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CAREER
DEVELOPMENT
MODELS
FOR THE
21S T C E N T U R Y
By Jon Schlesinger and Lauren Pasquarella Daley
24/JOURNAL APRIL 2016
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AC
BD
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D
Narrative Theory: Narrative career theories
are based around the concept of storytelling
and making meaning from career stories.
Planned Happenstance and Happenstance
Learning Theory: These are approaches that
embrace the role of chance in career development.
Career Construction and Life-Design Theory:
A natural extension from the narrative theory, Career
Construction also uses story, reflecting that people
use stories to organize their lives, construct their
identities, and make sense of their problems.
Chaos Theory of Careers:
Chaos Theory of Careers is an approach to understanding
career development describing both the content and the
process of career development.
APRIL 2016 JOURNAL/25
Time for a Change
Models of career development are
important for practitioners, as they
provide a roadmap and a framework
for understanding the process of how
careers are formed. Working with a
model of career development helps us
all better answer the question, “How
do people come to select or acquire a
career?” Working without a model is a
bit like driving a car without using your
GPS; you might end up where you want,
but the GPS can provide better directions
and multiple routes when unexpected
roadblocks appear. Models of career
development help us work more effi-
ciently and better integrate services.
In the last several years, there have
been increasing calls from the field
to create more integrated ecosystems,
communities, and focus on career net-
works within career centers (Dey &
Cruzvergara, 2014). While we are reas-
sessing the role of career services, we
should also be examining the underly-
ing career development models used to
frame our conversations. Career devel-
opment models have not always kept
pace with actual careers or workers.
The world of work and the demograph-
ics of workers has changed dramatically
in the last several years. Millennials
now make up the largest single share
of the work force; in fact, “more than
one-in-three American workers today
are Millennials (adults ages 18 to 34
in 2015)” (Fry, 2014). This generation
also includes the largest share of adults
identifying as non-white (43 percent)
(Fry, 2014). As we are becoming a more
diversified, multiracial work force, we
need career development theories that
better account for people today and
integrate diverse perspectives.
Career development theories for the
21st century need to be holistic, look-
ing at career development and decision
making for all individuals, and reflect
the lifelong career development process.
A holistic framework better aligns with
today’s emphasis on career communi-
ties, diverse students, and changing
ways of working. Although there are
other career development models that
can address 21st century needs, here we
outline four prominent models.
Four Models for
Career Development
Narrative Theory
Narrative career theories are based
around the concept of storytelling and
making meaning from career stories.
From this perspective, “career” is
seen as a story where students serve
as active players, narrating the past,
present, and future (Cochran, 1997).
Narrative interventions revolve around
making meaning from attending to,
dissecting, and discussing the overall
career story and all of the subsequent
parts. These include, for example, the
plot, the players/people involved, the
settings/environments, the actions/
experiences, the timeline/how and
when events occurred, the instruments/
one’s abilities, values, or important
detractors/helpers, and any wavering/
changing paths (Cochran, 1997). In this
model, when a career problem exists in a
student’s story, it often presents as inde-
cision and is seen as positive, indicating
that a student can explore and actively
clarify where his or her story is going.
Cochran (1997) outlined a seven-
step, episodic approach to address
career concerns through a narrative lens
that involves helping a student explore
and make meaning in early episodes,
take action in the middle episodes, and
then crystallize/move forward with the
story in later episodes.
In the early episodes of Cochran’s
(1997) approach, practitioners help
to elaborate the career story, using
assessments such as card sorts, interest
inventories, collages, career genograms,
autobiographies, or timelines. These
help the student make meaning around
the gap between where he or she is and
wants to go, understand the role of his/
her history in the career problem, and
draw out where he/she wants the story
to go into the future. This re-storying
helps shape what actions to take to
make the story a reality, trying out dif-
ferent roles or options, and crystallizing
choices. Narrative theory facilitates
practitioners in helping students try on
multiple career roles and beliefs. All
this is done to help the student move
forward with career planning.
Many narrative interventions incor-
porate language from and use literary
metaphors, which transcend cultures.
Using narrative career theory in a
career center works well for students in
individual and group settings. Assess-
ments and matching activities can play
a role in narrative approaches, as they
help students understand the influ-
ences, players, and plot. However, it is
important to note that assessments are
best used as conversation starters to
help make meaning and re-story future
narratives; other, more open-ended
interventions assist with understanding
where the story has come from to help
move the narrative into the future.
