Thursday, November 6, 2008

Blog about Storytelling and Career

http://astoriedcareer.com/2005/05/storynarrative-in-career-couns.html#more

This whole blog is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to utilize narrative and storytelling in their counseling practice.

This particular link leads to the first post in a long line of information that is pertinent to this particular subject.

Thank you Karen Hansen, PhD.

NARRATIVE APPROACH TO CAREER COUNSELING

Clients narrate or tell about their past career development, present career development, and construct their future career.

This is an active approach that attends to how clients intentionally interact with the world and learn about it through these interactions.

Focuses on the clients’ lives.

Similar to a play or psychodrama, in which clients enact their lives; career is seen as a story.

Application of concepts from literary criticism
_ agent - client, narrator, author of story
_ setting - where story occurs, also important people such as family, friends, etc.
_ action - designed to reach a goal that will satisfy needs of agent
_ instrument - what agent uses to reach goal


Storytelling

Client’s narration has a beginning (difficult or troubling situation), middle (obstacles and instruments that may be used in working toward reaching a personal goal), and end (counselor and client work together to develop solutions that will provide satisfaction and to reach a goal that will satisfy client).


Goals of Assessment in Narrative Counseling

Counselor is like an editor. Find out what is important from client’s story and what’s not
Identify patterns in clients’ lives
Form a sense of the client’s identity
Learn about the client’s goals for the future


Narrative Career Counseling

Counselor’s role is to help clarify the narrative and help client make career decisions
Counselors should listen for 3 important elements in a story
Coherence (should make sense chronologically or in terms of sequence of events)
Continuity (story should be able to be seen in terms of action that is directed toward a goal)
Causality (being able to explain events)


Cochran’s Narrative Career Counseling

Cochran describes 7 “episodes” or phases in career counseling using a narrative point of view
First three episodes - emphasize making a meaning out of the career narrative
Episodes 4-6 - focus on enactment or being active
Episode 7 - refers to crystallization of a decision

1. Elaborating a Career Problem
Clarify the client’s concern¼fill in gap of what is actually happening to client and his ideal
Ordinary conversation is primary way of elaborating
Also vocational card sort, construct laddering, interest and values inventories, ability tests
Drawing
Anecdotes - short stories that clients tell that help counselor understand aspects of clients’ lives

2. Composing a Life History
Two basic intentions - (1) to gather information about client’s interests, values, abilities, and motives; (2) to attend to the way clients select and organize their life stories
Ask clients to describe important events in their lives and discuss their meaning
Dramatization - counselor becomes the narrator and may refer to the client in third person
Other techniques - success experiences, lifelines, career-o-gram, and life chapters

3. Eliciting a Future Narrative
Clients consider their strengths, interests, and values as they may appear in the future
Focus is on evaluation of one’s strengths, interests, and values
Use same techniques from previous stage, with an emphasis on future
Guided fantasy - descriptive and/or evaluative, often represents an end point (something to help client reflect on accomplishments that he would like to have)
Written and narrative outline - Five sections: mission, strengths, work needs, vulnerabilities, and possibilities

4. Reality Construction
Taking action in the world of work; three purposes to active exploration:
(1) Immerses client in the real world
(2) Clients get information from a variety of sources and are able to evaluate the information as they talk to many sources
(3) Can imagine themselves in an occupation

5. Changing a Life Structure
Change in situation, oneself, or both
Clients often expect to make a change in the way they work or who they work with
New opportunities arise (e.g. salary increase, training, etc.); also negative aspects (e.g. fear of failing, anxiety about doing a poor job)

6. Enacting a Role
Trying things out to make one’s desired goals possible
Some start with a small role which may lead to larger ones

7. Crystallizing a Decision
Occurs when a gap between a client’s career problem and the ideal or possible solutions diminishes. Sometimes takes place when clients experience the previous six episodes.

