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The Developmental Perspective in Vocational Psychology
Journal of Vocational Behavior 59, 252–261 (2001) doi:10.1006/jvbe.2001.1831, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
The Developmental Perspective in Vocational Psychology Fred W. Vondracek The Pennsylvania State University Vocational psychology has not realized its potential as a developmental science, despite the centrality of its domain across the entire life span and its impressive accomplishments in measuring and modifying career behaviors. Moreover, rapid changes in technology and in the world of occupations have created new opportunities and new challenges. If vocational psychology is to realize its potential in this new reality, it must become a science and profession that can speak authoritatively on all substantive questions dealing with the vocational development of children, adolescents, and adults. It must also seek to integrate its research findings with those of other areas to produce a more coherent, cohesive body of knowledge that addresses every aspect of vocational development within the larger framework of life-span human development. °C 2001 Academic Press
Donald Super, more than any other vocational psychologist, is associated with bringing developmental perspectives to the study of careers. In recounting the history and development of vocational psychology (Super, 1983), he was careful to differentiate vocational psychology from personnel psychology, engineering or human factors psychology, and organizational psychology. He stressed that “vocational psychology focuses on people thinking about careers, preparing for occupations, entering the world of work, pursuing and changing occupations, and leaving the world of work. ...” He further suggested that the term career psychology might be used in place of vocational psychology “to make clear the focus on the developing person in search of and pursuing a vocation rather than on the static or (technologically) changing occupation” (Super, 1983, p. 6). Super’s vision of vocational psychology, shaped by his being a keen observer of its emergence out of the “dustbowl empiricism” of early 20th century American psychology and by half a century of scholarship in the field, has never been matched by its reality. Although Super’s work, culminating in the career rainbow (Super, 1980), was informed by the work of early developmentalists, particularly Charlotte Buehler (1933), he acknowledged that he had not made use of most of the more recent advances in developmental psychology (Super, 1985). At the same time, Super (1983) noted that leading developmental psychologists, in their landmark volumes on life-span theory and research (Baltes & Brim, 1979; Baltes & Schaie, Address correspondence and reprint requests to Fred. W. Vondracek, Human Development & Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, 211D Henderson Building South, University Park, PA 168026505. E-mail: [email protected]. 252 0001-8791/01 $35.00 C 2001 by Academic Press Copyright ° All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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1973; Nesselroade & Baltes, 1979), seemed to be completely unaware of advances in career psychology. There seems to have been little change since then. In their expansive chapter on life-span theory in the Handbook on Child Psychology, Baltes and his colleagues (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 1998) note that there have been advances in demonstrating the usefulness of life-span approaches for “other specialties,” citing, among others, an obscure article by Sterns and Dorsett (1994) that espouses the merits of viewing career development from a life-span perspective. Neither Baltes and his colleagues, nor Sterns and Dorsett seem to be aware of the rather extensive discussion of life-span developmental psychology that has taken place in vocational psychology for almost 2 decades (e.g., Vondracek, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1983; Vondracek, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1986). Lifespan psychologists are certainly not alone in their apparent neglect of vocational psychology in general and Super’s ideal in particular. Although Super claims that the renowned life-course sociologist Glen Elder (1968) used “Career Pattern studyderived theory,” one would be hard pressed to find any reference to Super’s (or any vocational psychologist’s) work in any of Elder’s subsequent work (e.g., Elder, 1997, 1998). The same is true of the work of most other sociologists who have written about phenomena that are central to the work of vocational psychologists (e.g., Clausen, 1972, 1993; Kohn & Schooler, 1983). Clearly, something has happened to prevent vocational psychology from fully realizing the vision of Super and others (e.g., Crites, 1969). In the following pages, I endeavor to examine what went right and what went wrong in the field and I attempt to articulate my vision for a vocational psychology that is part of mainstream psychology while reaching out to related specialties, including the sociology of occupations and human development. In the process, I also address the thorny issue of the relationship between science and profession, research and practice. The end result, I trust, will be an informative examination of some contrasting possible futures for the field of vocational psychology. Internal Strengths The greatest strength of vocational psychology is that its core subject matter is of central importance in the lives of individuals in virtually all modern societies and of critical importance to the welfare of families, communities, and nations. No other discipline can make such sweeping claims. By having life-span developmental metatheory as its guiding conceptual framework, vocational psychology is well positioned to explore, investigate, and understand the antecedents, concomitants, and consequences of vocational behavior. Most essential from this perspective is the centrality of the individual in the process. Unlike occupational sociology, which sees individual behavior determined primarily by institutions and social structures, a life-span-oriented vocational psychology is able to see the individual as producer of his or her own vocational development and occupational future. This is an optimistic view, which empowers individuals to use their talent, their commitment to work, and their judgment to create the careers and the lives that they aspire to.
