselicg focuses on personal dewelopment and choice-making processes. • There is a connection between socioeconomic class position and possible success in the area of education (social heritage) • Certain assets can give a person a position as long as it is accepted and considered valuable. Cultural capital is accumulated through studies. There are different social strategies of accumulation.

8. Implications for use • A person’s choices depend on the group s/he relates oneself to. That determines the preferences, applicable rules and the impossible actions. • For each group there are suitable strategies and courses of action that are unacceptable • Different proffesional groups are characterized by different values and expectations. The correspondecne between the group’s and individual’s values is important for successful adjustment.

9. Humanistic approach • Subjectiviti is important in people’s living experiences – what counts is a person’s own explanation • Perceptions of reality are constructed through the interaction between the phenomenological world and external and social contexts. • Life experience generates and enriches meanings, while meanings provide explanation and guidance for the experience. • Behavioural funtioning is a manifestation of how one thinks and feels. • “Life has no intrinsic meaning. We give meaning to life, each of us in our own fashion.” (Mosak, 2000)

10. Individual spychology (Adler) states that a person’s viewpoint including individual perceptions and beliefs should always be conicdered. • In the person-oriented approach (Rogers) reality and personal experience are equally important. Counselling is based on the understanding of the client’s subjective world. It should create the opportunity for exploration. • Existential philosophy states that search for meaning is a natural part of human existence. Humans yearn for meaning in life, from which a hierarchy of values is created.

11. Meaning in vocational choices • Vocationa identity reflects a part of one’s total self-concept. • What they have done and what they will do for living have different meanings for different people. • Vocational self-identity influences all other areas in life as well. • The choice of career is strongly related to lifestyle and to plans for the future.

12. Implications for use Facilitating subejctivity • Encourage the client to get engaged in the exploration. • Guide towards understanding personal meanings associated with past and present experiences • Counselling should facilitate the understanding of his/her worldview, beliefxs, values, lifestyle, motivations and expectations. • Developing intention helps to clarify and developone’s obejctives and goals. • For that end the cliend needs to make sense of his/her personal experiences.

13. Understanding context – counselling should increase the client’s awareness of possible contextual influences. Constructing interpretation – Life events can be reconceptualized and meanings can be reconstructed. Projecting action – counseling provides new methods that need to be applied in the planning of the future (private life, career). • It is important to highlight human agency in life career development • Underline the necessity for life-long learning.

14. Ecological rrame in counselling (A. Collin & R. A. Young) • Helping people cope with their life career dynamics in a rapidly changing environment. • Ecologyis the scientific study of the distribution, abundance of life, and the interactions between organisms and their environment. • The ecological approach covers two major constructs: people (agency) on one side and environment (context) on the other side. • A person’s career transitions may result from a combination of social, economic, natural and environmental changes.

15. The central concepts Agency – a person’s capacity and potential to make things happen. It includes self-awareness and understanding, locus of control, and active learning to adobt effectively. • The person initiates goal-oriented enactments into the context in which career events unfold. Context yields conditions for the existence and mobility of human agency. Contexts establish the background for events, relationships, and actions to take place. • Life and career experiences are always built within certain sociocultural contexts.

16. Implications for use Career counselling should help the client by bolstering self-confidence, responsibility, and ability to cope. Agency - S/he bears the responsibility to achieve career (life) goals by taking action and assigning meanings. Self-concept, self-efficacy and self-actualization are important factors. • A person has the choice to adopt new attitude and action toward the same environment. Prospectivity – the person’s capacity of evisioniong what is ahead. • Counsellors need to remove/lessen the fear of change by introducing long-term strategic planning.   Retrospectivity – the person’s future decisions are the sum of his/her past experiences. • The purpose of counselling is to let the client make sense of what has happened in his/her life. The counsellor facilitates the client to construct new meanings.

17. Flexibility - personal control in a constantly changing environment. • Maintain and expand one’s trasferable qualities and skills. • Develop the ability to adjust and reconceptualize. Communicative creativity – a person is both a sales person and a product. • Counselling is used as a learning process for insight gaining (why do I want this?) and behaviour rehersal. • People are often willing and able to do the actual job, but lack the ability obtain recognition for their special attributes and skills.

18. Constructivistic approach • Reality is netiher objective nor subjective, but participatory. • The client’s personal experiences should be taken into account instead of the results of “objective” assessments • Career planning is rarely rationally planned and organized. It is non-linear, intuitive and influenced by chance as much as by rational planning.

19. Central themses in constructivist counselling • There are as many different “realities” as there are people • Some realities are more viable and preferable to others • The counsellor and client are allies in constructing the client’s world, plans and coping strategies. • Counselling seeks to promote and support meaningful activity, reflection and self-articulation. • Instead of career-planning, one should concentrate on life-planning.

