Compare And Contrast Career Theories

The theory I connect with the most is Donald Super’s “life-span, life-space” theory. Donald Super devised a developmental stage theory involving one 's personal growth, acquisition of skills, and general development towards working. Super created a useful framework for conceptualizing the constantly evolving nature of career development. The theory presents the career process as one in which a person is confronted with various stages that he or she must undergo and complete before moving on to the next stage.

1.What is one short term goal you have on your agenda to achieve in the next couple of weeks to a month?

When researching a career, we must create an intellectually, creatively, and socially-informed picture of our professional futures based on our developing individual interests and personal goals.

I also liked taking the assessments. The career assessments are a great assessment to take for ourselves and also for students who are looking to enter a career. It is great that the career assessment confirmed my beliefs that working as a counselor or in the education field matches my interest. I can’t believe that the unemployment rate is so high. I’m sure this class has prepared you to help the students with their career and college decisions. The websites were very helpful and I will be using them in the future. It was great working with you in this class.

A brief background overview on a few career development theories will help direct this literature review and give a foundation to current theories in career development. Career development is a complex, lifelong process that is influenced by a variety of factors. Niles and Harris-Bowlsbey (2005) defined career development as “the lifelong psychological and behavioral processes as well as contextual influences shaping one’s career over the life span” (p. 12). Although there are many career development theories, this literature review will focus on just a few. Donald Super’s Life-Span, Life-Space Career Theory highlights the “complex and multifaceted nature of career development” (Niles & Hutchinson, 2009, p. 69). Super’s theory builds upon 14 assumptions and supports three key aspects of career development: life-span, life-space, and self-concept (Niles & Hutchinson, 2009). Life-span focuses on the development over one’s life through growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and

In the beginning, career counseling was strictly developed to help with job placement, but it became so much more than that after the career development was further researched by a group of theorist that focused on career process. What is it that drives us to choose a specific career path? According to Zunker (2012), different theorists such as Parsons, Holland, Krumboltz, Bandura, Super, and Gottfredson all developed theories on career development and their perspective on the importance of occupational process. Throughout this paper one will discuss the John Holland’s Typology and the significance of this particular career theory. Some of the points that will be covered in this paper include: history of theory, strengths and weaknesses, assessments used, population best fit for this theory, and diversity and

As already mentioned existing career theories dealing with vocational personality and environment Holland (1976) and Scheine’s anchors (1978) have been well respected and very adequate for many years.Those theories were helping many people to form and succeed in their career paths.

This model requires a close relationship between client and coach for it to be successful.  A career coach is responsible for helping an individual "identify their sharpest skills, define career goals, be more productive, set strategies to earn more money, and make them more valuable to their current or next boss (Simpson & Glowiak, 2012, p. 289). Peterson and Millier (2005) stress learning and development as the main goal of career coaching. The authors encourage career coaches to implement techniques that help clients make decisions based on long-term priorities and not contemporary

This article is about theories of career development. By applying the theories to my career developments, evaluating the strength and weakness of those theories, then I took my parents’ working experience as examples, finally came up with my theory that should be used when making a vocational choice.

According to Mondy and Noe (2005), career is a job that has been chosen to be accomplished during one’s working life. Career is the progress and actions of the person’s occupations or sequence of jobs held by someone throughout a lifetime which is until that person end up the careers. Most of the situations, people do not just referring to one position only but often looking for another jobs which composed of the jobs held, titles earned and work accomplished over a long period of time. There is an increasing trend to employees changing jobs more frequently, while employees in some cultures and economies stay with one job during their career. For example, an individual's career could involve being an engineer, though the

The three careers I have researched are ones that deal in the area of helping others in emotional or physical distress, either through counseling or stress relieving activities. The first is a therapist which is one of my main focuses as a career and the one that interests me the most. Another career I have researched is a recreational therapist, also being a major focus of mine in terms of career paths. Finally the third career I’ve conducted research on is a mental health counselor which is a type of job that I would like to work in if I’m unable to perform well in the first two. These three careers are very fascinating to me and the rewards and skills that these careers offer are very promising. Also the idea of being able to help those who are in need keeps me on track to one day being in this line of work.

     According to Ratts and Santos (2012), the definition of multiculturalism has been expanded to include sexual orientation, economic status, age, and religion (p. 113). The original definition of the term contained only the social constructs of race and ethnicity.  Traditional methods of career interventions are limited because multicultural issues were not considered in the development of technique and theories (Ratts & Santos, 2012). Before a career counselor can become culturally competent they much first explore their own unconscious biases and be willing to consider how they might negatively and positively affect clients (Teal, Gill, Green, & Crandall, 2012).

Patton and McMahon (2006) developed a systems theory framework for development of careers called the Therapeutic Framework. The system categorizes the various factors that influence the choice of career into individual factors (for both the learner who is to choose their career and their counselor), organizational factors, or environmental factors (Patton & McMahon, 2006). The system also recognizes the effect of timing on these factors; thus incorporating the aspects of past, present and future (McMahon, Forde, & Dickson, 2015).

For many people, finding a career that is both fulfilling and practical is a strenuous task. Fortunately, there is a plethora of different interventions, techniques, assessments, and inventories designed to aid those individuals in making the wisest career choices possible. But are any of those routes inherently better than the others? Or are all the differing options separate but equally effective? Donald Super’s Life Span Theory and John Holland’s Theory of Vocational Choice are just two of the many theories used for career counseling. Both methods are distinct in the way they approach career issues, yet despite their differences, there are some resemblances between the two theories as well. Comparing and contrasting these two theories will make it easier to see if one theory is better than the other for career counseling or if they are both equally effective.

Gysbers (2003) proposes that the value of career theories comes from providing practitioners with a framework to examine client behaviour, help understand the possible meanings of or explanations for the behaviour and subsequently, enables them to identify and respond to clients’ goals or problems. Significantly then, such theories may help explain an individual’s vocational behaviour, such as their initial career choice or later aspects of career development. This essay attempts to identify the theoretical framework that will underpin my guidance practice in the future.