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Vocational psychology has, not unlike clinical psychology, pursued its version of the scientist/practitioner model. The basic idea behind the model is that optimal outcomes can be achieved when science informs practice and practice, in turn, informs science. Although the model has been questioned, there is little disagreement about the fact that, under ideal circumstances, it may well be the best model around. Indeed, there is nothing unique to vocational psychology that necessarily precludes it from making the scientist /practitioner model work. The impressive array of psychometrically sound assessment instruments in vocational psychology represent an asset whose potential value is immense. In principle, well-designed instruments could guide early vocational development into directions that would facilitate individuals’ optimal use of their strengths and talents. They could facilitate the exploration of vocational interests and work values as well as the acquisition of sound decision-making skills, which could be helpful to individuals time and again as they navigate through the emerging landscape of serial careers. Internal Weaknesses Vocational psychology has become all but invisible in most psychology departments. There are thriving graduate programs in most subspecialties of psychology, except for vocational psychology. Textbooks on adolescent development give scant attention to the critical tasks of adolescence that are in the domain of vocational psychology, such as the development of a vocational identity and the discovery of one’s possible roles in the world of work. Vocational psychology’s alignment with counseling psychology may be partly to blame. Although clinical psychology has had only mixed success in maintaining the scientist/practitioner model, counseling psychology is more often perceived as having little to do with science and everything to do with practice (Lucas, 1994). Moreover, counseling psychology’s apparent preoccupation with the pursuit of political causes (however worthy they may be) has undermined its perception in the world of scientific psychology. Vocational psychology has become suspect as a scientific discipline, in part through its association with counseling psychology. Another significant problem that afflicts vocational psychology has been recognized as a problem of the entire field of psychology, namely its status of being a “disunified science” (Staats, 1991). Staats’s summary of various characteristics of the disunified science of psychology includes its description as chaotic, inconsistent, nonconsensual, faddish, disorganized, unrelated, and redundant (Staats, 1991, p. 910). The crux of the problem appears to be the preoccupation of psychologists to create novel findings rather than to spend their time finding and exploring interrelationships and organizing and simplifying already available findings. As a result, psychology has “many unrelated methods, findings, problems, theoretical languages, schismatic issues, and philosophical positions” as well as “much mutual discreditation, inconsistency, redundancy, and controversy (Staats, 1991,
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p. 899). Clearly, what applies to psychology in general applies particularly well to vocational psychology. In the area of intervention, vocational psychology is best known for its tests, such as the Strong Interest Inventory (1981) and the Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1970). Increasing utilization of computer-based guidance systems was reported more than a decade ago (Rayman, 1990) and has today become a routine part of the career counseling process, in some cases actually replacing the counselor (Gati, 1996). There is a distinct danger when career counselors rely extensively on the various measurement instruments and neglect properly contextualizing a client’s problems and issues. Proper contextualization, from the perspective of a life-span, developmental vocational psychology means viewing vocational development issues from the perspective of the whole person who is developing within multiple, interconnected contexts (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Moreover, the artificial separation of vocational issues and tasks from other domains of functioning and development risks the creation of fragmented, unrelated, and potentially counterproductive interventions (e.g., Lowman, 1991; Richardson, 1996; Spokane, 1991). A relatively unrecognized problem is the issue of when, in the course of the life-span, vocational psychology is relevant and when vocational psychologists should intervene. Unfortunately, this problem has not received the attention it deserves in vocational psychology. Both research and intervention in vocational psychology tend to be highly concentrated in the high school and college (or young adult) years. Yet, there is evidence to suggest that vocational development takes place in childhood (e.g., Cook et al., 1996; Goldstein & Oldham, 1979; McGee & Stockard, 1991; Seligman, Weinstock, & Heflin, 1991; Stockard & McGee, 1990; Trice, 1991). Early vocational education, vocational guidance in the schools, career counseling throughout one’s work life, and retirement and postretirement counseling should all be considered within the domain of life-span vocational psychology. For a variety of reasons, vocational psychology has not addressed these areas with equal vigor, and some have been substantially neglected or left to other fields, such as education. For vocational psychologists it is imperative that their practice as well as their research covers the life span and that they not confine themselves to samples of convenience (or habit) in research and practice. Ultimately, the most serious threat to the viability of vocational psychology will come from within if the field fails to attract first-rate students, researchers, theoreticians, and scientist/practitioners. The founding fathers and mothers of modern, postwar vocational psychology, with few exceptions, are gone. Although their work continues to provide guidance and direction, the next generation of vocational psychologists needs active leadership to help it to respond creatively to future challenges and opportunities. If Staats (1991) is right in his assessment of what ails (vocational) psychology, what the field needs, more than anything else, are unifiers who can creatively merge what Fishman (1990, as cited by Staats, 1991, p. 906) called “the experimental paradigm (discovery of universal laws), the hermeneutic paradigm (producing qualitative understanding), and the pragmatic paradigm (solving practical problems).”
