LATE ADOLESCENT AND ADULT CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Super’s two major concepts – life role and life stage (values are also important)

ROLE SALIENCE

People have differences in terms of the importance of work to them
Importance of work can also vary depending on their state in life
Salience Inventory – measures 3 aspects of life roles: commitment, participation, and value expectations
Super’s rainbow illustrates life roles
Life roles measured by Salience Inventory listed below:

Life Roles
Studying
Includes a number of activities: during school years – courses, school, studying at library or home
Many people continue their education at some point in their life for pleasure or to enhance their job advancement or success

Working
May start in childhood (e.g. babysitting, mowing lawn, etc.)
Adolescents usually get part-time work
Adults work at one or more jobs at various times in their lives
At retirement, jobs for pay or profit may be for fewer hours than when individuals were younger

Community Service
Includes broad range of voluntary service groups (e.g. social, political, or religious)

Home and Family
Varies greatly depending on age of individual
As adults enter later years, their responsibility for home and family may increase or decrease markedly

Leisure Activities
Nature and importance of leisure varies considerably throughout life
Particularly important for children and adolescents
Lifetime sports – sports that are less physically demanding and require fewer participants, so they are easier for adults to participate in at various times in their lives

For adults, leisure activities become more sophisticated and intellectual (i.e. theatre, books, stocks and bonds, etc.)
Liptak’s Leisure Theory of Career Development: leisure is a substitute for work as a way of trying out new activities, importance of play throughout the lifespan, shows significance of leisure in a variety of life stages, leisure plays a more important role in career development than work (especially in beginning and end of lifespan)

• Early childhood – parents are important influence in development of play and curiosity
• 6 to 12 – school and after-school activities allow for cognitive and motor skill development through play or leisure activity
• Adolescence – team and individual activities (i.e. sports, clubs, and hobbies) helps refine interests and abilities
• 19 to 25 – leisure related to work or education
• Adulthood – leisure related to work or family related activities,

Indicators of the Salience of Life Roles

Nature of involvement changes throughout a person’s life
Involvement is measured in terms of:
• Participation - measures actual behavior of a person
• Commitment - future plans, a desire to be active
• Knowledge - information about a role from experiencing the role or by observing it
• Value Expectations - opportunity for various roles to meet a variety of needs; values measured by

Value Expectation Scale of the Salience Inventory; includes 14 value expectations*:
Ability utilization – using one’s skills and knowledge
Achievement – feeling that one has produced good results
Aesthetics – finding beauty in the role one chooses
Altruism – helping others with problems
Autonomy – independent and working on your own
Creativity – discovering or designing new things
Economic Rewards – to have a have a high standard of living and material things
Lifestyle – plan one’s own activities and live the way you want to
Physical activity – being physically active
Prestige – opportunity for individuals to be acknowledged for what they accomplish
Risk – dangerous or exciting challenges
Social Interaction – being with other people and working in a group
Variety – being able to change work activities
Working Conditions

*The Values Scale also includes authority, personal development, social relations, cultural identity, physical prowess, economic security


ADULT LIFE STAGES

Both age-related (there are typical times when people go through the stages) and NOT age-related (also possible to experience each stage at almost any time during their lifetime)

One can be involved in several stages at once

MAXICYCLE – five major life stages

MINICYCLE – describes the growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and disengagement that can occur within any of the stages in the maxicycle


Basic Stages of Career Development
Exploration – 15 to 25 years old, the efforts that individuals make to get a better idea of occupational information, choose career alternatives, decide on occupations, and start to work.
Crystallizing – clarify what they want to do, learn about entry-level jobs, typically high school students, narrow choices
Specifying - college graduates, early 20’s, high school students who go straight to work, must choose their first full-time job, specify their preferences so they may find an employer
Implementing - last phase prior to working, making plans to fulfill their career objectives, start to network, talking to university counselor

Establishment - 25 to 45, getting established in one’s work by starting in a job that is likely to mean the start of working life, work in an occupation that will probably be steady for many years, for semi- and unskilled workers, it refers to the person who works for much of his or her lifetime.
Stabilizing - settling down in a job and being able to meet those job requirements that will ensure that a person can stay in the field in which he started, apprehensive about whether he has the skills necessary to stay with the work
Consolidating - starts to become more comfortable with work and wants to be a dependable producer, competent, and reliable
Advancing - occurs any time in the establishing stage, moving ahead into a position of more responsibility with higher pay

Maintenance - 45 to 65, not advancing, but maintaining their status in work. Find out how their work will change in the future
Holding - some level of success has been attained, concerned with holding onto the position that they have
Updating - updating workers on changes in their field, learning new things
Innovating - making progress in one’s profession, develop new skills

Disengagement - continue to use their mental capacities for growth and at the same time disengage from various activities (e.g. work)
Deceleration - slowing down one’s work responsibility (i.e. finding easier ways to do work or spending less time at work)
Retirement Planning - financial planning and planning activities to do when retired, individuals return to crystallization stage
Retirement Living - late 60’s, leisure, home and family, and community service becomes more important than work

Recycling - Not everyone follows stages in a neat orderly outline, may reenter any stage at any time


SUPER’S LIFE STAGES OF WOMEN

Seven career patterns for women:
_ Stable homemaking career pattern - get married soon after school and do not work
_ Conventional career pattern - enter work after high school or college, but after marrying, they are full-time homemakers
_ Stable career working pattern - after school, work continuously
_ Double-track career pattern - combine work and homemaking
_ Interrupted career pattern - enter work, then marry and full-time homemaking, then go back to work after children are older
_ Unstable career pattern - drop out of workforce, return, drop out, return.
_ Multiple-trial career pattern - works, but never really establishes career, has a number of unrelated jobs in her career
Others suggest ways to manage careers, such as making decisions decision with partner

Bardwick - Bardwick described typical experiences of women at various points in their adult life
_ Many women between 30 to 40 who have been involved in a career are concerned with not wanting to delay having children any longer
Many women are concerned with balancing their professional role and their feminine role
_ Between 40 to 50, women start to develop more autonomy and to become more independent. Women got back to work after children have gotten older, not a time of maintenance, but of career accomplishments
_ Bardwick is contrasted with Super by her notion that marriage and family are important to women’s career decision making and planning
_ Ecological perspective focuses on relationship between women and their environment


LIFE STAGES OF CULTURALLY DIVERSE ADULTS

Minority Identity Development (Atkinson, et al.)

_ Conformity - prefer majority culture
_ Dissonance - through information and experience, encounter conflict and confusion between values of own culture and majority’s
_ Resistance and immersion - rejects dominant culture and embraces minority culture
_ Introspection - begins to question total acceptance of minority culture
_ Synergetic articulation and awareness - incorporates cultural values of both the dominant group and other minorities

COUNSELOR ISSUES

Be aware of life stages of counselor in contrast with the client.