In our last blog we spoke about taking risks. We will continue on this theme as we expand on the processes at work in the occupational decision-making of adolescents and young adults.  In our last entry we differentiated between indecision and indecisiveness.  One of the consequences of indecision can be the delaying or postponement of a decision until the decision has to be considered in earnest.  This is readily evident in the resistance some students express towards efforts to facilitate self and occupational awareness. The fear of committing to a course of action that may later turn out to be incorrect can paralyze a student, causing him or her to avoid the decision altogether.  This paralysis became quite evident to me as I moderated a focus group with first year university students last week.

The students I met with, all in their first year of university and all living away from home for the first time, spoke at length about the processes involved in making the decision to attend the university at which I work.  For me, the most telling aspects of their stories were their almost universal admittance that they made the decision when the application deadline was almost upon them, that they were concerned about the possibility of making the “wrong” decision, and that many used intuition and experience in making the decision, even after employing very rational approaches to narrow the possibilities.

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We have been speaking at length about vocational identity and the various processes that contribute to its development.  Last time John pointed out that in the development of concepts related to self and occupations, there are two processes that are essential: integration and differentiation. Through the process of integration a person learns to put concepts about the world of work together, like using tools and building things, to build a more complex unit such as carpenter.  In this example subordinate concepts are integrated into a superordinate concept. With differentiation, the second process, the person separates general (superordinate) concepts into specific meaning (subordinate concepts), such as the difference between a general contractor and a cabinetmaker. Such differentiation allows people to experience one situation or occupation as different from another.

John also made reference to Erikson’s fifth stage of psychosocial development, the stage where identity is formalized.  Erikson came to see this stage as having two distinct steps.  The first step, usually typical of older adolescents and young teens, involves the development of identity by similarities.  The individual’s sense of identity at this step is based on how closely he or she fit or are similar to an identifiable group.  In the schoolyard this is evident when one sees groups of students dressed similarly, listening to the same music and expressing the same interests.  Identity is achieved by integrating one’s self with the group.

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In our last blog, we focused on the practice of exposing adolescents to work environments through the Take Our Kids to Work Day (TOKW) movement.  We highlighted the necessity of individuals linking occupational information with their perceived self-attributes, a process that promotes the development of a vocational identity.  The growth in self-understanding does not cease with the ending of the growth phase of career development. Moreover, we maintain that individuals who do not continue to link self-information and occupational information during the exploration phase will likely lack the meta-dimensions of clarity, certainty, and harmony as they understand the components of their self-concept system. We strongly support the TOKW initiative but suggest that the career practitioners involved need to go farther by preparing and processing the day with participants.  The focus of this blog is to suggest ways that practitioners can facilitate the linking of occupational information with self-precepts to enhance vocational identity formation by preparing and process the experience with their participants.   

First, often the focus of TOKW is on the provision of factual occupational information only.  While this provision is an important component, it is best experienced by encouraging adolescents to link this occupational information with their perceived self-attributes.   TOKW is an episode in the life of an adolescent. As such, it has a significant potential to enhance vocational identity either in helping the individual to make choices in favor of or against an occupation, or to lack overall relevance.  Episodes help to develop the self-concept and consequently ensuring the TOKW episode is appropriately prepared for and processed contributes to the elaboration of the self-concept and to vocational identity.  A critical component of any episode is the context in which it happens.  We think that helping adolescents to prepare for TOKW helps them to build a framework around what to anticipate during the episode.  Providing adolescents with questions to ask about the work environment (Holland’s work environments are helpful here) and about the psychological (aptitudes, skills, interests, values, personality traits) and social (occupational role, salary, educational requirements, occupational future) aspects of each occupation encountered helps them to develop appropriate concepts.  These concepts contribute to their understanding of the world of work, and to making the links between their perceived self-attributes and the occupational information learned during the episode.

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