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External Opportunities Societal changes (e.g., the rapidly increasing number of women in the workforce) and changes in the structure of occupations (e.g., new occupations being created and old ones being eliminated due to the accelerating pace of technological innovation) have created circumstances in which vocational psychology has the potential to touch the lives of every woman, every man, and every child in this country. Of particular interest is the observation that steadily advancing technology, especially in the area of computers and the Internet, has contributed to the development of cohorts of children and young adolescents who are “technowizards” and who have made (at least implicitly) important career decisions long before they are exposed to conventional career guidance. This, of course, represents an immense opportunity for vocational psychology to investigate and understand the vocational development of these precocious children and to offer services that help them to acquire and persist in functional career trajectories that can accommodate the ups and downs of technology cycles. Another set of opportunities for vocational psychology is created by the fact that the life cycle of many occupations has been shortened and occupational pathways have become much less stable and predictable. A significant number of today’s children will work in occupations that have not yet been invented, and a significant number of today’s workers will need to find new jobs because their current occupations will become obsolete. All of this may, given the right circumstances, necessitate more frequent utilization of the knowledge and interventions of vocational psychologists. Just as individuals consult with their tax accountant annually, they may seek an annual career check-up from their vocational psychologist. The boundaries between private life and work are becoming more permeable as we enter the 21st century. While this development contains dangers for the well-being of families and individuals, it also contains opportunities for enhanced quality of life. Instead of leaving the house and traveling to a central work location, such as an office tower or an assembly plant, more and more individuals will have the opportunity to work from home, linked to their colleagues and customers through high-speed computer networks, transmitting audio and video signals in real time. The 9-to-5 schedule may become extinct in many sectors of the economy and individuals will have many options for creating the kind of work schedule and work environment that is most likely to meet their needs and the needs of their families. Vocational psychology, with its broad focus on the individual and work and the interaction between the two, is well positioned to examine these shifting parameters and to deploy counseling and research services to optimize these new arrangements for both individuals and businesses. External Threats The ready availability of computerized assessment instruments, designed to offer “do-it-yourself” career guidance, represents a threat to the field primarily because it is likely to result in individuals not seeking or valuing the kind of comprehensive career counseling that could be offered by vocational psychologists.
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Moreover, there are concerns that even when individuals seek help from career counselors, computer-assisted career guidance is frequently not well integrated into counseling practice (Rayman, 1990). There is little doubt, however, that wellintegrated computer-assisted career counseling can have beneficial consequences, such as requiring less time from counselors to conduct routine tasks and allowing more time to develop refined judgments and sensitive evaluations (Gati, Fassa, & Houminer, 1995). Many modern organizations (including some of the largest employers) have become very different from the organizations in which the concept of career originally took root (Collin, 1996). Team working, participation, continuous quality improvement, and self-development are only some of the catchwords of the new context of careers. Career development seems to have become as much the business of the organization as it is the business of the individual. How vocational researchers and career counselors respond to this new reality may determine whether they will play a viable role in the future. Organizational psychologists, who may have divided allegiances between the organization that is paying them and the employee who is seeking their services, stand ready to step into any vacuum created by hesitation on the part of vocational psychologists to adapt to the new context of career development. Analysis of Strategic Issues Facing Vocational Psychology The greatest strength, as well as the greatest challenge for vocational psychology, is its connection to the larger field of psychology. Although psychology may be a disunited scientific discipline, it offers broad scientific perspectives and scientific expertise in virtually every area touched by people who are thinking about careers, getting ready to enter the world of work, making decisions about careers, building or changing careers, and solving all manner of problems they may encounter in the process. Psychology as a field offers a multiplicity of perspectives on the relationship between person and career, on the one hand, and every conceivable environment or social structure, on the other. Vocational psychology must strengthen its relationship to other subspecialties of psychology and focus on finding relationships,similarities, and synergies rather than on exploring differences in order to set the field apart and justify its existence in relation to other subspecialties. Psychology, in general, and vocational psychology, in particular, could gain a great deal from pursuing these aims systematically and strategically. Vocational psychology has had little or no impact on the formulation of policy, national or local, that affects the vocational development of individuals. A good example of this lack of impact is represented by the formulation of the federal school-to-work initiative. What vocational psychology research was critical to its formulation? Were any vocational psychologists consulted about the advisability of launching the federal initiative? Were vocational psychologists involved in shaping the objectives of the program (or the underlying legislation)? Moreover, have vocational psychologists had a voice in shaping the structure of early childhood programs, such as Head Start, to ensure that what children learn about the world of
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work and occupations serves to open their minds and allows them to believe that they can be whatever they wish to be? Do vocational psychologists play a role in preventing girls from concluding that science is not for them and in preventing boys from concluding that nursing is for girls only? Does vocational psychology research play any meaningful role in public discourse about these issues that profoundly affect the vocational development and career trajectories of future generations? If the answer to any of these questions is anything less than a resounding “yes,” vocational psychology faces an issue that it must address in order to be a viable scientific and professional discipline in our society. A Vision for Vocational Psychology’s Next Decade My vision for vocational psychology is that it will become a truly life-spanoriented science and profession. Life-span developmental psychology would seem to offer the most comprehensive theoretical perspective for making this vision a reality. There is little disagreement about the fact that vocational development has important antecedents in childhood and that it continues throughout adult life. A conceptual framework that covers the entire life span and articulates relationships of the developing person with the various levels of context would seem to perfectly suit the needs of vocational psychologists. Moreover, if used in the spirit of looking for similarities, agreements, and synergies, it would in no way prevent the use of other frameworks, such as social learning theory or various personality theories, as segmental theories. Without the life-span developmental metatheory umbrella, vocational psychology will continue to have great difficulties in trying to lay claim to expertise in vocational development across the life span; with it, the field can legitimately speak on issues related to the vocational development of children, adolescents, and adults of all ages. The second part of my vision is that vocational psychologists earn the right to speak authoritatively on all substantive questions dealing with the vocational development of children, adolescents, and adults by embracing a rigorous research agenda that asks important and consequential questions about the vocational development of individuals at all stages of life. In order to answer such questions, cutting-edge research methodologies would need to become everyday tools of the vocational psychology researcher. The establishment of a national agenda of research on vocational development, funded by such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, and the Department of Labor, should be a top priority for vocational psychologists. It is difficult to envision how this can happen without the establishment of some highly visible graduate training opportunities in vocational psychology. The third part of my vision for vocational psychology is that practitioners be viewed as indispensable resources for all questions, issues, problems, and policies related to vocational development. Clearly, vocational psychologists already have a strong start in this area. They are already respected for their development of psychometrically sound and sophisticated assessment instruments for the measurement of career variables, and they can be found in the career centers of most
