Readiness for Career Choices: Planning, Exploring, and Deciding

One of Super's most important contributions has been in explicating those developmental tasks that involve planning, exploring, and deciding, processes known collectively as readiness for career choices. The authors review existing means of conceptualizing and operationalizing the various aspects of readiness, as well as innovative practice applications that have emerged from this work. Next, selected elaborations and extensions of the readiness construct are described. Finally, future directions for theory and research on readiness are presented with a particular emphasis on the promise of considering contextual issues, motivational factors, and an expanded measurement perspective in subsequent inquiry and practice. 1994 National Career Development Associatio

Exploring the components of career well-being and the emotions associated with significant career experiences

This study aimed to identify the main features of career well-being and the emotions people experience as they navigate their careers. Data from 89 individuals working in various occupations suggested seven features of career well-being involving the following: career transitions, interpersonal relationships, relationship with the organization, work performance, sense of purpose, learning and development, and work—life issues. Fifteen positive and 24 negative emotions were reported, and several career experiences were associated with wide-ranging emotions. Moving to a new role was particularly likely to involve a mixture of positive and negative emotions. Participants frequently gave examples of interpersonal difficulties as negative career experiences, and these sometimes led to profound feelings of unhappiness and worthlessness. Implications for career counseling and career management are discussed

Autoethnography in vocational psychology: Wearing your class on your sleeve

This paper addresses reflective practice in research and practice and takes the issue of consciousness of social class in vocational psychology as a working example. It is argued that the discipline’s appreciation of social class can be advanced through application of the qualitative research method autoethnography. Excerpts from an autoethnographic study are used to explore the method’s potential. This reflexive research method is presented as a potential vehicle to improve vocational psychologists’ own class consciousness, and to concomitantly enhance their capacity to grasp social class within their own spheres of research and practice. It is recommended that autoethnography be used for research, training, and professional development for vocational psychologists