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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Career – how individuals see themselves in relation to what they do; individual’s work and leisure
that take place over his/her life span. The lifetime pursuit of an individual.
Career Choice – applies to decisions that individuals make at any point in their career about
particular work or related activities that they choose to pursue at that time.
Job – position requiring specific skills within one organization.
Occupation – similar jobs found in many organizations. Exists whether or not people are employed
in them.
THE ROLE OF THEORY IN PSYCHOLOGY
Theory – a group of logically organized laws or relationships that constitute explanation in a
discipline
General principles that judge the appropriateness of a theory:
1. explicit about its rules and theorems
2. precise about the limitations of their predictions
COUNSELOR’S USE OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Client Population
Theories of Counseling and Theories of Career Development
Derived from theories of personality.
Many counselors draw from many theories in their practical orientation.
Chunking
COUNSELOR SKILLS
Helping Skills – counselors need unconditional positive regard, genuineness, congruence, and
empathy
• Attending Skills
• Questions
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Assessment Instruments
Assessment can be used to develop and verify theory.
Testing can provide the counselor with information that can then be used as a means of
understanding the client from the point of view of career development theory.
For counselors, tests and inventories have three major features: selection, administration,
and interpretation.
Norms – used as a standard of scoring, scores that are typical of a population (sometimes
based on general population, but other times it is exclusive), typically presented in
percentile scores.
Reliability – dependability, consistency. When taking a test more than once, the scores
should be similar. Two major sources of unreliability: variation in human performance
and variation in the technical aspects of measurement.
Validity – Does the test measure what it’s supposed to measure? For an assessment
instrument to be valid, it must be reliable first.
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Providing Occupational Information
Occupational Outlook Handbook
Encyclopedia of Careers and Vocational Guidance
Occtalk: Describes occupational information that clients learn.
Psychtalk: Delineates the views that clients have of themselves.
How Career Development Theory Relates to Career Counseling
A way of understanding career concerns.
Helps counselors know what to do.
GOALS OF CAREER COUNSELING
Selection of an occupation
Adjustment to an occupation
IMPLICIT goals: assumptions made by the counselor.
EXPLICIT goals: agreements made between counselor and client about goals.
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
Autonomy-respect that clients make their own decisions
Nonmaleficence-do no harm
CAREER DEVELOPMENT OF WOMEN
CAREER DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURALLY DIVERSE POPULATIONS
WHAT’S AHEAD