WEEK 6 - MODERN: LEARNING THEORY - KRUMBOLTZ

Week 6 - February 23^rd

Learning Theories

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:  Learning Theory of Career Counseling (LTCC)

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

Theorist:  John Krumboltz

Main Concept/Ideas:

Krumboltz and his colleagues (Mitchell and Jones) developed a learning theory of career counseling comprising two distinct parts.  First part, focuses on explaining the origins of career choice and is labeled “social learning theory of career decision making” (SLTCDM).  Second part, focuses on career counseling and is labeled “learning theory of Career counseling “(LTCC).  SLTCDM identifies the factors influencing career decisions people make (subsumed under LTCC) and LTCC explains what career counselors can do to help clients make effective career decisions, lableled the entire theory LTCC.

LTCC is based on the application of Bandura’s social learning theory to career decision making.  Bandura’s theory emphasizes the influence of reinforcement theory, cognitive information processing, classical behaviorism on human behavior.  Social learning “assumes that people’s personalities and behavioral repertoires can be explained on the basis of their unique learning experiences and can still acknowledge the role played by innate and developmental processes.  Social learning also assumes that “humans are intelligent, problem-solving individuals who strive at all times to understand the reinforcement that surrounds them and who in turn control their environment to suit their own purposes and needs.  Bandura described the interaction of environment, self-referent thought and behavior at the “triadic reciprocal interaction system.”

SLTCDM describes the factors influencing individual’s career decisions.  LTCC describes what career counselors can do to help their clients make effective career choices.

SLTCDM identifies four factors that influence our career decision making:

1.  Genetic endowment and special abilities which are inherited qualities, such as sex, race, and physical appearance.  Special abilities such as intelligence, athletic ability, and musical and artistic talents result from the interaction of genetic factors and exposure to selected environmental events.
2. Environmental conditions and events are generally outside our control and involve a wide variety of cultural, social, political, and economic factors.  An example, government-sponsored job-training programs, such as the Comprehensive Employment Training Act and the Job Training Partnership Act, can provide opportunities for learning new skills and increasing employmentability.  Technological developments (computer technologies) create me job opportunities and make others obsolete.  Legislation related to welfare, labor laws, and union policies influences job availability and facilitates or restricts job entry.  Natural disasters can influence career opportunities and career paths.  Family traditions, as well as neighborhood and community resources, can affect individuals’ career decision making.  Job entry requirements can persuade or deter us from considering specific occupational opportunities.  Our geographic location can also play a prominent feature in influencing our career choices and the availability of job requirements (e.g. climatic differences between Maine and Florida result in differences in the availability of some job opportunities; availability of counseling jobs is greater in the US than in other countries in which counseling concerns are resolved by spiritual leaders.
3. Instrumental and associative learning experiences involve antecedents, behaviors, and consequences.  According to Mitchell and Krumboltz “Antecedents include the genetic endowments, special abilities, and environmental conditions and events previously discussed as well as the characteristics of a particular task or problem.  Behavioral responses include cognitive and emotional responses as well as overt behavior.  Consequences include immediate and delayed effects produced by the behavior as well as “self-talk”.
4. Instrumental and associative learning experiences involve antecedents, behaviors, and consequences.  According to Mitchell and Krumboltz “Antecedents include the genetic endowments, special abilities, and environmental conditions and events previously discussed as well as the characteristics of a particular task or problem.  Behavioral responses include cognitive and emotional responses as well as overt behavior.  Consequences include immediate and delayed effects produced by the behavior as well as “self-talk” about those consequences.

Associate learning experiences occur when a neutral stimulus is paired with a positive and/or negative stimulus or consequences.  Dramatic.

     5.  Task approach skills are genetic characteristics, special abilities, and environmental      influences (family support, training opportunities, financial resources, and occupational opportunities) which are used to make career choices.  These skills include the individual’s work habits, mental set, emotional responses, cognitive processes, and problem-solving skills.  Task approach skills influence outcomes and are themselves outcomes.

These four factors influence our beliefs about ourselves (what we are good at, what are interests are, what we value) and our beliefs about the world (“hard work always pays off,” “all accountants are stuffy,” “all counselors value altruism over economic rewards”).  These interactions of these four factors influence people differently, there are generally four ways in which they can influence our career decision making.


1.  Self-observation generalizations are overt or covert statements evaluating our actual or vicarious performance or self-assessments of our interests and values are defined as self-observation generalizations.  Learning experiences lead us to draw conclusions about ourselves and compare our performance with the performance of others and to our own performance expectations.  We use these comparisons to draw conclusions about our performance capabilities.  Conclusions about our interests and values result from learning experiences.  In SLTCDM, interest link learning experiences with specific actions.  Self-observations about values are statements about the desirability of specific outcomes, behaviors, or events. 

