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Friday, April 1, 2016

WEEK 11 - POST-MODERN: CHAOS THEORY - PRYOR & BRIGHT

Week 11 - March 29^th

Chaos Theories

Nature controlled by human thought is the essence of the reductionist dream… Against this trend (toward isolation of parts and systems) rises the young science of chaos, wholeness and change—a new insistence on the interrelationships of things, an awareness of the essential predictableness of nature and of the uncertainties in our science descriptions.

The chaos theory of career development views individuals as being complex dynamic systems. As individuals grow and develop they are subject to many different and continually changing life challenges. As their career development unfolds, they find themselves often dealing with such challenges as unplanned events, nonlinear change, unpredictability, and continual change.

The Concept of Attraction

Attraction is defined as a process used by individuals to organize a coherent self and then maintain and sustain it when change occurs. The process can he subdivided into four types of attraction called attractors. They are labeled point attractor, pendulum attractor, torus attractor, and strange attractor. They describe different patterns of behavior used to respond to changing life challenges.

Point Attractor

Individuals who use the point attractor pattern of behavior often focus on choosing the best occupation based in a match between their personalities, abilities, and interests. The extreme they have been seen as having “tunnel vision, exclusive preoccupation, over confidence in decision making, fixation on a choice option, ideological or goal-dominated thinking and/or obsessional or fearful behavior. They may also discount the role of change and uncertainty in the lives.

Pendulum Attractor

The attractor describes swings in behavior. Individuals who use this pattern of behavior are likely to engage in dichotomous either—or thinking. They may have rigid beliefs.

Clients in the grip of pendulum thinking will rarely be able to generate win-win scenarios and solutions will present “balance” as the desirable outcome may be aggravating the situation by attempting to stop the pendulum at the lowest point: Point of compromise is neither conflicting need is appropriately met, thereby aggravating both.

Torus Attractor

This pattern of behavior us described as “routine, habitual, and predictable thinking and behavior.” Individuals who use this pattern try to control their lives by organizing and classifying people and things. The like consistency and routine.

Fear, insecurity, self-consciousness uncertainty, worry about failure, desires to “play it safe” are sources of motivation that frequently constrain those in the torus attractor. When the illusion of their control is shattered by a major negative unplanned event, they typically try to regress to an earlier mode of coping, refuse to consider the consequences of change, den or hope that it does not affect them, or simply lose all confidence in their ability to respond to the new set of circumstances confronting them.

Strange Attractor

Point, pendulum, and torus attractors are closed systems—meaning that individuals who use these patterns of behavior tend to have a strong sense of control. They like order and stability. Open systems thinking (strange attractor) recognizes “the possibility of change being non-linear in the sense that a small difference may result in every major reconfiguration of the system”. This thinking promotes the ability for individuals to adopt and grow. Chance is not seen as the opposite order but as part of one’s existence. (Pryor & Bright, 2011)

Chaos Theory and Spirituality

The chaos theory emphasizes the importance of integrating spirituality into our conceptualizations of career development. Pryor and Bright described five dimensions of spirituality and career development that need to be considered in the work of career counselors. The first dimension is connection, which focuses on how we are interconnected with the human community, the world, and the universe. Second is purpose with its focus on “humans’ sense of meaning, purpose and significance”. Third is transcendence with its emphasis on the idea that there is a greater power beyond our understanding. The fourth dimension is harmony with its intention to “how e3verythiing fits together into an intelligible whole.” Finally, fifth is calling, or the idea that individuals often perceive that what they are doing with their lives is the result of being called.