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colleges and universities. They do not typically serve the needs of children and young adolescents and they are rarely found in the nation’s secondary schools, where they could be employed as important resources. For example, they could serve as consultants on the design of educational materials, curricula, and programs designed to begin elimination of the sex-role stereotyping of occupations. They could be instrumental in designing strategies for reducing the predominance of women in some occupations and the predominance of men in others and the attendant problems created by such sex-based occupational stratification. In private practice, doctoral-level, licensed (vocational) psychologists should be consulted routinely by women and men facing issues of career transitions, unemployment, or retirement. They should also be the principal resource for assisting individuals with the difficult choices involved in balancing the multiple responsibilities of home and work. Finally, I observe that the future of vocational psychology might depend on how well it can avoid building its reputation around “products that are inconsistent, unrelated, and mutually discrediting” (Staats, 1991, p. 910). To this end, the field of vocational psychology must articulate a clear and consistent mission to which most vocational psychologists must be willing to subscribe. The field must foster and cherish its relations to other subspecialties of psychology, integrating its research findings with those of other areas in order to produce a more coherent, cohesive body of knowledge that addresses every area of vocational development within the larger framework of life-span human development. Perhaps most importantly, the field of vocational psychology can thrive only when its members make a commitment to forego the common practice of mutual discrediting and focus instead on finding ways to weave different theoretical perspectives, and findings obtained with widely different methodologies, into a complementary whole that truly represents all of vocational psychology. REFERENCES Baltes, P. B., & Brim, O. G. (Eds.). (1979). Life-span development and behavior. New York: Academic Press. Baltes, P. B., Lindenberger, U., & Staudinger, U. M. (1998). Life-span theory and developmental psychology. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 1029–1143). New York: Wiley. Baltes, P. B., & Schaie, K. W. (Eds.). (1973). Life-span developmental psychology: Personality and socialization. New York: Academic Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Buehler, C. (1933). Der menschliche Lebenslauf als psychologisches Problem. Leipzig: Hirzel. Campbell, J. P., & Hansen, J.-I. C. (1981). Manual for the SVIB-SCII. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. Clausen, J. A. (1972). The life course of individuals. In M. W. Riley, M. E. Johnson, & A. Foner (Eds.), Aging and society: A sociology of age stratification (pp. 457–574). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Clausen, J. A. (1993). American lives. New York: Free Press. Collin, A. (1996). New relationships between researchers, theorists, and practitioners. In M. L. Savickas & W. B. Walsh (Eds.), Handbook of career counseling theory and practice . Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black.
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Cook, T. D., Church, M. B., Ajanaku, S., Shadish, W. R., Jr., Kim, J.-R., & Cohen, R. (1996). The development of occupational aspirations and expectations among inner-city boys. Child Development, 67, 3368–3385. Crites, J. O. (1969).Vocational psychology. New York: McGraw–Hill. Elder, G. H., Jr. (1968). Adolescent socialization and development. In E. F. Borgatta & W. W. Lambert (Eds.), Handbook of personality theory and research. Chicago: Rand McNally. Elder, G. H., Jr. (1997). The life course and human development. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development (Vol. 1). New York: Wiley. Elder, G. H., Jr. (1998). The life course as developmental theory. Child Development, 69(1), 1–12. Gati, I. (1996). Computer-assisted career counseling: Challenges and prospects. In M. L. Savickas & W. B. Walsh (Eds.), Handbook of career counseling theory and practice. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black. Gati, I., Fassa, N., & Houminer, D. (1995). Applying decision theory to career counseling practice: The sequential elimination approach. Career Development Quarterly, 43, 211–220. Goldstein, B., & Oldham, J. (1979). Children and work: A study of socialization. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Holland, J. L. (1970). The Self-Directed Search: A guide to educatinal and vocational planning. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. Kohn, M. L., & Schooler, C. (1983). Work and personality: An inquiry into the impact of social stratification. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Lowman, R. L. (1991). The clinical practice of career assessment: Interests, abilities, and personality. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Lucas, M. L. (1996). Building cohesiveness between practitioners and researchers: A practitionerscientist model. In M. L. Savickas & W. B. Walsh (Eds.), Handbook of career counseling theory and practice. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black. McGee, J., & Stockard, J. (1991). From a child’s view: Children’s occupational knowledge and perceptions of occupational characteristics. In N. Mandell (Ed.), Sociological studies of child development: Vol. 4. Perspectives on and of Children (pp. 113–136). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Nesselroade, J. R., & Baltes, P. B. (Eds.). (1979). Longitudinal research in the study of behavior and development. New York: Academic Press. Rayman, J. R. (1990). Computers and career counseling. In W. B. Walsh & S. H. Osipow (Eds.), Carrer counseling: Contemporary topics in vocational psychology . Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Richardson, M. S. (1996). From career counseling to counseling/psychotherapy and work, jobs, and career. In M. L. Savickas & W. B. Walsh (Eds.), Handbook of career counseling theory and practice. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black. Seligman, L., Weinstock, L., & Heflin, E. N. (1991). The career development of 10 year olds. Elementary School Guidance and Counseling, 25, 172–181. Spokane, A. R. (1991). Career intervention. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Staats, A. W. (1991). Unified positivism and unification psychology: Fad or new field? American Psychologist, 46(9), 899–912. Sterns, H. L., & Dorsett, J. G. (1994). Career development: A life span issue. Experimental Aging Research, 20(4), 257–264. Stockard, J., & McGee, J. (1990). Children’s occupational preferences: The influence of sex and perceptions of occupational characteristics. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 36(3), 287– 303. Super, D. E. (1980). A life-span, life-space, approach to career development. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 16, 282–298. Super, D. E. (1983). The history and development of vocational psychology: A personal perspective. In W. B. Walsh & S. H. Osipow (Eds.), Handbook of vocational psychology: Foundations (Vol. 1, pp. 5–37). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Super, D. E. (Personal communication, August 21, 1985).
