by themselves; if they did, they would be quite difficult to interpret.
The phrase “I don’t feel like working any longer” can be understood
quite differently if uttered by a chronically unemployed person or
one who has been intensively involved with a challenging task for
an extended period of time. That a phrase or other physical or ver-
bal behavior is subject to different interpretations does not imply
that they are meaningless but that they have to be contextualized
to find their potential meanings.
The second level of action is the functional step.An element of
action can be contextualized by seeing it as one of a series of con-
tiguous behaviors that comprise a step. A mother’s statement, “Please
go to school,” can be one statement in a sequence in which a mother
pleads with her teenage son not to drop out of school, or it may be
a reminder to a child that if she does not leave the house soon, she
will miss her bus. The same element can be part of two quite differ-
ent functional steps: pleading or reminding.
These functional steps are further contextualized by the actor’s
goals,which are the highest level of the organization of action, joint
action, project, and career. Goals represent the general intention of
the actor (individual or group). Thus in a parent-adolescent con-
versation about career, the mother’s goal of attempting to keep her
teenage son from dropping out of school contextualizes the con-
versation to some extent. As a reminder not to be late for school,
the element and functional step are also contextualized. In the case
of dropping out of school, one might think of the mother-son con-
versation as part of career, whereas the reminder about being late
may be confined to action or project. The former may have more
long-term implications for a student than the latter. Hence it can
be constructed as part of project (keeping the kids in school at all
costs) or career (completing high school being one of several ways
to overcome a life of poverty and unemployment).
Figure 6.1 summarizes the main constructs of action theory that
we have just described. Each aspect in the table is related to all the
other aspects in a complex and dynamic way. Their relationship is
highlighted in the following discussion of several salient issues
related to career and counseling.
218 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT