Personal Theories of Career Counseling
Description: Write a paper that describes your personal orientation to career counseling. This
should include a description of the way you understand major elements of the career process,
how that understanding guides interventions, and how it relates to your general orientation to
counseling and the change process.
Expectation: This paper will be 5-7 pages of content (not to exceed 7), double-spaced and in
APA style. In-text citations should be used where appropriate. This paper will include the
following elements (they may be presented in any order you choose):
– A coherent theory of vocations that reflects your personal understanding of: (a) what
‘work’ or ‘career’ is and how it relates to the life of the client, (b) how people develop
their job/career-related interests/values; (c) how people make job/career decisions; and
(d) what are valued outcomes, such as vocational performance or persistence. You may
use any of the theories we have discussed or elements thereof.
o My response: Use Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett):
overall model, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, interests model, etc.
– Describe the interventions that would flow naturally from this theory, and would produce
the process goals associated with the theory. You may use an example(s) to demonstrate
these principles.
o My Response: SCCT/CBT Career interventions that improve self-efficacy,
outcome expectations, interests, etc.
– Connect this theory to your theory of change (or psychotherapeutic orientation) more
broadly. How does it fit with how you see people, how they move through the world, and
how our field can bring help to our communities and our clients?
o My Response: Connect SCCT to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
You do not have to address these prompts point by point, or in this specific order, but they
should be addressed somewhere throughout your paper.
Evaluation: 20% of total grade, based on:
– Accurate description of theory
– Sufficient support for positions
– Complete discussion of ramifications of position
– Understandable, concrete application
– Logical connection to orientation/worldview
– Appropriate APA style
– Writing mechanics and style