A rich past and a future vision.

The National Career Development Association celebrated its 90th birthday at its recent summer conference. During that span of time, there has been significant development of theory, tools, and interventions as well as standards for the preparation of the members of the career development profession. The author reviews those accomplishments and suggests some needed directions for the immediate future.

For this special issue, authors have been asked to review the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in the career counseling profession and, based on these, to make suggestions and predictions for the next decade. I approach this task by examining the profession in four areas: its theoretical base, its tools, its methods of intervention, and the preparation of its members. In each section, I summarize my view of that category as well as offer suggestions for the next decade. Although I am aware that public policy and legislation are also critical factors, I leave this domain to other authors who have greater expertise in that area.

Theoretical Base

The career counseling field has a rich theoretical base. Parsons (1909) laid a foundation for career counseling work by stressing the critical relationship between the characteristics of individuals and occupational choices. His pioneering work led to the trait-and-factor approach that, although not a sufficient intervention in and of itself, is one helpful approach to identifying alternatives.

Anne Roe (1956) made a beginning contribution to the development of an organizational system for occupations that is simple enough to use with students and clients as a basis for their occupational exploration. Although her theory that early childhood experience was a determinant of vocational choice was not supported by research, her eight-category classification of occupations and her advocacy for a Things versus People dimension in the work tasks of occupations served as a foundation for the later work of Holland (1959) and Prediger (1981).

Super appeared as a giant in the field with his 1957 book The Psychology of Careers. With that book he began to move the field to a much broader perspective--from choosing an occupation to crafting a career, from single decisions at transitional points to lifelong development. He contributed many of the concepts most precious to the career counseling profession--the centrality of self-concept; the definition of career as a combination of interacting life roles; the delineation of factors and tasks that constitute career maturity; the importance of values and their attainment in various life roles; and finally, the recognition in his Arch of Determinants model (Brown & Brooks, 1990) that personal career is supported by two pillars of equal importance: internal variables such as interests, talents, and personality traits and external variables such as the labor market, the economy, and hiring practices.

Tiedeman (Tiedeman & O'Hara, 1963) made an immense contribution to the understanding of the process that underlies the many decisions made in a Super life stage or life role. His model provided a structure that could be internalized into one's own decision making or used as a basis for helping students and clients become aware of and inform their own processes.

Holland (1997), in his highly focused stream of research and development, has made his contribution through tools that counselors can use to assist individuals to make satisfying choices or transitions related to work, educational programs of study, and leisure activities. His theory defines personality types and the environment in which persons of those types may thrive or be dissatisfied. His classification system for occupations, often with non-Holland titles, has become the nationally accepted classification system and the basis for ACT's World-of-Work Map (Prediger, 1981).

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, a host of theorists have added to the understanding of the phenomenon of career choice and development. Schlossberg (1989) has focused on transitions--the factors that constitute them and a cognitive method of managing their impact. Peterson, Sampson, and Reardon (1991) have focused on the bases and dynamics of how individuals process information and on their readiness to do so. Krumboltz (1996) underscored the importance of the learning process, both instrumental and associative, in career choice and development. Brown (1995) has detailed the impact of values on career choice and development. Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1996) have focused on the power of self-efficacy and cognitive factors such as outcome expectations and goals as precipitators of career choices and behaviors. Hansen (1997) has stressed the need for individuals to focus less on self-actualization and more on inclusion of family and global needs--in other words, making career choices in a more holistic way.

These theorists, whose work is too briefly reviewed here, inspect the context and phenomenon of career choice and development from a different perspective. It is as if each one turns the kaleidoscope of career choice and sees a different and unique arrangement of its pieces. Yet all these theorists have identified relevant pieces of the puzzle.

This review of theories leads me to a summary of weaknesses in the profession's theoretical base as I see them. These, in turn, can become goals for the next decade.

1. Although theorists may not have identified all of the internal and external variables and dynamics that have an impact on career choice and development, they have surely identified most of them. At this point in the profession's history, career counselors need disciplined, thoughtful work in integration of these theories into a more meaningful whole as well as clear statements of the theories' implications for working with students and clients.

