CAREER DEVELOPMENT THEORIES

Career Development Theories

Career Development Theories

Anne Roe's theory focuses on early family relationships and their influence on career choice. Occupations are classified into two major categories: person-oriented and non-person-oriented. However, empirical research has failed to support Roe's theory. The major contribution seems to be the emphasis on childhood experiences on career development and her job classification system.

Career development is, for most people, a lifelong process of getting ready to choose, choosing and continuing to make choices from among available occupations in our society. Each individual undertaking this process is influenced by educational, economic, sociological, cultural, geographical, physical, psychological (e.g., interests, skills), and chance factors. Work may be defined as a productive, gainful activity in a job or profession. Work determines a person's worth and place in society, and it strongly influences one's sense of well-being as well as psychological identity.

Despite the centrality of work in the majority of people's lives and the apparent complexity of the career development process, a survey by the National Career Development Association indicated that only about a third of American adults were in their current jobs as a result of conscious planning. Thus, the majority of people chose a particular job because of chance circumstances. In addition, about 28 per cent of those surveyed reported they would be changing their job within 3 years. Assisting a person through the career development process is the primary task of a vocational psychologist or a career counselor.

Donald Super also recognized the changes that people go through as they mature. Career patterns are influenced by many personal characteristics, economic factors, psychological factors, and physical abilities, as well as chance factors. Super theorized that people seek satisfaction through work roles in which they can develop their self-concept. In fact, super asserted, “The process of vocational development is essentially that of developing and implementing a self concept.” Career maturity, a primary concept of Super's theory, is manifested in the successful achievement of age and stage development tasks across the life span. This developmental theory has five major stages. During the Growth stage (birth to age 14 or 15); the child forms his or her self-concept, which is associated with the development of abilities, attitudes, interests, and needs. The child also forms a general understanding of the world of work. In the Exploratory stage (ages 15 to 24), the individual makes a tentative career choice with related skill development.

Frank Parsons, teacher, lawyer, engineer, and social reformer, spearheaded the vocational guidance movement. He was concerned with the exploitation of workers by industrial monopolists. This concern led him to propose a method to help individuals make wise vocational choices by first studying the person (e.g., aptitudes, interests, resources, limitations), then understanding the primary characteristics of occupations, and, finally, by matching the individual with the appropriate occupation. This process, called the trait-and-factor theory, became the origin of career counseling and is still in use today. The assumption is that traits are stable and can be reliably and validly measured (the word factor is just a ...