fully execute a course of action needed to make and implement
suitable educational and vocational choices. Career confidence
arises from solving problems encountered in daily activities such as
household chores, schoolwork, and hobbies. Moreover, recognizing
that one can be useful and productive at these tasks increases feel-
ings of self-acceptance and self-worth. These behaviors and feelings
prefigure adolescents’ confidence about constructing their careers
and competence at problem solving. The resulting career confi-
dence facilitates performing behaviors that lead to developmental
task mastery.
Progress along the four developmental lines discussed herein
arises from the daily experiences of children. For example, an expe-
rience such as saving part of the money earned from household
chores to purchase a birthday present for a friend lets a child rehearse
and develop a future orientation and the willpower to delay gratifi-
cation, as well as plan a strategy and feel confident about pursuing
it. At the end of childhood, the four development lines coalesce
into the ABCs of career construction—attitudes, beliefs, and com-
petencies. When development is on schedule, adolescents approach
the tasks of the exploration stage with a concern for the future, a
sense of control over it, adaptive conceptions about how to make
career decisions, and the confidence to engage in designing their
occupational future and executing plans to make it real. In addition
to these developing dispositions and increasing competencies, indi-
viduals enter adolescence with a collection of self-percepts and
identifications with idols, images, and ideals. The next career stage
requires that they activate their dispositions and competencies to
weave these images into a cohesive representation of the self and
then use that fabric to clothe the vocational self in an occupation.
Career Stage Two: Exploration
The years of vocational exploration, generally defined as ages four-
teen to twenty-four, involve fitting oneself into society in a way that
unifies one’s inner and outer worlds. During the years of explo-
ration, society expects young people to learn who and what they
A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR 171