While narrative approaches might
seem to emphasize the past, they are
focused on using a story to identify and
understand the career problem. Shift-
ing a focus to creating the future story
allows the student to move into plan-
ning and take concrete actions. These
active interventions include traditional
activities such as taking internships,
attending career events, and speak-
ing with recruiters, all of which can
be powerful tools for students trying
on new roles. “Story” as a fundamen-
tal part of career learning has helped
move theories that incorporate narra-
tives into many practitioners’ tool kits
as an essential career development
framework.
Career Construction and
Life-Design Theory
A natural extension from the narra-
tive theory, Career Construction also
uses story, reflecting that “people use
stories to organize their lives, construct
their identities, and make sense of
their problems” (Savickas, 2015, p. 9).
Career Construction theory, advanced
by Savickas (2005), approaches career
26/JOURNAL APRIL 2016
development by exploring the subjec-
tive patterns and meanings individuals
create around work through story.
Building on established career
development theories, Career Con-
struction augments them to examine
career development and decision
making focused on the individual per-
spective. The three main elements of
Career Construction theory are voca-
tional personality, career adaptability,
and life theme (Savickas, 2005).
Building on traditional career theo-
ries, Career Construction’s vocational
personality examines individuals’
abilities, needs, values, and interests;
in this sense, it resembles the RIASEC
hexagon, but Career Construction also
recognizes that this typology is socially
constructed, with no reality outside the
instrument (Savickas, 2005). Interests
are recognized as dynamic—changing
and shifting naturally—and rehearsed in
a range of activities over time. As impor-
tant as interests are, career adaptability
explores how careers are developed by
IMPLEMENTING A NEW CAREER DEVELOPMENT THEORY: A CASE STUDY
While there is not just one right way to implement a new career development theory, we offer one example that demonstrates how
a new theory (in this case, CTC) was implemented into a college career center.
In selecting the theory, we first spent time reflecting on how the theory might work with our population. We asked:
• How will this theory influence student learning outcomes and measures of success?
• What services or offerings would change?
• What services would more easily integrate into the new model, and which ones might prove more difficult?
• How can the theory be integrated into workshops, resources, events, and materials?
• What professional development activities will help staff support this theory?
• How would this theory impact other units in the career center?
Next, after selecting the theory, we established new student
learning outcomes (SLOs) and measures of success. This, in
turn, made it easier to review, create, and adapt services. In
determining specific SLOs, we moved away from “made a ca-
reer decision” as the successful outcome for individual services
to “gained comfort with the uncertainty in the career process.”
As a result, this changed the foundation of student-focused
activities to emphasize creating opportunities for chance events,
taking action, and reframing the idea that career paths may
inevitably shift as positive events.
Another piece of the implementation process was gaining
buy-in from stakeholders external to the career center, includ-
ing parents, faculty, administrators, recruiters, and advisers.
This required a common language. Instead of discussing
chance, happenstance, or chaos, we discussed the need for
students to “create flexible plans” and “take action to put
themselves in the path of opportunity.” Demonstrating the
applicability of the theory for today’s students and employers
also helped create buy-in campus-wide, and trainings and
campus meetings designed to educate stakeholders helped to
extend the common language across campus. In discussions
with stakeholders, to illustrate the theory, we helped them
APRIL 2016 JOURNAL/27
individuals through the stories they tell
about how they are adapting and inte-
grating their self-knowledge with their
environment (Savickas, 2005). Adap-
tive individuals exhibit concern about
their future as workers, increasing the
control they have over their future,
are curious about their future selves,
and gain the confidence to pursue their
aspirations (Savickas, 2005).
What makes Career Construction
powerful in exploring both vocational
personality and career adaptability
together comes through examining an
individual’s life theme. The life theme
is the story about why individuals
make their choices and decisions; it is
a story of the integration into a holis-
tic self-constructed concept: “Career
stories explain why individuals make
the choices that they do and the private
meaning that guides these choices”
(Savickas, 2005). The Career Con-
struction framework brings a narrative,
holistic, and self-constructed emphasis
to career development.
Building upon the work of Career
Construction, Savickas and colleagues
developed life-design counseling spe-
cifically to address 21st century needs
of career development (Savickas, Nota,
Rossier, Dauwalder, Duarte, Guichard,
Soresi, Van Esbroeck, van Vianen,
2009). Savickas (2015) makes the dis-
tinction that life design is not a theory
or a model, but a discourse to describe
how practitioners can use Career Con-
struction theory. In laying out a manual,
Savickas, et. al (2009) described the
necessity for a new paradigm requiring
shifts in thinking for practitioners. The
most important shifts include the focus
on the process of career not being a
prescription, the individuals’ subjective
experiences, and the non-linear reality
of work and individuals’ experiences
(Savickas, et. al, 2009). The process
of life design reflects existing learning
cycles, focusing on constructing narra-
tives, deconstructing limited and false
beliefs, reconstructing new narratives,
and co-constructing a plan of action.
