Why aren't there more learning theories in careers?

I've probably talked about this before, (probably on more than one occasion) but I'm thinking again about the role that learning theories should play in career education, and wondering if that's a bit different from the one they actually play.

I trained as a careers adviser nearly 20 years ago, and these days I'm not really sure what kinds of learning theories get covered in other career practitioner courses. But as someone relatively new to teaching, I have spent quite a lot of time finding out about how people learn, and it's been a revelation to me. My knowledge is a bit home-made, and I'm sure it's not comprehensive, but I can see that even what I know would be really useful for any career practitioner who works with groups of clients.

So, here are my top three favourite learning theories (and a bit of empirical evidence) and what I do differently now that I know about them.

1. The pyramid of learning:

 

The detail of the study which led to this has been a bit discredited, but the underpinning concepts seem to stand up to scrutiny. The basic premise is that you are likely to remember very little of what you hear in a lecture, a bit more of what you talk about and almost everything that you have had to actually teach.

Students I find can be a bit resistant to this, but when I am trying to get people to get their heads round something really complex, I ask them to prepare a short chunk of a lesson and teach each other. It's complicated logistically, but works really well.

2. Andragogy
This is a fairly old one (Knowles 1958) which is supposed to show how adults learn in a different way from children. I remain unconvinced about the difference between the two groups of learners, but I like what the theory suggests. Knowles suggests that the key to good learning is to link the topic being studied to the participants' lives. First of all the approach holds that to motivate students to learn, they have to understand why they are learning this and what it's going to do for them. Then it's important that the students make links between the new information they are learning and what they already know. Finally a teacher should spend time at the end making sure the students are really, explicitly clear about how exactly they can incorporate their new learning into their practice.

This isn't rocket science, is it, but for me having this explicitly in my mind when I plan sessions is useful.

3. The link between thought and language.
This is probably my very favourite. It comes from Vygotsky, who seems to have come up with a wide arrange of innovative theories. Vygotsky suggests that thought and language are really closely bound up together. He says that thoughts aren't created as fully formed, properly worked though concepts. They start as fuzzy notions, and it is only when they are put into words that the thoughts become concrete. This suggests that in a learning context, each participant needs to be given the opportunity to put their own ideas into words in order to make their ideas more tangible. The words could be written or spoken, and done in pairs, groups or class discussion.

4. Learning styles
This isn't a favourite theory, but it's a favourite bit of empirical evidence. Learning styles have really cornered the market when it comes to learning theories and there are at least 71 different learning style frameworks (Honey and Mumford are the most well known). They are intuitively appealing, and it's always nice to be able to identify what kind of learner you are. But the evidence supporting their value as a way to enhance learning is really weak. It seems to be fairly well documented that people do indeed have preferences - there are definitely people who like looking at pictures more than words, or who prefer thinking about abstract concepts over the application of ideas. But the evidence is pretty consistent that this has very little (or no) impact on how well people actually learn. Visual learners don't absorb more information when it's presented in picture form than in words, and reflectors don't excel when given more space to reflect.

There are a few more. I also like Active Learning (I did a blog post on that last year, I think) and I'm really keen on student-centred learning. And there are probably dozens (maybe hundreds) of other theories out there.

I think my teaching is genuinely better since I've started to understand some of these, and I wonder if careers education broadly might benefit from a stronger underpinning of learning theories?

 

Career Sagacity

I've been involved with quite a few discussions recently about our profession and what makes it unique. We do seem to struggle to define or articulate what exactly distinguishes us from other helping professions. Colleagues have variously suggested that it's knowledge about the world of work, self-reflective practice, or an impartial, client-centred philosophy, but I struggle with all of these. The first one (knowledge of the world of work) because I really don't want the heart of my professionalism to reside in something which I could never properly keep on top of and which Google does so much better than me, and the second two (reflective practice and an impartial client-centred philosophy) because they don't mark us out as any different from counsellors, therapists or social workers.

But I was reading something about the notion of wisdom, and it really struck a chord. I think this is the closest thing I've come to which reflects what I'm aiming for in my professional practice. This stuff isn't new, but I'm not sure I've seen it applied to our role before.

Berlin's wisdom paradigm (Baltes and Freund, 2003) sets out five criteria which make up wisdom. I describe them below as they might apply to career practice:

1.  Rich factual knowledge. As career practitioners we should have a superior knowledge base about the world of work. I'm not at all suggesting this needs to be perfect, but I think it's genuinely helpful for us to have a good overview, and some professional knowledge which is hard for our clients to access.

