Posted: April 3rd, 2015

Career Counselling Term Paper

Career Counselling Term Paper

This assignment is intended to demonstrate how theory is related to practice by guiding students through their own career exploration process. Throughout this term we will review different career theories, and students will be asked to complete different exercises that would routinely be used in career counselling. We will also be examining the career counselling process. Students will use this information to help identify/refine their own career pathway. In preparation for completing this assignment, they must first:
Students are to write this paper from the career counsellor’s perspective, as if writing a report about their client. In this case, the client is the students themselves. The purpose of this paper is to give students an opportunity to apply what they have learned from the material covered in the course and from completing the assessment protocols, then pull it all together in a report that discusses the “client’s” background, career concerns, assessments used; what each “counsellor” think is going on for that “client” after reviewing the background, the counselling sessions conducted, and the assessment protocols results; interventions used or planned; decision-making model(s) used or planned; next steps (action plan); and follow-up plans. The paper must include the following sections and titles in the same order as they appear below; page lengths for each section are approximate but asit must be APA style they must be double spaced 12 pt font:
Background history (1 page)
Provide a brief case history of the “client”.
Define the “client’s” career concern.
Career development theory (2 pages)
Identify the theory used to conceptualize this case. Students must choose one of the theories discussed in the lessons.
Provide a brief review of the assumptions and key components of this theory.
Apply the theory chosen to this case and discuss how it has helped the student “counsellor” to understand their client’s case.
Assessment (Note: assessments are actual qualitative or quantitative tests administered during the career counselling process. In this course, the assessments completed are Holland’s Self-Directed Search, and the Career Pathways book.) (3-4 pages)
1. Briefly review the literature and offer personal insights regarding the role of assessment in career counselling. This review must use at least 2 references other than the text and readings assigned in class and should be specific to the career development theory chosen in 2 (a) above.
2. Discuss the “client’s” experience completing the SDS and Career Pathways protocols. Critically reflect on this experience by addressing the following questions: (1) How did you incorporate each approach into your career counselling sessions with your “client”? (2) What did your client see as the strengths and weaknesses of each approach based on his/her experiences with the two protocols? (3) Which approach did your “client” find most useful, and why? (4) What was your “client’s” experience of doing these two different activities (i.e. what did he/she get out of each, what did he/she find helpful or hindering etc.)?
3. Identify some additional assessment procedures you would use with this “client”, why you are
recommending them, and explain how you think they would help your “client”.
4. Summarize the information gathered from the “client’s” background information, counselling sessions, and assessment protocol results and identify a hypothesis about the “client’s” career concern that you want to check out with the client. This hypothesis should be specific to the “client’s” career concern in 1 (b) and to the career development theory chosen in 2 (a) above. In other words, how would you explain what is going on with your “client”, from the theoretical position you took in 2(a) above, now that you have heard his/her story and gathered all this information?
5. Interventions (Note: interventions are activities and exercises your “client” engaged in or you think would be helpful for your “client” to engage in as a result of completing the SDS and Career Pathways)(1-2 pages)
a) Discuss the interventions used in this case to date. Discuss the impact that these interventions had on the career counselling process.
b) what other interventions do you think might be helpful for your client, if any? How would these help him/her?
Decision-making, Action Planning, and Follow-up (1 page)
1. Briefly review the literature on decision-making approaches and choose the one that you think would work best with your “client”. Explain your rationale. The review must include at least 1 reference other than the course text and readings assigned in class. How would you introduce the idea of action planning to your “client”?
2. Create an action plan that you and your client have agreed can be implemented. What do you anticipate the challenges and impact of this action plan will be for your “client”?
3. Discuss the follow-up process you will use with this “client”.
Personal Reflections (2 pages)
Changing your “counsellor” role back to your role as a student in this course, at the end of this paper discuss your personal reflections on this experience (i.e. what did you learn, what did you find helpful/hindering to this process, what personal/environmental barriers made career planning more challenging, and any other observations/insights you had while completing this assignment).
The paper for this assignment must be 10-12 pages, double spaced, 12 pt font. Please utilize the headings above to organize your paper. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation count. Please note that APA format needs to be followed and marks may be deducted for failure to do so. What this means is that you need a proper list of references in addition to the citations in your paper. This final assignment should be submitted to the instructor as a Word document attachment via the “Assignments” tool.