This concrete process and the Career
Construction Interview (Savickas,
2015) moves Career Construction and
life design from theory to practice with
very tangible exercises.
Planned Happenstance and
Happenstance Learning Theory
Planned Happenstance (Mitch-
ell, Levin, and Krumboltz, 1999)
and Happenstance Learning Theory
(Krumboltz, 2009) are approaches
that embrace the role of chance in
career development. Both theories are
evolutions of Social Learning Theory
(Krumboltz, Mitchell, & Jones, 1976),
in which career choice is based on
genetic and environmental factors,
combined with learning experiences
around them. In other words, happen-
stance describes how individuals learn
about careers and develop career inter-
ests through planned and unplanned
events. (Note: Many of the traditional
career development models sought to
eliminate unplanned or chance events
by focusing on a few narrow factors.
The elimination of chance events in
our lives is not possible in any practical
sense, and attempting to do so would be
to cut oneself off from all interaction.)
Moving social learning experiences
forward, Krumboltz (2009) emphasizes
four important propositions. The first is
perhaps the most important: The goal in
career work is to help students learn to
take action, as opposed to make a singu-
lar decision (Krumboltz, 2009). Instead
of teaching students to reduce chance,
Planned Happenstance teaches them
to embrace unplanned events as desir-
able and necessary. Helping students
create and capitalize on this unpredict-
ability is vital for today’s careers—they
need to learn how to make decisions and
take action throughout their careers.
The second proposition highlights that
exploring values, interests, personal-
ity, and skills is helpful to understand
choices, but should not be used to
match individuals to specific careers
(Krumboltz, 2009). Instead, students
must push their exploration into action
understand how complexity, chance, and change impacted their own lives.
As we began to implement CTC, we recognized college students, in particular,
needed a framework for understanding and interpreting their own career development
through this new lens. Students and stakeholders were familiar with a traditional four-
year plan; however, that rigid linear frame no longer fit from a CTC perspective. As a
result, we developed a new framework and model for applying CTC in a college career
center. The model, which we refer to as “EPSA” for simplicity, features four phases:
1) explore majors and careers, 2) prepare for an internship and job search, 3) start
an internship and job search, and 4) adapt to a changing world (Schlesinger & Daley,
2016). To illustrate the nonlinear nature of the phases, the lack of true start and end
points, and the continual movement students will undertake throughout their career
development, we use a Mobius strip with the phases noted on it.
By not constraining the phases in traditional linear steps and keeping the model
flexible, adaptable, and open to change, we were able to lessen students’ career
anxiety and meet the needs of our stakeholders. For example, using this model, we
embraced students interacting with the career center at any point of their devel-
opment. The EPSA framework allowed students to understand that their career
planning is a process with no beginning or end, and that they are never too late to
take steps forward at any point, knowing they can adapt their path if new opportuni-
ties arise. As a result of our planning, we were able to incorporate the framework
into our services and resources, creating an integrated program with a 21st century
career development model.
28/JOURNAL APRIL 2016
Chaos Theory of Careers
Chaos Theory of Careers (CTC) is an
approach to understanding career devel-
opment describing both the content and
the process of career development.
CTC has its roots in general systems
theories arising out of math and sci-
ence, linking career development to the
functioning of the natural world (Pryor
& Bright, 2014). Since 2003, Pryor and
Bright have been extending and refin-
ing CTC through theory, research, and
practice with high school and college
students (Pryor & Bright, 2014).
CTC understands career develop-
ment as a complex dynamical system
characterized by complexity, intercon-
nectedness, and susceptibility to change
(Pryor & Bright, 2011). The complex
dynamical system is a key element in
the understanding of CTC; it accurately
describes how individual systems pro-
duce large changes from seemingly
small interactions (Pryor & Bright,
2011). The complex dynamical system
in career development moves CTC
toward a 21st century understanding of
career. Career is framed at the outset
as a system with multiple influences
by engaging in activities that help them
recognize and capitalize on unplanned
events. That is what is meant by
Planned Happenstance—the idea that
one is planning actions and open to rec-
ognizing opportunities, which occur in
an unpredictable way, so one can ben-
efit from them in a meaningful way
throughout the career.
Happenstance Learning Theory
frames five components for practi-
tioners to put the theory into action,
and offers a number of helpful ques-
tions to prompt student discussions
(Krumboltz, 2009). Career centers and
practitioners can find a number of ways
to use happenstance as a career develop-
ment model. As Dey and Cruzvergara
(2014) noted, networks and communi-
ties, in addition to traditional career
center activities—including network-
ing, career events, and informational
interviews—can support happenstance.
