Career, in vocational psychology dictionary

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Dictionary of Vocational Psychology

Career

There are three distinct definitions of career used in theory and research for vocational psychology: (a) The sequence of jobs or other work experiences in an individual's life; (2) A sequence of jobs or other work experiences in an individual's life that fall within the same occupation or within a closely related sequence of occupations; (3) A sequence of jobs or other work experiences in an individual's life that fall within the same occupation or within a closely related sequence of occupations, having the property that the sequence of jobs and work experiences tend to increase in status over time. These related definitions of career are themselves ordered in a series from less structured, with definition 1 being least and and definition 3 being most structured (with the requirements that the jobs be related and of increasing status). Most early discussions of career by vocational psychologists (such as by Donald Super in the 1950s) tended to rely on definition 1, but over time the popular use of the term has shifted to rely on definition 3. In fact, many contemporary vocational psychologists are critical of reliance on the concept of career (e.g., Mary Sue Richardson and David Bluestein), when in fact they criticize use of the third definition. Therefore, it is important in scientific discussions of career to make clear which of the specific definitions are used.

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