University career counsellors invest a lot of time and effort in the development of the skills and knowledge associated with self-reliance in job interviews. The resource-intensive nature of this approach needs to be reconsidered in the context of overall careers service delivery. More specifically, the key barriers to achieving a competent degree…

New ideas and perspectives are needed to form effective counselling strategies and approaches in an effort to promote and enhance the psychological well-being of individuals in retirement transition. This article is the second of two co-published articles. The first, "Life-career re-engagement: A new conceptual framework for counselling people in…

While discussions of social justice have become more prominent in the general career literature in recent years, little attention has been given to where the topic "fits" within career education and, more specifically, how it affects career advisers in schools. Drawing on the findings emerging from research in New Zealand, I examine career…

This article explores the findings of a doctoral study that examined the measurement of individual progression in the Irish Adult Education Guidance Initiative. The critical constructivist stance of the study challenges the prevalence of the positivist paradigm to evaluate long-term outcomes in adult guidance. The research highlights the…

Entrepreneurship as a career option has become increasingly desirable, and there is a real need to develop an opportunity-oriented entrepreneurial mindset among tertiary students. Current entrepreneurship education heavily relies on the linear process of business planning and rarely encourages the complex and non-linear thinking patterns necessary…

The broad utility of the concept of transition in many disciplines provides career educators and career advisory personnel with expanded opportunities to explore fresh solutions to problems they meet in the course of their work. Further practical solutions become available by continuing to seek applications of the concept. Career transition…

Research investigating the learning and career transitions of those disadvantaged in the labour market has resulted in the development of a four-component model to enable disadvantaged groups to navigate learning and career transitions. The four components of the model include: the self-concept; learning and recognition; career and life planning;…

The Systems Theory Framework (STF) is presented as an integrating and organising concept for the predominant theories of career. In order to test the integrative capacity of the STF, this research merges the STF's theoretical element of story with the Theory of Dialogical Self's model of personality. Implications for the practice of career…

In this article the five career narratives of three siblings and two unemployed men are drawn upon to critically examine the use of contemporary career discourse as a means to negotiate changes to work since the 1980s and to the present time. A critical analysis enables contemporary career discourse and workplace change to be located within the…

Simple matching models of decision making are no longer sufficient as a basis for career counselling and education. The challenge for contemporary careers advisers is how to communicate some of the complexities of modern career development to their students; in particular, the apparently contradictory relationship between the need for planning and…

This case study outlines an approach to design a career development program for university students using an adaptation of "the wheel" (Amundson & Poehnell, 2004). Ten elements of the model are listed and some of the key questions, tools and strategies that support each element of the model are highlighted. Its application in a variety of group…

The issue of training career counsellors in Australia requires considerable review in respect to theory and practice. This paper describes an internship model of training career counsellors. The model is derived from a current program of workplace training for candidates doing their masters in psychology. The program takes a competency-based…

This paper highlights five challenges to the accepted wisdom in career development theory and practice. It presents the chaos theory of careers and argues that the chaos theory provides a more complete and authentic account of human behaviour. The paper argues that positivism, reductionism and assumptions of linearity are inappropriate for…

Describes an ecological model of the vocational behavior of people with disabilities that includes context, the individual, mediating factors (individual, cultural, societal), environmental constructs, and outcomes. Discusses employment challenges for people with disabilities (job insecurity, technology, policies, stress) and makes suggestions for…

Traditional short-term vocational rehabilitation approaches should be replaced by a career development model based on systems theory. In the model, initial counselor interventions for career exploration, decision making, enhancement, and job realization yield to client independence in career self-management, which better supports long-term…