Vocational Psychology: Expanding the Vision and Enhancing the Impact ψ

Traditional vocational theories

Vocational theories serve as a valuable tool for practitioners and researchers alike to understand and assess the concerns related to work that individuals are experiencing, and to identify ways to help individuals resolve these work-related concerns. Tracing the field’s theoretical origins, vocational psychology has a rich tradition in career choice and development theory. Indeed, trait-and-factor theories, developmental theories, social cognitive career theories, and constructivist approaches have largely dominated vocational psychology. These theories are covered in many of the textbooks used to train future professionals and have received ample attention in research studies (Chaichanasakul, He, Chen, Allen, Khairallah, & Ramos, 2011; Sampson et al., 2014; Whiston, Rose, Peterson, & Nguyen, 2013). Notable examples of these theoretical approaches include Holland’s (1997) typology theory, Super’s (1980) life-span, life-space approach, and Lent, Brown, and Hackett’s (1994, 2000) early iteration of social cognitive career theory, each of which is reviewed next.

Over the years, these theories as well as research studies informed by these theories, have provided a strong knowledge base for understanding key factors related to decisions that people make about the career they choose to pursue. For example, Holland’s theory focuses on developing the knowledge and tools needed to facilitate a good match between individuals and work environments. Holland’s contributions have led to extensive research and practice implications, with highly sophisticated psychometric tools to assess an individual’s interests, values, and other attributes that inform the decision-making process (Holland, 1997). Super’s theory advanced the perspective that the resolution of developmental tasks and life roles are key determinants of an individual’s career success and satisfaction. Finally, an important premise of Lent et al.’s (1994, 2000) theory is that individual and environmental factors interact to shape a person’s social cognitions such as self-efficacy and outcome expectations, which are important determinants of interests and career choices.

These theories have provided a strong foundation for research and practice in explaining how individuals make decisions related to their careers; however, there are limitations to these approaches, which have been focused on career choice, decision-making, and adjustment issues. One limitation is that a common assumption—and a common critique—across these theories is the role of human agency (i.e., the belief that many individuals have a relative degree of volition in shaping their career paths; Blustein, 2001, 2006; Hooley et al., 2018; Richardson, 1993; Roberts, 1995, 2012; Sultana, 2014). The assumption that people are able to exert their own will when making career choices reflects a middle-class bias that is pervasive within the field and in our traditional theories (Liu & Ali, 2005; Richardson, 1993). Another limitation is that although each theory represents an important advancement for vocational psychology, most are extensions of Parsons’s (1909) original trait-and-factor theory (Sharf, 2013), largely focusing on career choice and viewing careers as an extension of one’s identity. Finally, many of these traditional theories were developed by a single individual, and when that theorist retired or died, theoretical developments often stalled (Sharf, 2013).

To address these issues, vocational psychology needs scholars who are willing to keep these theories “alive” by making refinements and advancements to the theories based on new research findings, novel conceptual ideas, as well as societal changes that affect work experiences. We also need theories that expand discussions of career to include the full range of occupational activities available to all segments of society (Arulmani, 2014; Blustein, 2006; Richardson, 1993, 2009; Sultana, 2014). Moreover, theorists need to acknowledge that people may hold varying conceptualizations of the terms work and career (Blustein, 2019; Chaves et al., 2004). In addition, our field needs more theoretical frameworks applicable to the work experiences of populations other than middle-class professionals. Importantly, we need to expand our theoretical contributions to cover domains of human behavior and work other than career choices and career development. Theoretical advancements are especially needed in the areas of work and mental health, the experiences of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism) in the workplace, unemployment, and precarious work. In the following sections, we highlight some exemplars of new theoretical perspectives in vocational psychology which expand traditional assumptions, incorporate populations historically marginalized in vocational theory and research, and extend vocational practice and research outside of the realm of career choice and development.

Emerging vocational theories

Several recent developments in vocational theory have expanded the theoretical lens through which vocational behaviors are conceptualized. Those proposing these emerging theories generally seek to move beyond the career choice and development paradigm to embrace a wider array of work-related concerns and challenges; their theories also have a parallel cohering theme in being overtly contextual and theoretically expansive.

Psychology of working framework (PWF; Blustein, 2001, 2006, 2008, 2013) and related psychology of working theory (PWT; Duffy, Blustein, Diemer, & Autin, 2016) reflect a set of initiatives that capture many of the defining elements of the emerging theories. In PWF, Blustein identified the pervasive focus on fostering career success and satisfaction in populations with a relatively high degree of volition and opportunity, and the corresponding neglect of individuals and communities whose work lives have been characterized by survival needs. Also in PWF, Blustein advanced a conceptual framework for a new perspective and mission in career development focusing on the needs that work optimally fulfills and the connection between work and mental health. In addition, PWF has sought to identify ways in which systems and institutions can be changed to support opportunities for all who work and who want to work. Researchers were inspired to incorporate PWF ideas into new counseling models (Blustein, 2006; Blustein, Duffy, et al., 2019; Blustein, Kozan, Connors-Kellgren, & Rand, 2015), new research agendas (e.g., Chaves et al., 2004; Duffy, Diemer, & Jadidian, 2012), and extensive scholarship on the resources and barriers that shape access to decent work (for a comprehensive review see Blustein, 2013). In an important conceptual contribution, scholars integrated PWF with an intersectional identity theory and a social class identity theory to explain the psychological experiences resulting from unemployment among marginalized groups (Ali, Fall, & Hoffman, 2013). PWF also has provided the inspiration and intellectual tools necessary for the development of two theories—the relational theory of working (Blustein, 2011) and PWT (Duffy et al., 2016). (Because of space limitations, we focus on PWT.)

