Reinekke Lengelle

Narratives at work: the development of career identity

Well-developed career stories are becoming increasingly important for individuals as they navigate an unstable and unpredictable labour market. Existing narrative approaches in career guidance do not yet clearly identify the learning process by which career stories are created. In this article, a model of transformation-through-writing will be introduced to help explain the learning process that occurs when narratives are used for constructing career stories. We propose that this learning process occurs stepwise in four cognitive stages: sensing, sifting, focusing, and understanding. To progress through these stages, an internal (with oneself) as well as an external (with relevant others) dialogue is needed. The case study used to illustrate the process is a story of unemployment and effectively shows how narratives can be created through expressive and reflective writing and how such a process may foster career learning in response to a boundary experience.

Narrative identity: writing the self in career learning

We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed way. Creative, expressive and reflective writing practices are described and parallels are drawn between these and existing practices and theories in narrative career counselling. Key exercises in graduate courses for writing for personal development are discussed and a theoretical explanation is given as to why a particular order of approaches and exercises works best to promote career learning.

Mystery to mastery: An exploration of what happens in the black box of writing and healing

In this article, a model of transformation-through-writing will be introduced that helps to explain how a transformative and dialogical-learning process occurs when narratives or poetry are used for healing. We focus in particular on how a “boundary experience” is processed—or how a painful “first story” can be rewritten to become a more life-giving “second story.” We propose that this occurs stepwise in four cognitive stages: sensing; sifting; focusing; and understanding. These stages are explained and underpinned by research on neurobiology, neuropsychology, and on identity learning. The case study used to illustrate this process, focuses on expressive and reflective writing in emotional recovery from domestic violence. To be effective, therapeutic writing requires a safe and enriching learning environment; we discuss how such an environment supports the dialogical self and what considerations a facilitator might take into account when working with a student or client.

Writing as soul work: training teachers in a group-based career-narrative approach

ABSTRACT Writing as soul work refers to the active engagement of students in transformative writing activities in a group setting with the aim to enable students to develop new, more empowering narratives. This article explains how soul work through writing can be used to foster career adaptability, expressed in the form of increased awareness and self-direction. We summarise the labour market realities that underlie a need for more narrative approaches and introduce writing as soul work as a potential method to respond to these contemporary career challenges. We define what is meant by soul work and writing, illustrate its use with several stories from practice, and make recommendations for teachers and implementation in institutions.

What a Career Coach Can Learn from a Playwright: Expressive Dialogues for Identity Development

Writing expressive dialogues can be used to assist individuals in developing their career identities – that is: stories that are needed to help people position themselves in relation to the current labour market. Writing expressive dialogues entails having written conversations with various parts of us – much like a playwright does with his characters – and making developmental gains in the process. In Dialogical Self Theory (DST) terms, it means talking to and with various I-positions on the page, perhaps forming coalitions, discovering counter positions, and innovating and integrating the self (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010, pp. 228–234). And as the playwright Miller suggests in the above quote, the creation of identity is an interactive process between self and others.

Writing the Self for Reconciliation and Global Citizenship: The Inner Dialogue and Creative Voices for Cultural Healing

This chapter provides a theoretically based and practical way of initiating cultural healing and global citizenship in (higher) education through creative, expressive, and reflective writing (i.e., writing the self). The Dialogical Self theory sheds light on the way in which particular self-narratives are I-prisons that can be re-storied to create third positions and the democratization of society through the democratization of selves. Two stories, one by an Aboriginal woman and one by a white woman who works with Aboriginal students, illustrate the process and show its potential for reconciliation in the Canadian context. A more general argument is made that cultural healing requires the cultivation of an internal dialogue within educational contexts, something that is hitherto underrepresented in curricula. Finally the work argues that reconciliation on a societal level begins with the questioning and creating of new narratives on an individual level; it is a process to be undertaken by both the “colonized” and the “colonizer.”

A Dialogue Worth Having: Vocational Competence, Career Identity and a Learning Environment for Twenty-First Century Success at Work

The cultivation of intrinsic motivation is key in the twenty first century, but most students in Dutch vocational education lack this quality. To foster intrinsic motivation, a strong career-learning environment is needed that enables students to develop career competencies and a career identity. However such an environment is absent in much of vocational education in The Netherlands. Research shows that desired learning must be practice based (real life experiences are key), enable a dialogue (in order to attach personal meaning to real life experiences) and give students more autonomy in making choices in their school careers. Although there has been an increase in the use of portfolios and personal-development plans, these instruments are used mainly for improving success at school but are not in career and work. In addition, research on the conversations between student and teachers/work-place mentors shows that the latter talk primarily to (65%), and about (21%), but rarely with (9%) them. The culture in schools is still predominately monological. Most teachers feel uncertain about their abilities to help students in developing career competencies and a career identity, though a growing number of teachers want to be trained in initiating meaningful career dialogues. In order to make such training successful in terms of promoting new guidance behaviours, it is essential that school managers create a strong career-learning environment for teachers. The Standards Era policies (Gatto JT, Weapons of mass instruction. New Society Publishers, Gabriola, 2009) that dominate Dutch vocational education at the moment, however, leaves managers little space to do so.

The Foundations of Career Resilience

In this chapter resilience is seen as a result of the relational empowerment of individuals. This implies not only the strengthening of individuals’ ability to create growth-fostering relationships, but also the creation of a learning environment that enables this strengthening. We postulate that at the heart of career resilience is the ability to foster both an internal (i.e., meaningful felt conversation with oneself) and external dialogue (i.e., meaningful conversations with others about lived experience) in the process of developing a flexible, personal, and useful career narrative (i.e., career identity). First, we discuss a model for identity learning that forms the basis of our claim. Next, we explore how much room there is for identity learning in both educational settings and in work organizations. We conclude that there is little space for an actual dialogue in both environments. Given the current demands placed upon the workforce and the complexity, insecurity, and individualization of society, attention to fostering career resilience through dialogue should be one of the pillars of management in schools and in work organizations.

Playwright Meets Career Coach

In this chapter we propose that writing dialogues in creative, expressive, and reflective ways can foster more awareness and self-direction among those who aim to start, build, or rescue their careers. In the first section of the chapter we sketch the societal issues for which narrative counselling is a response; we subsequently argue that more independent methods, like career writing (Lengelle, 2014) are needed as they are more time and cost effective as compared with one-on-one narrative counseling approaches.

Connecting to the muses

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. Pablo PicassoWe set out to bring into being a Creative Methods issue ...