1. From Super to Savickas:
A Review of Career Theory & its Application
Asia Pacific Career Development
Association Conference
May, 2014
Presented by:
JoAnn Harris-Bowlsbey, Ed.D.
Executive Director,
Content Development
Kuder, Inc.

2. • Explains the phenomenon of career choice
and development.
• Serves as a foundation for career
interventions.
• Predicts outcomes that can be expected
from career interventions and
environmental influences.
Why study theory?

3. • Career Development Theory
– Defines and describes career development through
five life stages and sub-stages.
– Provides an expansive definition of career as a
combination of interacting life roles.
– Stresses the centrality of self-concept as the driving
force in career choice.
– Stresses the role of values in making career choices.
– Depicts the balance of internal and external
influences on career choice.
Donald E. Super

4. The Career Rainbow

5. The Arch of Determinants

6. Practical Application
• Assist individuals to
– know their interests, aptitudes, and values.
– form a realistic, strong, and clear self-concept.
– develop time perspective and knowledge that
today’s choices affect the future.
– view work as one important role that interacts
with all other life roles.
– recognize and adapt to influences in the
environment that affect career choice and
change.

7. • Circumscription, Compromise, & Self-Creation
– Individuals choose occupations they perceive to be a
“good fit” related to
gender appropriateness.
intellectual demand.
interests and personality.
– Individuals are indecisive when the options they see
are perceived as undesirable.
– Career choices may be made by compromising, which
is the process of modifying career aspirations related
to these three characteristics.
Linda Gottfredson

8. Practical Applications
• Assist individuals to
– have a realistic picture of their interests and
personality and of the job duties and
requirements of occupations.
– view all occupations as accessible by members of
both genders and all social backgrounds.
– identify occupations that would be a “good fit”
for their interests, personality, and academic
ability.

9. • Personality Types & Environment
Interactions
– Individuals can be described as a combination of
two or more of six personality types.
– Environments can also be described as a
combination of these same six personality types.
– Individuals of a given type seek environments of
the same or similar type.
– To the extent that individuals find this match,
they are satisfied and productive.
John Holland

10. The Holland Hexagon

11. Practical Applications
• Assist individuals to
– identify their personality type.
– find occupations, postsecondary majors, and
leisure activities that match this type.
– gather information about these options and make
an informed choice.
– know how to make career moves, when
necessary, that are most compatible with
personal type.

12. John Krumboltz
• Learning Theory
– Career decision making is affected by
genetic endowment and special abilities.
environmental conditions.
instrumental and associative learning.
task-approach (decision-making) skills.
– From these, individuals develop
unique self-observations.
unique worldview generalizations.
task-approach (decision-making) skills.

13. Practical Applications
• Assist individuals to
– understand their unique capabilities.
– engage in meaningful learning activities related to
career choice.
– create realistic views of self and of the world.
– purposefully expand their interests and be open
to new opportunities.
– be open to and take advantage of unexpected
opportunities (happenstance).

14. Lent, Brown, & Hackett
• Social Cognitive Theory
– Self-efficacy is a very important ingredient of career
choice and success.
– Individuals are drawn to activities they think they can
perform well and avoid those they think they cannot
perform well.
– Self-efficacy is developed through
personal accomplishments.
vicarious learning (watching others; role models).
social persuasion (feedback from others).
outcome expectations (expected rewards).

15. Practical Applications
• Assist individuals to
– Identify and develop skills that allow them to
perform well in some specific areas, especially
those that can be related to paid employment.
– Create opportunities for individuals to receive
positive reinforcement for use of their skills.
– Identify occupations where these skills can be
used and rewarded.

16. Peterson, Sampson,
Reardon, & Lenz
• Cognitive Information Processing (CIP)
– Good career choices result from gathering and
processing information effectively.
– The career decision-making process is both cognitive
and affective and can be defined in specific steps
(communication, analysis, synthesis, valuing, and
execution).
– Decision making is affected by career beliefs, self-talk,
and self-awareness.
– Negative career thoughts need to be removed or
modified before good decision making can occur.

17. Practical Applications
• Assist individuals by
– assuring that they have “readiness” for career
planning and decision making by attending to
negative thoughts or self-talk that may be
barriers to good decision making.
– providing accurate and timely career information
on which to base decisions.
– helping them learn an effective decision-making
process that engages both mind and emotion.