2.  Worldwide generalizations are about the nature and functioning of the world.  Are formed from learning experiences.  The accuracy of worldview generalizations is dependent on the learning experiences shaping each generalization.

3.  Task approach skills are outcomes as “cognitive and performance abilities and emotional predispositions for coping with the environment, interpreting it in relation to self-observation generalizations, and making covert and overt predictions about future events.  Task approach skills both influence career decision making and are outcomes of learning experiences that shape individuals’ career development.  Task approach skills critical to career development are those involved in the decision making, problem solving, goal setting, information gathering, and values clarifying.

4.  Actions is learning experiences eventually lead individuals to take actions related to entering a career which can include applying for a job, entering a training program, applying to college, changing jobs, or taking overt steps to make progress in one’s career.

SLTCDM suggests that career decision making is “influenced but complex environmental (economic) factors as many are beyond the control of any single individual.  The theory is “the interaction between innate predispositions and earning experiences within the intra-individual, family, social, educational, and cultural context.”  Also, people prefer an occupation if:

1.   Have succeed at tasks they believe are like tasks performed by members of that occupation.
2.   Have observed a valued model being reinforced for activities like those performed by members of that occupation.
3.  Valued friend or relative stressed its advantages to them and/or they observed positive words and images being associated with it.

Krumboltz noted that people will avoid an occupation if

1. They have failed at tasks they believe are similar to tasks performed by people in that occupation.
2. They have observed a valued model being punished or ignored for performing activities like those performed by members of that occupation.
3. A valued friend or relative stressed its disadvantages to them and/or they have observed negative words and images associated with it.

The strength of SLTCDM is that it provides a description of factors influencing career decision making and identifies outcomes resulting from those influential factors.  It is a useful theory for understanding career paths.  The understanding acquired form such a perspective is helpful in making current career decisions and in formulating future career goals.

When career concerns arise, they typically involved one or more of the following: a) the absence of a goal, or career indecision, b) expressed feeling of concern about high aspirations, or unrealism, and c) a conflict between equally appropriate alternatives or multipotentiality.  Krumboltz developed the learning theory of career counseling (LTCC) to guide counselors in constructing career development interventions to help clients cope more effectively with these career concerns.  Counselors using LTCC help clients:  a) acquire more accurate self-observation generalizations, b) acquire more accurate worldview generalizations, c) learn new task approach skills, and d) take appropriate career-related actions.  LTCC assumes that counselors must be prepared to help their clients cope with four current career-related trends.

1. People need to expand their capabilities and interests, not base decisions on existing characteristics only.  Interest inventories assess what we know and what we have experienced.  Counselors must encourage clients to explore new activities, develop new interests, and consider new options based on newly formed interested and capabilities.
2. People need to prepare for changing work tasks, and not assume that occupations will remain stable.  Change is constant; career counselors must help their clients identify new skills to learn and develop strategies for coping with the stress inherent in an ever-changing world of work.
3. People need to be empowered to take action, not merely to be given a diagnosis.  Implementing a career choice, for some clients, is more challenging than making the choice.  Clients need ongoing assistance from their career counselors as they attempt to adjust to the career choice made and implemented.
4. Career counselors need to play a major role in dealing with all career problems and not just career selection.  Career-related concerns exist beyond this concern of identifying a career choice.  Clients may struggle with the burnout, underemployment, relationships with coworkers, family members’ reactions to career choices, and low self-efficacy.

These four trends suggest the importance of providing clients with learning experiences to a) correct faulty assumptions, b) learn new skills and interests, c) identify effective strategies for addressing issues emanating from interactions between work and other life-role activities and concerns, and d) learn skills for coping with changing work tasks.  Career counselors can use assessments to help clients identify what characteristics (beliefs, skills, values, interests, personality) they have learned and to identify opportunities for learning new characteristics.  The task of the career counselor is to promote client learning and the goal of career counseling is to enhance the ability to clients to create satisfying lives for themselves.

Krumboltz divides career development interventions into two categories:  a) developmental/preventive and b) targeted/remedial.  The former includes career education programs, school-to-work initiatives, job club programs, study materials, and simulations.  These career development interventions facilitate the acquisition of accurate and occupational self-information and the use of this information in the career decision-making process.  Learning through active on-the-job participation (job shadowing, internships, and worksite observations) is emphasized.  It is important to note that many clients could certainly benefit from participating in many of these activities, but they must first receive more targeted and remedial career development interventions.