Chaos Theory and Shiftwork

Chaos theorists have observed that change can occur in systems with gradually or very quickly with the effect of change is to reconfigure the system. When change occurs, it is called a phase shift because the system will have changed from its original configuration. Pryor and Bright (2011) used the term shiftwork to describe the work of career counselors helping clients deal with these phase shifts or changes in their lives, however and whenever change occurs. They describe 11 phase shifts care counselors need to pay attention to:

Shift 1: From Perdition to Prediction and Pattern Making

Shift 2: From Plans to Plans and Planning

Shift 3: From Narrowing Down to Being Focused on Openness

Shift 4: From Control to Controlled Flexibility

Shift 5: From Risk as Failure to Risk as Endeavor

Shift 6: From Probabilities to Probably Probabilities

Shift 7: From Goals, Roles and Routines to Meaning, Mattering and Black Swans

Shift 8: From Informing to Informing and Transforming

Shift 9: From Normative Thinking to Normative and Scalable Thinking

Shift 10: From Knowing in Advance to Living with Emergence

Shift 11: From Trust as Control to Trust as Faith

Implications of the Chaos Theory of Career Development for the Practice of Career Counseling

How are these 11 phase shifts to be dealt with in career counseling? Bright and Pryor (2008) suggested that career counselors use the following four-step process:

1. Identify, where operative, clients’ closed system thinking strategies.

2. Help clients to realize that such efforts at control, certainty, knowledge, and predictability are crucially limited.

3. Assist clients to recognize and utilize the stabilities and surprises of living in the strange attractor.

4. Enable people to be able to both perceive the dimensions of complexity and acknowledge and effectively negotiate uncertainty, change, and chance in constructive ways to fulfill their deepest aspirations.

Links to Articles or Videos:

https://careersintheory.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/applied-chaos/

http://www.careeroptionsmagazine.com/articles/applying-chaos-theory-to-career-development/

Friday, March 18, 2016

WEEK 11 - POST-MODERN: CONSTRUCTIVISM - YOUNG & COLLIN

Week 11 - March 29^th

Constructivist Theories

The individual is born with certain neural and endocrine tendencies or potentiabilites. These may be thought of as his personal resources, he finds himself in an environment which contains tendencies or potentialities which are independent if the individual, but with which the developing individual interacts. These may be considered cultural resources. As the individual makes use of the resources in his environment, and brings his own tendencies and potentialities to bear on them in the performance of the developmental tasks which constitute social expectation, interaction takes places.

Career counseling that uses both constructivism and social constructionism approaches ‘requires the counselor to enter into the psychosocial sphere of a person’s career system” which uses the narrative approach within the career counseling process to help clients describe their life career development past, present and future in terms of life career themes and patterns.

Cochran (2011) noted the importance of using the narrative approach within the career counseling process when he stated:

The best description of a client entering career counseling is that he or she is clouded. It is not just a life plot is a tacit pattern of meaning, but that the plot is clouded by distortions, negative assessments, recent influences, dubious connections and the like. The work of narrative career counselling involves an uncovering of thematic strands for meaning and the way that they form into a coherent whole. For the client, important connections might not have been seen before. The significance of particular desires, events, abilities and so on might not have been fully appreciated. The function of a narrative career counselor is to help clients see more clearly the meaningful patters from their own life histories.

Chapter 1, Table 1 in of the textbook describes the gathering client information phase of career counseling. As noted in Table 1, information can be gathered through quantitative and qualitative procedures. Qualitative procedures such as the Life Career Assessment (Chapter 10), career genograms (Chapter 11), and card sorts (Chapter 12) are particularly useful because they provide frameworks and stimuli how they view themselves, others, and their worlds; how they make sense out of their life roles, settings, and events past, present, and future; and how they talk about possible personal and environmental barriers and social constraints they may be facing.

Qualitative assessments such as the Life Career Assessment (LCA) are narrative interventions grounded in the postmodern approaches of constructivism and social constructionism. The goal is to provide clients with a real-life framework that enables then to tell their stories using their own words with emphasis on the client’s perceptions of themselves, others, and their worlds within their gendered, cultural, racial, socioeconomic, sexual orientation, spiritual, and disability contexts.

The general aim is to script a person’s own life story which makes it uniquely suited for an exploration of personal meanings and for helping solve many kinds of problems involving meaning. A narrative approach attempts to effect personal agency by viewing learners as active agents in their personal development and cultivating an increased emphasis on emotions and passion (Maree & Molepo, 2007).

