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Social Contexts for Career Guidance Throughout the World. Developmental-Contextual Perspectives on Career Across the Lifespan

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International Handbook of Career Guidance

Since its introduction, the meta-theoretical framework of developmental contextualism (Vondracek, Lerner, & Schulenberg, 1986) has served as a stimulus to researchers and practitioners in career development who care about understanding the developing person in a multitude of ever-changing contexts. At this point it has become widely accepted in the study of career development that behaviour is the result of interactions between person and contexts (Chartrand, Strong, & Weitzman, 1995; Shanahan & Porfeli, 2002). Shanahan and Porfeli (2002, p. 404) pointed out, however, that “the premise that vocational development reflects both person and context is so established that much of the time it is in fact not empirically studied.” The integration of both human development and context in career interventions has proved to be no less difficult than it is in the research enterprise. Nevertheless, progress has been made in theory development, empirical investigations, and the applications of these advances in career development intervention strategies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Pennsylvania State University, USA

    Fred W. Vondracek

  2. Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and Pharmacy, USA

    Erik J. Porfeli

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  1. Fred W. Vondracek
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  1. University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

    James A. Athanasou

  2. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

    Raoul Van Esbroeck

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Vondracek, F.W., Porfeli, E.J. (2008). Social Contexts for Career Guidance Throughout the World. Developmental-Contextual Perspectives on Career Across the Lifespan. In: Athanasou, J.A., Van Esbroeck, R. (eds) International Handbook of Career Guidance. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6230-8_10

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