PWT (Duffy et al., 2016) reflects a contemporary, interdisciplinary theory that builds on Blustein’s (2001, 2006, 2008, 2013) PWF. PWT was developed to provide a tool for scholars and practitioners interested in assessing the core assumptions of PWF and related fields (for overviews of the conceptual foundations of PWT, see Blustein, Kenny, et al., 2019; Duffy et al., 2016). Unique to PWT is the primacy placed on the role of contextual factors in work experiences and decisions, and the centrality of decent work as a construct. The concept of decent work, which was adapted directly from the International Labor Organization (2008) formulation, is defined as (a) working in safe conditions, (b) having time for leisure activities and rest, (c) having consistency in values between the employer, worker, and society, (d) earning fair compensation, and (e) receiving access to health care. Duffy et al. (2016) proposed a theoretically and empirically supported model wherein economic constraints, marginalization experiences, work volition, and career adaptability are key determinants of obtaining decent work. These individual and contextual factors, in turn, predict the fulfillment of three sets of human needs that optimally can be met at work: survival, social connection, and self-determination. These three sets of needs are hypothesized to lead to fulfilling work and overall well-being. Recent empirical tests of PWT have provided support for the theoretical proposition that marginalization experiences are related to decent work among individuals who identify as sexual minorities (Douglass, Velez, Conlin, Duffy, & England, 2017) and racial and/or ethnic minorities (Duffy et al., 2017). Taken together, these recent applications of both PWT and PWF underscore their promise in expanding knowledge about the work experiences of groups that have traditionally been neglected in vocational psychology theory and to the growing numbers of people who are engaged in precarious work.

An important influence on the development of the PWF and PWT was Richardson’s (1993) seminal article on the role of work in people’s lives. Within the past few decades, Richardson has expanded on this very thoughtful call for a more inclusive approach to understanding work and career by developing a fully-formed theoretical model to inform practice, research, and public policy. Influenced by both feminist and social justice approaches, the counseling for work and relationships perspective (CWR; Richardson, 2012) represents a social constructionist approach for understanding how individuals construct their lives through two interconnected social contexts: work and relationships. In this approach, Richardson moves away from focusing on work alone to emphasize the interplay between work and self across multiple contexts. CWR distinguishes between market work (paid work in public spaces, or educational preparation for market work), personal care work (work that includes caring for self or others), personal relationships (relationships in the personal context), and market work relationships (relationships in the work context).

Richardson (2012) has articulated the consideration of market work trajectories of individuals as co-constructed meaning that access and success in market work is not purely based on individual efforts but is also a result of political, economic, and social forces (e.g., labor market demand, generational poverty, lack of educational resources). She argued that understanding market work as co-constructed may help to

mitigate some of the damage that is done to those who struggle unsuccessfully to develop satisfying and meaningful market work trajectories. Rather than consider their struggles solely the result of personal failures, a contextualized understanding of how market work trajectories are coconstructed by both personal and social forces will enable the kind of critical consciousness that is an essential ingredient for a social justice approach to vocational psychology (Blustein et al., 2005). These social forces include market work conditions as well as the ways in which these opportunities are inequitably distributed according to social locations such as gender, race, and class. In other words, paying attention to market work as a context can broaden our vision to more easily include these systemic social forces. (p. 207)

In the quote, critical consciousness refers to the capacity to read the world and understand the overt and covert ways in which resources and constraints are allocated (Diemer, McWhirter, Ozer, & Rapa, 2015).

Richardson’s model suggests that further inquiry in areas such as individuals’ personal care work, sense of agency, capacity to manage transitions, and the narratives that people construct to make sense of life may serve to broaden the vocational psychology knowledge base. Jung and O’Brien (2019) have thoughtfully advanced Richardson’s ideas on the value of nonpaid work, which underscores the importance and relevance of this scholarly area.

When considered collectively, the contributions from the PWF and PWT communities and from Richardson have encouraged a deeper contextualization of work that has served to transform the mission and agenda of career development. These theorists have argued that vocational psychology’s contributions to career choice and development to date have been prolific and were consistent with the “pressing social needs of their times, at least for [a] significant portion of the population” (Richardson, 2012, p. 40). However, the nature of work has shifted considerably in the 21st century, and a contemporary focus requires a radical shift toward a more contextualized understanding of how work functions in our lives.

One of the most important cohering themes of the contributions from PWF and PWT initiatives and Richardson’s work is an explicit focus on sociological and economic factors as essential considerations in understanding how people negotiate work-related tasks throughout their lives. Sociological theories of career and work have had a long history, particularly in the United Kingdom, as reflected by Roberts (1995, 2012) who countered proponents of the career choice and development models by identifying how the opportunity structure has constrained options for people. Similar contributions emerged in the United States and other nations as the stark reality of work for those with less than optimal choices remained a visible counterpoint to the aspirational assumptions of many existing theories (e.g., Johnson & Mortimer, 2002; Leung & Yuen, 2012). A more explicit integration of psychological and sociological concepts represents a promising direction with intriguing conceptual innovations emerging in different regions of the career development community (e.g., Bimrose, 2019; Duffy et al., 2016; Hooley et al., 2018; Sultana, 2014).