LCA is useful when working with clients of all ages and differing cultural and ethnic backgrounds, women’s and men’s issues, and dealing with disability issues because clients’’ worldviews, environmental barriers, racial identity statuses, and levels acculturation can be addresses directly and naturally—very time flexible. It can be completed in 15-30 minutes or more in-depth interview conducted over several sessions.

Career genogram are qualitative assessments that can assist in understanding the clients in family context. Basic genograms contain all aspects of the family system work; focused genogram contains the framework of the basic genogram but emphasizes topics as attachment, emotions, anger, gender and sexuality, and culture.

Card sorts are subjective in nature and the effectiveness depends on the counselor’s ability to help the client arrive at insights and ideas from the process. These are nonstandardized approaches to sorting almost any array of ideas. Occupational card sorts have job titles with all kinds of themes, ideas, issues, values, or feelings emerge. They do not produce scores or have norms but have piles of which the client sorts to likes, dislikes, and indifferent. They can be sorted into smaller piles based on common themes that have influenced them in their sorting process.

As individuals are reflecting on their real-life experiences through the medium of narratives, they are crafting their narrative identities. They are engaged in meaning making. To understand the identity formation process is to understand how individuals craft narratives from experiences, tell these stories internally and to others, and ultimately apply these stories to knowledge of self, others, and the world in general.

The key to effective career counseling is the working alliance that is established between clients and counselors. The qualitative interventions used in the postmodern approaches of constructivism and social constructionism are useful in establishing working alliances. When counselors help clients to clients that their stories from their own perspectives, using their own language, it conveys that what they have to say is important; it conveys to them that counselors care and that clients are being listened to and understood. Bujold (2004) underscored this point that “the transforming power of narrative rests in the existence of a relationship in which a person feels that he/she is acknowledged and accepted” Sinisalo & Komulanien (2208) paraphrased Arthur, Inkson, and Pringle that “a career story is a personal moving perspective on what a person is and what he/she is able to do.”

Implications of the Postmodern Theories of Constructivism and Social Constructionism for the Practice in Career Counseling

1. Postmodern approaches to career development emphasizes multicultural perspectives and focus on the belief that there is not fixed truth. Individuals construct their own truths, their own realities.

2. Qualitative assessments provide frames and stimuli that assist clients in telling their stories about who they are, where they see themselves going, and the issues and circumstances they believe are impacting their career development.

3. “Constructivism has directed career practioners towards the holistic experience of a person’s career within their environmental context.” (McIiveen et al., 2005)

4. “Narrative therapists help clients see that their worlds are constructed through language and cultural practice and that clients can subsequently deconstructed and reconstruct their assumptions and perceptions.” (Meir, 2012)

5. “Client stories are face valid, that is they have intrinsic value, and narrative therapists assume that client stories reflect some meaningful aspect of that person.” (Meier, 2012)

Article—A Constructivist Look at Life Roles
Most career counselors credit Donald Super with their understanding of life roles. But the postmodern, or constructivist, counseling process is based on the client’s narrative or life story, with the counselor as a collaborative partner both in the client’s personal awareness of past and present chapters and in the client’s action steps in building a preferred way of being in future chapters. Clients are active participants in becoming aware of and exploring The variety of life roles (e.g., worker, family, relationships, learner) and their own sources of beliefs (e.g., experiences, media, family). It is “true reasoning” for finding the fit between person and occupation.

Theoretical Basis for Life Roles
Most introductions to career development include Super’s conceptual model of the life rainbow showing the nine life roles are played through the four theaters as one progresses through the five developmental stages. The life roles are: child, student, leisurite, citizen, worker, spouse, homemaker, parent, and pensioner. The four theaters are home, school, community, and workplace. The life stages are growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline. We are involved in several roles simultaneously and that roles affect each other. The reference to life roles goes back as far as Davidson & Anderson’s (1937) research on occupational mobility with the relationship between the worker and the roles held by a person outside his/her work life.

Leisure activities were outlets for interests and abilities that were not fully used if were not being satisfied on the job.

Life roles have been the basis of numerous applications dealing with adolescent career development, university students, adults, women’s issues, dual-career couples, and families, as well as international applications. Studies have dealt with life roles include clients with diagnosed cumulative trauma disorders; clients with spinal cord injuries; college student development; gender differences; dual-career couples; and international perspective, such as Work Importance Study—the five major roles or activities identified were study, work, home and family, leisure, and community activities or service.