Can be facilitated in three ways:
Identifying and eliminating obstructions
Actualizing opportunities
Reflecting on career decisions
Internal obstructions (lack of confidence in being able to obtain a job) to crystallizing vs. external obstructions (pressures from parents to enter a certain occupation)


THE ROLE OF ASSESSMENT

Inventories and assessments play a small role in constructivist career counseling¼since clients see their own realities. Tests and inventories can be used for all individuals (but will not help in understanding the perceptual world of the client)


THE ROLE OF OCCUPATIONAL INFORMATION

Can integrate occupational information in reptest, laddering, and vocational card sort and other techniques


APPLYING THE THEORIES TO WOMEN AND CULTURALLY DIVERSE POPULATIONS

Culture and gender interact within the context of client actions; stories or histories exist within a cultural context. How one views an action can have varying cultural interpretations.
Gender and culture guide how people develop attitudes, skills, and values
Young and colleagues have studied career projects in adolescence by studying pairs of adolescents and parents. A career project is a series of actions that adolescents and their parents take that is related to the adolescent’s choice of career.


COUNSELOR ISSUES

Counselors should be aware of their own perceptions of reality.
Understand the relationship fo the counselor’s constructs to those of the client.

CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH TO CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Constructivism - Psychological approach that has developed out of a philosophical position, postmodernism, which believes that individuals construct or perceive their own reality or truth, and that there is no fixed truth.
_ Related to postmodernism
_ View individuals as creating their own views of events and relationships in their lives
_ Constructivist counselors help clients see problems as meaningful options that are no longer helpful
_ Constructivist counselors deal with the ways in which their clients impose their own order on their problems and how they derive meanings from their experiences with others

Postmodernism - Reaction to modernism, which takes a rationalist approach that emphasizes scientific proof and is a reflection of advances in technology and science
_ Reflects a multiculturally diverse world in which different individuals can have their own construct or view of what is real for them

PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY

_ Most closely related to the work of George Kelly (The Psychology of Personal Constructs)
_ Constructive alternativism - individuals view the world differently from each other, to make sense of the world, people develop constructs or theories toward viewing people and events
_ Individuals behave as scientists predicting events by advancing theories about them and then testing the theories, constructs are continually modified to enhance predictions

Constructs
Bipolar-reflecting opposites (e.g. smart vs. stupid)
Not all constructs are applied to all events
Constructs are arranged in terms of how meaningful they are to individuals
Can be grouped into themes (e.g. related to the work role and to vocational choice)
Not events, but perception of events

Vocational construct system
_ Helps individuals to find a purpose in work
_ Control how they work
_ Evaluate the choices they make and the work that they do
_ Develop a sense of identity through work
_ Changes as an individual develops

Assessment and Counseling Strategies
Techniques that help assess clients’ perceptions of constructs about themselves and the occupational world are likely to lead to new constructs and the development of themes
Counselor interacts in a very collaborative way with the client

The Vocational Reptest
Most used instrument in construct theory
“Role Construct Repertory Test” is the full name
Client provides much of the information used in the reptest
Clients describe constructs related to occupations
Client is asked to compare and contrast various sets of items (e.g. occupations)
After comparing occupations, client would be asked to rate them
Requires time devoted to writing, ranking, and scoring

Laddering Technique
A means of determining which constructs are most important to clients
Helps identify the relative importance of the constructs within their system of constructs
Starts with choosing three occupations and then developing constructs about them by asking questions about them
Counselor continues to focus on questions about constructs as he moves up the “ladder”
Helps to clarify own feelings

Vocational Card Sort
VCS is a group of 60 to 100 cards with the name of an occupation on one side and information about the occupation on the other side
Clients are asked to sort the cards in three groups
_ Occupations one would consider or find acceptable
_ Those that one would not choose
_ Those that one is uncertain about
Then client must divide the three piles in any way by placing the cards in groups that have common reasons for acceptance or rejection
Counselor is attempting to determine the values or constructs that are important.