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Understanding career decision-making and progression: Careership revisited…

- - - - Pierre Bourdieu
        
        It was the inadequacy in the existing theories in regards to career decisions that Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes set out to overcome when constructing their Careership theory. They turned to Pierre Bourdieu to do this. Bourdieus work resonated with their data and with the ways they were thinking about it. Like them, his work was partially concerned with disproving the assumptions of economic rationalism which lay behind the views of Bennett (1992) and the dominant folk theory assumptions about decision-making. Also, Bourdieu's work gave a way to go beyond seeing structure and agency as opposites or as alternative ways of thinking about the world. Finally, they were drawn to the heuristic (a commonsense rule (or set of rules) intended to increase the probability of solving some problem) nature of Bourdieu's thinking. This was not conventional grand theory based upon a priori assumptions and logic, but theorising that was grounded in empirical data, where ideas were developed and used as necessary to explain whatever problem Bourdieu was considering at the time. This met directly with Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes research needs, to use modivified versions of some of his idea to make hueristic sense of their data.
        
        The Careership Theory
        
        The Careership theory was published in several places (Hodkinson, SParkes and Hodkinson, 1996; Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997,1998); Hodkinson, 1998). It argued that career decision-making and progression had three copletely overlapping dimensions (parts or sides). They were the positions and dispositions of the individual, the relations between forces acting in the field(s) and within that decisions were made and careers progressed, and the on-going longitudinal pathways the careers followed.
- - - - Theories for a general understanding of career
        
        Theories provide a general way of understanding career processes that is more than just the accumulation of practitioner experience or the blending together of idiosyncratic stories (unusual stories). In fact, all policy and practice in the guidance field are informed by theory, which is not simply an area of academics. In the UK, much career guidance policy and some practice are supported or constructed by a folk theory of career. Politicians and civil cervants follow this apparently common-sense theoretical position when trying to decide what to do about guidance and some educational provision. This folk theory is fluid and changeable, but often includes many of the following assumptions:
        
        -Career decisions entail matching a person with a career opening
        -Career decisions are or should be cognitive and rational
        -Career decision-making is a process culminating (a highlight)
        -Career decicions are made by the person following the career
        -Good career decicions reduce educational drop out and increase employment
        -Career decisions are made at the start of a linear career, or linear careet stage
        -Career progression is usually straightforward if a good decision has been made
        From this position it is assumed that the main purpose of career guidance is to increase the quality of the career decision-making process, leading to an increase in the number of good decisions being made, which in turn will lead to less educational waste and lesser unemployment. Although much of this lecture that Phil Hodkinson will give will show how and why this folk theory is wrong, his beginning point is to establish that those interested or engaged in career guidande can't help but have some theoretical perspective about career. More on careers in the next part.
        
        Which career theory should one use?
        
        In the previous part, it was said that those who are interested or engaged in career guidance cannot help but have some theoretical view about career. As this is the case, how can we decide which of the many competing career theories should we use? A good theory should meet two requirements or criteria:
        
        -It should be corresponding or in agreement with the ways in which career decisions are and/or could be made and the ways in which careers actually and/or could develop.
        -It should give an understanding that can valuably inform research, policy and practise.
        Many existing theories of career decision-making try to do two different things. They set out to explain how decisions are made but also to set out how decisions should be made. Perhaps, they do it like this because many people make career decisions in less than optimal ways. If we wish to help them improve these processes, it may aid them knowing what a good career decision would look like. But to do so, there really is no point in identifying idealistic ways of making decisions that are so far removed from actual expereince that they create an impossible model to strive for. This is something that occurs when we approach career decision-making as an abstract logical process rather than studying the complex, messy ways in which such decisions are actually made.
- - - - A persons dispositions
        
        The person always exercises a significant amount of influence on their own horizons for action. Bourdieu's concept of dispositions (the particular type of character that a person naturally has) is a good way to understand that. A persons dispositions are deeply held and mainly tacit (understood without being expressed directly) ways of viewing and understand the world, that orientate us towards all aspects (parts) of life. These dispositions (collectively termed the habitus, by Bourdieu) develop throughout our lives and are strongly influenced by our position(s) in the world, and our interactions within it.
- - - - Pragmatic Rationality
        
        Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Sparkes described the decision-making of their subjects as pragmatic rationality The main ways in which pragmatic rationality diverged from technical rationality were as follows.
        
        2.Secondly, all the decisions in their study were based on partial information, often taken from what Ball et al. (2000) later termed ‘hot sources’ (that is, from people whom they felt they could trust, rather than from, say, official printed materials. Non-one was concerned to get full information (whatever that means). Furthermore, many of them considered one opportunity only. Evaluative questions rarely entailed comparing this opportunity with possible others, but rather deciding whether or not this opportunity was what they wanted to do. Some, like David and Helen, actively worked with others to construct the opportunity itself. In David’s case there was never really ana actual decision (simply a lengthy process of constructing a training opportunity that was then taken up. On the other hand, Becky became a trainee dental nurse because a training provider found the opportunity and asker her if it would do. She said yes, because she was the traineeship as a chance to find out whether or not this was a job she really wanted. Her ‘choice’ provides a good example of a rational component that did not fit the technically rational model. From her perspective, getting a paid traineeship to explore a possible career was not irrational.
        
        3.Thirdly, as Phil Hodkinson has already shown, career decisions often involved several people, yet the technically reation view was that only the young person made a decision. In a related way, serendipity was important in many of the storie. Helen got her firt traineeship, party because the garage owner had already employed one young woman, whow as taken on as a part of a package deal, to attract a very skilled male worked he wanted to attract. This serendipitous appointment opened the way for him to consider a second female (Helen) in a strongly male occupation.
        
        1.Firstly, the decisions made by their subjects were more than cognitive and discursive: they were embodied (personified). They involved the physical, practical emotional and the affective, as well as the cognitive. In many ways, these decisions resembled the sorts of lifestyle choice that Giddens (1991) wrote about, involving, in his terms, the subconscious and practical consciousness, as well as discursive consciousness. Another way of describing the signifiance (importance) of the embodied nature of the decisons is that they were partly tacit. That is, the young people could not completely articulate some of their likes and dislikes. David expressed deep and consistent enthusiasm for farming, but his commitment went way beyond any rational reasons he could give. He knew that he had chosen a profession.