2. Rich knowledge of how to deal with these pragmatics. So this is where career theories come in. We should know how people make career decisions, how people make good career decisions, where people get stuck, and how clients can change their responses or behaviour to make getting jobs more likely. Here too sits our practice - this section encompasses information about how to work with clients to support them to make the most fulfilling choices and achieve their goals.

3. Knowledge about the themes and contexts of life. This puts careers within a system, and ensures that practitioners understand the different drivers and different factors which are woven into each career decision.

4. Recognition and tolerance of differences in beliefs. Here's where the self-reflective, client-centred and non-judgemental philosophy fits in.

5. Recognition and tolerance of uncertainly and ambiguity. This feels like an  excellent approach to dealing both with people and the world of work. It ensures that we focus on equipping our clients with the resources they need to negotiate their changing lives and the changing work place, and that we too can cope with the shifting landscapes that we face. It touches on career resilience and adaptability,

Key to this framework is the idea that wisdom doesn't depend on superior cognitive or technical knowledge: we are not competing with Google to know everything there is to know about careers in the 21st century, but it's a combination of knowledge and an understanding of how that knowledge is applied. It's not quite as client-centred as the coaching approach that I normally advocate, but I think it's interesting.

I've thought about this framework in terms of my own practice - my aspirations to be a Career Sage, but an alternative framing could allow us to see this as a taxonomy of the elements we are trying to engender in our clients. Perhaps it's more appropriate to work towards our clients becoming Career Sages.

Either way, I thought this was rather interesting and good food for thought.

Baltes, P.B. (1987) Theoretical propositions o fife-span developmental psychology: on the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology 23 611 - 626

Balters, P.B., Staudinger, U.M, Maercker, A. and Smith J. (1985) People nominated as wise: a comparative study of wisdom-related knowledge, Psychology and Aging 10, 155- 166

Levels of interventiveness

Just following on from my theme of non-directivity, I found this transcript of a presentation given by Margaret Warner, which I thought proposed a really interesting framework which might help us reflect on our own practice - both where it is and where we would like it to be.

 

Warner suggests that under the umbrella of client-centred practices, there are 5 levels of 'interventiveness' by which she means the degree to which the practitioner brings frameworks and ideas beyond the client's field of reference to the interventions.

 

Level 1 is really hypothetical. At Level 1, the practitioner brings nothing of themselves to the intervention and the dialogue and relationship exist entirely within the client's frame of reference. This is thought to be unrealistic (even if it were desirable, which is a moot point) as however skilful the practitioner, the client and practitioner are two different people and cannot inhabit the same psychological space.

 

At Level 2, the practitioner uses their own experiences and their frames of reference to help them to understand the client more fully. They are not trying in anyway to change the psychology of the client, just to understand it and walk in their client's shoes for a bit. The practitioner will try to communicate their understanding to the client, and if this works, the client will feel understood in that moment. The practitioner is aspiring to high levels of personal contact and low levels of control. Interventions at this level really are at the heart of Rogers's client centred approach.

 

At Level 3, the practitioner brings their own ideas, frames of reference and interpretations into the dialogue in order to allow the client to decide whether they are useful or relevant or not. The client is still responsible for the overall direction and content of the relationship and conversation. The relationship is very much one of equals.

 

At Level 4, the practitioner brings material to the dialogue from their frames of reference as an expert. This is a diagnostic model, where the practitioner finds out about the problem and makes a decision as to what kind of intervention is needed. The practitioner introduces these interventions to the client but from a position as the expert the assumption from both client and practitioner is that these should be implemented.

 

At Level 5, the practitioner introduces interventions without telling the client what they are doing or why. This contains the authoritative qualities of a Level 4 intervention but adds the idea that the client is unaware of what is being done to them.

 

Warner warns of the dangers of trying to incorporate interventions at different levels within the same therapeutic process, as the nature of the work alliance will be quite different at one level from another.

 

Levels 1 - 3 aim to foster a safe space in which the client can make their own decisions and where key issues can come to the fore. Levels 4 and 5 assume a considerable resistance in the client.

 

As I read these descriptions, I wonder if I'm a bit torn. If I think about what is going to be best for the client, I think I come down firmly in favour of Level 3.  I am thoroughly sold on the self-actualizing tendency and the idea that the client is in the best place to make their own decisions. But I wonder if I am a little bit seduced by the notion of the expert in Level 4. I quite like the idea of being able to solve my clients' problems and I also wonder if clients themselves often see a value (or a security) in Level 4 interventions which might be harder to spot in Level 3.