The constructivist approach holds that clients construct their own personal meanings and that these personal meanings are reflected in past and present experiences in a variety of life roles. The counselor co-constructs (uncovers and explores) with the client the life story that has been and is currently being lived. The client’s life experiences reflect the personal meanings held by the client. By de-constructing (opening up) these themes, the client is able to see different perspectives, find exceptions, imagine different experiences, and reveal the client’s preferred way of being. Clients have the opportunity to construct (author) their future story based on the personal meanings that they wish to implement in their lives.

In the storied approach, a number of techniques related to life roles in order to co-construct, de-construct, and construct the client’s story. The lifeline technique is used to uncover themes, people, and significant life events as perceived by the client. The career genogram is used to uncover and explore the client’s gender-role and life roles beliefs. By engaging the client in self-awareness and self-assessment, one uncovers the underlying values on which future choices and decisions will be made. The exploration of life roles is a strategy that will reveal the personal meaning of the client.

Counselors can mix technique to the life span map, life line, life-space genogram, life role circles, life role assessment, life role analysis, and goal map. Listed below are the seven techniques that focus on life roles and on client narrative which can be used separately or with two or more collaborative process that builds awareness and leads to client action.

The storied approach is used to demonstrated a variety of techniques that focus on life roles—co-construction (uncovering), de-construction (opening up), and construction (authoring) of the client’s story.

Co-construction—counselor and client establish rapport, place the client as expert in his/her life story, and develop an atmosphere of collaboration. Techniques that can be used during this phase are life space map, life line, life-space program, and life role circles.

The life space map is drawn by the client on blank sheet of paper where the counselor provides a variety of exploratory prompts. Counselor describes the blank paper which represents the client’s currently thinking, feeling, or doing—which represents by the client has come to counseling. Client then draws a circle that represents him/her self. Then the client draws a circle for each person in the client’s world, give the name, and draw a double ring to represent a spatial relationship (e.g., close, distant, overlapping).

The life line reveals the client’s past and present life story—graphic illustration of events, people, and perceptions that will uncover themes and meaning in the client’s story. On a blank sheet of paper, the client is instructed to draw a horizontal line through the middle of the paper; at the left edge the client writes today’s date. Chapters are represented by life stages—before school, elementary school, middle school, high school, college, first jog, and starting family. Client marks off significant starting points for each chapter and notes the year each began. Counselor prompts with how, low points; important people with significance; two adjectives to describe chapters. Activity engages client in defining what he/she means by family—genogram. Guidelines: males are squares; females are circles; horizontal line connects a husband and wife who are on the same plane; children are either square or circle—oldest to the left and youngest to the right; relationship by line color (red—warm relationship, blue—cold relationship); x shape if person is deceased; name and current age of each family member. Other significant people is client’s life listed at the bottom of the page “bushes”. Then list the occupation of each, geographic location, leisure activities, and quality admired in each with an action plan devised to begin the first to the client’s story in moving from current to future.

De-construction is a phase of “open space” and provides other points of view and challenges focused on exploring the origin of values and beliefs, assessing their importance, and determining how values and beliefs will be lived in the future chapters of the client’s story. The Client’s themes are important and can provide motivation and direction for future chapters. The life role allows the client to expand the definition of career from narrow to broader as living through multiple stages.

The counselor asks questions to probe the client and define the client’s values and beliefs or use a sentence completion technique.

Life role analysis helps the client to examine the costs and benefits of role expectations as defined by culture and gender—asked to recall parental messages related to family and work and identify positive and negative consequences.

Construction focuses on the future chapters of the client’s life developed across the life roles with integrated values and beliefs that have been identified by the client. Action plans are developed to take steps, to identify barriers, and resources to overcome barriers.

