Final Blog - Chapter 18

Blog 14 – Chapter 18

                After reading Chapter 18, I found the majority of Brown’s (2012) predictions about the trends associated with career information, career assessment, and career counseling to be reasonable; however, when looking back at previous predictions by Herr and Gysbers’, it seems likely that many of these trends may not hold true in the foreseeable future. In regard to career counseling, I found it interesting that some current career counseling books continue to discuss the issue of gender simultaneously, rather than addressing the needs of women separately. It is clear that women face vastly different issues in the realm of career counseling than men, thus leading me to support Brown’s (2012) prediction that there will be a divergence in thinking about career counseling practices for men and women in the future. Similarly, I think it is absolutely crucial for career counselors to direct much of their attention on the career counseling needs of culturally diverse populations as they will constitute the majority of the U.S. population by the year 2050. According to Brown (2012), career counselors will need to adopt different strategies and be sensitive to the values and needs of their culturally diverse clients to be effective. 

In order better handle the vast career counseling needs of our ever-changing society, I feel as though it would absolutely be beneficial for individuals to receive certification in career counseling. Throughout this entire course and reiterated in the last chapter of Brown’s (2012) text, it has become obvious that career development is a highly specialized field that should require more than one course of material in graduate school to learn the knowledge and skills necessary to work effectively with others as a career counselor. Although this is not the type of specialized work I plan on doing in the future, I have gained an immense amount of appreciation for the work being done by researchers and counselors in the field of career development. Given the importance and demonstrated of career counseling, I found it interesting that the majority of schools do not make programs such as the ASCA models mandatory in schools (Brown, 2012). If career counseling is to be aimed at prevention rather than remediation, it makes most sense to implement a program beginning in elementary school that allows students the opportunity to plan for their future. My hope is that career counseling and career development programs will become a regular part of students’ experience in schools so as adults, they are not left to question why no one had exposed them to these resources sooner.

References

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