Why do we need another book about career theories?
I love a theory. I’ve always loved a theory. I like other people’s theories and I like coming up with my own theories – generally really terrible ones based on very limited evidence. But I honestly can’t help myself. And I am not alone – not by a long chalk. We are theory-building creatures. It’s a function of being human – it’s what we do. We want to understand what’s going on around us and theories help us to make sense of the world, offering us an explanation for something that is complex or difficult.
That’s exactly what career development theories should be able to do for us at work. Career development, as we know better than anyone, is really complex. We are dealing with the interaction between an individual and their environment, the unconscious and conscious, the past, present and future, and the politics, economics and geography. And as career practitioners, we are called on to help our clients to unravel this all, to understand it better and to move forwards.
Formal career theories should be able to help us to do all that. There are dozens of them, so we ought to be able to find just the right one for any particular situation; they are generally very well thought-through and often backed up with empirical evidence; and they are specifically designed for our needs and so should be able to shed light on our clients’ experiences and guide our practice in a really useful way.
But somewhere along the line something has gone wrong. While most of us can dredge up the names of one or two theories from our training courses, the theories aren’t widely applied in career practice. I am generalising, of course, but I’ve been digging around about this topic for some time – both in the academic literature, and with colleagues in the field – and really, not many of us are actually using them in our work.
This is interesting. If we are theory-making beings, we know that theories can help our practice and there are loads of career theories out there, then why aren’t they well used?
It seems that over the years, people have offered lots of possible explanations for the limited uptake of theories in career practice: careers appointments are too short; the theories aren’t well taught; there are too many theories; the theories are too complicated; we’re too busy learning about the labour market to think about theories. But I couldn’t help but wonder, maybe we just don’t need theories? I’ve spent a lot of time writing about and teaching career theories over the years – promoting them as an important and useful aspect of our practice and our profession. But perhaps I’ve been misguided? Perhaps they are just not that useful?
I wasn’t quite ready to draw a line under it all, so I put a call out for self-confessed theory-loving career practitioners and asked them to tell me about the theories they use, how they use them, and why they use them. I had a great response and the career practitioners bowled me over. These colleagues used a great range of theories, some that I knew and some that I didn’t, and used them with a wide range of clients, in all sorts of different ways: with groups, in one-to-ones, with young people at school, with university students, with adults, with career changers, in short sessions, long sessions, implicitly, explicitly, for negotiating, for planning, spontaneously, and for reflection. They told me how the theories add value, bringing confidence and credibility to their work and insights to clients, increasing their empathy with their clients and their own self-compassion, and guiding their practice.
I was pleased to see this. But it got me no closer to solving my problem: if they are genuinely useful, then why aren’t we all using them?
Trawling back through the data I had collected from conversations with career practitioners across various research projects, it seemed to me that career practitioners were broadly positive about the idea of using career theories and generally felt that the theories had been well taught on their career guidance courses. But there were two things missing.
First, a readable guide to the theories. Practitioners talked about how difficult it was to find, access and wade through the academic papers that introduce the theories. They described having to read them over and over again and still not properly understanding what they meant.
Second, some clear guidance for using the theories in practice. The theory-loving practitioners I spoke to all talked about having worked out on their own how to apply the theories in their work and no-one seemed to be aware of any genuinely useful practice guides that could show them what theory-driven practice could look like.
And so, the idea of this new book started to germinate. Maybe I could write something that could help? Something that was solidly grounded in academic scholarship, but was very readable, using everyday language, without the interruptions of citations and footnotes. And it needed to have loads of practical ideas for incorporating the theories into practice – our UK practice, with its short guidance interviews and its emphasis on group work.
One problem I had heard practitioners discuss was how to know which theory to use and when. This was such a good question and I wondered how best to answer it. I decided it could be useful to group the theories around specific client issues. That way practitioners would be able to go straight to the theories that are most applicable to the particular problem their client was facing, whether that was raising self-awareness, boosting confidence or generating job ideas. I wanted to give practitioners the confidence and techniques to put the theories into practice straight away, so I collected some case studies, asking practitioners to describe their theory-driven sessions so that I could share them directly with the readers.
I think that we’ve ended up with a book that is straightforward, readable and practical, with the practitioner and their clients right at its heart. I hope it’s worked. I really hope it helps. Will you let me know how you get on?
For more information and practical advice about how you can utilise career development theories in your practical work, read Julia Yates' new book, Career Development Theories in Practice.