Blog 7

When I first started reading chapter 8of Brown’s textbook, I thought back to our discussions in class about technology taking power over social or personal relationships. Though some of the theories we’ve learned have been a bit dense with information, I felt myself getting defensive of the theorists who worked hard to evolve upon Parson’s Trait-Factor theory to create career counseling that focused on the individual. This O*NET seemed like it was replacing all of that hard work with a simple computer search!

Then (silly me, jumping to conclusions) I saw that the O*NET bases it’s judgments off of Holland’s Code (2012, pg. 183). That was really interesting to me, someone whose first instinct was to fight the dichotomy, because it shows that incorporating technology can become a part of a string of theories about career development.

This idea of technology helping with career guidance became more interesting and applicable to my views of career counseling as the chapter progressed. I have found the idea of career counseling so abstract because, even though we are learning that it is crucial to implement career counseling into elementary schools even, I have never seen it as my main focus as a counselor. Because of this negative attitude (I’ve worked on it!) I have had trouble grasping how to apply some concepts. Specifically, how do we properly convey the importance of helping people figure out their right career path if they aren’t interest in seeking us out in the first place? On page 185, Brown talks about simulations and games as a way of helping people gain career knowledge (2012). To me this sounds like the 2.0 version of the career shadowing that I had to do in middle school and high school, except more appealing to a generation that is used to technology guiding everything (work, school, play). These examples helped me to see that career counselors don’t have to be locked up in an office hoping an adolescent comes by asking about Personality X Environment theory; we can bring what they are interested to the client.

Brown even went on to talk about job shadowing, and the way he described it reminded me of my awful experience in middle school. Brown talks about bussing students to buildings/places where students will find plenty of jobs they are interested in, but his examples were “hospitals, the courthouse, and to the school district central office” (2012, pg. 186). This was analogous to my experience because our middle school shadowing supervisor was the science teacher, so all of our careers had to be science-oriented. Apparently psychology-related jobs didn’t count, so I ended up shadowing a dietician at a local hospital (something I have never and will never be interested in doing). I understand theoretically what Brown was saying about those large institutions, but I would just like to argue on the side of that being counterproductive to helping students explore any job field outside of major buildings.

Brown, D. (2012). Career Information, career counseling, and career development (10^th           ed.). New York: Pearson Education, Inc.