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Theory for guidance practice
- Overview of contents
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How do we choose between theories?
Critiques of traditional theories
New trends in theory development for guidance practice
New theories for guidance practice
An old adage proclaims 'Theory without practice is meaningless, but practice without theory is blind'. This section provides a critical introduction to traditional and new theories in careers guidance together with criteria with which to assess them. Re-familiarise yourself with 'traditional' career guidance theory, and see how much theory has evolved in recent years.
As the practice of careers guidance has become more established, policy requirements in the UK have increased its range of clients and tasks. Varied and complex demands on services have produced questions about how best to deal with their associated challenges, with answers increasingly being sought in career theory. New theories signal a rejection of scientific, positivist approaches to career, replacing them with paradigms embracing more holistic, fluid models of human behaviour. The process of working out (and working through) the implications of new approaches for practice is underway, with a key challenge likely to be reconciling new approaches and thinking to policy directives embedded in traditional theory.
Bodies of knowledge informing career practice have expanded over the past two decades and with this development, critiques of traditional theories are becoming a well-established feature of the literature.
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