Systemic influences on career development: assisting clients to tell their career stories.

In recent years, constructivism has begun to assume a more central role in career theory and career counseling (Amundson, 2003; Peavy, 1997, 2004; Savickas, 2002). Inherent to constructivism is the recognition that individuals are active agents in the production of their careers. This fundamental theoretical underpinning has witnessed the client-counselor relationship becoming a more collaborative process, with the client taking a more active role in the process and the counselor facilitating narrative, storytelling, and discursive processes.

A major challenge for theory informed by constructivism is how to apply it in practice (Patton & McMahon, 2006b; Reid, 2006). The Systems Theory Framework (STF) of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a) is a metatheoretical account informed by the constructivist worldview that meets the challenge of bridging theory and practice through the development of a qualitative career assessment instrument, the My System of Career Influences (MSCI; McMahon, Patton, & Watson, 2005a, 2005b; McMahon, Watson, & Patton, 2005). In this regard, Savickas (2005) is of the opinion that the authors of the MSCI have "translated their sophisticated theoretical model into a straightforward counselling method accompanied by coherent counselling materials" (p. iii). The MSCI is a reflection process, which assists adolescents to explore the systemic influences on their careers and, in so doing, to tell their career stories. This article describes a career counseling intervention based on the STF of career development using the MSCI reflection process. The article provides an overview of the STF, describes the MSCI, and illustrates the application of the MSCI with an adolescent.

STF of Career Development

In its brief history, the STF has proved applicable across countries, across cultures, and for career counselor training (Arthur & McMahon, 2005; Patton, McMahon, & Watson, 2006). Indeed, Amundson (2005) described the STF as one of four significant innovations in career theory. The STF is a holistic metatheoretical framework that accommodates both the content influences and the process influences on an individual's career development. This is illustrated in Figure 1. Content influences include the personal qualities and characteristics intrinsic to individuals, as well as the influences of the context in which they live, such as the people and organizations with whom they interact and the society and environment in which they live. These influences are organized in the STF as a series of interconnecting systems of influence on career development, specifically the individual system, the social system, and the environmental-societal system. The STF recognizes the changing nature and interaction of these influences (i.e., the process of career development) and is therefore conceptualized as a dynamic open system. The process influences include recursiveness (the interaction between influences), change over time, and chance. All influences are set within the context of past, present, and future.

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The individual system is central to the STF, as shown in Figure 1, and includes a range of intrapersonal influences, such as gender, interests, age, abilities, personality, and sexual orientation. The intrapersonal influences represent the subsystems of the individual system. Individuals are both a system and a subsystem. As subsystems, they do not live in isolation, but rather as part of a much larger contextual system, which comprises the social system and the environmental-societal system. The social system (see Figure 1) refers to the other people systems with which individuals interact (e.g., family, educational institutions, peers, the media). The individual and the social systems occur within the broader system of society and the environment, the environmental-societal system (see Figure 1). The subsystems of the environmental-societal system, such as political decisions or globalization, may seem less directly related to individuals but nonetheless have influence on their career development.

The STF also depicts the process influences of recursiveness, change over time, and chance (see Figure 1). These influences are illustrative of the dynamic nature of career development and the interaction that occurs within and between systems. Recursiveness is the multidirectional and nonlinear interaction between influences. Thus, a change in one part of the system will result in a change in another part of the system. Furthermore, the nature of the influences and the degree of influence change over time. In addition, individuals' career development will not always be planned, predictable, or logical. Unexpected or chance events, such as accidents, illness, organizational restructuring, or natural disasters, may profoundly influence career development. All of the process and content influences are set within the broader system of time. The past influences the present, and, together, past and present influence the future. Readers wanting more extensive descriptions of the STF are referred to the literature (e.g., McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a; Patton et al., 2006).

MSCI

The STF has stimulated the development of a qualitative career assessment instrument, the MSCI, which allows individuals to reflect on the influences on their career development and, through this reflection, to meaningfully create their own career stories (McMahon, Patton, & Watson, 2004). The MSCI provides a map based on the STF that encourages individuals to fill in the details and reality of their career development through the telling of their career stories. The MSCI guides individuals through a step-by-step process of visually representing, elaborating, and reflecting on the constellation of influences on their career development. Essentially, individuals are encouraged to develop a personalized STF. In this way, the uniqueness and wholeness of individuals is emphasized, and, through this, career counselors gain insight into their clients and the interconnectedness of systemic influences on their career-related needs.

The MSCI is a booklet of 12 pages with each page providing brief information, instructions and examples, and a place on which reflections can be recorded. This guided process begins with a page titled "My Present Career Situation" in which the individual reflects on occupational aspirations, work experience, life roles, support networks, and previous decision making. This reflection is guided by open-ended questions such as (a) "What career decisions do you need to make in the future?" (b) "What strategies or approaches have you used in your previous decision making?" and (c) "Who has helped you or provided advice with your previous career decisions?"

Each of the next four pages of the MSCI booklet contains diagrams that correspond to a subsystem of the STF (i.e., the individual system, the social system, the environmental-societal system, as well as the context of time). On these pages, examples of systemic influences are provided, and individuals can select from them or add their own examples. Thus, individuals identify and then prioritize their influences on diagrams titled "Thinking About Who I Am" (the individual system), "Thinking About the People Around Me" (the social system), "Thinking About Society and the Environment" (the environmental-societal system), and "Thinking About My Past, Present and Future" (the context of time).

The next two pages of the MSCI assist individuals in summarizing their reflections on their influences. These reflections are then represented diagrammatically on a chart titled "My System of Career Influences." In essence, this step invites individuals to construct their personal STF by combining information from each of the previous four pages. Figure 2 illustrates a personal MSCI diagram completed by the adolescent client in the case study that follows. In addition, Figure 2 illustrates how the theoretical STF can be personalized by completing the MSCI.

In the final pages of the booklet, individuals are provided with an opportunity to reflect on their completed MSCI diagrams on a page titled "Reflecting on My System of Career Influences." This reflection process is guided by open-ended questions such as (a) "What stands out most for you?" (b) "What has been confirmed for you?" and (c) "What would you like to change?" Thus, through this reflection process, individuals are enabled to tell the story of their present career situation. The final step in the MSCI booklet represents the construction of an action plan that is guided by questions such as (a) "Who will you talk to about your System of Career Influences diagram and what would you like to tell them?" (b) "What action or steps will you take now that you have completed your System of Career Influences diagram?" and (c) "What information would you like to find out now?"

Working with individual clients using the MSCI is a collaborative process in which the career counselor can be seen as a facilitator, encouraging a process that is meaningful to the client who is recognized as an active agent in the process of career construction. More extensive descriptions of the development of the MSCI are available in the literature (e.g., McMahon, Patton, & Watson, 2003, 2005a, 2005b; McMahon, Watson, & Patton, 2005; Patton & McMahon, 2006a; Patton et al., 2006).

A Career Story