PCB 3053 : CAREER COUNSELING
Course Leader: Ms Sabariah Siron

COURSE NOTES

TOPIC 3: SUPER’S LIFE-SPAN, LIFE-SPACE THEORY

1.0 INTRODUCTION

• People differ in their abilities and personalities, needs, values, interest, traits and self-concept.

• People are qualified, by virtue of these characteristics, each for a number of occupations.

• Each occupations requires a characteristic pattern of abilities and personality traits- with tolerences wide enough to allow both some variety of occupations for each individual and some variety of individuals in each occupation.

• Vocational preferences and competencies, the situations in which people live and work, and, hence their self-concept change with time and experience, although self-concepts, as product of sosial learning, are increasingly stable from late adolescence untul late maturity providing some continuity in choice and adjustment.

• This process of change may be summed up in a series of life stages characterized as a sequence of growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, and decline, and these stages may in turn be subdivided into (a) the fantasy, tentative, and realisatisic phases of the exploratory stage and (b) the trial and stable phases of the establishment stage. A small cycle takes place in transitions from one stage to the next or each time an individual is destabilized by a reduction in force, change in type or personnel needs, illness or injury, or other socioeconomic or personal events. Such unstable or multiple-trial careers involve new growth, reexploration, and reestablishment ( recycling ).

• The nature of career pattern is determined by the individual’s parental sosioeconomic level, mental ability, education, skills, personality characteristics and career maturity and by the opportunities to which he or she is exposed.

• Success in coping eith the demands of the environment and of the organism in thet context at any given life-career stage depends on the rediness of the individual to cope with these demands ( career maturity ).

• Career maturity is a hypothetical construct.

• The process of career development is essentially thet of developing and implementing occupational self-concepts.

• Process of syntesis of or compromise between individual and social factors, between self- concept and reality.

• Work satisfactions and life satisfactions depend on the extent to which the individual finds adequate outlets for abilities, needs, values, interests, personality traits and self-concepts. • Development through the life stages can be guided partly by facilitating the maturity of abilities and interests and partly by aiding in reality tensting and in the development of self-concept.

• The degree of satisfaction people attain from work is proportional to the degree to which they have been able to implement self-concept.

• Work and occupation provide a focus for personality organization for most men and women. Social traditions such as gender-role stereotyping and modelling, racial and ethnic biases, and opportunity structure, as well as individual diffrences are important determinants of preferences for such roles as worker, student, leisurite, homemaker and citizen.

2.0 SUPER’S VOCATIONAL DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES

1. Growth Stage : ( birth– 14 -15 age ) development of capacity, attitudes, interests and needs associated with self concept.
2. Exploratory stage ( ages 15-24 ) tentative phase in which choices are narrowed dow but not finalised.
3. Establishment Stage: ( ages 25-44 ) trial and stabilization through work experience.
4. Maintenance :(ages 45-64 ) continual adjustment process to improve working position and situation.
5. Decline : ( ages 65 + ) preretirement considerations, reduced work output, and eventual retirement.

3.0 SUPER’S VOCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT TASK

Stages of vocational development provide the framework for vocational behaviour and attitudes through activities known as vocational development task
Voc. Dev Task. Age General Characteristics
………………………………………………………………
Crystalization 14-18 Cognitive process period of formulating a general vocational goals through awareness of resources, interests, values and planning for preferred occupation.

Spesification 18-21 Period of moving from tentative vocational preferances towards a specisific vocational preference.

Implementation 21-24 completing training and entering employment.

Stabilisation 24-35 confirming a preferred career by actual work experience and use of talents to demonstrate career choice as an appropriate one.

Consolidation 35 + Period of establishment in a career by advancement, status and seniority.

4.0 SUPER’S CONCEPT OF CAREER MATURITY

Six dimension towards fostering career maturity during adolescence. 1. Orientation to vocational choice. 2. Information and planning 3. Consistency of vocational preferances. 4. Crystalization of traits( towards forming self-concept ). 5. Vocational independence. 6. Wisdom of vocational preferances( realistic preferances consisten with personal task).