Theories of guidance

Basic foundations and changing practices

Triin Hannust
 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.
 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.
• 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
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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)
• 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.
 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.
 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 develop
one’s obejctives and goals.
• For that end the cliend needs to make sense of his/her
personal experiences.
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.
Ecological rrame in counselling
(A. Collin & R. A. Young)

• Helping people cope with their life career

dynamics in a rapidly changing environment.
• Ecology is 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.
 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.
 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.
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.
 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.
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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
• 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
 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.
 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
 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?
 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.
 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
 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.
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