Super (Developmental 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: Super (Modern Theories of Career Development)
Super's Life-Span, Life-Space Theory of Career Development
Dates: Appeared in the 1950s until sometime in the 1980s
Theorist: Donald Super
Main Concept/Ideas:
Super (1990) described his theory as “a segmental theory…a loosely unified set of theories dealing with specific aspects of career development, taken from developmental, differential, social, personality, and phenomenological psychology and held together by self-concept and learning theory.” His initial ideas for his theories began forming in the 1930s. According to Super, Savickas, and Super (1996), these ideas originated in his interest in work and occupations, the developmental studies of Buehler (1933), and the studies of occupational mobility by Davidson and Anderson (1937). These beginning ideas were brought together in Super’s (1942) book, The Dynamics of Vocational Adjustment, in which he presented a development view of career choice. Super’s single most important idea was that career choice was a process, not an event.
In the early 1950s, Super introduced the first outline of his theory in his presidential address to the Division of Counseling and Guidance (now the Division of Counseling Psychology) of the American Psychological Association, in part as a challenge by Ginzberg that vocational counselors lacked a theory to guide their work. In his address, he identified the elements that he thought made up an adequate theory of vocational development. These elements included individual differences; multipotentiality; occupational ability patterns, identification and the role of models; continuity of adjustment; life stages; career patterns; the idea that development can be guided; the idea that development is the result of interaction; the dynamics of career patterns; job satisfaction; individual differences; status, and role; and works as a way of life. In 1953, he presented 10 propositions that organized these elements into what he called “a summary statement of a comprehensive theory.” Later two propositions were included, and still later two more propositions were added, making a total of 14.
In developing these 14 propositions, he drew upon fours diverse domains—differential psychology, developmental psychology, occupational sociology, and personality theory. Differential psychology provided a knowledge base about the various traits individuals possess and the variety of occupational requirements. Developmental psychology provided a knowledge base about the various traits individuals possess and the variety of occupational requirements. Developmental psychology contributed insights into how individuals develop abilities and interests and the concepts of life stages and development tasks. Occupational sociology offered new ideas about occupational mobility and the impact of the environmental influences. Personality theory contributed the concepts of self-concept and person-environment theory.
The first three propositions emphasize that people have different abilities, interests, and values, and may be qualified for various occupations because of this. No person fits only one occupation; a variety of occupations are available and occupations accommodate a wide variety of individuals. The next six propositions focus on self-concept and its implementation in career choices, on life stages with their mini- and maxi-cycles, and on the concepts of career patterns and career maturity. The next four propositions deal with the synthesis and compromise between individuals and social factors and work and life satisfactions. The last proposition looks at work and occupation as the focus for personality organization and the interplay of life roles as worker, student, leisurite, homemaker, and citizen.
In 1951, a major research program called the Career Pattern Study (CPS) in Middletown, NY, tested some of the hypotheses of Super and his colleagues. The CPS began following 138 eighth-grade boys and 142 ninth-grade boys. Super and his colleagues theorized that the movement of individuals through life stages was a typical process that could be loosely tracked according to an aged-referenced timeline. The participants were followed briefly up until age 21, more intensively at age 25, and then again at age 36. The findings have been made available periodically in a series of monographs (Jordaan & Heyde, 1979; Super & Overstreet, 1960), in article by Super (1985, and a dissertation by Fisher (1989).
Super’s life-span, life-space approach to career development organizes the concepts of life roles and life stages into an interactive system. This system is represented by a Life-Career Rainbow model. Five stages are shown in the relationship to age ranges appear on the upper outside rim. The life stages are labeled growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline and are called maxicycles. Although they maxicycles are not linear, not everyone goes through these stages in the same way or at the same age. Transitions from one stage to the next often involves minicycles which is going back through various stages before moving on. Within each of the stages, developmental task are to be mastered before movement to the next stages occurs. Super said, “Success in adapting to each developmental task results in effective functioning as a student, worker, or retiree and lays the groundwork for mastering the next task along the developmental continuum.”
