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

The case study of Thomas demonstrates the use of the MSCI as a theory-based guided reflection process that provides individuals with an opportunity to recount their experiences, elaborate meanings around their influences, and tell their career stories. The MSCI addresses concerns about practical applications of constructivist theories such as the STF. Such applications require individuals to assume an active role in the career counseling process and career counselors a facilitative role as they engage in a collaborative and discursive storytelling process. Consistent with its constructivist underpinnings, the MSCI reflection process provides individuals with an opportunity to locate their career decisions holistically within the context of their system of influences, and then to reevaluate and reprioritize them.

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Mary L. McMahon, School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; Mark B. Watson, Department of Psychology, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary L. McMahon, School of Education, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia (e-mail: marylmcmahon@uq.edu.au).