20. Implications for use • Assessment is aslo an intervention which leads to change in the assessed attributes • A persons’s attributes can manifest in some situations and lay dormant in others. • Assessments help clients concider the implications of their own interests, values, attitudes, dispositions, and preferences. It also helps to understand the imlications of these beliefs for the conduct of everyday activities. • The following methods of assessment should be used: autobiographical works, self-characterization, interviewing, and portfolio assessment.

21. Personal counseling • Career issues and noncareer issues often appear concurrently in counselling. • About a third of the problems presented by clients during career counselling are not career related • Career counselling should be concidered a form of brief therapy. It helps the client recognize the relation between career and other life roles. • Counselling process is based on a strong client-counsellor relationship • If counselling consentrates only on testing and career-planning then the solutions are usually not sufficiently thought out.

22. Morita philosophy in counselling Counselling focuses on helping the client adapt to the changes occuring in worklife For that end: • Focus on fostering a positive attitude • Pay more attention to the positive features in life. Even negative events can have a positive side. • Be aware of life’s two-sidedness and learn to take different prespectives.

23. Make peace with anxiety. Accept it as an unevitable part of work-life. • Focus on what the client will do instead of how s/he feels. • Propose goal mediation and adjustment – things will not always go according to plan • Take ownership and value previous experiences

24. The “new” world 1. Technological development can render some skills redundant (e.g., replacement by machines) and create the need for new ones. 2. Time spent in one occupation has grown shorter. • Permanent employment is giving way to contract, temporary, or contingent employment • Individuals are required to become their own employers. • More general skills and/or a greater number of diverse skills that can be applied in a wide spectrum of areas are needed 3. Tests measure skills, abilities and interests at a specific point in time. However, those characteristics are not static in time.

25. Skills related to success • Problem-solving, critical thinking, infromation gatnering and analyzing • Creativity and innovative idea production • Adaptability to new situations and work roles • Interpersonal flexibility and competence • Self-esteem • Collaboration

26. Counselling in the new world Counselling should focus on expansion, diversification and inclusion. It is important to base the choices on a person’s present characteristics instead of potential. The client’s interest dictates which areas will be New questions, that should be asked: • What are your interests? • What are your abilities? • What kind of professions do you value?   • How much education do you plan to get?

27. Implications for use • Structured interviews and discussions about successes, enjoyable activities, and wishes. • Systematical documentation of development of and changes in personal characteristics • Employability skills portfolio – overview of accomplishments, experiences, skills, talents, interests. ! Abilities and interests are malleable and stretchable. Prominent as well as relatively weak skills should be enhanced to help the client become more versatile.

28. Consecquences of mobility.Adapting to a new environment • First time in an unfamiliar environment that may have different values, norms etc. • Absence of a supportive social network • Need to cope with problems by oneself • Need to take sole responsibility for one’s actions • Lack of resources/skills that are needed to cope with new challenges • Opportunity to test one’s own strenghts, skills, judgements, and to try new things

29. Counselling and mobility • All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. • Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment • Everyone has the right to education. • Culture takes diverse forms across time and space. • Clients may need more help (both professional and personal) when living in a forieign context. • The needs of those who plan to move into another environment and those who already are in a foreign environment differ. • The role of guidance and counselling is to help clients with integration and social cohesion. • Counsellors can help remove tension and increase mutual understanding between majority and minority cultures in education and working life.

30. References Chen, C. P. (1998). A holistic approach to worklife dynamics: Morita philosphy-based career counselling. Counselling Psychology Quaterly. Chen, C. P. (1999). Human agency in context: towards an ecological frame of career counselling. Guidance & Counselling. Chen, C. P. (2001). On exploring meanings: combining humanistic and career psychology theories in counselling. Counselling Psychology Quarterly. Gies, V. 1990, Developing a personal career counseling theory: An overview of the theories of Donald Super and David Tiedman. Guidance & Counselling. Launikari, M. & Puukari, S (2005).Multicultural Guidance and counselling. Theoretical Foundations and Best Practices in Europe. Lewis, J. (2001). Career and personal counselling: comparing process and outcome. Journal of Employment Counselling. Lindh, G., & Dahlin, E. (2000). A Swedish perspective on the importance of Bordieu’s theories for career counselling. Journal of employment counselling. Søren Kristensen, S. (2005). Õppida rännates. Välispraktika kui didaktiline vahend Euroopa kutsehariduse kontekstis. Symons, C. (1997). Redesigning career counselling. Guidance & Counselling. Vance, P. R. (1996). Constructivist career counselling and assessment. Guidance & Counselling. Symons, C. (1997). Redesigning career counselling. Guidance & Counselling.