For students, the ideas of chance and
taking action to create career progress
can be challenging and exciting. Often,
students accept this idea only after dis-
cussing their experiences or after a
new career success from a seemingly
unplanned event.
Jon Schlesinger,
M.Ed., LPC,
director of the Hiatt
Career Center at
Brandeis University,
oversees the career
development
team, providing
leadership on career topics and
programs. Schlesinger has worked
in career centers at the University
of Colorado Boulder, University of
Florida, and Northwestern University.
His focus is on career development,
CTC, assessment, and student
learning outcomes. He speaks on
career development topics, including
CTC, and is a frequent presenter
at National Career Development
Association events. He has an article
on applying CTC in college career
centers appearing in the June 2016
issue of the Journal of Employment
Counseling.
Lauren
Pasquarella Daley,
Ph.D., LMHC,
MCC, NCC, has
more than 16
years’ experience
in counseling
and career
development, having worked in both
university and private practice career
services settings. Daley has a Ph.D.
in Counselor Education, participated
in the NCDA’s Leadership Academy,
is a former president of the Florida
Career Development Association, and
holds the Master Career Counselor
(MCC) designation from NCDA.
She received the NACE/SJG Rising
Star Award in 2010. She currently
has a small career counseling
private practice, and works for
Catalyst, a nonprofit organization
that accelerates progress for women
through workplace inclusion. Daley
worked in university career services
for more than 10 years. She has
had her work published in peer-
reviewed journals and has presented
extensively on women in the
workplace, career development, and
diversity and inclusion.
APRIL 2016 JOURNAL/29
contextual in fluence s at play in ca reer
development and decision making.
As illustrated with happenstance,
chance is an important aspect in any
career development model. Embrac-
ing chance and actively seeking out
new opportunities enables more open
systems thinking. Change is one of
the characteristics that makes CTC
unique and purely modern; change is
fundamental to careers, as interests,
values, and any number of other fac-
tors will change over time. With CTC
as a guide, practitioners work to help
students become comfortable with
change, better understand and explore
how patterns of interest develop, and
learn how to create new opportunities.
Choose One Model and
Move Forward
Narrative, Career Construction, Hap-
penstance Learning Theory, and Chaos
Theory of Careers are a few theories
that, to our thinking, better reflect the
current state of career development.
The models discussed here have a
number of similarities. All move away
from objective test-and-tell methods
to focus on individual experiences.
In addition, they are student-centric,
allowing for much greater diversity of
student experiences and backgrounds.
These approaches also better reflect
student preferences for individualized
services.
While students benefit from indi-
vidualized services, individualized
or siloed career centers do not benefit
anyone. Career centers should have
an appropriate career development
model so that all parts of the orga-
nization—mission, vision, learning
outcomes, strategic planning, stake-
holder relations, marketing, career and
educational events, and so forth—can
be aligned.
One theoretically aligned plan is more
powerful at advancing the brand of
career services and educating students.
Choose one, and move forward.
where change is continual. From this
perspective, CTC provides a holistic
model and creates a framework to help
individuals understand and process
their own career development.
The mathematical origin of chaos
theory provides language to describe
systems and their interplay with
career development. Attractors define
in psychological and career terms
how individuals interact with sys-
tems and become bounded in patterns
of feedback (Pryor & Bright, 2011).
One attractor stands out as the best
representation of reality and career
development: the strange attractor,
which describes an open system rep-
resenting unpredictable events and
individuals’ reactions to them (Pryor
& Bright, 2011). The motion of the
strange attractor is complex, but not
in exactly the same way each time
so that it becomes sensitive to small
changes and new emerging patterns
(Pryor & Bright, 2014). The strange
attractor is an important illustration of
how logical, rational planning meets
creativity and imagination in career
development. In exploring the strange
attractor in action, we see both com-
plexity and patterns that are similar,
but not exact repeats. Understanding
past patterns of behavior is informa-
tive, but limiting in terms of long-term
prediction. CTC emphasizes the limi-
tations of prediction when it comes to
career, and focuses on the patterns and
themes in career development.
Providing a foundation for under-
standing CTC in action, Pryor &
Bright (2011) discuss three C’s—
complexity, chance, and change—as
overlapping elements that describe
the situational factors, unplanned
events, and continual changes in
career development. For many prac-
titioners, the three C’s help move
CTC from theory into practice. Com-
plexity describes all the situational
factors that will influence and alter
an individual’s career plans. Rather
than focusing exclusively on values,
interests, personality, and skills,
CTC recognizes the vast number of
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