In addition to the life stages, the Life-Career Rainbow features life roles located in the space and time of life stages (life space). Super identified six life roles in which individuals participate over the life span: homemaker, worker, citizen, leisurite, student, and child. See links for Power Point slides for complete Life-Career Rainbow beginning at slide 6 and link from Career Services. Individuals often participate in multiple roles at the same time; the amount of time and effort varies by life stage and age. Individuals’ participation in these life roles fluctuates depending on age and other circumstances across the life span. Some roles are more important during certain ages than others. Sverko (2006) stated “By combining the life space with the life-span or developmental perspective, the Rainbow model shows how the role constellation changes with life stages. As Super noted, life roles wax and wane over time.”
An important concept in Super’s formulation of career development is career maturity. The general agreement of this term denotes a readiness to engage in the developmental task appropriate to the age and level at which one finds oneself. Maturity is never reached but instead the goal relative to where one is at any given time and helps to promote a life span notion rather than a static, irreversible pattern of career development. Later Super refined his notion of career maturity and suggested that the term for adults should be career adaptability and included the constructs of planfulness (including autonomy, self-esteem, and reliance on a time perspective), exploration, information, decision making, and reality orientation were in his formulation of career maturity (adaptability).
Super’s work on theory building was substantial and continuous over a long period of time and saw the need to concentrate on the use of his theory in practice. He was interested in applying his theoretical concepts to career counseling. He and a number of his colleagues developed the career development assessment and counseling (C-DAC) model.
The C-DAC model begins with a session that focuses on the client’s concerns and a review of data about the client. Then four phases of the assessment was undertaken, with the first phase being the assessment of the importance of the work role in relationship to other life roles. The next phase, attention is given to determining the career stage and career concerns of the client, followed by identifying resources for making and implementing choices and assessing resources for adapting to the work world. Interests, abilities, and values are assessed by the following trait and factor methodology are the next phase. The last phase focuses on the assessment of the client’s self-concept and life themes by using qualitative assessment procedures.
The final step in the C-DAC is the assessment and interview data which integrates the interview material and the assessment data into a narrative which realistically and sensitively portrays the client’s vocational identity, occupational self-concept, and coping resources and the locates the individual in the multiple roles with the developmental tasks. Comparing this narrative to the client’s career concerns begins the process of formulating, collaboration with the client, a counseling plan designed to fit the client’s career development.
Super (1990) summarized the status of his theory has been refined and extended over the last decade. Differential psychology has made technical advances. Operational definitions of career maturity have been modified, and the model has been modified with them. Recycling through stages in a mini-cycle has been refined but it is the same as it was when first formulated. Ideas about how to assess self-concepts have evolved as research has thrown light on their measurement, and knowledge of how applicable self-concept theory is to various subpopulations have extended but has not changed the model greatly. Life-stage theory has been refined but mostly confirmed by several major studies during the past decade. The role of learning theory has been highlighted by the work on social learning, but to the neglect of other kinds of interactive learning. The career model is in the maintenance stage, but health maintenance does not mean stasis but rather updating and innovating so midcareer changes are better recognized and studied.
The concept of life stages has been modified from envisioning mainly a maxicycle to involving minicycles of growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline which is linked in a series with the maxicycle. Reexploration and reestablishment have attracted a great deal of attention, and the term transition denotes these processes. Greater emphasis is on the fact that the typical impetus for any specific transition is not necessarily age itself, but the timing of transition (stage) is a function of the individual’s personality and abilities as well as the situation.
Implications of Super’s Life-Span, Life-Space Theory for the Practice of Career Counseling
·
Because individuals’’ life career development
involves more than the choice of occupation and the adaptation to it (work
role), career counseling should focus attention on how work roles interact with
other life roles.
·
Because occupational decisions are related to
other life decisions and often continue to be made throughout the life span,
career counseling needs to be provided to individuals of all ages and
circumstances.
·
Because career development can be described as a
stage process with developmental tasks at each stage, and because the nature if
these stages is not linear but cyclical, counselors need to help clients
understand that they are not venturing outside if normalcy if there cycle back
to earlier developmental stages.
·
Because people who are at different stages of
development may need to be counseled in different ways, and because people at
similar stages but with different levels of career maturity (adaptability) also
need to be counseled in different ways, it is important to learn how to use
life stages and task to make diagnoses and select appropriate intervention
strategies.
Links to Articles or Videos: http://career.iresearchnet.com/career-development/life-career-rainbow/;
https://elearn.etsu.edu/d2l/le/content/6249282/viewContent/38399272/View
https://elearn.etsu.edu/d2l/le/content/6249282/viewContent/38399268/View
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