Extract
Constructing a life that works: part 2, an approach to practice.
The 1st article (C. Campbell & M. Ungar, 2004) of this 2-part exploration of postmodern approaches to family therapy and narrative approaches to career counseling explored the differences between traditional trait and factor counseling models and postmodern approaches using life narratives and social constructionism. In this 2nd article, the authors discuss 7 aspects of their practice as postmodern career counselors that ask clients to (a) know what you want, (b) know what you have, (c) know what you hear, (d) know what constrains you, (e) map your preferred story, (f) grow into your story, and (g) grow out of your story. Several case studies demonstrate the applicability of these theories to practice.
********** In Part 1 (Campbell & Ungar, 2004) of these two articles, we examined the differences between trait and factor models of career counseling and postmodern approaches. Our goal has been to outline a social constructionist approach that focuses on life narratives and constructions of identity. A social constructionist approach emphasizes that the way individuals experience their world depends on how they construct meaning for events in their lives through the language available to them to describe their experiences. Both the theoretical and applied aspects of these two articles grow out of our experiences in both the career and vocational counseling and marriage and family therapy fields. In the first article, we examined the differences between traditional trait and factor models of career counseling and postmodern approaches that use life narratives and social constructionism. As career counselors and marriage and family therapists, our approach to career development brings together the extensive literature on postmodernism in the field of family therapy with emerging narrative approaches to career counseling. Our purpose in this second article is to discuss in detail practical applications of our approach to postmodern career counseling. In the field of career counseling, translating postmodern theory into practice has bee...See the full content of this document
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