2. In theory development to date, there has been disproportionate attention to the career development of White, middle-class, young men. Given the societal changes and diversity of the twenty-first century, it is essential that more attention be given to the career development of women; members of racial/ethnic minorities; persons with disabilities; and gay men, lesbians, and bisexual men and women.

3. The profession's research base is spotty and fragmented. Although some theories, such as Holland's, have been subjected to long-term study across many cultures, others have been subjected to little or no study. Many studies that are related to the investigation of theories or to the evaluation of interventions have been done with small, non-representative samples.

Tools

Theories spawn applications, and applications require tools. Tools include formal and informal assessments, curricula, and technologies. They are items that counselors can use to aid, in substantial ways, their delivery of services to students and clients.

The latest edition of A Counselor's Guide to Career Assessment (Kapes & Whitfield, 2001) bears testimony to the fact that the profession has a myriad of well-researched instruments designed to measure career beliefs, career thoughts, career maturity, interests, skills, aptitudes, abilities, personality traits, values, and other internal variables. Many of these instruments are available in print and in computer-based and Internet-delivered forms. Many have had a long history of research that has documented acceptable reliability and validity, and many are based on the theoretical work reviewed in the first section of this article.

The development of additional instruments seems unnecessary. Rather, the needs appear to be the following two points:

1. Counselors need more funding to acquire these instruments and time to administer them to students and clients--especially at the secondary school level.

2. Counselors need more training in the effective use of these instruments--especially in knowing how to use the instruments' results to assist clients/students in career decision making.

In schools, career development curriculum is a second and very important tool for delivering career guidance services. The development of the National Career Development Guidelines, funded by the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (NOICC; 1992), and the American School Counselor Association's National Standards for Career Counseling Programs (Dahir, Sheldon, & Valiga, 1998) provided a corn textual skeleton upon which career guidance curriculum could be built at the local level as well as developed by publishers. Furthermore, well honed models of implementation, such as that described by Henderson and Gysbers (1998), offer practical tools and training for implementation of guidelines. Thus, there is no scarcity of guidelines and models. Rather, the needs exist in the following areas:

1. School administrators and counselors in schools and colleges need to recognize and implement the high priority that systematic programs of career guidance should have.

2. With this recognition, time needs to be created in the school day of middle and high schools to make career-planning curriculum available.

3. School counselors need more training in the area of career development in order to teach or manage such curriculum effectively.

Since the late 1960s, the profession has had a rich flow of development effort related to the use of technology (stand-alone, networked, and Web-based computers) to support the career planning process. The earliest systems, developed by Super, Tiedeman, and Katz (see Super, 1970), each in its own way sought to use the computer as a means to implement the theorist's work as a counselor might or to teach a process that computer users would learn and internalize. Although not a theorist, I operationalized Roe's (1956) classification system, using interest inventory scores and school achievement to assist a student to identify "cells" of occupations for exploration.

These early systems--the Education and Career Exploration System, the Information System for Vocational Decisions, the System for Interactive Guidance Information (SIGI), and the Computerized Vocational Information System (CVIS)--might be called career guidance systems. Their characteristics included (a) the presence of a user record, allowing an ongoing monitoring function of the student's career guidance activities; (b) the implicit or explicit teaching of a career development process; and (c) online assessment or use of off-line results as a part of the process. In addition, these systems provided databases and searches of extensive files of occupations and colleges.

The 1970s, spurred by funding from the NOICC, were the heyday of the development of career information systems and of the continued development of early computer-based guidance systems--namely of DISCOVER (replacing CVIS) and SIGI Plus. The career information systems, such as the Oregon-based Career Information System and the commercial Guidance Information System, focused on the quality of searches and databases, customizing the latter for specific states. By the 1990s, some systems had alternate versions for middle school students and for older adults and began to incorporate the use of audio, video, or still images, or all three, into their systems. In the late 1990s, the first Web-delivered versions appeared.