Future chapters can be seen as “possible selves” of what clients might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming future concept as “potential social Me”, the “ego ideal”, “how I should be”, and “the Dream” in which these future concepts are linked to motivation with specific, organized, concrete action steps toward future goals which is a vital part of the self-concept. A goal map can assist in visualizing the client the steps to take, obstacles that may face, resources to overcome the obstacles, and a clear focus o=f the goal.

The life line that was the co-construction phase can be expanded into the future. A blank sheet of paper where the client draws a horizontal line through the middle and puts today’s date on the left edge and an arrowhead at the right edge. Client picks a point in time from the future to identify next chapter where values and beliefs will be a part of the various life roles. Then steps are identified to begin the next journey.

Constructivist Applications of Life Roles in Career Counseling
Life roles are important to career counseling as they expand the focus from occupational concerns and job placement to life stories that empower clients. Variety of clients—dual-career partners; women; men; adolescents; diverse populations that include race and ethnicity, gay men, lesbians, and bisexual and transgender persons; and person with disabilities. The life roles may include learner, family, relationships, worker, leisure, and community.

It is important to address life roles before adulthood with benefits of providing opportunities for adolescents to participate in school counseling programs. Counselors are challenged when working with diverse populations.

Links to Articles or Videos:

https://elearn.etsu.edu/d2l/le/content/6249282/viewContent/39140535/View

https://elearn.etsu.edu/d2l/le/content/6249282/viewContent/38399266/View

WEEK 9 - MODERN: CAREER DEVELOPMENT TRANSITION MODEL - SCHLOSSBERG

Week 9 - March 15^th

Transitional Theories

· Anticipated - that will happen for most individuals over their lifespan; expected events

· Unanticipated – career/life events not expected or not planned

· Nonevent – events that were anticipated and planned but did not happen

What is anticipated by one individual may not be by another, and the context of the events shape transitions is an important consideration as well as the impact. Transitions comes in bunches while an individual is experiencing one transition, another one occurs.

· The Transition Process

· Phases

· At first pervasive, total preoccupation with transitions and complete disruption of life

· Disbelief, sense of betrayal, confusion, anger, and resolution (hopefully—after a period of time)

· Assess

· Start with client’s perceptions

· How preoccupied are people with transitions

· Measures of life satisfaction

Factors that Influence Transitions – identify coping resources. Four major factors (the situation, the self, support, and strategies).

· The Situation—variables characterizing the situation that counselors need to understand

· Trigger (what triggered the transition?), timing does the transition relate to the social clock?), the source (where does control lie?), role change (does the transition involve role change?), duration (permanent or temporary?), previous experience with transitions, concurrent stress

· The Self

· Identify personal situations and psychological resources. Personal and demographic variables need to be considered include socioeconomic status, culture/race/ethnicity, gender role, age and stage of life, and state of health, with psychological resources encompass variables related to ego development, personality, outlook, and commitment and values. (See page 35 for a list of questions to access clients’ selves).

· Support – focus on client’s environment

· Consider the social support clients have (intimate relationships, family, friendship networks, and institutions, functions of support available to them (affect, affirmation, aid, and feedback), and their options (actual, perceived, used, and created). (See page 36 for a list of questions used to access support).

· Strategies

· Coping responses can include trying to control the situation, its meaning, and the stress associated with the transition. Strategies (info seeking, direct action, inhibition of action). (See page 36 for a list of questions to help understand one’s balance).

Implications of Schlossberg’s Adult Career Development Transition Model for the Practice of Career Counseling.

1. Because more individuals are changing occupations at later stages of their career development, counselors should be open to clients who want to change and understand and empathize with the frustration, pain, and joy involved in the transition process.

2. Because clients are going through transitions are often experiencing anxiety and emotional problems, it is essential to provide a safe environment—focus on listening and responding skills, and attending and focusing skills.

3. Because clients involved in transitions often have difficulty reframing and refocusing their situations, provide new perspectives to them through intervention, theme identification, and the presentation of internal and external information.

4. Because clients usually need assistance moving on, help them develop problem-solving, decision-making, and coping skills.

5. Because social support is the key to successfully coping with transitions, provide clients with skills that aid in developing social support system and networks.

