A Context-Rich Perspective of Career Exploration Across the Life Roles

Building on the recent contributions of Donald Super (e.g., 1980), this article presents a broadened lens with which to view theory, research, and practice in career exploration. Super's contributions on career adaptability and the life-career rainbow (e.g., Super, 1990; Super & Knasel, 1981) were applied to current areas of ambiguity in the career exploration literature, yielding potentially useful ideas about the antecedents and consequences of career exploration. Based on an integrative analysis guided by Super's recent contributions and related conceptual innovations, a context-rich perspective is proposed to broaden the attentional focus of discourse about career exploration. The article discusses the theoretical implications of the context-rich view and provides suggestions for counseling practice.     

The Constructivist Résumé: Promoting the Career Adaptability of Graduate Students in Counseling Programs

The authors present the constructivist résumé, an original approach developed to promote professional identity development and career adaptability (i.e., concern, curiosity, confidence, and control) in students completing graduate‐level counselor training programs. The authors discuss underlying theories, including Super's (1990; Super, Savickas, & Super, 1996) life span, life space theory and Peavy's (1998) SocioDynamic Counseling Model, and their applications to career counseling. They also provide a detailed case illustration, make practical recommendations, and note the advantages and limitations of the approach.     

Donald Edwin Super: The Career of a Planful Explorer

Donald Edwin Super was a member of the National Career Development Association from 1934 to 1994, a full 60 years. Starting at midcentury, his writings and lectures provided the main impetus to expand vocational guidance to encompass career counseling. This article, structured around the five stages in Super's life stage model and narrated in the language of vocational development tasks that he identified and researched, tells the story of Super's own career development and extrapolates the major themes in his unparalleled career as a vocational psychologist and career counselor.     

Voices in Transition: Lessons on Career Adaptability

Occupational problems have negative consequences across life domains, yet relatively little research addresses the psychological resources necessary for the adult career transition. Considering Super's concept of career adaptability (D. E. Super &: E. G. Knasel, 1981), the authors outline what they believe adults need to successfully manage the transition. Individuals in transition were interviewed and their responses were analyzed using qualitative methods. Participants who anticipated career change planfully and realistically, even when their jobs appeared to be secure, cited better experiences of the transition and perceived themselves to be coping better than did participants who ignored signs of change or reacted unrealistically soon after the job loss.     

Integrating Barriers to Caucasian Lesbians' Career Development and Super's Life‐Span,Life‐Space Approach

Researchers and practitioners do not fully understand the nature and extent of actual and perceived barriers in lesbians' career development (S. L. Morrow, P. A. Gore, & B. W. Campbell, 1996). In this study, 10 lesbian women, ages 42 to 64 years, were interviewed and asked to identify barriers to career development due to sexual identity. Integration of sexual orientation in D. E. Super's (1990) Life‐Span, Life‐Space approach is proposed.     

Applying Image Norms Across Super's Career Development Stages

D. E. Super's (1957) theory of career development has long been of interest to careers researchers (M. Savickas, 1994; S. C. Whiston & B. K. Brecheisen, 2002). Its insightful illustration of career stages has made it widely applied by careers practitioners. Image norms may influence the career decisions and developmental tasks inherent in each stage. An image norm is the belief that individuals must present or possess a certain image, consistent with occupational, organizational, or industry standards, in order to achieve career success. Understanding the effects of image norms across D. E. Super's (1957) career stages has important implications for individuals, organizations, and career counseling professionals.     

Measuring Career Development: Current Status and Future Directions

Donald E. Super's work to linguistically explicate and operationally define career development and its central processes has strongly influenced how counselors throughout the world comprehend and guide their clients' vocational behavior. Starting at midcentury, Super conceptualized career development in terms of life stages and developmental tasks. He proposed that counselors measure career maturity, globally, by comparing chronological age with developmental task being encountered, and that they measure career maturity, specifically, by identifying the coping methods used in facing a task. Super advanced counselors' abilities to understand and counsel adolescents who are trying to specify educational and vocational choices by explaining the importance of career choice readiness and by devising measures of career maturity. To complement the construct of maturation as the central process in adolescent career development, Super proffered the construct of adaptability as the central process in adult career development and also devised a measure of this process.     

Career Concerns,Values, and Role Salience in Employed Men

This study tested Super's model of career adaptability by examining the relationships between career development concerns, values, and role salience among 881 men employed full-time in a cement factory. They responded to the Adult Career Concerns Inventory, the Values Inventory, and the Salience Inventory. The inter-correlations of the resulting scores were appropriately small and coincided with theoretical predictions. A principal components analysis clarified the latent structure of the relations between and among the scales. The results supported both Super's model of career adaptation and his model for Career Development Assessment and Counseling.     

A Super Contribution to Vocational Theory: Work Values

This article traces the influence of Donald E. Super in introducing the concept of work values into career development and vocational theory. It reviews the conceptualization, taxonomy, and assessment of work values. Research bearing on Super's “onion model,” representing his views on the relationship of work values to other variables in the affective domain, is also presented. Finally, an overview is given of the research evidence regarding any functional role that work values actually play in the career development of individuals.     