Prominent themes of the emerging theories are an explicit contextualized understanding of work in relation to the broad spectrum of life and a commitment to integrating work and nonwork issues. Building on these themes, Lent and Brown (2006, 2008) developed an integrative social cognitive model of well-being, which extends social cognitive career theory’s (SCCT) interlocking model of interest, choice, and performance to explain satisfaction in educational and vocational areas and the effect of work-based fulfillment on life satisfaction. Proponents of this theory posit a reciprocal relationship between work and well-being, where work satisfaction and overall satisfaction are each assumed to have an effect on the other. Researchers have found that satisfaction in a life domain is associated with overall life satisfaction (Lent et al., 2005; Lent, Nota, Soresi, Ginevra, Duffy, & Brown, 2011; Lent, Taveira, & Lobo, 2012; Ojeda, Flores, & Navarro, 2011); however, longitudinal studies did not support the bidirectional relationship between domain and life satisfaction (Lent, Taveira, Sheu, & Singley, 2009; Singley, Lent, & Sheu, 2010). Additional research is needed to assess the nature of the relationship between domain and life satisfaction, and future researchers in this area may also extend well-being outcomes to include measures of mental health other than life satisfaction.

Another recent extension of SCCT is Lent and Brown’s (2013) social cognitive model of career self-management, which expands SCCT’s focus outside of the traditional outcome of career choice. The self-management model moves away from the content of vocational choices to capture vocational processes such as managing multiple roles and work transitions, and their relation to work and well-being outcomes. This new theory already has stimulated multiple studies that have provided support for the self-management model in predicting career decidedness (Lent, Ezeofor, Morrison, Penn, & Ireland, 2016; Lent, Ireland, Penn, Morris, & Sappington, 2017; Lent, Morris, Penn, & Ireland, 2018), decisional anxiety (Lent et al., 2016, 2018), exploratory goals (Lent et al., 2016; Lent et al., 2017), job search intentions and job search behaviors (Lim, Lent, & Penn, 2016), multiple role balance intentions (Roche, Daskalova, & Brown, 2017), and sexual identity disclosure in the workplace (Tatum, Formica, & Brown, 2017). Future research using the social cognitive self-management theory can be extended to understand a wide array of work processes with adults in the workforce.

Innovations in developmental and constructionist perspectives to career development have also emerged in recent theories. Within the life-design movement (Savickas et al., 2009), a similar focus has been advanced for the integration of work and nonwork issues in the development of a holistic approach to career development and career counseling. The life design approach uses clients’ stories and narratives to understand how they view themselves and events around them to create a career path for the future (Savickas, 2019; Savickas et al., 2009). The life-design paradigm reflects an international synthesis of ideas related to career choice, development, and adjustment, with notable contributions from Savickas (2013) and Guichard (2009). Savickas’s compelling career construction theory, which built on new ideas from constructionist narrative psychology, formed a key foundation for life-design theory. Guichard’s (2009) contributions are often overshadowed but merit attention in this article. Over the course of decades, Guichard developed an elegant theory that describes how people construct their identities with careful attention to how the context both shapes and constrains the development and expression of identity. The combination of Savickas’s career construction theory with Guichard’s self-construction theory has culminated in a rich paradigm that expands the purview of career counseling to include a broader focus on designing one’s life across roles and the life span. Life design theory has received widespread international attention and has inspired multiple studies that have validated a key measure, the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012), across multiple international contexts. (For a review of the burgeoning literature on career adaptability, we refer readers to an excellent meta-analysis by Rudolph, Lavigne, & Zacher [2017].) This approach may be particularly useful in developing skills among low-skilled workers to navigate their work experiences (Brown, 2016).

Contextual action theory (Young & Domene, 2019) is also derived from a constructivist perspective. Contextual action theory has emerged from an application of action theory, which includes the proposition that human beings are goal-directed and engage in actions to implement their goals in their lives. The work by Young, Domene, and Valach (2015) has considerable potential to provide ideas that may inform further theory development, practice, and research in a manner that balances individual agency with a clear awareness of cultural factors and social and economic constraints.

Other promising theoretical innovations have been introduced based on a developmental framework. Building on many decades of thoughtful integration of career development and developmental psychology frameworks, Vondracek, Ford, and Porfeli (2014) and Vondracek, Ferreira, and Santos (2010) have developed new and important vistas that have the potential to enrich our understanding of work and career behavior across the life span. A similarly rich synthesis has been advanced by Bakshi (2014), who has applied the compelling theoretical and empirical contributions of Baltes, Lindenberger, and Staudinger (2006) to the challenges inherent in considering work and career behaviors from a life span perspective. Taken together, the developmental tradition remains robust in vocational psychology, with a particularly important potential in further integrations of vocational psychology with emerging theories and research in developmental psychology.

Another promising trend is the emergence of nonlinear theories of vocational behavior. Two compelling contributions have been advanced from Australia—systems theory framework (Patton & McMahon, 2014) and chaos theory (Pryor & Bright, 2019). The systems theory framework was developed in response to calls for theoretical integration and quickly emerged as a vital and promising contribution that emphasizes the recursive nature of psychosocial causality. Included in the systems theory framework is a broad array of content and process influences, including intrapersonal factors (e.g., psychodemographic factors, psychological attributes, attitudes, beliefs) and environmental societal content influences (e.g., political, economic, and historical factors). This wide range of factors is thoughtfully connected in a systemic framework that seeks to capture the complex reality of work-based decisions and behaviors. Chaos theory (Pryor & Bright, 2019) is derived from the assumption that career and work-based processes are highly complex and very difficult to predict given the presence of chance factors and other unexpected events that play a role in career development. The use of the term chaos may imply a lack of order or coherence in one’s career life; however, Pryor and Bright noted that patterns can be discerned if nonlinear perspectives are sought that incorporate chance and broad systemic influences.

