Career Counseling Theories: Person-In-Environmental Analysis

Among many other theories, the most appealing theory was the Person-in-Environment perspective. Unlike other career counseling theories, the person-in-environment perspective encounters and looks at an individual’s environment and his or her sociocultural interactions and relationships. In the textbook, the author describe this theory as focusing on contextual interaction over the life span (Zunker, 2015). As counselors, we acknowledge that every individual is different and unique not only because they live in a different household, but because on top of genetic differences, all environmental influences affect individuals in its own ways resulting in different perspectives and worldviews. So as the person-in-environment perspective says
An introduction of a constructivism is absolutely reasonable path. Since we have looked at the client’s ecosystems, now we need to figure out the interactions and relationships of his ecosystems and its influences on him. The construction theory captures the nature of people that is making their own perspectives and worldviews to understand environmental interactions and events, and those are the personal constructs (Zunker, 2015). The personal constructs are not fixed because the life changes all the time; thus, people constantly modify their sets of personal constructs according to their new life events and experiences (Zunker, 2015). The construction theory does not stop here. It goes beyond understanding one’s personal constructs, it connects the sets of personal constructs to a developmental contextualism and a vocational development. This is what I most endorse about the career construction theory is that helps clients to learn how to construct a career path along with the progress to discover one’s vocational self-concept and a meaningful life. Nowadays, countless numbers of people prioritize their job over themselves due to many different reasons such as a parental pressure, monetary reasons, a peer pressure, etc. When people choose their
According to Zunker (2015), the Trait-and-Factor theory is the most durable of all career counseling theories. In fact, in my opinion, it makes most sense to use this theory only if the client is confused and does not know where to begin with. In this case, the counselor could provide some standardized assessments and based on the result, the occupational recommendation could be made. Therefore, this theory would be most useful for adolescent and young adult individuals who seek for a vocational guidance. However, as the author mentioned in his book, the trait-and-factor theory focuses are too narrow that it is hard to recognize it as a career development theory (Zunker, 2015). Similar to the trait-and-factor theory, other trait-oriented theories such as the Person-Environment-Correspondence theory and Holland's typology lack the ability to discuss the changes and fluctuations in the current job market. Whereas, the person-in-environment perspective is able to reflect on what is currently happening in the job market today.
Another career development theory to consider is the Cognitive Information Processing theory. This theory approaches in terms of how individuals make a career decisions and use information in career problem solving and decision making (Zunker, 2015). The cognitive information processing theory’s main focus is to provide skill developing