Abstract
This second issue of 2023 of the Australian Journal of Career Development (AJCD) continues to represent a scholarly space of exchange for our international community of researchers and practitioners in the career development field.
The AJCD continues to welcome both quantitative and qualitative research, promoting different approaches and methodologies, building an inclusive and current space of scientific interlocution for the advancement of research and interventions.
This issue begins with an invited article by Richard A. Young and Amrit K. S. Mundy. Their contribution is conceived as an answer to Jean Guichard's article “How to support the design of active lives that meet the challenges of the twenty-first century (economy, ecology and politics)?”. To face the current ecological, economic, and political challenges, Guichard (2022) suggested the relevance of new conceptual frameworks and interventions in the career field referring to the value of Arendt's (1958) broad perspective of action and active life. The authors’ answer to the question posed by Guichard (2022), proffers contextual action theory as an alternative approach for reconceptualizing career theory and practice centering on goal-directed action. The aim is offering a theoretical connection between action and career, including social context, providing a current framework for practice with specific approaches to career interventions and counseling.
This issue continues with a core of quantitative studies on different targets, formed by five contributions.
The article by Dünya Şen Baza and Özlem Ulaş Kılıçb aims at verifying a career self-management model among Turkish undergraduate students. Through a structural equation model, the authors showed that in their model of career decision-making self-efficacy, vocational outcome expectations, and goal feedback had a significant and direct effect on university students’ career decidedness. Although future studies will be necessary to further confirm these results, the authors underlined the value of preventive interventions on studied variables to favor students’ career decidedness offered by university career services.
The second quantitative article by Silvia Platania, Martina Morando, Paola Magnano, and Giuseppe Santisi introduces the value of activating multiple psychological resources for facing the instability and changes of the current scenario. These resources are particularly important for the transition from academic life to the world of work. The study analyzed the mediating effect of proactive personality and courage in the relationship between career adaptability and university satisfaction in both Italian and Spanish psychology university students, comparing these two different cultural contexts. A multi-group analysis showed differences between the two groups of psychology university students. More specifically, Italian students showed higher levels of courage and a strong proactive personality, but lower levels of concern and confidence about their professional future among the factor of career adaptability. Instead, Spanish students showed higher levels of confidence and control among the factor of career adaptability, an adequate and strong proactive personality but significantly lower levels of courage. These results invite future studies that compare different cultural contexts.
The third quantitative article by Colin McCowan, Peter McIlveen, Brad McLennan, Harsha N. Perera, and Lucia Ciccarone regards career development learning and its value as a curricular strategy to prepare students for their post-compulsory school transitions to further study or work. The present study verified a hypothesized Career Education & Development Framework including eight factors: understanding of self, opportunities, influences, goal setting, decision-making, taking action, reflecting/reviewing, and confidence. The hypothesized framework was confirmed in two groups of Australian secondary school students. Having access to this holistic measure could offer future perspectives for research and intervention in the career development field.
The fourth quantitative article by Anja Jo Schultheiss, Eileen Koekemoer, and Andries Masenge examines the relationships between career commitment, career resilience, self-efficacy, and subjective career success among South African veterinary professionals. The results showed significant positive relationships among studied variables and the moderating effect of self-efficacy in the relationship between career commitment and subjective career success. These results suggest opportunities for intervention for career success of veterinary professionals, pointing out the value of self-efficacy.
The last quantitative article of this group by Andrew J. Taylor, Harsha N. Perera, P. Nancey Hoare, Peter McIlveen, and Mary Salama presents a study carried out among Australian retail workers to examine the latent structure of the Work Volition Scale (WVS), a brief measure of the perceived capacity to make career decisions despite constraints. The study also analyzed the invariance of the WVS across gender, and mean differences in work volition across income. The results showed a bifactor model with a general work volition factor and specific factors (volition, financial constraints, structural constraints) with invariance across gender. Furthermore, retail workers earning high wages reported greater volition than those earning low wages. This instrument could open future perspectives for research and career development intervention for this important workforce sector.
A review article precedes the last qualitative article of the present issue. This scoping review by Fay A. Amaral, Chris Krägeloh, Marcus Henning, and Fiona Moir analyzes the research on the relationship of career indecision with depression, negative thoughts, and the role of self-efficacy and sense of control among school leavers. Results showed that more decided students tended to have more positive affect and higher levels of well-being. On the contrary, less decided students tended to have higher levels of depression. These findings suggested the value of integrated counseling in vocational and mental health support services in schools.
The last article of this issue is qualitative research by Marcelo Afonso Ribeiro. The study has two aims: to realize, through a literature review, a synthesis of the main contemporary career patterns; to build, using a qualitative approach, contemporary narrative patterns of career construction of Brazilian workers. From the analysis of literature five career patterns emerged: Traditional/professional, Flexible, Hybrid, Transitional, Social role balancing. Instead, in the qualitative empirical study, nine narrative patterns of career construction emerged from the discourse of the involved Brazilian workers: Enclosure (professional career and occupational career), Nostalgia (nostalgia for past organizational career), Possibility (flexible career, entrepreneurial career, and informal career), Hybrid (hybrid careers), Instrumentality (transitional career and liminal career). This study emphasizes the importance of producing situated career practices, diversifying groups of participants as well as research contexts to contextualize theories and concepts.
The AJCD holds its commitment to offer international opportunities of enrichment and dialogue, supporting methodological diversity as an essential component for advancing research and intervention practices in the career development field.