New models of career education are needed to prepare young people for changes and challenges in the world of work. We propose that the psychology of working framework/theory (PWF/PWT) has the potential to shape career education in transformative ways that are attentive to shifting dimensions of the local context and the marginalization of large…

The authors provide a reaction to the Major Contribution by Richardson in this issue of "The Counseling Psychologist" on the counseling for work and relationships perspective. The authors examine the trajectory of Richardson's work, beginning with her seminal article in 1993, which set the stage for a new paradigm for vocational psychology.…

To analyze the conception of work and its relationship with the various indices of progress in career development, we administered a structured, open-ended questionnaire that explored beliefs about working among a sample of Italian high school students considering university options. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we found that…

Describes development and validation of model of commitment to career choices process, operationally defined by Commitment to Career Choices Scale. Defines two independent constructs pertaining to commitment process: Vocational Exploration and Commitment dimension, reflecting variations in level of commitment to career choices, and Tendency to…

Considers Super's explication of developmental tasks of planning, exploring, and deciding as readiness for career choices. Reviews existing means of conceptualizing and operationalizing various aspects of readiness. Describes selected elaborations and extensions of readiness construct. Presents directions for theory and research on readiness,…

Emancipatory communitarian perspectives advocate for theory, research, and action that address the needs of oppressed groups, such as urban adolescents. Considering the dearth of instruments sensitive to the career development needs of urban adolescents, this study examined the component structure of three indices of career development with 220…

Attempted to identify role of career exploration in the career decision making process using college student (N=103) subjects. Found internal search instrumentality beliefs to be associated with the planning phase of career decision making, and environmental exploration was predictive of vocational commitment. (Author/ABL)

This study presents the educational and career goals and perceptions of supports and barriers related to these goals as described in semistructured interviews of 16 students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds attending 9th grade at an urban public high school in a large Northeastern city. Using consensual qualitative research (CQR)…

Attachment to peers, intimacy, and attachment to mother were positively associated with environmental exploration and commitment to career choices in a study of 147 young adults. Both male and female late adolescents may use peer relationships for support and a buffer from the anxiety related to career decision making. (SK)

Nearly a century ago, Frank Parsons established the Vocation Bureau in Boston and spawned the development of the counseling profession. Elaborating on Parsons's socially responsible vision for counseling, the authors examine contemporary perspectives on career decision making that include both rational and alternative models and propose that these…

Building on recent calls for a more explicit and intentional endorsement of social justice goals within counseling psychology and vocational psychology, this article proposes Prilleltensky's (1997) emancipatory communitarian approach to psychological practice as a useful framework for vocational theory, practice, and research. Such a framework…

Examined vocational hypothesis testing by applying Snyder's hypothesis-testing research paradigm to a vocational task in two experiments. Subjects (N=106) were asked to evaluate the appropriateness of a specific occupation for themselves. Subjects tended to exhibit confirmatory hypothesis-testing strategies when relevant occupations were…

As a reaction to the article by D. M. Tokar et al. (this issue), discusses the most pressing methodological and theoretical challenges embedded in the study of family relationship factors in the career decision making of college students. Reviews outstanding theoretical and empirical issues characteristic of structural equation modeling, with a…

Two studies examined psychological separation, parental attachment, and career development of college students. For women, attachment to and conflictual independence from both parents were positively related to progress in career choice commitment process, negatively related to tendency to foreclose. For men, attachment to, attitudinal dependence…

Correlational analysis of data from 134 undergraduates assessed the variance between career choice variables and decisional progress variables (vocational self-concept, commitment, readiness). Most significantly related to progress variables were exploration variables: amount of information and intended-systematic exploration. Congruence between…