 

I think this feeds into discussions about our own expertise. What is it that we can offer clients that no other practitioners can? I always come back to the idea that we are experts in the process of career and interventions - we know how people make career decisions and how to help them to make better career decisions. But where does that fit best? I think it is level 3. I think at level 3, practitioners can bring their own expertise, but they acknowledge that the client is the expert judge of whether these ideas are helpful. At level 4, our expertise is more obvious, but less helpful. But I think we as a profession need to be confident in order to position ourselves at Level 3.

 

 

http://www.adpca.org/system/files/documents/journal/PCJ%20V7%20N1%207.pdf

“La Psychotherapie Centree sur la Personne: Une nation, plusiers clans. Mouvence Rogerienne—Nouvelle serie #9—Paris, Novembre 2004. (Translation by Cecile Rousseau of ”Person-Centered Therapy: One Nation Many Tribes.”)

Non-directivity in career coaching

At the heart of much of our career professionalism is the notion that we are non-directive practitioners. This is widely accepted and its importance is felt keenly. I wonder, though, if it has become one of those concepts which is so much part of our fabric that we don't really think about how it works and whether it's actually a good thing. I thought it might be useful if I just reminded myself what it is and spent a moment checking that I still believed in it.

At the heart of the non-directivity principle is the notion of self-actualization, the belief that we are all intrinsically motivated to change, to grow and develop. This is a biological tendency, not a moral imperative - it's part of the human condition and is simply what it means to be human. The role of the practitioner is to help clients work out what might be preventing this growth and help them identify what to do about it. The client is in charge of identifying what the problem is and working out what the solution is. This approach to practice is not just a moral position, it's a belief about how it is. Advice and suggestion from outside simply won't work and risk getting in the way of the all-important therapeutic alliance.

So that's the theory, as set out by Rogers (1957).

Rogers himself was concerned that the notion of non-directivity was being misunderstood. He originally used it as synonymous with 'client-centred' but and dropped it from his lexicon fairly early on in his writing. Some of his concern seemed to be that non-directivity was thought to be an element of client centred practice. In fact it's more fundamental than that: the central axiom of client centred practice determines that practice should be non-directive. A client centred approach does not include non-directivity - non-directivity is entirely bound up with the theory. The motivational force for change resides within the individual and a facilitative attitude in the therapist leads to the relationship which gives the client the resources to unleash this force. Non-directivity is a natural and inevitable consequence of a belief in the actualizing tendency.

The non-directive principle is sometime criticised for being impossible to achieve. However hard we try to be entirely unbiased, our own opinions will inevitably surface in our responses to our clients' stories. But actually, the hard-line version of non-directive counselling, as described by Rogers, doesn't require a consistent and perfect lack of bias. Rather, it advocates an adherence to the philosophy of non-directivity - a commitment to and a belief in the self-authority and self-determination of the client. Rogers states that 'reasonable consistency' in non-directive practice is enough to facilitate growth and that a 'facilitative attitude' is the thing to strive for.

So that's how it is described in its original form. How should that be applied to careers work?

I think that career practice in general sticks to the principle that we shouldn't tell our clients what to do. Most of us, most of the time would baulk at the idea that after an hour with a client, we might be in a position to tell them what career path to follow - and I think we would be against this both morally (it's not our place to do this) and practically (we simply couldn't do it). This, I think, is the role that non-directivity holds in our practice. A more hard-line version of non-directivity though would lead to career practitioners giving no advice and giving no suggestions. At all. It would preclude us from telling clients what steps to take, where to look for job vacancies and what A levels you need to take to get into medical school. It would even mean that we shouldn't suggest that a client chooses a goal for the conversation or identifies any action points to implement afterwards.

This I think feels more extreme than we see in most career practice, and I'm not at all sure that we would be doing our clients any favours if we help back from expressing ourselves altogether.

For me, one useful idea has emerged from Grant (1989) who talks about the difference between principled non-directivity and instrumental non-directivity.  His idea of instrumental non-directivity seems to suggest that a practitioner (he was writing from the perspective of a therapist, but the same could apply to any therapeutic intervention) should be non-directive until the point at which an intervention of some sort would be useful to the client. It's about a philosophy of non-directivity but within the context of a process.

For me, this works. I almost always use a model (usually the GROW model) as a structure for my career conversations. I find that this framework, with its goals at the beginning, and action points at the end allows me and my client to make good use of our time together and achieve more than with a less structured dialogue. But within this framework, about which I am directive, I try to stick to non-directive content. I direct the process, my client directs the content.

Another interesting idea has come from Kahn (1990) who suggests that the idea of therapist fallibility is a more useful notion than non-directivity. He describes an approach which he calls directive responsivity, where the therapist does make suggestions of interventions, but where both the therapist and the client acknowledge that the therapist might be wrong. Advice giving and suggestions can then be a manifestation of the therapist's empathetic understanding and congruence, and show authenticity.

