No abstract

emphasizes cognitive-person variables that enable people to influence their own career development, as well as extra-person (e.g., contextual) variables that enhance or constrain personal agency. Although the theory has yielded a steady stream of inquiry and practical applications, relatively little of this work has examined SCCT's contextual variables or hypotheses. In this article, several avenues for stimulating study of the contextual aspects of career behavior are considered. In particular, the authors (a) examine "career barriers," a conceptually relevant construct, from the perspective of SCCT; (b) advocate study of contextual supports as well as barriers; and (c) propose additional context-focused research and practice directions derived from SCCT.

Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) currently consists of 4 overlapping, segmental models aimed at understanding educational and occupational interest development, choice-making, performance and persistence, and satisfaction/well-being. To this point, the theory has emphasized content aspects of career behavior, for instance, prediction of the types of activities, school subjects, or career fields that form the basis for people's educational/vocational interests and choice paths. However, SCCT may also lend itself to study of many process aspects of career behavior, including such issues as how people manage normative tasks and cope with the myriad challenges involved in career preparation, entry, adjustment, and change, regardless of the specific educational and occupational fields they inhabit. Such a process focus can augment and considerably expand the range of the dependent variables for which SCCT was initially designed. Building on SCCT's existing models, we present a social cognitive model of career self-management and offer examples of the adaptive, process behaviors to which it can be applied (e.g., career decision making/exploration, job searching, career advancement, negotiation of work transitions and multiple roles).