a choice usually involves trial jobs in the specified occupation. The
initial occupational position allows individuals to try on the occu-
pation for fit and then move to other positions so as to zero in on a
suitable job. The period during which choices are actualized is often
referred to as the school-to-work transition (Blustein, Juntunen, &
Worthington, 2000). The quality of vocational coping behavior
during that transition appears to be more important than actual
success in the first, second, or even third job.
The critical vocational coping behaviors during the disjunctive
transition from school to stable employment consist of actions that
move one to increasingly more congruent occupational positions
(Super, Kowalski, & Gotkin, 1967). The goal of this movement is
to arrive at a situation in which the person can function optimally,
or at least effectively. The ideal progression starts with develop-
ing skills that prepare one to enter an occupation through further
schooling, training, or apprenticeships. This training should be fol-
lowed byexperimentingwith a series of related jobs in a process of
elimination that leads to a more or less permanent position. Hav-
ing found such a position, the individual begins the process of sta-
bilizingto make the job secure. Obviously, this progression can be
delayed or disrupted by maladaptive attitudes, beliefs, and compe-
tencies for crystallizing preferences, by vocational identity styles
that distort the specification of an occupational choice, and by
external barriers that thwart actualizing a choice. These delays and
disruptions can be manifested in driftingfrom one unsuitable posi-
tion to the next, flounderingperformance in a position, or stagnating
in an inappropriate or blind-alley job. In the Career Pattern Study
(Super et al., 1967) about one-third of the participants drifted and
floundered during the bulk of the seven years after high school;
another one-sixth started off drifting and, after three or four years,
began to stabilize. At age twenty-five, 80 percent were stabilizing.
Consequently, effective coping with the tasks of the exploration
stage should not be conceptualized as predicting early stabiliza-
tion in a position; rather, it ensures continuing movement to more
congruent positions, with eventual establishment in a suitable and
viable position.
A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR 177