Week 9 - March 15th
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/
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