With the phenomenal rise of the Internet in the 1990s, hundreds of Web sites that provide career advice, career information, job placement, and career-related assessment appeared (Harris-Bowlsbey, Riley Dikel, & Sampson, 2002). On the whole, these form a smorgasbord of disjointed information that is available to the public free of charge and without consumer protection. On the one hand, the Internet as a medium provides a never-before-experienced opportunity to provide free, high-quality information and moderately priced "cybercounseling" support to the masses. On the other hand, it offers the opportunity for the dissemination of information of poor quality and the provision of ineffective support services. Ethical standards, designed to produce the better of these two alternatives, have been developed by the National Career Development Association (NCDA), the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), and the American Counseling Association and are available on their respective Web sites.

When this article was written, most of the computer-based career information and guidance systems were available for a fee using the Internet and were available to the general public as well as to students in schools and colleges. Also, a small number of sites offered an integrated system of content as opposed to disjointed information. Furthermore, the first cybercounseling site, focusing on providing career planning assistance to clients via e-mail or real-time videoconferencing, has been established.

Because I have invested much of my career in developing technology as a tool, these developments are exciting and positive. Nevertheless, they represent a significant challenge for the next decade in the following ways:

1. As we enter the age of cybercounseling, counselors desperately need research about its effectiveness. One of the profession's foundational principles has been that a face-to-face, facilitative relationship is an essential component for effective counseling. Given this premise, will support using e-mail or even video yield effectiveness in assisting a client or student to reach identified goals? Will this method of intervention be equally effective with all clients and for all kinds of career-related topics?

2. As the Internet becomes a more feasible medium for delivery of high-quality career information and for provision of counseling, the profession needs to consider what it can do to ensure access to these resources by all citizens.

3. Given the vast range in the quality of information and services available through the Internet, the profession needs to review Web sites for quality assurance as it currently does with videos and print materials.

4. Given the potential for comprehensive Web-based career centers, the professional association should consider developing two prototypes. The first would serve the professional community, providing online access to the best in literature, assessment, curricula, publications, and Web sites to assist professionals to implement career-planning services. The second should serve the general public in making career choices and changes.

Interventions

The profession has four common methods of intervention: one-to-one counseling, group counseling, group guidance, and interactive computer-based systems and Web sites. The one-to-one approach, the most expensive one and the one most commonly used, is well-grounded in the Rogerian tradition of facilitative skills. The content of these interviews includes topics such as self-concept, interests, skills, values, life roles, and goals. The exploration of educational and vocational options is often guided by the use of assessment.

The more recent "career as story" approach (Cochran, 1997) uses early childhood memories, role models, and life stories as content to reveal significant life themes and values that can be translated into career options. Still others (e.g., Brown, 1995) propose discussion and clarification of values as the central focus for career counseling.

Group counseling approaches that are related to career concerns seem to be limited, with the exception of the approach that Pyle (2001) proposed in which a group of six to eight participants engage in a group process that includes values clarification, decision-making goal setting, and action planning.

Group guidance is a common method of intervention, especially in schools. In this approach, career development curriculum is infused into ordinary school subjects or taught in a unified curriculum or as a full-semester course in colleges.

One-to-one approaches, as do group guidance or curricular approaches, seem to be well developed without critical need of further development in the next decade. Group counseling approaches are few, and the field could profit from additional models.

Computers as an intervention have already been explained in a previous section of this article. Computer-based systems and Web sites cease to be simply tools and become an intervention when (a) a user record is stored so that an individual's use of a system and of tentative choices can be tracked and (b) there is professional support provided to the user either off-line or online (cybercounseling).

Some priorities from my perspective for the next decade include the following points:

1. Through research and use of instruments that measure constructs such as career beliefs, career thoughts, career decidedness, and career maturity, career counselors need to learn how to identify which students/clients need costly one-to-one services and which can have their career planning needs met by less expensive and more available interventions (i.e., group counseling, group guidance or workshops, or computer-based systems).

2. As indicated earlier, career counselors need research and development related to the use of virtual career centers, including real-time cybercounseling. Such work would include finding ways to determine which clients can profit from services in this mode, which content topics can be adequately addressed, what the optimal combination of technology is for delivery, and the effectiveness of this method of intervention.