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Trice, A. D. (1991). Stability of children’s career aspirations. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 152(1), 137–139. Vondracek, F. W., Lerner, R. M., & Schulenberg, J. E. (1983). The concept of development in vocational theory and intervention. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 23, 179–202. Vondracek, F. W., Lerner, R. M., & Schulenberg, J. E. (1986). Career development: A life-span developmental approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Received March 1, 2001
The Developmental Perspective in Vocational Psychology Fred W. Vondracek The Pennsylvania State University Vocational psychology has not realized its potential as a developmental science, despite the centrality of its domain across the entire life span and its impressive accomplishments in measuring and modifying career behaviors. Moreover, rapid changes in technology and in the world of occupations have created new opportunities and new challenges. If vocational psychology is to realize its potential in this new reality, it must become a science and profession that can speak authoritatively on all substantive questions dealing with the vocational development of children, adolescents, and adults. It must also seek to integrate its research findings with those of other areas to produce a more coherent, cohesive body of knowledge that addresses every aspect of vocational development within the larger framework of life-span human development. °C 2001 Academic Press
Donald Super, more than any other vocational psychologist, is associated with bringing developmental perspectives to the study of careers. In recounting the history and development of vocational psychology (Super, 1983), he was careful to differentiate vocational psychology from personnel psychology, engineering or human factors psychology, and organizational psychology. He stressed that “vocational psychology focuses on people thinking about careers, preparing for occupations, entering the world of work, pursuing and changing occupations, and leaving the world of work. ...” He further suggested that the term career psychology might be used in place of vocational psychology “to make clear the focus on the developing person in search of and pursuing a vocation rather than on the static or (technologically) changing occupation” (Super, 1983, p. 6). Super’s vision of vocational psychology, shaped by his being a keen observer of its emergence out of the “dustbowl empiricism” of early 20th century American psychology and by half a century of scholarship in the field, has never been matched by its reality. Although Super’s work, culminating in the career rainbow (Super, 1980), was informed by the work of early developmentalists, particularly Charlotte Buehler (1933), he acknowledged that he had not made use of most of the more recent advances in developmental psychology (Super, 1985). At the same time, Super (1983) noted that leading developmental psychologists, in their landmark volumes on life-span theory and research (Baltes & Brim, 1979; Baltes & Schaie, Address correspondence and reprint requests to Fred. W. Vondracek, Human Development & Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, 211D Henderson Building South, University Park, PA 168026505. E-mail: [email protected]. 252 0001-8791/01 $35.00 C 2001 by Academic Press Copyright ° All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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1973; Nesselroade & Baltes, 1979), seemed to be completely unaware of advances in career psychology. There seems to have been little change since then. In their expansive chapter on life-span theory in the Handbook on Child Psychology, Baltes and his colleagues (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 1998) note that there have been advances in demonstrating the usefulness of life-span approaches for “other specialties,” citing, among others, an obscure article by Sterns and Dorsett (1994) that espouses the merits of viewing career development from a life-span perspective. Neither Baltes and his colleagues, nor Sterns and Dorsett seem to be aware of the rather extensive discussion of life-span developmental psychology that has taken place in vocational psychology for almost 2 decades (e.g., Vondracek, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1983; Vondracek, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1986). Lifespan psychologists are certainly not alone in their apparent neglect of vocational psychology in general and Super’s ideal in particular. Although Super claims that the renowned life-course sociologist Glen Elder (1968) used “Career Pattern studyderived theory,” one would be hard pressed to find any reference to Super’s (or any vocational psychologist’s) work in any of Elder’s subsequent work (e.g., Elder, 1997, 1998). The same is true of the work of most other sociologists who have written about phenomena that are central to the work of vocational psychologists (e.g., Clausen, 1972, 1993; Kohn & Schooler, 1983). Clearly, something has happened to prevent vocational psychology from fully realizing the vision of Super and others (e.g., Crites, 1969). In the following pages, I endeavor to examine what went right and what went wrong in the field and I attempt to articulate my vision for a vocational psychology that is part of mainstream psychology while reaching out to related specialties, including the sociology of occupations and human development. In the process, I also address the thorny issue of the relationship between science and profession, research and practice. The end result, I trust, will be an informative examination of some contrasting possible futures for the field of vocational psychology. Internal Strengths The greatest strength of vocational psychology is that its core subject matter is of central importance in the lives of individuals in virtually all modern societies and of critical importance to the welfare of families, communities, and nations. No other discipline can make such sweeping claims. By having life-span developmental metatheory as its guiding conceptual framework, vocational psychology is well positioned to explore, investigate, and understand the antecedents, concomitants, and consequences of vocational behavior. Most essential from this perspective is the centrality of the individual in the process. Unlike occupational sociology, which sees individual behavior determined primarily by institutions and social structures, a life-span-oriented vocational psychology is able to see the individual as producer of his or her own vocational development and occupational future. This is an optimistic view, which empowers individuals to use their talent, their commitment to work, and their judgment to create the careers and the lives that they aspire to.
