another stable condition. Each stage has a different goal, and the
name of a stage indicates that goal: growth, exploration, establish-
ment, maintenance, and disengagement. Each career stage can be
further delineated as a sequence of major developmental tasks.
Although the career stages emphasize change, the vocational devel-
opment tasks within them detail how stability is reestablished and
continuity maintained. These vocational development tasks are
expectations imposed by society and experienced by individuals as
career concerns. Success in adapting to each developmental task
results in more effective functioning as a student, worker, or retiree
and lays the groundwork for progressively mastering the next task
along the developmental continuum. At each age, vocational devel-
opment tasks and career concerns should mesh, and the degree of
mesh indicates level of vocational maturity. Skipping a task in the
normative sequence may result in difficulties at a later stage. For
example, failure to explore during adolescence can cause unrealis-
tic occupational choices in early adulthood. Let us examine in
detail the ontogenetic progression of the five career stages, each
with its own set of vocational development tasks.
Career Stage One: Growth
The years of career growth, generally defined as ages four to thirteen,
involve forming a vocational self-concept. This life stage has been
the subject of thousands of psychological studies, many pertinent to
vocational behavior. Only a select few, however, have been incorpo-
rated into conceptual models of vocational development. In practice,
career researchers, with their interest in continuity and change, have
concentrated on four lines of development (Freud, 1965), which I
call concern, control, conception, and confidence. Each of these
developmental lines brings forward into adolescence a syndrome of
attitudes, beliefs, and competencies that are critical in determining
how people choose their work and construct their careers (Super,
1990; Savickas & Super, 1993). I conceptualize the four syndromes
as constituting response readiness and coping resources for dealing
A DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY OF VOCATIONAL BEHAVIOR 167