Donald Super’s Life-Span / Life-Span Theory of Career
Development
Super began to form these ideas in the late 1930s.
The beginning ideas were brought together in Super’s book The Dynamics of Vocational Adjustment in
1942. This showed a developmental view of career choice. It emphasized career choice as a process and
not just an event.
Super’s Four Domains:
1: Differential Psychology – various individual traits
2: Developmental Psychology – how individuals
develop abilities and interests – life stages
3: Occupational Sociology –
occupational mobility and environmental influences
4: Personal Theory – self-concept
and personal environment theory.
Super’s Fourteen Propositions:
1-3: People have different abilities,
interests, and values – so they are qualified for various occupations (more
than one at a time)
4-9: Self-concept in career choices
– life stages – career patterns and career maturity
10-13: Synthesis and compromise
with individuals and social factors – including work / life satisfaction
14: Work and occupation as a focus
for personality organization – interplay of life roles like worker, student,
leisurite, homemaker, and citizen.
Super’s Life-Career Rainbow:
Life roles, put in the space and time of life stages.
There are six life roles:
·
Homemaker
·
Worker
·
Citizen
·
Leisurite
·
Student
·
Child
These roles can cross over each other and fluctuate through
the life span.
Here is a great resource on explanations of life roles:
The outer rim has 5 life stages:
·
Growth
·
Exploration
·
Establishment
·
Maintenance
·
Decline
Super called these life stages maxicycles. They are linear,
but we all experience them in different ways and at different ages. Super called the transition between life
stages minicycles , where developmental tasks are mastered.
Career maturity: readiness to engage in the developmental
task appropriate to age and level. Note:
maturity is never reached and always remains a goal.
Career adaptability: Used to describe career maturity for
adults – to include planfulness, exploration, information, decision making, and
reality orientation.
C-DAC (Career Development Assessment and Counseling Model:
(created by Sup0er and colleagues to put his theory into practice with
career counseling)
·
Begins with client session asking concerns and
review of data.
·
Phase 1 – Assessment of the importance of the
work role with other life roles.
·
Phase 2 – Determining the career stage and
career concerns. Identify resources for making and implementing choices and
assess resources for work world adaption.
·
Phase 3 – Assess interests abilities and values
with the trait and factor methodology.
·
Phase 4 – Self-concept and life themes with
qualitative assessments. This final step
integrates the interview material and the assessment data.
This site has study flash cards:
