Career is an important aspect in an individual’s life, it is important to equip an individual with skills and understanding to make an appropriate career transition and support them throughout life. This is essential for an effective functioning of an economy and also for individual well - being. The job of career guidance counselling is thus very important. By facilitating successful transitions into paid employment, high quality careers guidance can also help ameliorate social deprivation and poverty: The role of career guidance is vital as there are mounting evidence suggests that an individual’s level of consumption, self-esteem, social-status, and even happiness depend to a large extent on not just income, but also social status, associated with occupational attainment. (Brown, Sessions and Taylor, 2004, p 20) This is one offered by Arthur et al (1989) who proposed that career is ‘the evolving sequence of a person’s work experiences over time’ (p8).It plays a role in raising career expectations and aspirations of pupils (Brown et al, 2004) and may also enhance broader school effectiveness (Killeen et al, 1999).

Osipow and Fitzgerald (1996) postulate that the concept of career has recently undergone a transformation (p50) and distinguish between career choice as a point-in-time ‘event’ and a developmental ‘process’ over a longer period of time (p54). Whilst acknowledging that broader definitions (which include life roles and life span) have emerged, they suggest a more ‘parsimonious’ definition (p51), limited to vocational behaviour and vocational development.

Looking back at the traditional theories, we can say that Frank Parsons began a concept of vocation published a book vocational guidance in his book “Choosing a Vocation” He laid the foundation for trait and factor approach. Trait is characteristic of an individual that can be measured through testing and Factor is characteristic required for successful job performance. His approach is to select an occupation, you must have a clear understanding of self, followed by the knowledge and requirement and conditions of different lines of work. Through this, you get the experiences.

Another theorist, E Williamson actually developed an extension of Parson’s work. His theory used test to determine individual and job characteristics. He then developed the medical model to help people make career choices. This leads to the development of the vocational counsellors. The six types in the medical model are as follows analysis, synthesis, diagnosis, Prognosis, counselling treatment and follow up. In short, it gives information followed by assessments and advice. His theory says that individuals are organised by unique pattern of capabilities and potential. The traits are correlated with the requirements of different jobs and testing is the best means of predicting future job success. As each individual by using their capabilities effectively try to attempts to identify their own traits in order to work and live. According to Proyer (2006) in career counselling interest and ability are discussed together. His theory gives information and guides with suggestions. In this theory, the counselling interview was important and it is still carried out in other theories.

There were many developments in the tools and inventories. These developments are established in fifteenth Mental Measurement Yearbook (Plake, Impara and Spies, 2003) and in Test in Print VI (Murphy, Plake, Impara, and Spies, 2002). The scores in the aptitude test can suggest an entry to a specific occupation and according to Baker, 2002, the ASVB has been shown to improve aspects of career decision making and enhance self-knowledge in high school students.

Savickas (1997) concurred: ‘Parsons’ paradigm for guiding occupational choice remains to this day the most widely used approach to career counselling’ (p150). This is supported by recent findings from a longitudinal study into effective guidance, which indicates that career practitioners in England are still heavily reliant on this approach (Bimrose, et al, 2004; Bimrose and Barnes, 2006).
Another theory which enhances the trait and factor theory is the work adjustment theory which came about by Rene Dawis and Lloyd Lofquist (1984) define work adjustment theory as a continuous and dynamic process by which a worker seeks to achieve and maintain correspondence with a work environment (p. 237) It is important to know that an individual has many interest and occupational entry can be predicted more accurately through the client’s interest. According to Tracey and Hopkins (2001) find that both interests and self-estimates of ability predict occupational choice but interest are more predictive of ability than are self-estimates. Work adjustment theory has implications for helping clients with adjustment problems (Griffin & Hesketh,2005) . In comparison with Parson’s theory, career counselling fail to look into helping clients with adjustment problems issues such as problems with coworkers and superior , problem with work demand and retirement.

Then comes Alec Rodger ‘s theory which talks about the point seven plan, which is the physical makeup, attainments, general intelligence, special aptitudes, interest, disposition and circumstances. The above mention theories are psychological theories which is the Matching Models leads to logical approach where testing and measuring is done to have a rational decision making and it emphasis on problem solving. Students may freely apply to the vocational programme of their choice; however, vocational education apprenticeships differ remarkably in availability and personal requirements and are offered on a competitive basis by private companies, which require thorough career preparation prior to this transition (Hirschi, 2009).It can be said Gottfredson and Super theories can be inter matched during counselling.

But then again, according to Gottfrdson, L.S. (1981) there are 4 developmental processes which is cognitive growth ,self-creation, circumscription and compromise. This model clearly falls into Bloom’s widely use taxonomy of cognitive tasks of teaching and learning. (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001 )

According to Richard S. Sharf (2010) felt that the short comings in these theories is that it assumes that clients are rational and opportunity exist, it emphasis on the fact from the testing but ignores the feeling part of their client. It views interviewer as an expert and led to believe that competence equates contentment.
As the traits and Factor theories evolve in time and these theories come less directive with variation in test. The static view of people and jobs have changed and job matching through has become more sophisticated, through computer guidance programme. To add to that counsellor’s role has become more educational. It was assumed that individual behaviour was observable, measurable and linear, and that individual career identity and development could be understood separately from the contexts in which they operate, is now over (Skills Commission, 2008, para 8.1, p 20).

John Holland‘s matching model that emphasises personality which lead to job satisfaction. This will influence job. According to Savickas’s (1997, 2002) career adaptability model and consistent with Super’s theory (1990), major dimensions of adolescent career development (i.e., career exploration, decision making, and planning) will be considered along with other demographical, personality, and career related variables to understand who actually seeks help from career counsellors and what distinguishes them from the adolescents who do not. Help-seeking in career counselling is a relatively new research area.

Holland basic assumption says people are one of the 6 personality types and it an extension of profile of traits and factor theory. The career path is an extension of personality. This is a way to stereotypes. Employers recruit to their own image. This has led to people of the same personality type working together in a job creating a working environment that fits their type. And it assumes people will be successful if they work in an environment that suits their personality types. There is a congruence relationship between the personality and the environment and there are one, two or three types of dominant type and there is consistency. His theories began as vocational preference Inventory which was then interpreted by the counsellor. In 1994, the inventories which was widely used was self – directed search. Holland strength come form that many schools used these career programmes as it emphasis on the role of individual as they get self- help. The inventories are cheap and quick. Holland’s typology system is used by the counsellor to classify the client’s experiences with environment. Major shortfall is that it does not explain how the types are developed and does not cater to undifferentiated clients. Its view is static and incongruent.

Followed by this comes the matching model which is the Jung and Myers Briggs (MBTI) using personality and interest inventories and to determine ‘best fit’ type. To understand the impact of preferences on learning, counselling styles, career choice. Carl Jung’s based Theory of Psychological Types (1923) According to the personality types, preferences are inborn and all types are not static, equally valuable and there is no one best way to be. MBTI data are not meant to be used to tell a person to enter or stay out of any occupation; rather, MBTI data are useful to give a perspective on the kinds of occupations that are more likely to be a match or mismatch with the person’s type preference (Macdaid, McCaulley, & Kainz. 1991)

This states that in career counselling this MBTI types alone is not enough information to make a career choice. Other factors like values, skills, interests and skills do play a part. This is reinforced by Tieger and Barron – Tieger (2001, p367 ) said that respondents should be told that type reflects an individual’s preferences, not abilities or intelligence, nor is it a predictor of success. It also informed that people should not be counseled towards or away from certain jobs solely on the basis of type.
According to Kennedy and Kennedy (2004), explain how MBTI can be useful in employment counselling in describing preferences as they relate to types of career choices. Adding to that, Bell (2006) suggested that executive coaches found that the using this model lead to greater gains. When a client facing Jung’s analytic psychology is divided into three conscious ego-sense, personal unconscious – thoughts feeling not included in conscious awareness- past and future material compensate or balances conscious attitude and ideas.

Healy and Woodward (1998) has positive value in dealing with obstacles in clients’ career development. However on the hand Healy (1989) also challenged that MBTI tools by placing people into 16 types cannot enhance counselling. In addition to this , Pittenger (1993,2005) revealed evidence to show that MBTI has limited counselling utility, reliability and validity and it is not sufficient to use this MBTI type in counselling.

McCaully and Martin (1995) said cash should be taken in administering and interpreting MBTI so that there is a best fit for the client and advice both the power and limitation of type theory. Clients need to understand their type preference can have an effect not only on their career choice but how they learn and relate as well. This type can provide a non-threatening language for exploring how individuals differ from others in their chosen field.
Lawrence (1993) and understanding of personality type can free one in several ways and provide confidence in one’s own direction of development and help to reveal the areas in which one can become excellent with the most ease and pleasure.
MBTI Acknowledges a person’s preferences and opens possibility of finding constructive values, instead of conflicts in the differences one might encounter with someone whose preferences are opposite one’s own. Abella & Dutton (1994) researchers have cautioned that people should not completely eliminate certain occupations from job consideration solely on the basis that they are not the appropriate type.

These theories neglect of gender differences in the labour market has been noted (Bimrose, 2002; Bimrose, 2004; Osipow and Fitzgerald, 1996) and its relevance for culturally diverse groups questioned (Leong et al,1998; Mobley and Slaney, 1998). Gender and cultural issues are sometimes overlooked with these theories. Holland (1997) has shown that men score high on realistic, investigative scales while women scores higher in social, artistic and conventional scales His findings is further backed by Reardon, Bullock and Meyer(2007) who analysed 2000 census data that reflected 120 million people in United States and concluded in Holland’s favour. According to Padavic and Reskin (2002) these statistical discrimination happens when an employer applies generalization about a group of people to an individual. The effect would be discrimination against a particular gender in this case women would set in and limit attainment in their career in many ways.

However, the growth in gender desegregation in the service industry has caused a shift making males enter occupation which was traditionally been female occupations. Hence the vice versa has happens too where influx of women entering male dominated occupation will be stronger (Cotter, Defiore, Hermsen, Kowalewski and Vanneman ,1995).

The traditional theories did not consider stereotyping occupation. According to Bigler, Averhart Liben (2003) studied the perception about workforce of African children and concluded that children’s perception of race can influence their perception of the desirability of an occupation.

Nature and Nurture plays an important part in the development of career counselling. According to Super’s (1990) life-span, life-space approach to career development, adolescence corresponds to two important career development stages. The first stage, growth, includes the developmental task of searching for information about work, as well as about one’s interests and capacities: This process improves the sense of self and opens a variety of educational and occupational possibilities. The early tasks of the second stage, exploration, lead adolescents to crystallise their occupational preferences based on the information they acquired in the growth Int J Educ Vocat Guidance (2010) 123 stages. Super proposed that this exploration stage continues until the age of 24 when late adolescents or emerging adults start to implement their career choices. However, most Swiss adolescents make their career decisions earlier and implement their career choices either by choosing specific vocational training programs, or different high school tracks that determine further educational paths. In other words, adolescents’ career maturity, which refers to the achievement of career development tasks in each stage to prepare for career decision making (Super, 1990), is crucial at this developmental stage.

Although the interest and aptitudes from the trait and factor theory still play a part in career counselling but it is further enhanced by the development of self- concept. This is due to the fact that people are active participants in relationship between biological selves and the environment which is constantly changing (Gottfredson, 2005)

The super theory of self-concept is further strengthened by Gottfedson’s concept of circumscription and compromise and creating a unique self. Her four stages in development allow a transition of one self. This is further reinforce with the concept of psychtalk and occtalk carried out by (Starishevsky &Matlin, 1963) The career counsellors are able to get a notion through the discussion of believe of self and that beliefs can have an implication for occupation. This concept further provides a link for super’s theory on self-concept.

In Super’s Life Career Rainbow (LCR) (1980) throughout life we play the following roles; homemaker (parent), partner, worker, citizen, leisurite, student and child. They can be mutually supportive, complementary or conflicting. They are conducted within 4 ‘theatres’: home, community, education and work.
On the other hand, career maturity is not an end status in career development. It also represents the readiness to cope with the changing work and environmental conditions in future career decision making, which Super referred to as career adaptability in adult career development. Recently, some researchers have suggested that the notion of career maturity be replaced with career adaptability for children and adolescents, as well (Hartung, Porfeli, & Vondracek, 2008; Niles & Harris-Bowlsbey, 2008; Savickas, 1997).which require early selection of an educational path. However, one cannot expect the evolution from career models to career perspectives to be unrelated to gender. Studies focusing on the career aspirations of high school and college students convincingly show that aspirations with regard to marriage and children do influence occupational goals and aspirations, and do so in a different way for men and women (Hite and McDonald, 2003).

Moreover, there is over whelming evidence that the way in which the relationship between work and family is experienced and dealt with is also strongly gendered (Arthur et al., 1989; Cytrynbaum and Crites, 1998; Keene and Reynolds, 2005; Levinson, 1978; Mennino et ah, 2005; Sekaran and Hall, 1989; Shirley and Wallace, 2004; Tinklin et al., 2005). Women bear the bulk of the burden in negotiating between the requirements of work and the requirements of the family. On the basis of those empirical generalizations one expects women to be less in favour of flexible careers because household work and care for children seem more compatible with stable careers. Hypothesis 4 should in any case be tested for men and women separately. We use cluster analysis (Vermunt and Magidson, 2000)

Indeed, Super acknowledged that a weakness of his theory was its fragmented nature, anticipating its future development: “What I have contributed is not an integrated, comprehensive and testable theory, but rather a ‘segmental theory’. A loosely unified set of theories dealing with specific aspects of career development, taken from developmental, differential, social, personality and phenomenological psychology and held together by self-concept and learning theory. Each of these segments provides testable hypotheses, and in due course I expect the tested and refined segments to yield an integrated theory. (Super, 1990, p.199)

This fragmentation was identified as the most serious criticism of the theory (Super et al., 1996) in a chapter published after Super’s death in 1994: ‘Its propositions are really a series of summarizing statements that, although closely related to data, lack a fixed logical form that could make new contributions of their own’ (Super et al., 1996, p.143).

According to Osipow and Fitzgerald (1996) the original version of his theory was too general to be of much practical use, with its conceptual value being limited by its sweeping style - though this weakness had been addressed by subsequent refinements (p.143). They argue that a particular weakness is the failure of the theory to integrate economic and social factors that influence career decisions (p.144).
This concern is echoed by Scharf (1997) and Brown (1990), who propose that Super’s theory does not adequately address the particular challenges that women and ethnic groups present career theory (Brown, 1990, p.355; Scharf, 1997, p.153).

Brown (1990) also specifically criticises the theory for its failure to account adequately for the career development of persons from lower socio-economic groups (Brown, 1990, p.355).
Linked with these criticisms is an important concern identified by Osipow and Fitzgerald (1996) that ‘in recent years relatively few new empirical tests of the theory have been conducted’ (p.144). Despite weaknesses, Brown (1990) suggests that Super’s theory ‘occupies stage centre, along with Holland’s thinking. There seems to be no reason to doubt that it will continue to be of considerable importance in the future’ (p.356).

To this Super felt that, “What I have contributed is not an integrated, comprehensive and testable theory, but rather a ‘segmental theory’. A loosely unified set of theories dealing with specific aspects of career development, taken from developmental, differential, social, personality and phenomenological psychology and held together by self-concept and learning theory. Each of these segments provides testable hypotheses, and in due course I expect the tested and refined segments to yield an integrated theory. (Super, 1990, p.199)

This fragmentation was identified as the most serious criticism of the theory (Super et al., 1996) in a chapter published after Super’s death in 1994: ‘Its propositions are really a series of summarizing statements that, although closely related to data, lack a fixed logical form that could make new contributions of their own’ (Super et al., 1996, p.143).

