Story telling, career assessment and career counselling: A higher education case study

Adults changing careers through university education: Making meaning of quantitative career assessment scores through an integrative structured interview

“…Although the stimuli for the interviews were the quantitative SDS scores, the process constructs of the storytelling approach to narrative career counselling, that is, reflection, connectedness, meaning making, learning and agency (McMahon et al, 2012a), were clearly evident in the interviews. This finding is consistent with a South African research which integrated career assessment with narrative career counselling (McMahon et al, 2012b).…”

“…A particular challenge has been to exploit the potential complementarity of career psychology's expertise in assessment and the narrative counselling processes advocated by constructivism and social constructionism (McMahon & Watson, 2012;Rottinghaus & Eshelman, 2015;Sampson, Peterson, Osborn, & Hayden, 2015;Watson, 2017;, 2015Zytowski, 2015), an example of which has previously been described in the South African context (see McMahon, Watson, Chetty, & Hoelson, 2012b). A related challenge has been the limited guidance provided for career psychologists who wish to adopt narrative methods and the resultant uncertainty about how to engage in narrative practice (Reid, 2017).…”

“…Consistent with other narrative approaches to career counselling, the storytelling approach recognises as core process constructs (1) the personal agency of individuals to tell stories about and (2) to make meaning of their experiences (McMahon & Watson, 2010. Storytelling facilitates the core process construct of (3) connectedness through making explicit relationships and interconnections within and between influences (McMahon, Watson, Chetty, & Hoelson, 2012a, 2012b. Distinguishing the storytelling approach from other narrative career counselling approaches are the core process constructs of (4) reflection and (5) learning, both of which are explicitly incorporated as important elements of the career counselling process (McMahon et al, 2012a).…”

“…Distinguishing the storytelling approach from other narrative career counselling approaches are the core process constructs of (4) reflection and (5) learning, both of which are explicitly incorporated as important elements of the career counselling process (McMahon et al, 2012a). (For a more detailed description of the storytelling approach and the process constructs, see McMahon et al, 2012b.) The STF and the core process constructs of the storytelling approach informed the development of the ISI in terms of its section structure and questions, which will be described later in this article.…”

The Systems Theory Framework of Career Development

“…Comparison of parental and adolescent perceptions of career influences on adolescent career development has been investigated (Collett, 2011). In higher education, McMahon et al (2012b) demonstrated how other forms of career assessment could be integrated within the metaframework of the MSCI process by describing how the administration of a values card sort was stimulated from a MSCI (adult) conversation between a career counselor and a Black African woman. Case studies have demonstrated how the MSCI can assist adolescents to become more active in the career counseling process and to holistically consider their career decisions ).…”