Comparing Intake Concerns and Goals With Career Counseling Concerns

The authors investigated the relationship among clients' intake concerns, intake goals, and career counseling concerns. Results indicated that intake goals focused primarily on resolving D. E. Super's (1957) exploration stage tasks, but concerns included education‐related issues and ego dystonic emotions related to work. Intake concerns and goals were not related to the content of career counseling. Implications are discussed.     

Young Women's Work Values and Role Salience in Grade 11: Are There Changes Three Years Later?

Eleventh graders participated in a longitudinal study of career decision making in which they completed a series of career‐related inventories and follow‐up interviews. There was little change in work‐related values between the 2 administrations of the Values Scale (G.W. Fitzsimmons, D. Macnab, & C. Casserly, 1985); however, greater variation occurred on the Salience Inventory (G. W. Fitzsimmons et al., 1985), particularly Role Value Implementation. Role salience seems less stable than values, perhaps reflecting the transition from high school to postsecondary education or the world of work. Implications for D. E. Super's (1981, 1990, 1994, 1995) theory of career development and applications to career counseling are outlined.     

Work—Family Interface for Same‐Sex,Dual‐Earner Couples: Implications for Counselors

The author highlights information for career counselors to consider when addressing work‐family interface with individuals who are members of same‐sex, dual‐earner couples or families. D. E. Super's (1990) life‐span, life‐space theory is the framework used to organize the literature review and discussion of current trends. Issues related to the roles of worker, partner, parent, stepparent, and caregiver are discussed. Suggestions are provided for career counselors.     

The Thematic-Extrapolation Method: Incorporating Career Patterns into Career Counseling

One of Donald Super's most important contributions of career counseling was the career model, the idea that one person's sequence of work positions constitutes a whole and unique career. In 1954, he advocated a method for predicting career patterns called the Thematic-Extrapolation Method (TEM). TEM is described and summarized in three identifiable steps. Recent writings from developmental, psychodynamic, and narrative approaches to career counseling suggest innovative revisions and elaborations on the original method. A modified TEM remains a promising, but largely untried, career counseling technique.     

Career Development in Middle Childhood: A Qualitative Inquiry

The purpose of this investigation was to explore childhood career development by examining 4th‐ and 5th‐grade students' career and self‐awareness, exploration, and career planning. Responses to written assignments provided qualitative data for analysis. Written narrative data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods as described by C. E. Hill, B. J. Thompson, and E. N. Williams (1997). Consistent with theory (D. Super, 1990), children's reflections on prominent career tasks and influences revealed 8 of the 9 (all but curiosity) dimensions of childhood career development as outlined by Super. In addition, participants described their conceptions of work, a domain not explicitly articulated by Super and worthy of further inquiry.     

Career Salience of Institutionalized Adolescent Offenders

This study investigated self-esteem and career salience of institutionalized adolescent offenders in the context of Super's (1980) lifespan career development theory. Participants were 185 male adolescents. Results indicated that participation, commitment, and values expectations in home-family roles contribute significantly to self-esteem in adolescent offenders. Additionally, adolescent offenders differ from adolescent non-offenders on home-family and work roles, with adolescent offenders scoring higher. Implications for career counseling of institutionalized adolescent offenders for transition into the community are discussed.     

Integrating Existentialism and Super's Life‐Span,Life‐Space Approach

As workers face a changing and ever‐complex employment landscape, traditional career theories and approaches may not be sufficient in meeting career challenges. Calls for integrated career theories have emerged as more people seek meaning and purpose in their lives and careers. This article proposes a career counseling option that integrates existentialism and Super's (1990) life‐span, life‐space approach to establish a foundation for a broader approach to career development that views clients holistically by exploring life and career meaning and purpose from a developmental perspective. A case example and interventions are provided to demonstrate practical application and a contextual framework, along with implications for counselors.     

Voluntary Midlife Career Change: Integrating the Transtheoretical Model and the Life‐Span,Life‐Space Approach

Frequent career change is the predicted experience of workers in the global economy. Self‐initiating career changers are a substantial subset of the total population of career changers. There is currently a dearth of theory and research to help career counselors conceptualize the career change process for the application of appropriate interventions. The authors present an integration of a well‐researched behavior change theory, the transtheoretical model of change, with Super's (1990) life‐span, life‐space approach. The corresponding stages of the 2 models are discussed along with theoretically appropriate interventions. The integrated model provides the basis for future research on the change process for voluntary midlife career changers.     

Self-Esteem,Vocational Identity,and Career Salience in High School Students

This study used Super's (1980) life span career development theory to investigate the relations between self-esteem level, vocational identity, and career salience in high school students. Two hundred fifty-one students were randomly selected from junior classes in urban, suburban, rural, and vocational schools. Results indicated that high self-esteem students scored significantly higher than low self-esteem students on vocational identity and career salience (participation, commitment, and values expectations) in school and home or family roles, but they did not differ on work, community, or leisure roles. Implications for life span career counseling are discussed.     

Super's Life-Span,Life-Space Approach and Its Outlook for Refinement

The major elements of Super's life-span, life-space approach, their origins, and their evolution are briefly described. Five categories of possible future refinements in Super's approach are suggested.