18. Mark Savickas
• Career Construction Theory
– Individuals have one or more life themes that guide
their career choices.
– These life themes become apparent as individuals tell
their life stories.
– Individuals construct their careers by imposing
meaning on what they do in work – meaning that
helps them live out their life theme(s).
– In today’s uncertain world, career adaptability is
exceedingly important.

19. Practical Application
• Help individuals to
– identify important life themes through reflection
on the past chapters of their lives.
– identify work activities that would allow them to
play out those themes.
– identify action steps that they need to take in
order to make career choices or changes.
– understand the concept of career adaptability
and be psychologically prepared to make changes
as needed.

20. A Summary
• Influences on Career Choice and Development
– Genetic endowment.
– Awareness of interests, skills, aptitudes, and values.
– Awareness of need to plan ahead and effect of current
choices on future outcomes.
– Clear understanding of personal life theme(s) and values.
– Strong self-concept and self-efficacy.
– Cognitive decision-making skills.
– Environmental conditions, including family and peers.
– Career adaptability/willingness to engage in new learning.

21. Continua to Consider
• Developmental vs. Choice Point
• Individual Control vs. Environmental Control
• Theoretical vs. Practical
• Total Life Involvement vs. Work only
• Research-supported vs. Non-supported

22. Developmental vs Choice Point
• Donald Super’s theory is the most developmental in
nature because
– It defines all life stages and sub-stages and how career
development occurs in each.
– It defines all life roles and how they interact in an individual’s life
space.
– It defines most, if not all, of the influences that affect career
choice and development.
• John Holland’s theory is the most “choice point” theory
because
– It does not focus on how individuals become a specific “type,”
but rather on how to identify that type and match it in
occupations, postsecondary majors, and other life activities.

23. Internal vs External Control
• Krumboltz and Peterson, Sampson, Reardon, &
Lenz appear to be highest on internal control
due to
– emphasis on exercising control via a rational decision-
making process.
– emphasis on removing personal barriers and
purposefully seeking new learning experiences.
• John Holland appears to be highest on external
control due to
– his position that an individual’s personal code is
formed through heredity and environment and is
typically stable across the life span.

24. Theoretical vs Practical
• John Holland’s theory offers the most practical application
due to
– providing both informal and formal assessments to measure
one’s Holland type.
– providing databases that assign codes to all occupations and
postsecondary majors.
– ease of use of this matching system in web-based and print-
based interventions for both individuals and groups.
• The theories of Gottfredson and Lent, Brown, & Hackett
appear to be the least practical due to
– Identifying key factors in career choice without providing tools to
measure those factors in any concrete way.
– not providing any way to translate self-perceptions into
occupational choices.

25. Total Life Involvement
vs Work Only
• Super leads the group in applying career
development principles to the totality of life
because
– no other theorists (other than Sunny Hansen)
deal with this issue at all.
– his definition of career is “all of the activities
occurring in all life roles at a given point in time.”
– his Career Rainbow and its attendant concepts
are an invaluable depiction of the impact of work
on other life roles and vice versa.

26. Research-supported vs
Non-research-supported
• By far, Holland’s theory is the most research-
supported theory of all, followed by that of
Donald Super because
– Holland himself conducted vast research studies of
the theory while he was Vice-President of Research at
ACT.
– Hundreds of students and professionals worldwide
have researched his theory.
Results are reported in Holland’s book Making
Vocational Choices and in a scholarly paper
(http://www.career.fsu.edu/documents/technical%20r
eports/TR50.pdf) written by Bullock, Andrews, Braud,
and Reardon.

27. In Closing
• All of these theories add to the well of what
we know about the antecedents and process
of career choice.
• It is professionally wise to be an eclectic, in
other words, to draw from all the theories.
• It is useful to apply different theories and
their proposed interventions to different
clients, depending upon their needs and
your resources in the situation.

28. Questions?Thank you
JoAnn Harris-Bowlsbey, Ed.D.
Executive Director, Content Development
bowlsbeyj@kuder.com
Kuder, Inc.
302 Visions Parkway, Adel, IA 50003
www.kuder.com