Effective Career Guidance - Career Guide

developmental theory

The process of helping a person to develop and accept an integrated and adequate pic-

ture of themselves and of their role in the world of work. A central concept is that people

develop through stages over their lifetime.

1. Introduction

The general principles underlying developmental approaches to careers guidance are
that:

● individual development is a continuous process;

● the developmental process is irreversible;

● these processes can be differentiated into patterns called stages in the life

span;

● and that the result of normal development is increasing maturity

The names most closely associated with this theory of vocational choice are Eli Ginzberg
and Donald Super.

2. Eli Ginzberg

Ginzberg et al. (1951) proposed three life stages which broadly corresponded with chrono-
logical age

● First came the fantasy stage which lasted up until eleven years old;

● second, the tentative stage, lasting from ages eleven to seventeen, with the

three substages of interest, capacity and value;

● third, the realistic stage, which lasted from age seventeen onwards, with

substages of exploration, crystallisation and specification.

3. Donald Super

Super was a doctoral student of Ginzberg’s and developed many of Ginzberg’s ideas. He
thought Ginzberg’s work had weaknesses, one of which was the failure to take into account
the very significant existing body of information about educational and vocational develop-
ment (Osipow & Fitzgerald, 1996, p.111). Super (1957) and Super et al. (1961) extended
Ginzberg’s three life stages to five (with slightly different sub-stages), arguing that occupa-