Targeted and remedial career development interventions include goal clarification, cognitive restructuring, cognitive rehearsal, narrative analysis, role playing, desensitization, paradoxical intention, and humor.  LTCC also emphasize the importance of teaching decision-making skills to clients.  Learning how to make career decisions helps clients resolve current career concerns and equips clients with an important task approach skill for coping with changing work and personal conditions in the future. 

To help counselors identify problematic client beliefs related to each of the career problem categories (indecision, unrealism, and multipotentiality) Krumboltz developed the Career Beliefs Inventory (CBI) which is based on the rationale that people make career decisions according to what they believe about themselves and the world-of- work.  The beliefs are accurate and constructive; they will act in ways that are likely to help them achieve their goals.  If their beliefs are inaccurate and self-defeating, they will act in a way that makes sense to them but not help them achieve their goals.

CBI helps counselors understand their clients’ beliefs and assumptions.  The instrument is most useful when administered at the beginning of career counseling.  It contains 25 scales organized into the following 5 categories:  My Current Career Situation, What Seems Necessary for My Happiness, Factors That Influence My Decisions, Changes I Am Willing to Make, and Efforts I Am Willing to Initiate.  These categories are related to mental barriers blocking clients form taking action.  Meaningful journeys, including our career journey, contains obstacles that must be confronted.  Clients allow discouragement and other problematic beliefs to dominate their thinking and efforts to take positive actions.  Self-defeating beliefs such as those measured by the CBI must be addressed if the client is to move forward.  Counseling strategies such as cognitive restructuring and reframing are useful in helping the client to address these issues.

Career beliefs is often, in career counseling, referred to significant events in ways that suggest the client had little to do with the experience.  Career counseling often involves helping clients understand and take advantage of the chance events they encounter in daily living.  Unplanned events are not only inevitable, they are desirable and referred to this phenomenon as “planned happenstance” which can be incorporated into career counseling by teaching clients to generate, recognize, and incorporate chance events into the process of theory career development.  Career counselors can ask their clients questions such as: “How have unplanned events influenced your career in the past?  How did you enable each event to influence your career development?  How do you feel about encountering unplanned events in your future?”  Counselors and client interactions that intentionally address the role chance on career development help to normalize such occurrences, help clients see the thematic influence upon theory career development, and help clients be increasingly open to noticing and acting upon unplanned events in the future.  An internal locus of control and increased sense of personal self-efficacy are fostered.

Focus on the skills clients need to develop to take advantage of unplanned events in their career development.  Developing a sense of curiosity, being persistent, being flexible, maintaining a sense of optimism, and being willing to take risks represent a set of skills that increase the individual’s ability to take advantage of unplanned events.

Counselors evaluate the success of career development interventions by standards determining whether clients experience a reduction in career indecision.  Krumboltz recommends that career counselors consider revising these criteria.  Counselors using LTCC view indecision as a desirable quality for motivating clients to engage in new learning activities and recommends reframing “indecision” to “open-mindedness.”

The goal of achieving congruence between individuals and their work environments is unnecessarily restricting because “birds of a feather” do not always flock together.  Two very different people can be successful in the same occupation.  Krumboltz argues that the congruence criterion is less useful today because it is based on stagnant definitions of occupational environments and overlooking changes in work environments: “Heterogeneity, not homogeneity, within occupations is now more highly valued.”

Krumboltz recommends focusing on measuring changes in client characteristics such as skills, values, beliefs, interests, and work habits.  Counselors can ask themselves whether their career development interventions have stimulated theory clients to engage in new learning activities.  Process measures can focus on assessing the degree to which clients have made efforts to create more satisfying lives.

LTCC is new and relatively untested by research.  There is extensive research supporting the general social learning theory.  Krumboltz cites several studies supporting SLTCDM hypotheses related to the development of educational and occupational preference, task approach skills, and action.

A strength of LTCC is that it addresses both environmental and intra-individual variables affecting career development.  LTCC is compatible with Super’s Archway model of career development and offers a bit more in terms of specific ways on which environmental and personal variables influence career decision making.  LTCC can also be used as a framework for understanding the development of interests leading to one’s personal modal orientation as described by Holland’s theory.  The development of the CBI and subsequent application of strategies such as cognitive restructuring and reframing provide useful and important applications of the theory to career development interventions.

Links to Articles or Videos: 

https://elearn.etsu.edu/d2l/le/content/6249282/viewContent/38591160/View

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