The development of work-based well-being models and constructs represents another emerging area in vocational psychology that can advance theory outside of the traditional realms. For example, Allan, Owens, Sterling, England, and Duffy (2019 [this issue]) proposed a model of fulfilling work consisting of job satisfaction, meaningful work, engagement, and positive emotions, which serves as the central outcome of the strengths-based inclusive theory of work (Owens, Allan, & Flores, 2019 [this issue]). The strengths-based inclusive theory of work combines contextual factors with positive psychology concepts into a new vocational theory about the role of work in creating gratifying life experiences—a clear move away from traditional vocational psychology theories’ focus on career decisions. Additional novel and promising approaches to the study of work include research on the well-being constructs of career calling (Dik & Duffy, 2015; Duffy & Dik, 2013;), work mattering (Jung, 2015), meaningful work (Steger, 2014; Steger & Dik, 2009; Steger, Dik & Duffy, 2012), work engagement (Schaufeli et al., 2002; Schaufeli et al., 2006; Sonnentag et al. 2010), and capability approach (Robertson, 2015).

When considered collectively, the foundational theories in vocational psychology have provided a firm basis of scientific rigor and an increasingly expansive intellectual agenda for theory development. The new and emerging theories and models extend the traditional discourses to create frameworks with the potential to fully transform and revitalize vocational psychology, especially when integrated with some new ideas discussed later in this article. As reflected in this discussion, promising new theoretical ideas, which we believe are essential for maintaining the relevance of vocational psychology, are evident in analogous fields (e.g., occupational sociology, postmodern thought, narrative psychology) and, increasingly, in non-Western contexts (e.g., Arulmani, 2019; Bakshi, 2014; Mkhize, 2012).

Trends in vocational scholarship

Several content analyses of career journals provide a window from which to assess past and current states of vocational research by assessing frequently researched topics and sample characteristics. Common topics represented among these studies include career development, career interventions, career assessment, life span perspectives, and special populations (Buboltz, Ebberwein, Watkins, & Savickas, 1995; Buboltz & Savickas, 1994; Chaichanasakul et al., 2011; Garriott, Faris, Frazier, Nisle, & Galluzzo, 2017; Lee et al., 2017; Loveland, Buboltz, Schwartz, & Gibson, 2006; Nilsson, Flores, Berkel, Schale, Linnemeyer, & Summer, 2007; Sampson et al., 2014; Whiston et al., 2013). This research indicates that vocational behaviors (i.e., career choice) and career interventions are well-covered topics in vocational research. Sampson et al. (2014) noted recent research trends in the areas of constructivist theories; SCCT; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics occupations; social justice; career calling; socioeconomic status and/or social class; career life coaching; and public policy. Counseling psychologists have focused less on topics such as the impact of poverty, the complex relationships between care work and market work, or precarious work (Blustein, Kenny, et al., 2019; Richardson, 2012).

We have also studied the middle stages of the life span extensively. Prior analyses of publications have indicated that adult employees (19%) more commonly participated in research samples in the Journal of Career Development (Chaichanasakul et al., 2011), and college students (44%) were the most common participants in the Journal of Career Assessment (Whiston et al., 2013). The aformentioned finding is consistent with other studies covering multiple journals where undergraduate students, high school students, and adult workers were most often represented in multicultural research samples (28–35%, 27–31%, and 14–23%, respectively; Flores et al., 2006; Lee et al., 2017). Moreover, adult workers, high school students, and college students were sampled most often in international research samples (37%, 29%, and 19%, respectively; Nilsson et al., 2007). We know relatively less about children and youth, older adults, and retirees, reflecting the need for more coverage in vocational research on the early and later years of the life span.

Several reviews of vocational psychology research indicate that researchers in this field need to make significant strides to produce scholarship that represents the diverse communities in our society and across the globe. In comprehensive reviews of publications in four vocational journals (i.e., Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Career Assessment, The Career Development Quarterly, and Journal of Career Development) from inception through 2015, a mere 7.4% of all publications within these journals focused on racial and/or ethnic minorities within the United States (Flores et al., 2006; Lee et al., 2017). Together, these two studies indicated that racial and/or ethnic minority career publications represented at least 10% of all publications in only 10 of the 46 years analyzed. The initial rise in career publications focused on racial and/or ethnic minority populations took place starting in 1991 (12.9% of publications) and peaked in 2006 (14.8% of publications). Publication patterns across the decades show an increasing trend from the 1990s to the 2000s (9% to 10.7%), and a decreasing trend from the 2000s to the first half of the 2010s (10.7% to 7.2%) in the proportion of racial and/or ethnic minority publications in the four selected career journals. Thus, as the proportion of people of color within the U.S. population is increasing, the collective share of vocational psychology research that is devoted to their career needs is decreasing in the journals within our field that inform practices and the development of career theories.

Scholars have traced other characteristics of research published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, The Career Development Quarterly, Journal of Career Assessment, and Journal of Career Development. In terms of publication of international career articles, Nilsson et al. (2007) found that 2.4% of all articles published in these journals from 1970 to 2004 were categorized as international articles. These authors also noted an increase in the number of international publications across decades. In the 11-year period following Nilsson et al.’s study, there was a significant increase in the proportion of international articles published across the same journals, representing almost one quarter (22.5%) of all publications (Garriott et al., 2017). By comparison, other multicultural research reflected in the four journals across the same 11-year period was as follows: 8.8% racial and/or ethnic minority (Lee et al., 2017), 11.1% gender, 8.1% age, 5.9% SES and/or social class, 2.1% religion, 1.7% immigration, and less than 1% each for ability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity (Garriott et al., 2017). Of course, other journals exist in many regions of the world for vocational psychology scholars, including the British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, L’Orientation Scolaire et Professionnelle, and the International Journal of Educational and Vocational Guidance (among others), which are vibrant outlets with a long history of seminal publications.

