Super's Life Span, Life Space Theory
When reading chapter two, Donald Super's life
space theory really interested me. Even though his theory is broken down and
segmented into postulates, I still believe the theory looks at the person in a
holistic way. The postulates are sequenced beginning with just looking at a
person holistically, then moving towards using a person's skills and what
we know about career development in order to find a career that caters to
ourselves as people with specific skills and personality organization. Super
believes that his theory applies to both men and women. Super's Life-Career
Rainbow ties together situational determinants, history and social economics of
a person within their lifelong journey through career development. I found this
Life-Career Rainbow to be interesting, especially the outside layer of
situational determinants within the outer layer. The word establishment is next
to the age 25, however, in the modern society of career development that we
will live in today, I disagree with the word establishment. Many young 25 year
olds are still in school in the exploration phase, or might be just beginning
their stage of career development. Many 25 year olds are just beginning school,
or might have switched majors so they are still studying for an undergraduate
degree. I also disagree with maintenance, because now people change their job
ten to fifteen times in their life span. Many are not maintaining within the
years of thirty to sixty-five. Many are exploration and trying to establish for
the second time. Some of the words on the Life- Career Rainbow need to be
adjusted to what is going on in today’s society. The Life-Career Rainbow was
copyrighted in 1980, but many changes have been made and career development is
evolving.
Another
interesting part about Super’s work is that it is used for different career
development programs for children as well as a base for career counseling. This theory helps create the six
components measured by the Career Development Inventory. The components
include: career planning, career exploration, decision-making, world-of-work
information, knowledge of preferred occupations, career orientation. However,
an interesting part of the information researched by Super was based on white
males. He did later do research on women, however, he focused on white males.
He did state that African Americans were more likely to be in lower career
maturity than a white person. This makes me thing of the social justice that we
are still struggling with today. Now I understand why Brown discusses it so
heavily in the first chapter. Many of the theories and theorists focused on
white males in the area of career development, which does not give information
on females, or people with cultural diversity. I am curious to research more about Super’s work and dig
deeper into his thoughts and theories. He seems to have a great influence of
the world of career development.
Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed.). New York: Pearson.
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