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Vocational psychology has, not unlike clinical psychology, pursued its version of the scientist/practitioner model. The basic idea behind the model is that optimal outcomes can be achieved when science informs practice and practice, in turn, informs science. Although the model has been questioned, there is little disagreement about the fact that, under ideal circumstances, it may well be the best model around. Indeed, there is nothing unique to vocational psychology that necessarily precludes it from making the scientist /practitioner model work. The impressive array of psychometrically sound assessment instruments in vocational psychology represent an asset whose potential value is immense. In principle, well-designed instruments could guide early vocational development into directions that would facilitate individuals’ optimal use of their strengths and talents. They could facilitate the exploration of vocational interests and work values as well as the acquisition of sound decision-making skills, which could be helpful to individuals time and again as they navigate through the emerging landscape of serial careers. Internal Weaknesses Vocational psychology has become all but invisible in most psychology departments. There are thriving graduate programs in most subspecialties of psychology, except for vocational psychology. Textbooks on adolescent development give scant attention to the critical tasks of adolescence that are in the domain of vocational psychology, such as the development of a vocational identity and the discovery of one’s possible roles in the world of work. Vocational psychology’s alignment with counseling psychology may be partly to blame. Although clinical psychology has had only mixed success in maintaining the scientist/practitioner model, counseling psychology is more often perceived as having little to do with science and everything to do with practice (Lucas, 1994). Moreover, counseling psychology’s apparent preoccupation with the pursuit of political causes (however worthy they may be) has undermined its perception in the world of scientific psychology. Vocational psychology has become suspect as a scientific discipline, in part through its association with counseling psychology. Another significant problem that afflicts vocational psychology has been recognized as a problem of the entire field of psychology, namely its status of being a “disunified science” (Staats, 1991). Staats’s summary of various characteristics of the disunified science of psychology includes its description as chaotic, inconsistent, nonconsensual, faddish, disorganized, unrelated, and redundant (Staats, 1991, p. 910). The crux of the problem appears to be the preoccupation of psychologists to create novel findings rather than to spend their time finding and exploring interrelationships and organizing and simplifying already available findings. As a result, psychology has “many unrelated methods, findings, problems, theoretical languages, schismatic issues, and philosophical positions” as well as “much mutual discreditation, inconsistency, redundancy, and controversy (Staats, 1991,
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p. 899). Clearly, what applies to psychology in general applies particularly well to vocational psychology. In the area of intervention, vocational psychology is best known for its tests, such as the Strong Interest Inventory (1981) and the Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1970). Increasing utilization of computer-based guidance systems was reported more than a decade ago (Rayman, 1990) and has today become a routine part of the career counseling process, in some cases actually replacing the counselor (Gati, 1996). There is a distinct danger when career counselors rely extensively on the various measurement instruments and neglect properly contextualizing a client’s problems and issues. Proper contextualization, from the perspective of a life-span, developmental vocational psychology means viewing vocational development issues from the perspective of the whole person who is developing within multiple, interconnected contexts (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Moreover, the artificial separation of vocational issues and tasks from other domains of functioning and development risks the creation of fragmented, unrelated, and potentially counterproductive interventions (e.g., Lowman, 1991; Richardson, 1996; Spokane, 1991). A relatively unrecognized problem is the issue of when, in the course of the life-span, vocational psychology is relevant and when vocational psychologists should intervene. Unfortunately, this problem has not received the attention it deserves in vocational psychology. Both research and intervention in vocational psychology tend to be highly concentrated in the high school and college (or young adult) years. Yet, there is evidence to suggest that vocational development takes place in childhood (e.g., Cook et al., 1996; Goldstein & Oldham, 1979; McGee & Stockard, 1991; Seligman, Weinstock, & Heflin, 1991; Stockard & McGee, 1990; Trice, 1991). Early vocational education, vocational guidance in the schools, career counseling throughout one’s work life, and retirement and postretirement counseling should all be considered within the domain of life-span vocational psychology. For a variety of reasons, vocational psychology has not addressed these areas with equal vigor, and some have been substantially neglected or left to other fields, such as education. For vocational psychologists it is imperative that their practice as well as their research covers the life span and that they not confine themselves to samples of convenience (or habit) in research and practice. Ultimately, the most serious threat to the viability of vocational psychology will come from within if the field fails to attract first-rate students, researchers, theoreticians, and scientist/practitioners. The founding fathers and mothers of modern, postwar vocational psychology, with few exceptions, are gone. Although their work continues to provide guidance and direction, the next generation of vocational psychologists needs active leadership to help it to respond creatively to future challenges and opportunities. If Staats (1991) is right in his assessment of what ails (vocational) psychology, what the field needs, more than anything else, are unifiers who can creatively merge what Fishman (1990, as cited by Staats, 1991, p. 906) called “the experimental paradigm (discovery of universal laws), the hermeneutic paradigm (producing qualitative understanding), and the pragmatic paradigm (solving practical problems).”
