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Wednesday 19 June 2024

Savickas’ Career Construction Theory

Sometimes called Life Design, Career Construction Theory (CCT) is a post-modern approach to an individualised career in a work environment where there no longer appear to be 'jobs for life' (Savickas, 2005, 2012; Luke & Gibbons, 2022). CCT arose out of a growing sense of employment uncertainty and mobility (Savickas, 2012). I have written about CCT before (here).

We construct our career from within our shifting perspective (Luke & Gibbons, 2022). We know we will change our roles regularly, and have change happen to us, so the theory suggests that being awake to our context and constraints is more important than dissecting our personality (Luke & Gibbons, 2022). CCT suggests that we "create unique narratives that represent [our] current view of reality and worldview" (Luke & Gibbons, 2022, p. 139), and - hopefully - our career development takes a holistic view of us as a person AND our context AND the change we are experiencing. We make sense of what is going on for us through the self-construction language we use to describe ourselves and tell our story. This is not just a work role, but social role, in our own context. Our self and our identity interplay to form our life narrative, or life design (Barnes, 2019). We create a career identity through our knowledge of our narrative and constructivist self:
  • Construction are the micro-narratives that we build about ourselves. Deconstruction is how we seek to "undo a story's uncritical domination over the client's thinking, [while] not destroy[ing] the story" (Savickas, 2015, p. 15)
  • Reconstruction is how we pull together "micronarratives about important incidents, recurrent episodes, significant figures, self-defining moments, and life-changing experiences" (Savickas, 2015, p. 16). We cohere our life themes so we and others can make sense of our story, so we can take action
  • Co-construction happens through the relationship between the practitioner and client, where through challenge and confirmation, a narrative is created which includes changes to our identity. We can clear false or limiting stories to assist future action
  • Action is a type of working in our own future, and of hope: "Through action, not verbal expressions of decidedness, clients engage the world" (Savickas, 2015, p. 17)

For us to manage those actions, to assist us to move through our likely career transitions, we also need 'career adaptability' (Savickas, 2005, after Super, 1992), which consists of four key life design tools: concern; control; curiosity; and confidence (read more here).


Sam

References:

Barnes, E. (2019, May 19). Module 1: Career Theories. In Integrating Career Focused Counseling [course]. https://careerfocusedcounselingproject.wordpress.com/2019/05/19/module-1-career-theories/

Luke, C., & Gibbons, M. (2022). Career-focused Counseling: Integrating culture, development and neuroscience (1st ed.). Cognella Academic Publishing.

Savickas, M. L. (2005). The Theory and Practice of Career Construction. In S. D. Brown, R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (pp. 42-70). John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Savickas, M. L. (2012). Life design: A paradigm for career intervention in the 21st century. Journal of Counseling & Development, 90(1), 13-19.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1556-6676.2012.00002.x

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