I think for me the important thing is to keep the best interests of the client at the heart of every decision I make within my intervention. I truly buy in to the notion of the self-actualising tendency, I genuinely believe that the best decisions will come from my client and their motivation will come from their belief that this is the right decision. But where my client is definitely the expert on themselves, I am the expert on the process. I bring some knowledge and experience and understanding of career theories and psychological theories which means that sometimes I have a different perspective to share.

So I think I can be comfortable with the notion of instrumental non-directivity, and directive responsivity, where my client is in charge of the content but I may be directive about the process.

 

Grant, B. (May, 1989). Principled and instrumental nondirectiveness in person-centered and client-centered therapy. Paper presented at the Third Annual Meeting of the Association for the Development of the Person-Centered Approach in Atlanta, May, 1989

 

Kahn, E. (1999). A critique of non-directivity in the person-centered approach. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 39(4), 94-110

http://www.ibrarian.net/navon/paper/A_Critique_of_Nondirectivity_in_the_Person_Center.pdf?paperid=6672382

Labour Market Information in Career Conversations: What should practitioners know and how can academic research help

I'm not a big fan of using labour market information in career practice. I know I'm out of synch with the prevailing view in the profession, but I have concerns about information giving being at the heart of our professional role.

But I spent yesterday with my career coaching students, and we had some great discussions about the role of information about the world of work in career conversations. Particularly interesting to me were our discussions about what kind of information practitioners should know. There is always going to be far too much information about the labour market for us to absorb, so how do we decide what is going to be most useful?

We talked first about having a broad overview. Whilst it might be impossible to know what kinds of selection tests are used in all kinds of employers, it could be useful to have a good sense of the range of tests which are generally used. We may not have a clear sense of exactly what standards of professional dress are expected in a particular organisation, but it might be realistic to know the smartest and most casual boundaries within a particular industry as a whole. So, an overview is good, and in terms of the detail, it's about knowing where to look - what are the best resources that you can direct clients to, which they can use to get the information for themselves.

The second area we discussed was that it might be really useful for us to have information which is difficult for clients to find themselves. Whilst the ONS website might furnish us with some great statistics, it's also an easy place for our clients to look. So, what might be more useful for us is to focus on the kind of information which is difficult to find. One example of the difference between easy to find and hard to find information is knowledge about what employers say and what they do. The literature is clear that when it comes to recruitment, what employers actually do is different from what they say they do. Employers are often quite explicit about the criteria against which they measure candidates, but there is oodles of evidence that despite the rhetoric, white candidates with middle class accents, well groomed hair and no disability are more likely to get jobs regardless of their teamwork, communication and leadership skills. Having this kind of information, I think, is adding something to our clients' job hunting toolkits which they would find difficult to access themselves, and which might genuinely make a difference.

For me, this is another argument for the role of empirical research in career work. Employers and employees are often happy to share lots of useful information about their roles, organisations and industries. This is useful, perhaps essential information for a good career decision and a successful job search. But if we can get it by looking on websites and finding people to talk to then so can our clients. Academic research is harder to get hold of and harder to make sense of. As career practitioners, we are often educated to post-graduate level, and we learn how to find and interpret this information. And it is these academic studies which are going to be able to uncover the information that even the employers don't know that they know.

At this stage I begin to get quite enthused about occupational information. This feels like an approach to LMI which doesn't aim to turn our role into information-givers, but instead gives us a challenging and skillful role to play, which can take our clients beyond where they can get to on their own.

Subjective Career Success: what is it and how can we get more of it?

Career Success is a good concept for us career practitioners to get our heads around. In particular I guess what's most important is the acknowledgement that what 'success' looks like will vary from one client to another and probably more important, our own conceptualisation will be different from those of our clients.The literature makes a distinction between objective and subjective success which I think is quite useful - objective being measured in terms of pay and promotion, and subjective in terms of your own assessment of your achievements.

Ng and Feldman have conducted a meta-analytic review (ie they've put the data from a large number of little studies through a single analysis) and have come up with some interesting findings about what factors are more likely to lead to subjective career success.

First they quite helpfully define subjective career success (SCS). They point out that it might be based on the same constructs as objective career success (pay and promotion), but the issue here is to what extent an individual believes that they have done well: two people earning the same salary might have quite different levels of SCS. In working out our SCS, we compare our current situation with a number of comparators including our personal aspirations, our past achievements, future goals and expectations and the achievements of others - co-workers, friends or family members. We compare particular aspects of our careers including interpersonal success, financial success hierarchical position and life success.

