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Wednesday 21 June 2023

What field is career development in?

Career practice is a “social activity”, usually focused around ideas of work or life roles, “engaged in by a career practitioner and a client” (Herr, 2008, p. 46). But the field of career practice is diverse, with many specialisations (Bernes et al., 2007): not only do practitioners discuss with school leavers “jobs that do not yet exist, using technologies that have not yet been invented, in order to solve problems that have not yet been defined” (Borgen & Hiebert, 2014, p. 709), but with all adults transitioning across the life span. In addition to in-school services, the career development profession in Aotearoa New Zealand has formalised practice specialisations which include: career counselling; working with those with disabilities; career development programme design and delivery; research; policy development; professional supervision; and organisational career development (CDANZ, 2018). 

I was recently asked what field careers work lies in, which gave me pause for thought. In my mind, career development lies between the business sub-area of Human Resources on one hand, and Social Sciences counselling on the other; as it is a form of wellness coaching for our working lives. However, the fact that I had never really thought about this before left this 'top of my mind' analysis feeling a little precarious. So I decided to do some reading, to see what the experts thought. 

Professionals in the career practice field arrive in career practice from other places, and become dual citizens of two professions. For example. career "practitioners [in the UK] are members of other professional groups – teachers, psychologists, labour-market administrators" (Watts, 1998, p. 1), which is pretty broad. Education, psychology, and economics (business). In Australia, career practitioners arrive into career development from “a range of pathways [via…] backgrounds in education, psychology, […] and social work” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2002, p. 106, citing Patton, 2001); so education, and psychology. Human resource management is also suggested as an Australian pathway (Commonwealth of Australia, 2002); adding the final of the three: and business. 

In Aotearoa, practitioners have definitely segued into the career sector from an earlier profession (Furbish, 2002; Young, 2022), coming from “backgrounds in teaching, business (human resources or training) and the social sciences” (McCowan et al., 2000, p. 31); so the same three again. There are some common themes here: education, psychology, and business. To me, this has a flavour of the wider meaning of 'interdisciplinary' studies. 

Surprisingly, I haven't yet found a field definition per se in the academic literature. I have found a definition of a 'sister' field though: that of coaching, "with an interdisciplinary focus [fusing] counselling, psychotherapy, and psychometrics" (Shams, 2020, p. 4). But coaching is alongside career development, not quite it. I am also not quite convinced by this example of interdisciplinarity as the fields of "counselling, psychotherapy, and psychometrics" are actually elements of a single field: that of psychology. 

Interdisciplinary studies have been defined as a complex "subject or problem [with] multiple parts requir[ing] study by different disciplines"  (Repko et al., 2016, p. 5) with the complexity driven by the following: "(1) the complexity of nature, society, and ourselves; (2) the complexity of the globalized workplace; (3) the need for systems thinking and contextual thinking; (4) the changing nature of university research; (5) the public world and its pressing needs; and (6) a knowledge society’s need for both disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity" (p. 4-5). 

So what I am left with is that perhaps career development is already an interdisciplinary field: that we already sit on the boundaries of a number of fields. Perhaps an initial place is those boundaries of education, business, and psychology.

This will need more thinking. 


Sam

References

Bernes, K. B., Bardick, A. D., & Orr, D. T. (2007). Career guidance and counselling efficacy studies: An international research agenda. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 7(2), 81-96. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10775-007-9114-8

Borgen, W., & Hiebert, B. (2014). Chapter 40 Orienting Educators to Contemporary Ideas for Career Counseling: An Illustrative Example. In G. Arulmani, A. J. Bakshi, F. T. L. Leong, & A. G. Watts (Eds) (2014). Handbook of Career Development: International perspectives (pp. 709-726). Springer.

CDANZ. (2018a). Career Development Association of New Zealand Competency Framework. Career Development Association of New Zealand. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p4je3cbcuCk659W116_YlQxWIKQmkJ4v/view

Commonwealth Government of Australia. (2022). Career Services in Australia: Supporting people's transitions across the lifespan [report]. http://hdl.voced.edu.au/10707/9320

Furbish, D. S. (2002). A Snapshot of New Zealand Career Practitioners. Australian Journal of Career Development, 11(2), 13-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/103841620201100204

Herr, E. L. (2008). Chapter 3: Social contexts for career guidance throughout the world. In J.A. Athanasou, R. Van Esbroeck (Eds.), International Handbook of Career Guidance (pp. 45-67). Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

McCowan, C., McKenzie, M., Medford, L., & Smith, N. (2001). Careering in the South Pacific: An overview of career guidance and counselling policy and practice in Australia and New Zealand. Australian Journal of Career Development, 10(3), 28-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/103841620101000307

Patton, W. (2001). Career education: What we know, what we need to know. Australian Journal of Career Development, 10(3), 13-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/103841620101000304. 

Shams, M. (2020). Chapter 1: Key issues in family business coaching. In M. Shams, D. A. Lane (Eds.), Coaching in the family owned business: A path to growth (pp. 1-12). Routledge.

Watts, A. G. (1998). Reshaping career development for the 21st century. Inaugural professorial lecture. Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.100.1185&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Young, S. (2022). A snapshot of Aotearoa NZ career practitioners [Manuscript submitted for publication]. Social Sciences, NMIT/Te PÅ«kenga.

5 comments :

  1. Perhaps its a life well lived. CT

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  2. Thank you for this post, you clearly demonstrate why it’s hard for people to understand what we do when we tell them :) We find it hard to explain ourselves and struggle to explain the skill involved. It’s hard to explain the beauty inherent in the transformational nature of our work, maybe that’s a good thing too :)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks so much for your thoughts: you make a good point about beauty in the amorphous nature of the work. I hadn't thought about that before!

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