Educ7051 Career Counselling Narrative Approaches Assessment Answers

Task 1 – Personal Reflection Activity

Reflect on your own career and your work as a career counsellor using the Reflection Activities that you completed in Module 1.

1. a)    Submit the completed Reflecting on My Career Influencesactivity including the diagrams and also written responses to the guided questions. The “Reflecting on My Career Influences activity” onstructivist approaches by McMahon.
2. b)    What have you learned about yourself as a person and as a career counsellor?
3. c)    How might you apply this activity in your work as a career counsellor?

(NB: Your work will be treated confidentially and you are not expected to discuss aspects of your life which you are not comfortable sharing with another person. It is the analysis of your learning that will be evaluated.)

Task 2 – Literature Review

d)  Consider the advantages and disadvantages of narrative career counselling.

e) Post a comment about your perception of narrative career counselling on the Blackboard discussion titled Narrative career counselling. Where possible, relate your comment to that of another student. (Pass/Fail)

Task 3 – Narrative Career Counselling Interview Critique

Indicate which interview you have based this task on.

1. What evidence can you find in the interview that the career counsellorwas successful in creating a ‘mattering climate’. Include at least two examples of the evidence in your response and explain your selection.
2. What are the personal qualities that you have that will assist you in creating a ‘mattering climate’? Knowing about such qualities and the importance of a mattering climate, what strategies will you use to create a ‘mattering climate’ in your future career counselling?
3. Consider the constructs of reflection, connectedness, meaning making, learning and agency. Identify three (3) examples of how the clientdemonstrated each of these constructs and list them.
4. Identify examples of the counsellingmicro-skills (e.g., questions, reflections, paraphrases) that the career counsellor used to elicit such client responses. List these examples. Explain the reasons for your choices.
5. As you listen to the interview, use the Systems Theory Framework diagram found in Module 2 on the Blackboard to map a 20 minute segment of the interview e.g., if the client speaks about what they want to do draw a line numbered 1 from the individual to the future. If the client then mentions their family’s hope for them, draw a line numbered 2 from future to family. Continue this process through the interview. NB: Submit this interview map with your portfolio.
6. What have you noticed about the interview map? Describe your observations of the interview map.
7. On the basis of this map and your responses to the previous activities in this Task, describe how you now understand the narrative career counsellingprocess. How would you describe the role of the career counsellor? How would you describe the role of the client? How would you describe the career counselling relationship?
8. Identify three key learnings that you have had about narrative career counsellingthat you could use as advice to yourself or to another person. Explain why you think these would be helpful to you or to another career counsellor.

Answer:

Task1.

Personal Reflection

As a client to the career counselors, the first question that came to my mind is that whether I need a career counselor or not. However, after I became one, I realized I have been engaged to something which is a little different than other careers and is something which enhances my analytical characteristics. At some point of time, while I have been counseling, I realize that the assistance I provide to my clients should also be applied on my own career as well. I should also be able to take my career to a point where it only moves towards the positive side before I start advising others about their own life. While I suggest them to be more focused and confident about their career, I should also believe in myself and motivate myself. My experience in this field has taught me that if you feel drained in a job, you should opt for something else. You are to nurture your qualities and skills through your career. So, I have always made it a point that my job should make me happy throughout the entire week, not only on Friday evenings.

Task 2.

Literature Review

Career counseling develops career identity

Narrative as a medium in Career counselling

Tradition versus Modern Narrative Career Counselling

According to Savickas et al. (2009) narrative career counseling offers the counselors with innovating methods of responding in order to fulfill multiple needs of various clients (Wehmeyer & Shogren, 2017) . Sustainable future can be achieved by the career counselors as the narrative career counseling opens up new possibilities. The focus of this method is to provide the clients with useful and meaningful experience.  The authors have examined the changes in delivery methods in career counseling over the years. The contemporary economic time had greatly impacted the methods and finally shaped it. Savickas mentioned that before 1900 the career counseling was mainly the mentoring of agricultural communities. However the industrial revolution changed the scenario. The vocational guidance emerged during the industrial era which encouraged the narrative career counseling. In twentieth century’s second half, the rise of corporate world felt the need of effective career counseling (Di Fabio, 2014). The needs of the clients changed so improved career counseling was in demand. The change also influenced a shift in the terminologies related to career counseling. The traditional use of vocation changed into career and the definition now incorporate more holistic approach towards life’s work. In that period, the self construction was more appropriate for the career counseling of that period. However recently they have offered life designing approach that can be adapted in the self construction process of narrative career counseling. The life designing helps to broaden the horizon of career counseling in more widespread arena (Wehmeyer & Shogren, 2017).  