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External Opportunities Societal changes (e.g., the rapidly increasing number of women in the workforce) and changes in the structure of occupations (e.g., new occupations being created and old ones being eliminated due to the accelerating pace of technological innovation) have created circumstances in which vocational psychology has the potential to touch the lives of every woman, every man, and every child in this country. Of particular interest is the observation that steadily advancing technology, especially in the area of computers and the Internet, has contributed to the development of cohorts of children and young adolescents who are “technowizards” and who have made (at least implicitly) important career decisions long before they are exposed to conventional career guidance. This, of course, represents an immense opportunity for vocational psychology to investigate and understand the vocational development of these precocious children and to offer services that help them to acquire and persist in functional career trajectories that can accommodate the ups and downs of technology cycles. Another set of opportunities for vocational psychology is created by the fact that the life cycle of many occupations has been shortened and occupational pathways have become much less stable and predictable. A significant number of today’s children will work in occupations that have not yet been invented, and a significant number of today’s workers will need to find new jobs because their current occupations will become obsolete. All of this may, given the right circumstances, necessitate more frequent utilization of the knowledge and interventions of vocational psychologists. Just as individuals consult with their tax accountant annually, they may seek an annual career check-up from their vocational psychologist. The boundaries between private life and work are becoming more permeable as we enter the 21st century. While this development contains dangers for the well-being of families and individuals, it also contains opportunities for enhanced quality of life. Instead of leaving the house and traveling to a central work location, such as an office tower or an assembly plant, more and more individuals will have the opportunity to work from home, linked to their colleagues and customers through high-speed computer networks, transmitting audio and video signals in real time. The 9-to-5 schedule may become extinct in many sectors of the economy and individuals will have many options for creating the kind of work schedule and work environment that is most likely to meet their needs and the needs of their families. Vocational psychology, with its broad focus on the individual and work and the interaction between the two, is well positioned to examine these shifting parameters and to deploy counseling and research services to optimize these new arrangements for both individuals and businesses. External Threats The ready availability of computerized assessment instruments, designed to offer “do-it-yourself” career guidance, represents a threat to the field primarily because it is likely to result in individuals not seeking or valuing the kind of comprehensive career counseling that could be offered by vocational psychologists.
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Moreover, there are concerns that even when individuals seek help from career counselors, computer-assisted career guidance is frequently not well integrated into counseling practice (Rayman, 1990). There is little doubt, however, that wellintegrated computer-assisted career counseling can have beneficial consequences, such as requiring less time from counselors to conduct routine tasks and allowing more time to develop refined judgments and sensitive evaluations (Gati, Fassa, & Houminer, 1995). Many modern organizations (including some of the largest employers) have become very different from the organizations in which the concept of career originally took root (Collin, 1996). Team working, participation, continuous quality improvement, and self-development are only some of the catchwords of the new context of careers. Career development seems to have become as much the business of the organization as it is the business of the individual. How vocational researchers and career counselors respond to this new reality may determine whether they will play a viable role in the future. Organizational psychologists, who may have divided allegiances between the organization that is paying them and the employee who is seeking their services, stand ready to step into any vacuum created by hesitation on the part of vocational psychologists to adapt to the new context of career development. Analysis of Strategic Issues Facing Vocational Psychology The greatest strength, as well as the greatest challenge for vocational psychology, is its connection to the larger field of psychology. Although psychology may be a disunited scientific discipline, it offers broad scientific perspectives and scientific expertise in virtually every area touched by people who are thinking about careers, getting ready to enter the world of work, making decisions about careers, building or changing careers, and solving all manner of problems they may encounter in the process. Psychology as a field offers a multiplicity of perspectives on the relationship between person and career, on the one hand, and every conceivable environment or social structure, on the other. Vocational psychology must strengthen its relationship to other subspecialties of psychology and focus on finding relationships,similarities, and synergies rather than on exploring differences in order to set the field apart and justify its existence in relation to other subspecialties. Psychology, in general, and vocational psychology, in particular, could gain a great deal from pursuing these aims systematically and strategically. Vocational psychology has had little or no impact on the formulation of policy, national or local, that affects the vocational development of individuals. A good example of this lack of impact is represented by the formulation of the federal school-to-work initiative. What vocational psychology research was critical to its formulation? Were any vocational psychologists consulted about the advisability of launching the federal initiative? Were vocational psychologists involved in shaping the objectives of the program (or the underlying legislation)? Moreover, have vocational psychologists had a voice in shaping the structure of early childhood programs, such as Head Start, to ensure that what children learn about the world of
