The Theory and Practice of Vocational Guidance

A Selection of Readings

Barrie Hopson, John Hayes

• Publisher: Pergamon
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780080133911
• eBook ISBN:
  9781483181257
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Theory and Practice of Vocational Guidance: A Selection of Readings is a compilation of papers that discusses theoretical foundations and practical applications of vocational guidance. The book presents 36 articles that cover various concerns in career counseling, both in theory and in practice. The first part of the text deals with theoretical concerns in vocational guidance, such as model for the translation of self-concepts into vocational terms; social factors in vocational development; young workers in their first jobs; and the criteria of vocational success. In the next part, the book presents the practical issues, which include needed counselor competencies in vocational aspects of counseling and guidance; an occupational classification for use in vocational guidance; psycho-social aspects of work; and key concepts in the use of psychological tests in vocational guidance. The book will be of great use to any professionals, but will be most useful to those involved in career counseling, such as human resource practitioners, school counselors, and college career advisers.

PART I

THEORY

Outline

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION TO THEORY

Chapter 2: Introduction

Chapter 3: Introduction to Theories of Vocational Choice and Decision-making

Chapter 4: A Theory of Vocational Development

Chapter 5: A Model for the Translation of Self Concepts into Vocational Terms

Chapter 6: A Theory of Vocational Choice

Chapter 7: Decision and Vocational Development: A Paradigm and Its Implications

Chapter 8: Occupational Choice: a Conceptual Framework

Chapter 9: Vocational Choice and Utility for Risk

Chapter 10: Career Decision-Making

Chapter 11: Vocational Development: Ten Propositions in Search of a Theory

Chapter 12: Introduction to The Home and the School

Chapter 13: Social Factors in Vocational Development

Chapter 14: Some Psychological Aspects of Inter-Generation Occupational Mobility

Chapter 15: Early Determinants of Vocational Choice

Chapter 16: Sibling Associations and Role Involvement

Chapter 17: Introduction to The Transition from School to Work

Chapter 18: Youth and Work: Problems and Perspectives

Chapter 19: The Entry of School Leavers into Employment

Chapter 20: Young Workers in their First Jobs. An Investigation of Attitudes to Work and their Correlates

Chapter 21: Introduction to The Work Experience

Chapter 22: Concepts of Work

Chapter 23: The Criteria of Vocational Success

Chapter 24: The Meaning of Work and Jobs

Chapter 25: A Theory of Work Adjustment

Chapter 26: Job Satisfaction: Issues and Problems

INTRODUCTION TO THEORY

“Every man’s work, whether itbe literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.”

SAMUEL BUTLER

Introduction

THE subject of Part I of the book is occupational choice. The major points of emphasis are two: “why” people choose one job in preference to another, and “how” this is accomplished.

People can always provide ready-to-wear answers to describe how they came to choose a particular job, but subjective evaluation is notorious for its attractive “red herrings”. It is, therefore, most disappointing when we look for objective investigations into the phenomenon of occupational choice to discover that until quite recently the cupboards were depressingly bare. Psychology, in the form of Mrs. Hubbard, did not really have a change of heart until the early nineteen-fifties. As it transpired, the provider was not a psychologist, but the economist Eli Ginzberg and his associates (1951), who were to bring to the attention of psychologists and sociologists the paucity of empirical information and theoretical interest existing at the time.

Prior to Ginzberg’s book, Occupational Choice: An Approach to a General Theory, three generalized approaches to occupational choice can be elicited. Part I of this book is concerned with theories of occupational choice and decision-making; none of the following three approaches can justify the title of “theory”.

ACCIDENT HYPOTHESIS

This may be described as the “St. Paul on the road to Damascus” approach. With a blinding flash of insight, a person suddenly “hits” on the idea of being, for example, a plumber, by watching one at work on the sink in his house. The anthropologist Malinowski explained his transference of interest from chemistry to anthropology following the experience of reading Frazer’s Golden Bough during a convalescence from tuberculosis. Whistler relates how, if he had not failed a military examination, he would have lived out his life as an army officer. These examples illustrating some of the ways in which people describe the discovery of their raison d’être, are, in reality, emphasizing the role of chance occurrences in life decision-making processes. This explanation of occupational choice sees chance as the important operating factor.

No one doubts the substantial element of chance operating in these examples, but all that they illustrate is that chance was an important factor reinforcing trends already existing at that point in time. The accident factor is seen as the iceberg trip above the submerged mass of earlier experiences and individual dispositions. Many people observe plumbers at work in their kitchens but they are not all motivated to rush out to seek employment as a plumber. Many American young men fail their West Point examinations, but they do not all become artists like Whistler. Thousands of people must have read Frazer’s Golden Bough, and some of these could also have been recovering from tuberculosis, yet they were not all converted to anthropology as a career.

In explaining their occupational choices as accidents—”I was walking down the High Street, saw this advert in the window, went in and got the job”—most people mean that they were affected by an unplanned exposure to a powerful stimulus. But there are countless such occurrences in everyone’s life, and the important question is why are some of these stimuli responded to while others are ignored. The “accident” hypothesis does not tell us.

An attempt to deal with the problem of the selection/non-selection of stimuli in the occupational choise process has been made by the developmental theorists like Super (Chapter 1), Tiedeman (Chapter 4), Blau (Chapter 5), and the decision-making theorists (Chapter 6 and 7).

IMPULSE HYPOTHESIS

This approach has been stressed in particular by the psychoanalysts who emphasize the importance of unconscious motivations in everyday life. Ernest Jones quotes the case of the child who showed an unnaturally strong interest in micturition who became a well-known engineer of bridges and canals. We have all heard stories of the sadist who becomes a surgeon or a butcher, and the homosexual who becomes a barber. Again, however, a few examples do not substantiate an all-embracing theory. As the accident hypothesis attributes all occupational choice to the responses of an individual to external forces, so the impulse hypothesis stresses the all-importance of internal factors, that is, the emotional forces. Many surgeons can be shown not to have had abnormal sadistic urges during childhood, and all engineers involved in the construction of bridges and canals do not exhibit childish fascination with micturition. Also, occupational choices other than surgery are made by persons with strong sadistic impulses, and even if this category of occupations were broadened to include butchers, dentists, prison officers, etc., it would still be too narrow to include all occupations permitting expression of so pervasive an impulse.

An attempt to substitute a more sophisticated approach to the question of “impulses” and their effects on occupational choice has been made by “need theorists” like Anne Roe (Chapter 11) and psychoanalytic theorists like Bordin, Segal and Nachman (1963).

TALENT-MATCHING APPROACH

This approach grew up from the needs of the vocational guidance practitioners—professionals working privately, within a youth employment service, guidance agency, or some branch of the educational system. Their work, fundamentally, is to find a suitable occupation for an individual sitting in front of them. The essentials of this approach are cont...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• SOME OTHER TITLES OF INTEREST
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART I: THEORY
• PART II: PRACTICE
• Author Index
• Subject Index