Sara Santilli

Employer Attitudes towards the Work Inclusion of People with Disability.

BACKGROUND This study examines the importance of work in life of people with disability and then focuses on employer attitudes towards these people. In the light of Stone and Colellas model, the study examines the employer attitudes and the role of variables such as type of disability, employer experience in the hiring of persons with disabilities, the description of hypothetical hirees with disabilities, the ways in which employers evaluate work performance and social acceptability, and the work tasks that they consider appropriate for workers with disability. METHOD Eighty employers were randomly assigned to standard condition (candidates with disability were presented by referring to the disability they presented) or positive condition (candidates were presented with reference to their strengths). RESULTS It was found that the type of disability and its presentation influence employer attitudes. In addition, realistic and conventional tasks were considered appropriate for hirees with disabilities. CONCLUSIONS Implications were discussed.

Contemporary Career Construction: The Role of Career Adaptability

Over the last decade, the rapidly changing job market has begun to demand that people more actively construct their professional lives and acquire career adaptability.

Career Adaptability, Hope, Optimism, and Life Satisfaction in Italian and Swiss Adolescents:

The consequences of economic crisis are different from one European context to the other. Based on life design (LD) approach, the present study focused on two variables—career adaptability and a positive orientation toward future (hope and optimism)—relevant to coping with the current work context and their role in affecting life satisfaction. A partial mediational model between career adaptability and life satisfaction, through a positive orientation toward future (hope and optimism), was tested across Italian and Swiss countries. Seven hundred twenty-six Italian and 533 Swiss young people between the ages of 12 and 16 years were involved. Results provided support for the model in the Italian group and a full mediation model for the Swiss one. The data suggest that the context may have an effect on how career adaptability has an impact on general life satisfaction. These results have important implications for practice and underscore the need to support adolescents in their LD process.

Design My Future An Instrument to Assess Future Orientation and Resilience

This article reports the development and psychometric requisites of Design My Future, an instrument assessing future orientation and resilience. Three different studies involving Italian preadolescents were conducted. With the first, the items were developed and the factor structure verified; the second confirmed instrument’s multidimensional structure and evaluated its discriminant validity. The third study was conducted to verify the invariance of factorial structure across gender. Results provide strong psychometric support for Design My Future as a valid measure for analyzing middle school students’ thoughts about their future orientation and resilience and for career education and career counseling activities.

My Career Story: Description and Initial Validity Evidence

My career story (MCS) comprises a self-guided autobiographical workbook designed to simulate career construction counseling. The MCS contains a series of questions from the Career Construction Interview to elicit a life-career story and reveal a life theme that are then related to a current career problem indicated by the workbook user. Reflecting on the answers to the questions aims to promote key life-design goals of adaptability, narratability, intentionality, and action. After describing its development and use, a case illustration and initial preliminary validity study of the MCS is presented. Latent semantic analysis, a method for determining meaning similarity of words and passages within bodies of text, indicated a mean agreement level of .81 between MCS life portraits constructed by participants (N =10) and those constructed for the participants by experts in career construction counseling. The MCS shows some initial promise for self-guided career intervention to increase self-reflection and ability to tell and enact one’s career story. Future research is needed to support the validity of the MCS workbook.

A serious games system for the analysis and the development of visual skills in children with CVI: A pilot study with kindergarten children

The development of visual skills is crucial in sustaining an adaptive cognitive and social development in children. The paper describes the result of a pilot study, involving a group of 4 years old children, with a set of serious games to improve the assessment and rehabilitation process in children with CVI. The system uses an eye tracker system to correctly measure the performances of the child and his/her capability to watch and touch a moving object at the same time and to perform ab cognitive visual decision making.

Qualitative Approaches to Career Assessment with People with Disability

Considering the times we are living in, we can say that change is a significant actor. Even if it has always characterised human beings’ history, change is now going so fast that new ways of thinking about society, well-being, the future and work are emerging (Nota, Soresi, Ferrari & Ginevra, 2014).

Life Designing and Positive Youth Development

According to the European Commission (2015), in 2014 the rate of school dropout in Switzerland was 6.7% compared to 9.8% in Belgium, and 15% in Italy. The reasons for these discrepancies can be partially explained by or related to different social, political and economic contexts, characterized by different migration rates, financial situations, etc. In this fast changing global economy, it is important to help youth, regardless of their origin, deal with career and work-related difficulties. Based on Positive Youth development and Life Design approaches, the present chapter focused on variables relevant to cope with the current training and work context and their role in affecting youth’s life satisfaction. Specifically, we focused on career adaptability, hope, optimism, future orientation and resilience. The relations between career adaptability, positive youth variables and life satisfaction have been analyzed over different presented studies. Specifically, we described European project collaboration between the University of Padova, Italy, KU Leuven, Belgium and Lausanne, Switzerland that started during the first ECADOC Summer School. The findings of the studies are reported and discussed and practical implications to implement preventive career education activities to increase life satisfaction among adolescents are presented.

Career Adaptability and Career Resilience: The Roadmap to Work Inclusion for Individuals Experiencing Disability

Work plays an essential role in career development and in achieving higher levels of life satisfaction for individuals with or without disability. It can be in fact considered as both a place for socialization and an instrument that helps people define their role in the society, thus contributing to the development of a better self-image and, therefore, to higher levels of self-esteem. Based on a Life Design approach, the present chapter focuses on career adaptability and career resilience as positive resources effective in coping with current unpredictable and unstable work contexts and in promoting social and work participation of people with as well as without disability. Suggestions to improve career adaptability and career resilience and to achieve a better quality of life will be also provided.

Career adaptability, resilience, and life satisfaction: A mediational analysis in a sample of parents of children with mild intellectual disability†

ABSTRACT Background: Parents of children with intellectual disability (ID) have been found to be more likely to experience lower levels of life satisfaction than parents of typically developing children as a result of the increased challenges they experience. Based on a life design approach, which emphasises the role of career adaptability and resilience in dealing with life challenges, this study aimed at analysing the relationship between career adaptability and life satisfaction through the mediational role of resilience in parents of children with mild ID. Method: One hundred and fifty-two (62 fathers and 90 mothers) parents of children with mild ID were involved and were administered measures of life satisfaction, career adaptability, and resilience. Results: The structural equation model showed that career adaptability is indirectly, through resilience, related to life satisfaction. Conclusion: This result has important implications for practice, and it underscores the need to support parents’ life satisfaction, promoting their resilience, and especially their career adaptability.