Counselor Preparation and Other Professional Concerns

This section includes thoughts on professional identity, counselor selection, and counselor preparation. In recent years, counselor identity--and, therefore, the image of the profession--has been compromised. Originally, the National Certified Counselor (NCC) designation provided a common standard for the training and experience of a counselor. In addition, the National Certified Career Counselor (NCCC) designation provided a common standard for the training and experience of counselors specializing in career concerns. Furthermore, existence of the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs and its standards provided a common understanding of a quality counselor education program.

Several things have occurred to change this picture. The growth in the number of states that require licensure for counselors, although positive, has resulted in having counselors who are licensed, certified, neither, or both. The discontinuance by NBCC of the NCCC credential has removed the special distinction for individuals with specialized training and experience in the career development area.

In addition, two new specializations in the career development area have evolved--career development facilitators (CDFs) and career coaches. Professional organizations--including NOICC, the Career Development Training Institute, and NCDA--have been closely involved in determining the competencies and curriculum for CDFs; certification is available through the Council for Credentialing in Education, an organization associated with NBCC. There are at least two discontinuities in this situation: (a) CDFs in many settings are performing tasks that in the past were reserved for professional counselors and (b) a significant number of professional counselors are seeking CDF training because its curriculum offers more career development work than their master's-degree program offered.

This picture is further confused by the rapid rise in the number of and demand for career coaches. At this time, there is a wide variance in the length, content, and scope of their training, and there are multiple sources of certification. Furthermore, NCDA has not taken a position in regard to acceptance, competencies, training, or certification of this new member to the career development family of service providers.

Finally, those responsible for counselor education programs may need to scrutinize their admission procedures in an age when the head count is so important to financial viability. Applicants to counselor preparation programs are typically screened for their academic ability to succeed in the course work. Many graduate schools either do an inadequate job or do not even attempt to screen applicants concerning personality criteria for effectiveness in the profession. Although good facilitative skills and a Holland Social-type personality are considered best for entry into the profession, the profession may need to recruit and cultivate some other types. The profession certainly needs strong Holland Investigative types for program development, research, and evaluation. It needs strong Holland Enterprising types to deal with public policy and public image issues, and it may need Social Realistic types for effective cybercounseling. The profession also needs to continue to try to find ways to attract more men and more persons who are members of minority groups.

There is a lack of professionalization in the body of counselors who deal with career counseling concerns. Although it is estimated that there are approximately 300,000 counselors in the United States, only about 55,000 of them belong to the American Counseling Association. Although unknown, there is likely to be a similar proportional relationship between the number of counselors working in the career development area and the membership of NCDA. Furthermore, there is need for continuing education for counselors in an even greater variety of methods, including Web-based courses, because only a very small percentage of counselors attend content-rich national conferences sponsored by NCDA. The profession is also splintered in that there are several associations with similar missions related to career counseling and guidance.

The profession has the following needs related to professional concerns:

1. Counselors who wish to specialize in the career choice and development area need training beyond that required for state licensure or the NCC, which is currently one graduate course with no specialized internship related to career concerns. This problem could be solved by making it possible for students who want to specialize in this area to take 9 semester hours (career theory and practice, career assessments, and use of technology) in their master's-degree program and to have their internship directly related to the career specialty.

2. Content related to the use of Web sites should be included in several counselor education courses, and a specialized curriculum should be developed for individuals who wish to become cybercounselors.

3. Clear lines of distinction should be drawn regarding the competencies, job duties, training, and certification of professional counselors, career development facilitators, and career coaches so that both the profession and consumers can be informed. NCDA needs to take leadership in this matter on behalf of the profession.

Our profession has been formed and continually enriched by 90 years of development of theory, tools, interventions, and elements of counselor preparation and professionalism. The context of the twenty-first century--a rapidly changing workplace, increased number of career changes per lifetime, and a global, diverse market for services--demands more effective delivery of services to a greatly expanded audience. Perhaps some of the suggestions included in this article will facilitate meeting these challenges in the next decade.

References

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JoAnn Harris-Bowlsbey, Career Development Leadership Alliance, Finksburg, Maryland. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to JoAnn HarrisBowlsbey, 1600 Green Mill Road, Finksburg, MD 21048 (e-mail: [e-mail]).