Integrating perspectives in career development theory and practice. (Articles).

Other aspects may also come into play in the developmental process. In examining the vital role of family influence in one's career options and preferences, Roe's (Roe & Lunneborg, 1990) notion of parenting style and family atmosphere may be quite relevant. This could lead to some critical insights for comprehending and explaining one's values, lifestyle, and other individual aspects and experiences, thus making parental and family information important material for narrative formation. This may blend with some familial roles of Super's life career rainbow and Gottfredson's sociological variables in a natural way. Also, taking different roles through life-span and life-space, as defined by Super (1990), is a learned experience that requires an individual to acquire knowledge and skills during his or her growing process. At this point, Krumboltz's notion of social learning (Mitchell & Krumboltz, 1996) can enter the narration. A pivotal task of career intervention is to help clients see the necessity to transla te desires for positive change into concrete action. To achieve this goal, clients are empowered and assisted to learn more effective skills in problem solving and decision making, parallel to Mitchell and Krumboltz's (1996) "task approach skills." Thus, learning experiences are explored and acquired through biographical meaning making.

To integrate developmental conception in narration, the counselor may help the client to foster a sense of growth in retrospect, at present, and toward the future. The biographical framework provides a very pertinent structure and context for the developmental experiences that unfold. Within narration, the focus can be on describing and understanding the interrelationships between various roles and their impact on the client's life course. Thoughts and feelings connected with the experiences of fulfilling the career developmental tasks, along with other familial, social, and personal role interactions, may be shared. Events and situations surrounding role implementation become natural themes for plotting a story line. It may be necessary to emphasize the significance of the client's past learning experiences as well as anticipated experiences. The benefit of combining learning experiences into the narration is that the client may have a better sense of the relationship between learning and development. That i s, growing means learning more things, and learning provides more opportunity for growth. Just as career development accompanies the learning process, one's career narrative can be constructed and reconstructed to reflect the positive influences derived from the various learning experiences. This stimulates an optimal, fruitful, and dynamic cycle for personal and career growth.

Career as Context Conceptualization

The significance of context in an individual's life career development has been addressed by the contextual explanation of career (Young et al., 1996) and other constructivist approaches and perspectives in career psychology (Collin & Young, 1992; Peavy, 1993, 1996, 1997; Savickas, 1993, 1995a, 1997). Context is essential for meaning making because it provides background information that explains experiences and action. A broad scope, life career development can be seen as a complex and dynamic interaction between the person and his or her environment. This macro person--environment interrelationship addresses a basic phenomenon of human psychology. That is, human understanding is subject to influences from conditions and situations surrounding the very perceptions and experiences of individuals.

Complex variables are involved in the formation of a context. Variables such as parental and familial influences, interpersonal relationship, cultural value, social and economic environments, political atmosphere, and natural changes can influence the circumstances that affect an individual's decision to think, feel, and act. Context takes various forms, with psychological, tangible, and other situational components defining the background scenes. A workplace is an example of a context. A person's professional duty as a computer programmer may remain unchanged when she leaves Workplace A for Workplace B. However, she may experience the change of the tangible context (e.g., workplace location, surroundings, facility, equipment). Similarly, she may also experience the change of the psychological context (e.g., relationship with new supervisors and peers, work rules and policies, management style, general working atmosphere). Furthermore, she may encounter contextual factors that are both psychological and tangi ble (e.g., reward system and employee services, such as child care facility). Such background scenes can either facilitate or hinder an individual's personal life and work life experiences. This indicates the critical function of context in the whole picture. An experience only becomes explainable when its very context is presented. This is because the interpretation of experiences can vary significantly if the contextual background is altered. Meaning making cannot occur if its context is not fully described, examined, and taken into account.

Young et al. (1996) used the contextualist approach as a basis for summarizing the three salient aspects of context in career theories: multiplicity, meaning, and interweaving. Multiplicity refers to the complexity of a context. That is, multiple variables and factors are often involved in constructing a context. Meaning refers to a person's perception and interpretation of the situation. The context can vary when it is viewed by different people. The interweaving nature of a context shows that various variables often coexist, and they interact with one another, generating an intertwined relationship between variables in the context. Following this view, meaning making should ultimately reflect the multifaceted and interweaving nature of the person's context. A life career context is defined with a sense of wholeness. Many dynamic social, cultural, economic, and personal variables interplay and are intertwined with one another. Thus, a flexible, open, and holistic approach is adopted to examine and make sense of a complex structure.

Several positivistic and objectivist perspectives may be considered for integration with context formation. Although Holland's (1997) six types of working environments present a set of archetypes of the world of work, they may also be considered as a part of the requirements in the macrocontext. Similarly, the notion of person--environment correspondence (Dawis, 1996) may be incorporated into the formation of the larger and more complex structure of the context. With their roots in the trait and factor theoretical tradition, theories that focus on matching individuals with their work environment do not attempt to address the three salient aspects that are proposed by the contextual approach. However, if we career counselors adopt the multiplicity epistemology, we may realize that the macrocontext may well include the more static factors and stable characteristics of work environment, as suggested by the trait and factor approaches. Because such factors and characteristics reflect, to some degree, conditions a nd demands from the work world, perceiving them as some of the variables in the total context may be beneficial. Thus, to consider and examine them may be relevant in comprehending the total context.

Rooted in the social learning philosophy, Krumboltz's (Mitchell & Krumboltz, 1996) notion of "environmental conditions and events" addresses the influences that are often beyond the person's control. Natural disasters, political turmoil, government regulations, economic boom or downturn, and technological development are examples of environmental influences. According to Krumboltz, environmental circumstances have either a facilitative or a hindering effect on a person's capacity to learn and to perform career tasks. The environmental factor in this context focuses on the external conditions that are objective, observable, and measurable. It is clear that the observable context does not include subjective aspects of the context, as suggested by the contextual theoretical perspective of career (see Young et at., 1996); however, these two approaches seem to share some common ground with regard to context.

On the basis of the social constructivist ideology, Young and his colleagues (Collin & Young, 1986, 1992; Young & Valach, 2000; Young et al., 1996) postulated that context is a complex and holistic macrostructure that encompasses both objective and subjective phenomena in vocational psychology. The observable natural and societal conditions that influence people's life and career choices are, of course, contextual factors. At the same time, people's subjective views on things and experiences are also a part of the contents that can form a context. For example, the experience of coping with unemployment can construct two different countexts. It may generate either a victim's description (e.g., "I am so depressed because I was laid off") or an agent's script (e.g., "I am searching for options to get something for myself"). These illustrations demonstrate that language and perceptions form the basis for the context.

Notwithstanding the differences, Mitchell and Krumboltz's (1996) notion of "environmental conditions and events" seems to echo part of the content (i.e., the objective influences of the environment) that is well identified and recognized in Young and colleagues' (Young & Valach, 2000; Young et al., 1996) works regarding the notion of context. On the basis of this shared aspect, both approaches may be used together to address the critical function of contextual influences. In other words, the notion of environment in Krumboltz's theory may be useful to the notion of context in Younger al.'s (1996) contextual explanation of career, and vice versa. For example, when both approaches are applied to a career issue, they may provide useful support and reference to each other regarding the objective aspect of the context. The subjective aspect of the context may be considered when there is a need to broaden the scope of the person's learning experiences.

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