Future directions for vocational research

As indicated at the outset of this article, the nature of work has changed and is forecasted to continue to change in unpredictable ways due to globalization, technological advances, and decreasing labor force participation rates (Blustein, Kenny, et al., 2019). These trends have led to troubling concerns about a postwork society in which marketplace work may not be available to all who want and need to work (Lent, 2018; OECD, 2015). At the same time, U.S. society is becoming increasingly diverse, and we are part of an increasingly global community where countries are interdependent. It is important that vocational psychology scholarship reflects these developments in the nature of work and seeks to meet current and future social, economic, and psychological needs. The topics covered in our research, the demographic makeup of the participants that comprise our samples, and the varied international contexts where our research is conducted must mirror both the United States and global communities. Psychologists in general, and counseling psychologists specifically, have consistently sought to respond to societal needs (Heppner, Casas, Carter, & Stone, 2000). To remain relevant, it is especially important that the field continue to take shape and be influenced by the society that we serve. The application of our research is further limited in its topical focus, as reflected in an ongoing emphasis on circumscribed life stages and sampling. These restrictions increasingly impact the utility and ability of our efforts to shape both best practices and policies to serve the full scope of the public’s interests.

If research is used to develop theory and inform practice, we know relatively little about the work of individuals from marginalized groups in our society. Although there has been a rise in international research in the field, other multicultural aspects have been largely undervalued or underemphasized in vocational psychology scholarship in recent years. Garriott et al. (2017) speculated that these areas may be neglected in vocational journals because of difficulty accessing marginalized populations for research, researchers’ biases, underrepresentation of diverse scholars with interests in these lines of work, or authors’ tendency to seek other outlets for their research. Certainly, the proliferation of new journals in the field, particularly those in multicultural psychology, or the desire to publish work in open access journals, may steer multicultural career scholarship to outlets outside of the four journals that were examined in these studies. Collectively, these studies on the state of multicultural coverage of vocational psychology research point to the limited external validity of our scholarship and the inadequacy of our research to inform best practices in career counseling for a range of diverse cultural groups (Flores et al., 2006; Garriott et al., 2017; Lee et al., 2017).

Expanding our sampling to include the full scope of people who work and want to work is clearly one way to improve our scholarship; however, scholars have highlighted that researchers must also improve how studies are conceptualized, suggesting that the field has relied too heavily on generalizability and group differences research approaches (Hall, Yip, & Zarate, 2016; Leong, Hartung, & Pearce, 2014). These scholars call for more studies that reflect multicultural approaches where human behaviors are understood from the perspective of the participants under investigation, and psychological constructs that are culture-specific are included in the study (Hall et al., 2016). Researchers have provided a tool, the cultural lens approach (Hardin, Robitschek, Flores, Navarro, & Ashton, 2014), to help scholars broaden their focus and enhance the cultural validity and specificity of empirical studies. The cultural lens approach includes specific steps for the conceptualization of research studies from a cultural perspective, and these authors provide examples of applications of the cultural lens approach to research using common vocational theories (Hardin et al., 2014; Robitschek & Hardin, 2017). For instance, Hardin et al. (2014) challenged scholars to reflect on the definitions and assumptions of basic constructs in theory such as how the “person” is defined in Holland’s (1997) theory, and encourage scholars to expand this definition beyond the assessment of individual interests to generate culturally relevant constructs and research questions for the population of interest.

Work and work-related concerns are crucially connected to psychological health and well-being (Blustein, 2008; Fassinger, 2008; Fouad & Bynner, 2008; Swanson, 2012). However, work and psychosocial issues have historically been compartmentalized in psychology (Betz & Corning, 1993; Krumboltz, 1993), and vocational psychologists and counseling scholars have argued compellingly against the false boundary between career counseling and personal counseling, or career concerns and overall mental health (Blustein, 2006; Fouad, 2001; Lent, 2001). Still, much of vocational psychology research has largely reinforced this dichotomy by failing to focus on the integration of mental health and work to the extent that it could. We believe that more vocational research can assess the relation of environmental factors (workplace policies, organizational climate, experiences with racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ableism, etc., in the workplace) to mental health. Another promising area for research is a focus on individuals who experience serious mental illness and other disabling conditions (Fabian, 2013). Promising new directions include exploratory studies that are identifying the ways in which individuals with disabling experiences understand and relate to their work lives (e.g., Dunn, Wewiorski, & Rogers, 2008; Millner et al., 2015). Researchers can also explore how both voluntary and involuntary work transitions (e.g., a new parent exiting the workforce to care for a baby; being employed in a job that is equivalent to one’s skills and qualifications, subsequently transitioning to unemployment) play a role in mental health (Fouad & Bynner, 2008).

To maintain our relevance as a field, we need to expand the coverage of topics that we investigate as well as diversify the samples that are the focus of our research. As professionals who are trained in assessment, we must continue to develop research tools to assess constructs tied to the new theories described in previous sections. Noteworthy advancements in vocational measurement include scales to assess decent work (Duffy et al., 2017), underemployment (Allan, Duffy, & Blustein, 2016), meaningful work (Lips-Wiersma & Wright, 2012), and career calling (Dik, Eldridge, Steger, & Duffy, 2012; Praskova, Creed, & Hood, 2015).