The disadvantages of narrative career couselling

According to Stead and Watson (2006) during this time, in the American paradigm the career counseling had to be developed from the predominant conventional notion. It is especially evident in the non-western scenario. The predominant practice of narrative career counselling had to be changed for applying them in the non western career guidance system. The history has seen changes in the career guidance identity due to contextual and cultural changes. Watson and McMahon (2013) stated that this eventually led to a new career guidance identity. In the twenty first century the career guidance was in need for a good narrative. The researchers have proposed many newer approaches to the narrative career counseling since the narrative career counselling’s seminal text by Cochran in 1996. Maximum of these approaches mainly focused on the developed western countries like USA and Europe. The newly developed narrative career counseling includes other western country like Australia and non western country like South Africa. The narrative career counselling thus differed from the previous approach.

Storytelling Method and Interview Method

Storytelling as effective career counseling method

La Pointe (2014) examines storytelling approaches should be discussed with its psychological context as well. The identity based on social narrative counseling is socially situated, coconstructed and interactively performed.

Oyserman, Elmore and Smith (2012) compared identity within the storytelling career counseling as the anchor for meaning making. The career counselors get to know about the clients as who they which helps them to guide the clients with right career choices. Storytelling approach of narrative career counseling is closely related to crafting identity (B?la?-Timar, 2015). The engagement of present and past experiences through the interactive process of storytelling eventually develops a future story that is in a harmonious connection with identity.

Interview as effective career counseling medium

Task3.

Interview critique

Mattering climate

The interviewer created the mattering climate effectively by constructing and presenting the question such a way that the client felt that the interviewer has concerns for him and values them.  The counselor developed a cultural appropriate treatment plan in the career counseling for understanding the world views and self concept of the client. Douglas told her about his ethnic identity and childhood struggle in details. This helped the counselor to identify the issues that affected and shaped the client’s life. During the counseling Douglas identified himself as queer, and the counselors sensitive reaction made him express his feelings regarding this and how it is related to his other aspects of life.

Counselor asked him about the profession of his parents. Douglas told her how they started off as refugee factory workers and eventually built their own dry cleaning business. Anika extended the conversation by how after a series of jobs his parents became entrepreneurs.

The Vietnamese identity of Douglas was addressed by Anika as she wanted him to reflect on the work ethics and styles he experienced during his formative years.

The observation map shows that attributes like values or ethnicity of the client is associated with the past. He explained how he struggled about his ethnic identity and how his ethnicity and family built up his values which will eventually shape his self concept. His coming terms with his sexual orientation is related to his present. The individual’s self concept is the present state that the counselor is trying to understand in order to guide him in the right way. His language skills, education and physical attributes are connected to the present. His work of knowledge will be developed in the future.

Reference

Amundson, N. (2017). Active Engagement and the influence of constructivism

B?la?-Timar, D. (2015). Narrative Identity And Storytelling In Career Counselling. Journal Plus Education, 13(2), 280-295.

Gu, Q., & Su, Y. (2016). How Does Objective Career Success Affect Subjective Career Success? The Moderating Role of Self-Awareness. Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies, 4(03), 227.

LaPointe, K., & Heilmann, P. (2014). 'Daring Leaps' Construction of Meaning and Individual Agency in Career Change Narratives in the Media. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 4(2), 47.

McMahon, M., & Watson, M. (2013). Story telling: Crafting identities. British journal of guidance & counselling, 41(3), 277-286.

McMahon, M., Watson, M., & Patton, W. (2015). The Systems Theory Framework of career development: Applications to career counselling and career assessment. Australian Journal of Career Development, 24(3), 148-156.

Savickas, M. L., Nota, L., Rossier, J., Dauwalder, J. P., Duarte, M. E., Guichard, J., ... & Van Vianen, A. E. (2009). Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the 21st century. Journal of vocational behavior, 75(3), 239-250.

Wehmeyer, M. L., & Shogren, K. A. (2017). Life design and career counseling. Counseling and Coaching in Times of Crisis and Transition: From Research to Practice.