Edwin L. Herr

Vocational maturity: The effects of school, grade, curriculum and sex

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the usefulness of the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI) as a measure of vocational maturity. Using longitudinal data collected over three points in time from three large school systems, answers were sought to each part of the following question: Does the mean VDI score differ (a) among three school systems, (b) among four curricula, (c) among three grades, (d) and between males and females? The statistical methodology used was analysis of variance. The findings indicate that scores on the CMI incrementally increase by grade level. However, the rate and level of this increase is influenced by sex, school, and curriculum effects.

Career Development and Mental Health

ConclusionWhile the extent of linkages and the patterning of the relationships between career development and mental health is yet to be fully studied and articulated, this paper has argued that such connections do exist. Given such a premise, it has been contended that career counseling does serve as a therapeutic modality as it provides dislocated, unhappy, maladjusted or underemployed workers information, support, encouragement, and skills that increase personal competence, facilitate hope, and reduce feelings of being a social isolate of little worth or dignity. Skill building or psychoeducational approaches can deal directly with such matters as anger management, assertiveness, planfulness, interpersonal competence, openness to constructive supervision. These are matters of educating people for choice, for purpose, and for development, approaches which help people to create reality and make meaning for themselves within the context of work and career. As such they are therapeutic ways of engendering mental health.

Career(s) education in Britain and the USA: Contrasts and common problems

Abstract An analysis of the meanings attached to ‘careers education’ in Britain and to ‘career education’ in the USA reveals a number of important differences, each of which identifies questionable assumptions in the careers education model emerging in Britain. Attention is also addressed to three major problems which have received inadequate attention in both countries: the socio-political aims of career(s) education, the extent to which it should be concerned with paid employment, and the relationship between the content of careers education curricula and the institutional structures within which these curricula are based.

The Impact of Career Education Courses on Career Beliefs and Career Decision Making among Business College Students in Taiwan.

the tightening economy. Therefore, starting in 1991 and continuing to 1997, a Six-Year Career Guidance Plan was implemented by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. One goal of this plan is to have career education implemented as either integral to or interactive with the learning system. As a result, career education is seen by the Ministry of Education as central to the mission of higher education. If a career education course for Taiwan’s college students becomes part of the higher education requirement, the contributions of career education

Career counselling: A process in process

Abstract Career counselling, career guidance, and career interventions are terms in the process of evolution. Historical and contemporary factors in the US experience that have changed and expanded the needs for career counselling and related career interventions are discussed. For many work-adjustment problems, in particular, there is a growing acknowledgement that career and personal counselling must fuse. Where this fusion occurs, on a continuum from choice, indecision, and situational concerns to change, indecisiveness, and personal concerns, is analysed.

Social Contexts for Career Guidance Throughout the World

The Pennsylvania State University, USA It is difficult to fully understand either career guidance or individual behaviour in isolation from the social contexts in which they function. Neither individual behaviour nor career guidance occurs in a vacuum, removed from the continuous transactions with social norms, mass media, behavioural expectations, policies and regulations, cultural traditions, definitions of acceptable roles, beliefs and values that comprise the field of stimuli in which individual behaviour and career guidance processes are constantly immersed. Such stimuli occur with different levels of intensity, intimacy, relevance and credibility as they shape and reinforce individual behaviour or the form and substance of career guidance processes, programs, or systems. Social contexts also provide the conditions that shape individual self-concepts or identity, the content and nature of the occupational structure, the form and freedom of access to work, and who is likely to obtain what types of work. Thus, the social context influences the choices available to individuals and reinforces some career behaviour while rejecting other behaviour. Elements of the social context also influence how guidance and family roles are conceived, the types of achievement and aspirations that are nurtured, and the types of knowledge about opportunities that is filtered to subpopulations of people through cultural, racial, and socioeconomic lenses. The social context, then, is also the seed-bed for career concerns that become the content of career guidance (Herr, 1996). Kleinman (1988), a psychiatrist and anthropologist, has put the transactional nature of human behaviour as follows:

Perspectives on Career Assessment of Work-Bound Youth

In this article, work-bound youth are identified as an adolescent subpopulation whose goals are to attain occupational skills and to enter the workforce immediately on leaving secondary school. The characteristics of this population are discussed, and their needs for systematic career interventions are described. Particular emphasis is given to this groups need for career assessment, the types of assessments that may be useful, and the application of the Super, Osborne, Brown, Walsh, and Niles (1992) Career Development Assessment and Counseling (C-DAC) model as a frame of reference for the choice and use of the career assessments included.

Emerging trends in carrer counselling

This paper examines the emerging trends in counselling, particularly career counselling, in relation to education, career and employment. It deals with the counselling issues associated with each of these emphases and with the comprehensive populations for whom education, career, and employment content may be different but important in various settings: schools, universities, business and industry, community. Particularly important are the counselling emphases associated with unemployment, underemployment, career and job change, and persons with disabilities. Major attention is given to emerging perspectives on the relationship of career counselling to mental health, stress and anger management, and behavioural health.

Secondary school curriculum and career behavior in young adults

Abstract As part of a larger longitudinal study of the effects of secondary school characteristics on career behavior in young adulthood, this paper presents findings obtained from 1007 males and females who graduated from high school in academic or vocational curricula 6 or 8 years ago. Criterion behavior included the completion of career development tasks in the exploration and establishment life stages as measured by the Adult Form of the Career Development Inventory, certainty about immediate occupational plans, and satisfaction with occupational goals and progress toward meeting them. Significant differences were found in the pattern of career development by curriculum but not by sex, in certainty by curriculum and sex, and in satisfaction by neither curriculum nor sex. The implications for a stage theory of career development are discussed.

Perceptions of Play Therapy in Taiwan: The Voices of School Counselors and Counselor Educators

The current status of play therapy in the elementary schools of Taiwan was investigated in relation to its compatibility with Chinese culture and its potential for wider societal adoption. Seven participants, four counselor educators and three elementary school counselors, in West Taiwan participated in this phenomenological qualitative inquiry. Seven assertions emerged from the interviewing data, implying that the potential for adopting play therapy in Taiwanese school counseling is embedded in the society. However, there are insufficient facilities and a lack of play therapy resources. Further investigation of the infrastructure in school counseling is necessary. Suggestions for practice and research regarding the development of play therapy and child counseling are presented.