Historical and recent practice trends

Vocational theory and research are closely aligned with career counseling practice, and so, it should be of no surprise that like the other pillars of the profession, practice implications of vocational psychology tend to emphasize career choice and development interventions and to focus on change at the individual level. Work-based counseling occurs in a wide array of settings, including career counseling centers in educational institutions; nonprofit or government-sponsored employment services for adults in transitions; rehabilitation agencies (for individuals recovering from substance abuse and other disabling conditions); private practice by counselors, career coaches, and psychologists; and more limited services via online systems. Pope (2015) outlined three distinct periods of career interventions, starting with Parsons’s (1909) model in the early 1900s where professionals helped youth increase knowledge of the self and occupations, and career decisions were based on a match between the two. Later, vocational practice was influenced by Super’s (1957) work to include a developmental focus and to attend to the process of decision-making. More recently, constructivist career counseling practices are reflected in Savickas’ (2012, 2019) life design interventions, wherein professionals work with clients to construct, deconstruct, reconstruct, and co-construct narratives to define future life paths in relation to the clients’ careers.

Recent meta-analyses conducted on traditional career counseling interventions (i.e., group counseling, workshops, classes, group test interpretations, individual test interpretations, individual counseling, computer, computer plus counselor) indicated that interventions focusing on career choice outcomes such as vocational identity, career decidedness, and career decision self-efficacy, are reasonably effective (e.g., Brown et al., 2003; Whiston, Li, Mitts, & Wright, 2017). The most recent meta-analysis, performed on 57 studies conducted between 1996 and 2015, reported effect sizes ranging from 0.18 to 0.45 across seven career choice outcomes, with a mean effect of 0.35 across all of the outcomes (Whiston et al., 2017). The effect sizes across treatment modalities ranged from 0.77 for individual counseling (n = 2 studies) to 0.07 for computer alone (n = 2 studies). These findings are important to the field of vocational psychology, as research points to the positive impact of our career interventions for individuals; however, the impact that we can have as a field on society is limited by the narrow focus of interventions on career choice outcomes and on the individual. Moreover, most of these career choice intervention studies involved college students (50.0%), followed by high school students (19.6%), adults (16.1%), middle or junior high school students (10.7%), and mixed age groups (3.6%), indicating that the majority of these interventions occur in postsecondary and secondary school settings.

Other meta-analyses of studies with samples of adult workers and adult job seekers have provided support for the effectiveness of work-based interventions and job search interventions. For instance, a meta-analysis of 38 studies on workplace stress management interventions indicated that these programs had medium-to-large effects on stress, anxiety, and mental health outcomes (Richardson & Rothstein, 2008). Another meta-analysis of 47 studies on employment interventions found that intervention participants were 2.67 times more likely to obtain a job than control group participants (Liu, Huang, & Wang, 2014). Importantly, employment interventions that included both skill development and motivation enhancement components were most effective. However, of the 85 articles included across both of these meta-analyses (Liu et al., 2014; Richardson & Rothstein, 2008), only seven were published in traditional journal outlets for counseling psychologists who focus on vocational issues: two in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (both published in the 1970s) and five in Journal of Vocational Behavior, suggesting that few counseling psychologists are involved in interventions aimed at adult job seekers and employees.

Advancements and recommendations in practice

Vocational psychology needs new practice models that reflect contemporary and expected societal changes, and that expand the focus of interventions outside of the career choice domain. Specifically, our field needs models that can inform practice in the areas of unemployment, precarious work, and decent work, and we need to design and evaluate the effectiveness of vocational interventions (both at the individual and systems levels) with unemployed and underemployed populations. One such framework that can guide both individual and system interventions that target unemployment and underemployment combines both emancipatory communitarian (Blustein et al., 2005; Hooley et al., 2018) and psychology of working (Blustein, 2006) perspectives (Blustein, Connors-Kellgren, Olle, & Diamonti, 2017; Blustein, Duffy, et al., 2019). This integrative framework takes a critical approach to analyzing systems that contribute to precarious work in society and theoretical perspectives that fail to adequately address these concerns. Blustein et al. (2017) reviewed unemployment policies at the national level, which encompassed unemployment insurance, one-stop career centers, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014, and job creation programs; this review concluded that although these policies have resulted in some success for unemployed workers, they do not attend to the systemic issues that contribute to unemployment.

Another advancement in vocational psychology practice includes the strengths-based inclusive counseling for work (Owens, Flores, Kopperson, & Allan, 2019 [this issue]). What is notable about this contribution is the authors’ efforts to link vocational practice to the strengths-based inclusive theory of work, a new vocational theory aimed at addressing a variety of work-oriented, well-being outcomes. In this innovative approach to practice, Owens, Allan, and Flores (2019) present a framework for career counseling practice that incorporates positive psychology interventions to help individuals achieve fulfilling work. The authors outlined interventions to enhance strength-based concepts such as hope, strengths, adaptability, and empowerment, which are hypothesized to be the key mechanisms through which individuals can attain fulfilling work. Research is needed to assess the effectiveness of this new approach to vocational practice.

