Chapter 6 covered theories of contextualism and chaos and their
application to career counseling. There
are a few contextualist theories and a few chaos theories explained in this
chapter. Thankfully they have a case
study as well because it was very confusing to me to try to figure out how
these work solely by their descriptions.
Brown even mentions in the opening paragraph of this chapter that
Savicks’ model is complex, difficult to grasp and often dismissed (Brown,
2016).
Contextualist
theories has ten assumptions according to Brown. These are that human behavior is nonlinear,
cause and effect relationships can’t be studied, individuals can’t be studied
outside their own context, research data can’t be generalized, researcher’s
values should guide the research process, client’s stories are actual data
sources, research has no goals, self develops continuously between them and
their own contexts, etc (Brown, 2016, p. 102-103). The first contextualist theory that is
mentioned is by Young, Valach, and Collin.
It states that the clients career goals are not determined by events
that happened in their lives, but that their career-related behaviors are “…goal-directed
results of the individual’s construction of the context in which she or he
functions” (Brown, 2016, p. 103-104). This
thinking rejects previous theories such as Super’s and Holland’s. Savickas’ career construction theory is next,
stating that “…construction of self occurs primarily through a reflective
process…thinking about self and interpreting the thoughts as they occur in
context” (Brown, 2016, p. 105). Savickas’
theory varies from the previous one because it incorporates Holland and Super,
it doesn’t dismiss them (Brown, 2016).
Brown follows the
descriptions of these theories by explaining Savickas’ five step approach to
career counseling. His five steps are
construction, deconstruction, reconstruction, coconstruction, and action. As I stated in the first paragraph, this got
to be relatively confusing for me.
Thankfully, the Case of B helped to give me a real life example, as well
as table 6.2. I feel like Brown did not
give descriptions of the stages as much as try to relate them to other things
without clearly laying out what they are first.
Table 6.2 did a much better job explaining the five steps by showing the
counselor’s tasks and the client’s tasks (Brown, 2016).
The chaos theory that
Brown examines next is typically used for mathematics. Counselors use five assumptions of this when
dealing with families, groups and organizations. There are 8 themes outlined that may occur
during counseling, not in any specific order: change, balance, energy,
community, calling, harmony, unity, and summary (Brown, 2016).
Brown ends the chapter
by explaining solution-focus counseling, which we are learning about in another
class. So far, this way of counseling is
the one that makes the most sense to me, but that may just be because it’s the
one I’ve had the most practice with. It
seems like other theories are trying to get you to analyze a lot about the
client whereas this one is just the counselor helping the client find their own
way (Brown, 2016).
References
Brown, D. (2016). Career
information, career counseling, and career development (11th
edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.
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