Innovative Moments in Career Construction Counseling: Proposal for an Integrative Model

Intervention and evaluation of the life design counseling: A case study

This article aims to explore the effectiveness of Life Design Counseling (LDC) for a high school student before choosing the subject. To evaluate LDC outcomes, the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale-China Form was used before and after the intervention. Two measures were used to evaluate the process of LDC: the Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS) and Future Career Autobiography (FCA). The results show that the LDC approach produced a significant change in career adaptability. In addition, the findings demonstrate a significant narrative movement or change with the evaluation of the process. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Therapeutic Collaboration in Career Construction Counseling: Case Studies of an Integrative Model

The mapping of therapeutic collaboration throughout counseling deepens our understanding of how the helping relationship fosters client change. To better understand the process of career construction counseling (CCC), we analyzed the therapeutic collaboration on six successful face-to-face cases. The participants were six Portuguese adults, five women and one man, real clients of a career counseling service, and four psychologists, three female and one male trained in the career intervention model. The participants completed demographic questions and measures of career certainty, vocational identity, career indecision, and psychological functioning. The Therapeutic Collaboration Coding System was used to track collaboration throughout all interactive episodes. The clinical significance of the intervention was calculated by analyzing pre-post-test statistical differences for each case, with the Reliable Change Index and Z score. The findings evidenced a pattern of therapeutic collaboration evolution for good outcome cases. Based on this pattern, we propose a model of process-outcome evolution for the three phases of CCC.

Life Design Counseling: Theory, Methodology, Challenges, and Future Trends

With the rapid development of society and the dramatic change of environment, previous career counseling focusing on personal choice has been difficult to meet individuals’ needs. It is very meaningful and valuable to introduce the ideology of Life Design Counseling (LDC). In this mini review, we introduce and analyze the theory and methodology of LDC. This review puts forward challenges in the field of LDC, including the lack of attention to clients from multiple backgrounds and professional counselors, the lack of diversified methods in the intervention process, and the lack of diversified research. The theoretical research, practical research, and the integration of theory and practice of LDC still need to be further concerned by researchers.

Innovating and contextualising career counselling for young people during the Covid-19 pandemic

This article reports on how the changing career counselling needs of young people during the Covid-19 pandemic can be met. It is argued that innovative and contextualised career counselling that is in line with the basic principles of ‘best practice’ and draws on a life design–based framework offers a viable conceptual framework for this kind of endeavour. Such counselling can promote young people’s adaptability; enhance their employability; and bolster their narratability, narrativity and autobiographicity. A brief theoretical overview explains innovation and contextualisation in career counselling and clarifies key aspects of counselling for self- and career construction. The style of e-career counselling advocated here can help young people make meaning of their career-lives and (re-)kindle their sense of hope and purpose. Moreover, it can help them devise practicable strategies to actuate their sense of purpose and hope and also help them experience a sense of being part of something much bigger than themselves. In addition, it can promote young people’s entrepreneurship and self-entrepreneurship and bolster their employability. Longitudinal research, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods studies on the topic, is needed to examine the value of the e-career counselling approach. Such research could involve different assessment instruments and counselling strategies and include questionnaires to facilitate pre- and post-assessment of the effectiveness of the approach.

Facilitating Narrative Change in Career Construction Counseling

Career Construction Counseling fosters client change by evoking and elaborating innovative moments in client narratives. In this article, we describe four types of dialogues that counselors may use to prompt narrative novelty and foster client change: (a) identify and evaluate the effects of innovative moments, (b) highlight contrasting self-positions, (c) ask about changes achieved, (d) promote a meta-perspective on change. Vignettes from a case are used to illustrate how to use IM markers as a heuristic guide for when to engage in these four types of dialogues.