Promising new directions in practice and advocacy are emerging in vocational psychology and related fields that focus on marginalized communities and facilitate a more expansive understanding of interventions above and beyond career choice and development issues. Research that has documented the academic and work barriers faced by immigrant students (Kantamneni, Dharmalingam, Tate, Perlman, Majmudar, & Shada, 2016; Kantamneni, Shada, Conley, Hellwege, Tate, & Wang, 2016; McWhirter, Ramos, & Medina, 2013) has informed vocational psychology advocacy efforts focused on dismantling structural barriers that prevent immigrant youth from pursuing educational and work opportunities. In addition, Allan, Duffy, and Collisson (2018) made a unique contribution to career counseling practice by focusing on meaningful work as an intervention outcome. These researchers found that a prosocial work intervention aimed at helping others enhanced the experience of meaningful work among college students and working adults. For more details on a broad range of vocational interventions that need to be empirically tested, readers are referred to the APA Handbook of Career Intervention (Hartung, Savickas, & Walsh, 2015), which includes chapters devoted to descriptions of interventions designed to enhance employment (Vuori & Price, 2015), work engagement (Bakker, 2015), work–family balance (Cinamon, 2015), calling (Dik & Duffy, 2015), and networking (Shortland, 2015). Other chapters address career interventions with specific groups traditionally excluded from practice discussions, including poor and working-class individuals (Blustein et al., 2015) and immigrant workers (Schultheiss & Davis, 2015). Notable examples of group-level intervention programs for middle and high school students (Ali, Brown, & Loh, 2017; Ali, Yang, Button, & McCoy, 2012; Kenny, Bower, Perry, Blustein, & Amtzis, 2004), survivors of interpersonal violence (Chronister & McWhirter, 2006), inmates reentering the workplace (Fitzgerald et al., 2013), and individuals transitioning from welfare to work (Juntunen, Cavett, Clow, Rempel, Darrow, & Guilmino, 2006) should be emulated to lessen the burdens that a considerable segment of our population experiences in securing decent work.

Employment counseling and interventions aimed at improving the mental health of workers are crucial areas where vocational psychology practice can have an impact. However, this type of work is largely marginalized in vocational psychology theory, research, and practice or is credited to other professionals, such as industrial/organizational psychologists or vocational rehabilitation counselors. Vocational psychologists can be more involved in research to understand how work-based interventions help to enhance mental health functioning among workers (Kelloway, 2017). To remain relevant to the world of work today and to live up to our profession’s origins in social justice advocacy, vocational psychologists must expand their traditional focus of intervention research with college and high school students to include adults. These interventions can incorporate effective practices in securing decent employment, reducing mental health symptoms, helping workers navigate competing demands for their time between work and home, and other positive work outcomes. For instance, Varghese’s (2013) integrative model for vocational interventions with prison inmates, which focuses on the link between employment and recidivism, is an exemplar of how vocational psychologists can extend their practice to a marginalized group in our society.

These types of interventions, and others like those highlighted earlier, are not yet mainstream in the vocational psychology practice domain, which still focuses to a great extent on assessment and interventions at the individual level and traditional practices to promote career decision-making. Moving forward, vocational psychology practictioners need to (a) expand their focus from the individual level to group, organizational (Fouad & Bynner, 2008), and policy levels (Blustein, 2008, 2019; Fassinger, 2008; Fouad & Bynner, 2008); (b) incorporate mental health (Blustein, 2013; Richardson, 2019) and social justice (e.g., Ali et al., 2012; Kozan et al., 2017; Sultana, 2014) components; (c) expand the outcomes assessed to include nonwork-related benefits of vocational interventions; (d) broaden the targets of our interventions beyond college and high school students; and (e) collaborate with scholars and practitioners in related fields such as industrial/organizational psychology, social work, human resources, and management, to design comprehensive interventions that cover the broad range of issues that workers experience.

A foundation for a broader and more inclusive approach to practice can be found in the APA Professional Practice Guidelines for Integrating the Role of Work and Career Into Psychological Practice (APA, 2016). These guidelines, which were developed by a task force of the Society for Vocational Psychology, provide both the rationale and foundational knowledge that can inform the work of psychologists whose clients present with work-related issues. The guidelines encompass an insightful perspective on the role of work in people’s lives and identities, knowledge about how work influences psychological and physical health, the impact of work-related transitions across the life span, awareness of how social barriers and identities influence work, the intersection of work and other life roles, and an understanding of how economic and social factors influence a person’s access to work and career trajectory. These guidelines provide a viable means of considering the knowledge and training that behavioral health service providers need to function effectively in delivering counseling and therapy to clients.

Another approach to career practice described by Hooley et al. (2018) suggests a radical approach to social justice within career guidance, arguing that careers and work are inextricably linked to social, political, and economic systems. As a consequence of these connections, Hooley et al. (2018) argued that it is impossible to develop theories and practices of career development without addressing these systems. In their view, career guidance and counseling developed in Western countries are tied to the neoliberal/free market economic perspectives in which profit is the ultimate goal. They argue that the idea of career currently constructed within career development practice reflects an individualistic process that is focused on helping people compete and gain advantages in their lives (Hooley et al., 2018). In this way, free market/capitalistic economic systems dictate that vocational psychologists’ practice encourages people to solely act in their own interests, as this would ensure the effective functioning of a free market economy (Hooley et al., 2018). Thus, it is possible that when vocational psychologists focus solely on individual career development, practitioners and theorists are likely to miss the larger sociopolitical context that influences the work options, motivations, and work choices of groups that are marginalized in society and may risk perpetuating the victim blaming paradigm (Prilleltensky & Stead, 2013). According to Hooley et al. (2018), vocational psychologists too heavily focused on individual career paths miss the opportunity to understand and intervene with employment issues from community, neighborhood, or collectivistic perspectives situated within economic and political systems.