The meta-analysis found a whole range of factors which can help to contribute to SCS, including dispositional traits (in particular core self-evaluation), motivation (organisational commitment, work engagement), social networks (supervisor support - both general and career specific support) and organisational and job support (promotion organisation). But by a mile, the key factor was shown to be expectations. If an individual reports unmet expectations at work (and these could be in terms of their career overall, or within a particular role) they are significantly less likely to feel that they have done well.

The authors suggest that organisations should make a concerted effort to try and find out what employees want from their careers in order to see whether they can help ensure that expectations are met. Satisfied workers have been shown to work harder, be more productive, demonstrate more organisational commitment and have lower staff turnover, so the benefits are palpable for the organisation as well as the individual.

The paper makes a convincing read for those considering introducing career coaching within the workplace, which is great news.


Ng, T.W.H. and Feldman, D.C. (2014) Subjective Career Success: A meta-analytic review Journal of Vocational Behavior 85 169 - 179

Is a job for life or just for Christmas?

It is a much vaunted notion that the job for life was once the norm, and is now the exception. It's so widely accepted that I don't think anyone knows where the idea came from or what data it's based on - it's so obviously true that it doesn't need to be backed up with evidence.

I have struggled to really get my head round this as the statistics don't seem to agree with the prevailing view, but also don't really agree with each other. One challenge is that statistics are often fairly blunt instruments. Gregg and Wadsworth (2002) illustrate this nicely. Looking at the data from 1975 to 2000 they highlight that the two following statements are both currently (at least were in 2002) true:

The typical worker today can expect to spend ten years in their current job
and
The typical job will last 15 months.

This is explained by the fact that 'job survival chances rise sharply with duration' which means that half of all jobs last around a year but that the other half are likely to last 5 or 10 years: if you make it through the first year, your chances of staying long term are high.

So that's quite interesting, but has this always been the case, or is this something new? Well, this depends on who you read. Most literature falls down on the side of no change (or little change) but there are some dissenting voices. In the UK, the Labour Force survey suggests no change, but the General Household Survey suggests a bit of a change. There are a number of confounding issues. The data is hard to trace as the question seems to have been asked in different ways at different times, so it's hard to know whether you're comparing like with like; economic cycles have a huge impact, so you have to be sure you're comparing the right times within two economic cycles; and finally, maternity rights came in in 1979 and were extended in 1994, changing women's access to continuous service.

Overall, there is some evidence that men's average tenure and women without dependent children's has gone down a bit, but mothers with dependent children's has increased. The decline in men's long term jobs seems to be concentrated in men over 50. For men, median job tenure has declined by about 20% since 1975.

Gregg, P. and Wadsworth, J. (2002) Job tenure in Britain, 1975 - 2000. Is a job for life or just for Christmas Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 64 (2) 0305 - 9049

Occupational Segregation

Occupational segregation is the idea that certain groups of people dominate in certain occupational groups. It's usually linked to inequality in society and a lack of social mobility.
This study looked at census data from the US from 1970 to 2010 and examined the demographics found in particular occupational groups. Their findings were a bit depressing, and they concluded that the US labour market is a system in which "individuals who are not white and male are predictably relegated to the least desirable roles.".
The authors found that whilst there had been a bit of change in the demographic make up, progress towards a more equal labour force over the 40 years had been slow and limited.They conclude that waiting for this kind of social change to happen naturally is not the way forward and more, and more effective direct action needs to be taken.
There have been some changes. White men now make up a smaller overall proportion of the work force than they did 40 years ago, as women are more likely to work and migration has led to a significant increase in the number of workers from BAME backgrounds. But what is interesting is where these new workers are working. Broadly, BAME workers have entered the workforce in lower skilled jobs. Women have made significant progress within certain previously male dominated arenas (such as law and medicine). But in the hard core male arenas of STEM subjects, women have made next to no progress despite policies initiatives and money being poured into the area. There have been some improvements within education - women in the states now make up about 20% of engineering degree students, but these women graduates don't enter the profession and if they do, they leave it three times as fast as men.
My last little vignette is about vets. This seems to be the one arena in which there has genuinely been a shift. In 1970 this was a profession almost exclusively inhabited by men but by 2010 it had shifted to a near equal gender balance. I couldn't even hazard a guess as to why, but I thought it was worth a comment.

Byars-Winston, A., Fouad, N and Wen, Y. (2015) Race/ethnicity and sex in US occupations, 1970 - 2010: Implications for research, practice and policy Journal of Vocational Behaviour 87 54-70