Gysbers, N., Heppner, M., & Johnston, J. (2014). Career Counseling Holism, Diversity, and Strengths. Alexandria, Virginia: American Counseling Association.

Types of Transition

Schlossberg

· Anticipated - that will happen for most individuals over their lifespan; expected events

· Unanticipated – career/life events not expected

· Chronic Hassles – continuous and pervasive nature

· Non-events – transitions that never happen; anticipated events that did not happen

Hopson and Adams’

· Voluntary

· Involuntary

· Approaching Transitions

· Identify the type of transition

· Impact on the individual

· Transitions can come in bunches

· The Transition Process

· Phases

· Total preoccupation with transitions disruption of life

· Disbelief, sense of betrayal, confusion, anger, and resolution (hopefully)

· Assess

· Start with client’s perceptions

· How preoccupied are people with transitions

· Measures of life satisfaction

Factors that Influence Transitions

· The Situation

· Trigger, timing, the source, role change, duration, previous experience with transitions, concurrent stress

· The Self

· Identify personal situations and psychological resources (SES). Culture/race/ethnicity, gender role, age and stage of life, state of health, ego development, personality, outlook, and commitment and values

· Support

· Intimate relationships, family, friendship network, and institutions. Functions of support (affect, affirmation, aid, and feedback) options (actual, perceived, used, and created)

· Strategies

· Functions (controlling situation, its meaning and associated stress) and strategies (info seeking, direct action, inhibition of action)

Links to Articles or Videos:

https://elearn.etsu.edu/d2l/le/content/6249282/viewContent/39140548/View

https://prezi.com/dj2rbfct2z00/schlossbergs-transition-theory/

WEEK 9 - MODERN: ECOLOGICAL THEORY MODEL - COOK, HEPPNER, O'BRIEN

Week 9 - March 15^th

Ecological Theory

Crites (1969) identified three broad overlapping eras to describe the evolution of career and development theory building which are: Observational, Empirical, and Theoretical.

Theoretical Era can be subdivided into two categories labeled modern and postmodern. Modern theories began in the 1950s with postmodern emerging in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Name of Theory: Race/Gender Ecological Theory Model

Dates: Modern Theory--appeared in the 1950s - sometime in the 1980s

Theorist: Ellen P. Cook, Mary J. Heppner, Karen M. O’Brien

Main Concept/Ideas:

Cook, Heppner, and O’Brien designed a career development model to examine contextual factors in the vocational development of individuals. They used an ecological (relationship between organisms and the environment) model to develop what they called a race/gender ecological approach to career development. The model states that human behavior results from the ongoing, dynamic interaction between the person and the environment. Behavior is the result of an assortment of factors at the individual, interpersonal, and broader sociocultural levels. Vocational behavior can be understood as an “act-in-contect” where the context is essential to the naming and meaningfulness of the individual’s behavior. This model has been used to understand and intervene in the vocational behavior of diverse woman. Ancis and Davidson (2012) used this theory to understand women’s and girls’ issues related to education and the workplace, sexual violence, and legal issues. Bieschke and Toepfer-Hendey (2006) applied this model to career interventions with lesbian women, and Heppner and O’Brien (2006) used it with women in poverty. Ecological thinking has been applied extensively to understanding the levels of change necessary to promote social justice (Pitt-Catsouphes & Swanberg, 2006).

Bronfenbrenner (1977) developed the most widely cited ecological model and the one that Cook and his colleagues used as their guiding theoretical framework. Bronfenbrenner identified four major subsystems that include human behavior: a) the microsystem, which includes the interpersonal interactions within a given environment, such as home, school, or work setting; b) the mesosystem which constitutes interaction between two or more microsystems, such as the relation between an individual’s school and his/her work environment; c) the exosystem, which consists of linkages between subsystems that indirectly influence the individual, , such as one’s neighborhood or the media; and d) the macrosystem, which is the ideological components of a given society, including norms and values.