Super believed that people differ in career importance during their lives and with Nevil and Super (1986) who provided data for the Salience Inventory showing people at different ages and across different cultures value work differently which traditional theories seemed to have overlooked at this. So career counselling cannot be universal. The life Career Rainbow is basically different roles from birth (growth) to old age (decline) according to the amount of time and energy we spend on each role. We should carefully consider the role salience as the importance the individual attaches to each of the roles at any one time. The roles vary within an individual life time. Super theory life career rainbow is not static and is interchangeable. The counsellors roles are very important as they have to acknowledge the fact that in career counselling changes are taking place quickly.

As discussed above, the theories in the career counselling is not static, they go through various transition and retaining the best. One size does not fit all. Career counsellors have to weigh carefully which theories are applicable to their client and administer them. They have mix and match the theories to provide for their clients to bring out the best in them when they attend the sessions.

Part 2
My career path is greatly influenced by the environment I was in. I was very much influenced by my parents as my mum was a preschool teacher and a part time tutor. In addition to this, my eldest sibling and my aunts are teachers too. This had a great impact on me as I grew up admiring this profession they were in. As clearly defined by Gibson who suggested that role models can be seen as representing the child’s needs and wants. I admired the things they do in their profession. But during my early adulthood years, I grew an interest to become a botanist. I gained more knowledge on this field .I explored on my own with my friends to know more about the plants and I have a small garden with many types of plants. Yet I did not get the opportunity to work in this area so I took up teaching as my profession. Trice and Tilapaugh’s (1991) said that children’s view of occupations is illustrated by where children’s aspire their parents’ occupation and are influenced by their perception of how satisfied their parents are with their own work. I learnt from my parents and aunties the challenges and happiness they faced by being in this profession. I followed my aspiration and am a teacher by profession. I have to go for aptitude test and other forms of test to get the job. The traditional traits and factor theory was used for selection for this profession.
Socialist environment where helping one another is essential and being socially responsible. As a teacher, values are important and passing on the values to the pupils are very essential so they become a good citizen.
I am in a phrase in life where I reflect on my career path. For Holland (1997) describes a second form of consistency which is consistency of aspiration. My aspiration has taken a turn as I incline more to counselling teenagers and children. That can be considered that of Super theory under the Life Stages (Super (1990). I am at the maintenance where I am making continual adjustment. I enrolled in Childhood Studies and Guidance and Counselling programme , to gain more knowledge in this area.
I also realised that I am at what Super’s concept of ‘career maturity. Being in the middle adulthood, I am taking on new tasks to work on at the same time, understanding my own limitations, I volunteer in study skills sessions in school and help pupils.
I also inclined towards the theory of self-concept. I see the need to serve people, provide volunteer service to aid pupils in the welfare homes. With my ability to teach children, I take this opportunity to teach pupils in the homes. I also see the need to develop my talent which is to play a musical instrument. I develop new skill by learning to play a musical instrument.

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Paul J. Hartung Associate Professor, David L. Blustein Associate Professor, 2011. Reason, Intuition, and Social Justice: Elaborating on Parsons's Career Decision-Making Model. Journal of Counselling & Development, volume 80, issue no. 1, pg 41-47. Proyer, R.T. (2006). The relationship between vocational interests and intelligence: Do findings generalize across different assessment methods? Psychology Science, 48(4), Robert Pryor and Jim Bright, Book. New York ; London : Routledge 2011 Sharf, R. S. (2009) Applying Career Development Theory to Counseling: 5th edn Pacific Grove: Brooks / Cole Starishevsky, R., & Matlin, N.A. (1963). A model for the translation of self- concept into vocational terms. In D.E. Super, R. Starishevsky, N. Matlin, & J.P. Jordaan (Eds.)

Trice, A. D., & Tillapaugh, P. (1991). Children’s estimates of their parents’ job satisfaction.Psychological Reports ,69, 63-66. Watts, A.G. (2001) ‘Donald Super’s Influence in the United Kingdom’, International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 1(1) Zunker, V. G., (2006) Career Counseling: a holistic approach. 7th edn. Pacific Grove: Brooks / Cole

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