The Hooley et al. (2018) position concerning career guidance for social justice suggests that career practitioners must first understand how our theories and practices are embedded in the neoliberal/free market system in which profit maximization is the goal. In Hooley et al.’s view, it is incumbent upon career practitioners to help individuals understand the political and economic context in which they make work decisions, and to develop new political skills and grow community resources that serve to develop both individual as well as collective actions. This view of practice requires an emancipatory view of career counseling in which part of the goal is to develop a sense of critical consciousness and collectivism in clients that would help them to feel more agentic in their own lives and optimally challenges unfair political and economic systems. Hooley et al. (2018) offer suggestions on how this radical approach to career guidance practice can challenge existing political and economic structures in a struggle for economic justice.

As counseling psychologists, we are well-trained in both mental health and work and career psychology as well as in multicultural and social justice perspectives, which collectively provide the core knowledge for building a practice model and culture that embraces work issues as legitimate and deeply felt aspects of human experience. The foundational knowledge exists in the practice community of counseling and career development providers. However, we believe that our field must do more to develop practice models that parallel the full scope of challenges that people face in their work lives and in connecting clients’ work lives to other life domains.

Traditional policy contexts

Traditional policy arenas will continue to need our input; however, in 20 years, policy needs may be different and our contributions will similarly change. Within the world of career development education, one prominent challenge will be in informing the narrative that connects school to work, which drives some of the ways in which students are motivated to perform at their best in school. If student effort is no longer clearly linked to more volition in one’s future work life, the entire enterprise of career development education may need to be revisited. In addition, the modal approach of developing curriculum to meet current and anticipated marketplace needs (such as in the current science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career development movement) may need to be revisited if many of these fields are automated or infused with artificial intelligence. Given the changes taking place now and expected to increase in the coming decades, it is hard to imagine that career and school counseling in kindergarten through 12th grade contexts will have similar goals and methods in 20 years. The transforming nature of school counseling will require thoughtful input from vocational psychologists as will the entire enterprise of training and education. The new theories, research trajectories, and expanded visions that we have outlined in this article will help to inform the policy consultation and advice that we can offer educators and counselors who are exploring ways of developing a sustainable education policy in light of radical changes in the workplace.

In the realm of labor policy, vocational psychologists have had an impact on the design and delivery of career services for adults who are transitioning in and out of the labor market. The career development field, for example, has been actively engaged in providing training for employment counselors and career coaches who work for one-stop career centers in the United States and other agencies that support adults in work-based transitions. Similar efforts have been used in other regions of the globe that have been seeking out best practices for unemployed and precariously employed adults. Optimally, vocational psychologists will develop new counseling models to help people become critically conscious agents in their own lives and in their communities. Ideally, these new models will be disseminated to employment services around the globe. In addition, we envision that vocational psychologists will be able to consult on an issue of fundamental importance currently and in 20 years: What is gained and lost by not providing people with work to fulfill their need for sustainable livelihoods? Even if people are able to support themselves via basic income allocations, the question of how they develop a purposeful life will likely be central in the public discourse. We therefore envision vocational psychologists advising policy makers about the optimal services that ought to be provided for people seeking help in navigating their work lives. At the same time, we believe that our colleagues will be able to advise policy experts, government officials, and other thought leaders on the importance of work (or similar types of tasks and activities) in attaining a life of meaning and overall well-being.

Although working within traditional contexts is critical to advancing a social justice perspective on work, it will also be essential for vocational psychologists to work directly with their local communities in trusted public spaces. For example, as the United States federal and state governments become less reliable and more unpredictable in funding of unemployment resources, communities are turning to their local public libraries as places to find help with finding work (Ali & Brown, 2017; Real, Bertot, & Jaeger, 2014). Vocational psychology partnerships with local community leaders and city councils could help to enhance such services at libraries, especially in rural and more remote areas where access to services is more difficult to obtain. Although libraries are often seen as very traditional spaces, they are on the forefront of social justice movements in many local communities.

An expanded vision of policy contexts

A clear objective of this article is to inform and inspire readers to enhance the impact of vocational psychology outside of the traditional foci and contexts that have defined the field for a century. One important way of expanding our impact is to consider a broader array of public policy spaces in which to contribute in the coming years. Some of these efforts have been manifested over the past few decades with considerable input into policy debates taking place in various regions of the world, with particularly exemplary policy consultation in the United Kingdom over the past few decades (e.g., Hooley & Barham, 2015). We envision vocational psychology continuing to connect to government agencies, which has been our tradition over the years. However, as governments become less stable and predictable, we propose that vocational psychologists reach out to multinational organizations such as the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, and the OECD, which have been very involved in thoughtful considerations about the future of work. A recent report prepared for the International Labour Organization by Blustein, Masdonati, and Rossier (2017) provides an example of how psychologists can engage with public policy bodies that have a broad and expansive agenda with respect to work issues.

We also envision vocational psychologists developing their own public policy initiatives, optimally enhanced by relationships with professional counseling and psychology as well as multinational organizations. The issues that are central to vocational psychology will very likely be key challenges in 20 years, which will dominate the public discourse as individuals and communities seek ways to develop livelihoods that offer both dignity and opportunity. Continuing collaborations with such organizations as the National Career Development Association, the Society for Vocational Psychology, and the International Association of Vocational and Educational Guidance will provide a bit more strength in numbers for policy statements and advice. Thoughtful use of social media will likely enhance the impact of policy positions, as will attempts to inform political, social, and economic debates with a focus on the importance of human rights in the workplace (Blustein, Kenny, et al., 2019).