Career Counseling

Career Counselling

Theory and Relationship Strategies

Increasing recognition of cultural influences on career development requires expanded theoretical and practical perspectives. Theories of career development need to explicate views of culture and provide direction for career counseling with clients who are culturally diverse. The Systems Theory Framework (STF) is a theoretical foundation that accounts for systems of influence on people's career development, including individual, social, and environmental/societal contexts. The discussion provides a rationale for systemic approaches in multicultural career counseling and introduces the central theoretical tenets of the STF. Through applications of the STF, career counselors are challenged to expand their roles and levels of intervention in multicultural career counseling.

The potential of systems theory to account for diversity and the complexity of influences on career development has only recently been documented. What is shared in common by systems approaches is the "ongoing relationship, between elements or subsystems of the system and the changes that occur over time as a result of these continual interactions" (Patton & McMahon, 1999, pp. 9-10).

Diversity Issues

In this case Naomi is a biracial woman. Her mother is of Latina descent and her father is African American. Career counselors need to examine how culture is represented in theories of career development and in models of career counseling. There are debates about "who counts" as clients who are culturally diverse and debates about how theories of career development should account for cultural diversity. Each debate has implications for how professionals approach counseling (Patterson, 1996; Thomas & Weinrach, 1998). Many career development theories define culture according to variables within the person and within identified cultural groups (Hartung, 2002). Person variables that are commonly addressed include personality traits, interests, and abilities. Recent conceptualizations of career theories and career counseling models are giving more emphasis to environmental and contextual variables such as gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and cultural values (Brown, 1996; Constantine & Erickson, 1998; Cook et al., 2002; Fouad & Bingham, 1995; Hartung, 2002; Young, Valach, & Collin, 1996). Three areas, however, require further examination in order to advance the application of career development theory to career counseling.

In the narrative process of construction, deconstruction and reauthoring, we suggest that counselors consider the following template of dimensions to explore the influence of family culture and context (Chope & Consoli, 2006). Counselors may find discomfort in exploring some of the areas but they are all necessary in establishing a shared worldview with the client. We have organized a number of dimensions in a continuum spanning from the personal, through the family, to the social for use in narrative counseling.

Families may have different rules about the influence of the extended family. Grandparents, aunts, cousins, and uncles may play a role regarding career selection and education that is different from that in other cultures. There's a lot of pressure to conform to both the norms of the family and those of the culture. But the reputation of the family is a primary concern. Multicultural families may take a more rigid point ...