Target population
CTI targets pupils from high schools and vocational schools, students and adults (males
and females). These clients may complete the inventory for the following reasons:
- pupils from high schools and vocational schools: deciding on further
education and training, finding an occupation, looking for a job; - students: deciding on a field of specialized study, choosing an occupation,
finding a job; - adults: changing occupations or jobs, finding employment, re-enter working
life after an absence for study, raising children or other reasons, professional
advancement.
Examples, case studies, exercises
The theoretical base of cognitive theory is that the affective life and the behaviour of
people are strongly determined by the way their cognitive processes enfold. Past
experiences have their share in these processes.
Cognition, in the context of career, operates on the basis of a “schema” built on
experiences (good or bad, encouragingly or inhibitory, etc.). In concrete situations of
action, the schema may prove to be functional or dysfunctional, and an individual may
adopt a corrective attitude, flexible, or may remain under the hold of an inadequate and
non-productive way of reacting, strengthening thus the dysfunctional schema of
behaviour, which will take their toll on subsequent information processing and the
unfolding of systematic thinking. Negative and dysfunctional thoughts may crystallize in
autonomous reactions, accompanied by emotions and self-blocking attitudes.
As regards personal decisions in solving career-related problems, Beck et al. (apud
Sampson, 1996) find the following categories of systematic errors:
- “some people reach certain conclusions in the absence of arguments or even
in spite of existing evidence to the contrary (arbitrary inference); - some people only accept that information which is in agreement with their
initial experience and knowledge (selective abstraction);