Career development

Transcript

SoheeA sixty-four-year-old engineer comes to a psychologist. He isn't depressed. He's restless. Retirement is a year away, his grandchildren live nearby, and he volunteers at a robotics club. He says, I don't want to stop working. But I can't keep doing this same job.

RyanAnd the question for us is: which career theory helps him most? Welcome to EPPP Prep, the podcast. I'm Ryan.

SoheeI'm Sohee. Today is career development, two blueprint spots. The knowledge statement asks for research-based models of vocational and career development. And there are five names to know: Holland, Super, Gottfredson, social cognitive career theory, and Krumboltz.

RyanStart with Holland. A study by Ertl and Hartmann in Frontiers in Psychology summarizes him well. Holland's theory of occupational choice focuses on vocational interests, and distinguishes six ideal types.

SoheeRealistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. The acronym is RIASEC.

RyanAnd here's the key twist. The six types describe a person's personality and interests, but they also characterize work environments. And according to Holland, people seek work environments that fit their vocational interests.

SoheeLet's define each one using that study's descriptions. Realistic people are interested in mechanical or technical activities, and prefer working with tools or machines.

RyanInvestigative people are interested in mathematical and scientific activities. Artistic people in creative and artistic activities.

SoheeSocial people are interested in social interaction and interpersonal relations. They enjoy teaching or helping others.

RyanEnterprising people are interested in leading and convincing others. And Conventional people prefer ordering and repetitive tasks.

SoheeBy those descriptions, a helping profession like ours draws on Social interests, teaching and helping. And a research career adds Investigative interests, the scientific side.

RyanNow the fit idea, which is called congruence. Ertl and Hartmann put it this way: Holland's theory says a person seeks the best fit between their interest profile and the profile of their environment, and that fit is called congruence.

SoheeAnd a profile is often summarized as a three-letter code. If someone most resembles Investigative, then Realistic, then Social, their code is IRS.

RyanThen the hexagon. A study by Batista and colleagues describes the hexagonal RIASEC model. The six types sit around a hexagon, and the similarity between types corresponds to how close they are on it.

SoheeSo adjacent types are similar, and opposite types are the most different. In that study's congruence scoring, a person and environment in opposite positions got the lowest score.

RyanPause and think. A client's top interest is Artistic, and he works as an accountant in a job built on ordered, repetitive procedures. In Holland's terms, what's the problem?

SoheeLow congruence. His interests are Artistic, and his environment looks Conventional. The tempting wrong answer calls it a self-efficacy problem. That's a different theory. Holland's lens is person-environment fit.

RyanAnd a scoping review by Lange and colleagues adds that, according to Holland's person-environment fit theory, satisfaction and persistence depend on that congruence. A perceived lack of fit can lead to dissatisfaction, withdrawal, or career change.

SoheeNow Super. A review by Lytle, Foley, and colleagues in the Journal of Career Development describes his theory, centered on the Life-Career Rainbow.

RyanSuper said each person takes on multiple roles, or life spaces, often at the same time. Citizen, worker, parent. And those roles are played out in different theatres, like home and the workplace.

SoheeThat's the life-space side. Super's own 1980 paper was titled a life-span, life-space approach to career development. The life-span side: people move through five life stages at various rates. The review notes the last stage, decline, typically begins around age sixty-five.

RyanAnd here's what helps with stage questions. The review quotes Savickas describing how people may move through a minicycle of growth, exploration, establishment, management, and disengagement during each career transition.

SoheeSo the stages aren't a one-time march. People recycle through them when they change careers. Which fits our engineer, who may be starting a fresh minicycle of exploration at sixty-four.

RyanSuper also helped develop assessments, the review says, including the Values Scale, the Career Development Inventory, the Adult Career Concerns Inventory, and the Salience Inventory.

SoheeAnd Super's model directly applies to retirement counseling. The review says providers can use the Life-Career Rainbow to help older clients explore changing life roles. Someone may want more time as a citizen, a leisurite, or a grandparent, without being ready to leave work completely.