The race/gender ecological model recognizes that by their nature, humans live interactionally in a social environment. The model recognizes that individual’s career throughout life as he/she encounters opportunities or obstacles because of race or gender which reminds us that career behavior does not occur in a vacuum but rather emerges from a life-long dynamic interaction between the person and his/her environment. Ancis and Davidson (2012) described ecologically based career counseling could assist women “struggling with sexual harassment in the workplace…to view this oppressive behavior as one of power, rooted in societal/cultural beliefs (macrosystems) rather than operating solely at the individual level.”

Career behavior is thought to be determined by the interrelationships between the subsystems in a larger ecosystem (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). Implicit is the knowledge that interrelationships occur simultaneously on multiple levels, so focus on behavior at any one time. The model recognizes that individuals of the same biological sex or race may encounter similar circumstances because of their demographics, each path is unique because if individual circumstances and the unique interactions of the subsystems. Clients bring their ecosystems into counseling by conveying how they understand and react to circumstances (perceptions of opportunities or the lack of opportunities, positive or negative comparisons of self to desired models, optimistic or pessimistic conceptions of the future, or internalization of stereotypes as personally salient or irrelevant). Individuals are thought to shape the environment around them in complex ways as they overtly reward or punish the career behavior of others.

The larger culture, operating as a macrosystem, perpetuates career myths and stereotypes that are related to race and gender, and institutionalizes forms of race/gender discrimination. This macrosystem embodies values such as White male privilege, Eurocentric worldviews, race-/gender-appropriate ideologies, or race/gender typing of occupational choices. Macrosystem values may be internalized by the individual (internalized oppression) and on the microsystem level may influence how others treat a person because of his/her gender or race.

Implications of Race/Gender Ecological Model for the Practice of Career Counseling

1. The model reminds career counselors that we can change the person-environment interaction in numerous ways for any given client. Examples—changing the environment through counselor or client initiatives, helping the client identify and practice skills to cope more effectively with the environment, and addressing the cognitive processes that shape the client’s interactions with the environment.

2. Engaging in more traditional career counseling interventions that help the individual after perceptions about desirable and appropriate career alternatives. The model calls on counselors to serve as client advocates working toward environmental and societal changes that may facilitate the development of present and future clients.

3. Careful assessment of the client’s ecosystem determines how and where career counseling interventions can be most effectively implemented for an individual.

4. The counselor serves as a liaison, working as a partner with the client to effect more successful and satisfying interactions with the world of work.

5. The counselor uses diverse methodologies and emphasizes that clients are best served with a diverse range of conceptualizations and interventions are considered.

6. The model requires a range of skills not typically require in intrapsychically oriented interventions but respects the complexity of influences shaping an individual’s life over time.

This model provides a template for helping the client examine the macro- and microsystems affecting his/her development. For example, an assessment of the client’s racial identity status as a microsystem influence is very important to understanding many of the dynamics of the career counseling process. The assessment of racial identity status can be accomplished with one of the racial identity scales or through a less formal verbal assessment based on the counselor’s thorough understanding of the various racial identity statuses. Counselors would benefit from reading chapters on social class worldview, acculturation, and racial and ethnic identity and special journal issues that have been devoted to multicultural counseling and assessment. Helms (1994) indicated that to understand a client’s racial identity status, the counselor may be able to access how the client integrates racial information into his/her career self-conception, which may be a critical factor in effectively providing career planning assistance. It is especially important to examine how a client’s racial identity might affect such constructs as racial salience in job selection, strategies for dealing with racism in the work environment, work adjustment, and work satisfaction.

When gathering client information, this is a phase of providing information that may be useful to the client. Particularly if the client is at a less developed racial identity status, he/she may be unaware of structural barriers in in the career development process. It is important that the counselor help the client become aware of these barriers and discuss ways to circumvent these obstacles should they occur. The counselor may also point out the roles of the sociopolitical environment, culture, and social class in shaping individuals’ self-concepts. This information will lay the groundwork for future discussion about how environmental and cultural factors may influence aspects of the client’s career development process.

Links to Articles or Videos:

https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-134078041/explicating-an-ecological-approach-to-the-career-development

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Explicating+an+ecological+approach+to+the+career+development+of+women.-a088701557

https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-1267839191/engaging-with-social-justice-applying-ecological
http://slideplayer.com/slide/6254210/