continuities engenders meaning that bridges the separation, reduces
confusion, and resolves doubt. The reward for looking at the past to
construct a story about the present is the ability to move forward
into the future.
The constructivist career counseling model regards narrative
work as “bricolage,” that is, constructing something new with what-
ever is at hand. The accumulation of everyday experiences provides
the building blocks with which to construct careers. The source of
materials for new construction, or for deconstruction and recon-
struction, are old events that are transportable to the new situation,
as well as current and concrete stories of daily survival. Using bio-
graphical bricolage (Savickas, 2000c), clients apply ordinary lan-
guage and concrete thinking to make sense out of the work world
and construct career narratives that authenticate their choices and
improve their adaptive fitness. This is the process of career decision
making as experienced by individuals; it is one of roundabout means,
not the technical rationality prescribed by Parsons’s paradigm of
“true reasoning” (Parsons, 1909).
The interview is the counselor’s prime procedure for enabling
career construction through narrative means, as well as for creating a
safe space from which clients can seek growth and exploratory expe-
riences. Meaningful conversation brings change. During the conver-
sation, constructivist career counselors apply the narrative paradigm
by using generic counseling processes such as coaching, educating,
facilitating, guiding, influencing, mentoring, modifying, organizing,
planning, and restructuring (Stone, 1986). These counseling processes
should be selected and applied systematically, because some coun-
seling processes work better than others in preparing clients to cope
with different developmental tasks (Savickas, 1996). For example,
guidance may work better for crystallizing a group of vocational
preferences to explore, whereas coaching may work better for con-
ducting a job search. Constructivist career counseling, of course,
also uses homework assignments that help clients form new atti-
tudes, beliefs, and competencies. These assignments or experiences
can include consulting pamphlets and books, viewing filmstrips,
A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR 193