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Creating a research agenda of volition in career counseling

par Broonen, Jean-Paul
Référence International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance - Restructuring Careers Over Unexpected Powerful Forces (18-21 sept 2015: Tsukuba)
Publication Non publié, 2015-09-20

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

The purpose of this paper is to present volition construct as the basis for a research agenda in career counseling. In liquid societies of late modernity where pursuit of career in unstable and rapidly changing occupational structures is so difficult, motivation fueling vocational constructing behaviors appears to be a prerequisite of success. However, motivational processes are only half of the story. In order to overcome internal or external obstacles to a confident and peaceful reflection on their career development, individuals need more than ever to bring into play volition, that is, the capacity to regulate in difficult contexts psychological functions such as cognition, motivation, and emotion in order to determine which motivational tendencies related to career choice processes are implemented, when, where, and how. Surprisingly volition is until now largely or completely unexplored in the vocational counseling domain. In this contribution, I address some basic aspects of the overarching volition construct originating in experimental and social psychology, and recently also considered by cognitive neurosciences. Taking the psychology of action control as a lens of analysis, I outline the potential resources for career counseling of (1) action versus state orientation affect-regulatory competences which are a main component of Personality Systems Interactions theory (Kuhl, 2000) that proposed a comprehensive functional analysis of hierarchic regulatory systems mediating human motivation and personality ; (2) implementation intentions (Gollwitzer, 1999), that is, a kind of specific plans which may be activated in the post-decisional pre-actional phase of the Model of Action Phases ; (3) an attempt to disentangle volitional control from career control dimension included in the construct of career adaptability (Savickas, 2012; Johnson et al., 2013). It is argued that some leading career theories of career counseling might benefit from incorporating volitional constructs into their framework. I propose a specific agenda to address how these constructs could be explored in the vocational counseling domain in order to enrich concrete practices for helping clients, faced to an unsecured world, volitionally construct the future of their career.