RyanSavickas expanded on Super with career construction theory. The review says it focuses on how people construct their careers through the meaning they place on work-related behavior, in the context of their environment and relationships.

SoheeAnd Savickas discourages focusing on sequential stages, emphasizing less predictable career paths. Its key concept is adaptability: the quality of being able to change, without great difficulty, to fit new or changed circumstances.

RyanPause and think. Back to our engineer. Which theory helps you explore his shifting roles, as worker, grandparent, and volunteer, at the edge of retirement?

SoheeSuper's life-span, life-space theory, with the Life-Career Rainbow. Career construction theory and adaptability would also fit his late-career transition. Holland might help him pick a new kind of work. But the roles question is Super's home turf.

RyanNext, Gottfredson's theory of circumscription and compromise. Ertl and Hartmann say it highlights the developmental process behind occupational choice, and explains how gender differences in career choice develop.

SoheeTwo processes drive it: cognitive growth, and self-creation, meaning the development of a self-concept. As the self-concept develops, people successively exclude occupations that no longer fit it.

RyanCircumscription is that narrowing. At an early stage, orientation to sex roles at about six to eight years old, children classify people and jobs as male or female, and exclude occupations outside their tolerable sex-type boundary.

SoheeThen they exclude jobs whose prestige is too low, the tolerable-level boundary, and whose requirements seem too high, the tolerable-effort boundary.

RyanGottfredson also claims the prestige boundary matters more for men's choices, because typically male occupations vary more in prestige than typically female ones.

SoheeAnd there's a practical implication in the article. If you want to encourage girls' realistic interests, the steps should come early, before things-oriented work environments get excluded as inconsistent with their self-concept. That's prevention thinking, applied to careers.

RyanAnd the honest qualifier: the same article says the empirical evidence for Gottfredson's theory is equivocal, with studies often lacking appropriate methods.

SoheeNow social cognitive career theory, often shortened to SCCT, from Lent and colleagues. It's based on Bandura's social cognitive theory.

RyanIt highlights three cognitive variables, less stable than personality traits. Self-efficacy beliefs: your assessment of whether you can perform certain actions. Outcome expectations: what you expect will result from those actions. And personal goals.

SoheeIn SCCT's choice model, interests develop from self-efficacy and outcome expectations, which come from learning experiences. And those experiences depend on personal variables like gender or ethnicity, and background influences like role models and gender role socialization.

RyanThe Lange review adds SCCT's emphasis on environmental supports and barriers, which shape self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and motivation.

SoheePause and think. A young woman is good at math but says, people like me don't do engineering, I'd never make it. Which theory frames this best?

RyanSCCT. Her low self-efficacy and negative outcome expectations, shaped by learning experiences and context, are limiting her interests and choices. Gottfredson could also be relevant, since she may have circumscribed engineering early as not for her. But self-efficacy language points to SCCT.

SoheeAnd last, Krumboltz's social learning theory of career decision making. The Lange review says it emphasizes observational learning and social reinforcement.

RyanRole models matter. Watching professionals, and hearing about others' experiences, shapes beliefs about which careers seem attainable, desirable, and appropriate. And modeling works best when the observer sees themselves as similar to the model.

SoheeRecap. Holland: six RIASEC types for people and environments, arranged on a hexagon. Fit is congruence, and lack of fit predicts dissatisfaction and change.

RyanSuper: life-span, life-space. Multiple roles across life's theatres, five life stages ending in decline around sixty-five, and recycling through a minicycle at each transition. Savickas' career construction theory stresses meaning and adaptability.

SoheeGottfredson: circumscription and compromise, narrowing choices by sex type, prestige, and effort, with equivocal evidence.

RyanSCCT: self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and goals, shaped by learning experiences and by supports and barriers. Krumboltz: observational learning and reinforcement.

SoheeAnd a closing thought. You chose this field for a reason, maybe the Social and Investigative parts of you. A setback on an exam doesn't change that fit. It's one transition, and you're adapting to it.

RyanThanks for listening to EPPP Prep.

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