The theory and practice of career construction

Abstract

Career construction conceives of humans as storytellers and life-careers as stories told. A theory of vocational behaviour and a system of career counselling, career construction implements life design as a new paradigm for career theory and intervention in the twenty-first century (Savickas et al., 2009). Life design augments the vocational guidance (Holland, 1997; Parsons, 1909) and career development (Super, 1990) paradigms of twentieth-century career science and practice. Building upon psychological constructivism that views meaning as intrapersonally constructed by the individual, life design takes social constructionism as its central epistemology. Constructivism and constructionism both portray human experience as incoherent and variable. They also hold that meaning resides in words people use to describe and explain their experiences rather than in the world. Psychological constructivism, however, views people as scientists who use cognition to interpret their experiences and make sense of the world (Collin and Guichard, 2011). By contrast, social constructionism views people as storytellers who use narrative and relationships to co-construct meaning through dialogue (ibid.).

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