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work and occupations serves to open their minds and allows them to believe that they can be whatever they wish to be? Do vocational psychologists play a role in preventing girls from concluding that science is not for them and in preventing boys from concluding that nursing is for girls only? Does vocational psychology research play any meaningful role in public discourse about these issues that profoundly affect the vocational development and career trajectories of future generations? If the answer to any of these questions is anything less than a resounding “yes,” vocational psychology faces an issue that it must address in order to be a viable scientific and professional discipline in our society. A Vision for Vocational Psychology’s Next Decade My vision for vocational psychology is that it will become a truly life-spanoriented science and profession. Life-span developmental psychology would seem to offer the most comprehensive theoretical perspective for making this vision a reality. There is little disagreement about the fact that vocational development has important antecedents in childhood and that it continues throughout adult life. A conceptual framework that covers the entire life span and articulates relationships of the developing person with the various levels of context would seem to perfectly suit the needs of vocational psychologists. Moreover, if used in the spirit of looking for similarities, agreements, and synergies, it would in no way prevent the use of other frameworks, such as social learning theory or various personality theories, as segmental theories. Without the life-span developmental metatheory umbrella, vocational psychology will continue to have great difficulties in trying to lay claim to expertise in vocational development across the life span; with it, the field can legitimately speak on issues related to the vocational development of children, adolescents, and adults of all ages. The second part of my vision is that vocational psychologists earn the right to speak authoritatively on all substantive questions dealing with the vocational development of children, adolescents, and adults by embracing a rigorous research agenda that asks important and consequential questions about the vocational development of individuals at all stages of life. In order to answer such questions, cutting-edge research methodologies would need to become everyday tools of the vocational psychology researcher. The establishment of a national agenda of research on vocational development, funded by such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, and the Department of Labor, should be a top priority for vocational psychologists. It is difficult to envision how this can happen without the establishment of some highly visible graduate training opportunities in vocational psychology. The third part of my vision for vocational psychology is that practitioners be viewed as indispensable resources for all questions, issues, problems, and policies related to vocational development. Clearly, vocational psychologists already have a strong start in this area. They are already respected for their development of psychometrically sound and sophisticated assessment instruments for the measurement of career variables, and they can be found in the career centers of most
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colleges and universities. They do not typically serve the needs of children and young adolescents and they are rarely found in the nation’s secondary schools, where they could be employed as important resources. For example, they could serve as consultants on the design of educational materials, curricula, and programs designed to begin elimination of the sex-role stereotyping of occupations. They could be instrumental in designing strategies for reducing the predominance of women in some occupations and the predominance of men in others and the attendant problems created by such sex-based occupational stratification. In private practice, doctoral-level, licensed (vocational) psychologists should be consulted routinely by women and men facing issues of career transitions, unemployment, or retirement. They should also be the principal resource for assisting individuals with the difficult choices involved in balancing the multiple responsibilities of home and work. Finally, I observe that the future of vocational psychology might depend on how well it can avoid building its reputation around “products that are inconsistent, unrelated, and mutually discrediting” (Staats, 1991, p. 910). To this end, the field of vocational psychology must articulate a clear and consistent mission to which most vocational psychologists must be willing to subscribe. The field must foster and cherish its relations to other subspecialties of psychology, integrating its research findings with those of other areas in order to produce a more coherent, cohesive body of knowledge that addresses every area of vocational development within the larger framework of life-span human development. Perhaps most importantly, the field of vocational psychology can thrive only when its members make a commitment to forego the common practice of mutual discrediting and focus instead on finding ways to weave different theoretical perspectives, and findings obtained with widely different methodologies, into a complementary whole that truly represents all of vocational psychology. REFERENCES Baltes, P. B., & Brim, O. G. (Eds.). (1979). Life-span development and behavior. New York: Academic Press. Baltes, P. B., Lindenberger, U., & Staudinger, U. M. (1998). Life-span theory and developmental psychology. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 1029–1143). New York: Wiley. Baltes, P. B., & Schaie, K. W. (Eds.). (1973). Life-span developmental psychology: Personality and socialization. New York: Academic Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Buehler, C. (1933). Der menschliche Lebenslauf als psychologisches Problem. Leipzig: Hirzel. Campbell, J. P., & Hansen, J.-I. C. (1981). Manual for the SVIB-SCII. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. Clausen, J. A. (1972). The life course of individuals. In M. W. Riley, M. E. Johnson, & A. Foner (Eds.), Aging and society: A sociology of age stratification (pp. 457–574). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Clausen, J. A. (1993). American lives. New York: Free Press. Collin, A. (1996). New relationships between researchers, theorists, and practitioners. In M. L. Savickas & W. B. Walsh (Eds.), Handbook of career counseling theory and practice . Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black.
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Trice, A. D. (1991). Stability of children’s career aspirations. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 152(1), 137–139. Vondracek, F. W., Lerner, R. M., & Schulenberg, J. E. (1983). The concept of development in vocational theory and intervention. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 23, 179–202. Vondracek, F. W., Lerner, R. M., & Schulenberg, J. E. (1986). Career development: A life-span developmental approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Received March 1, 2001