This article discusses the major contributions (Krumboltz & Worthington, 1999; Lent, Hackett, & Brown, 1999; Savickas, 1999; Swanson & Fouad, 1999) to this special issue of The Career Development Quarterly on the application of career development theories to the school-to-work transition. Common thematic elements in these 4 articles include a focus on the individual who faces the transition from high school to work and an emphasis on the developmental aspects of the transition. The article concludes with a cautionary recommendation that theory-building efforts derived from the individual experiences of work-bound youth ought to be included in theoretical and intervention initiatives to facilitate the school-to-work transition.
The four articles in this special issue reflect sophisticated thinking by some of the leading scholars in our field. One might suggest that the synthesis of the major theoretical perspectives in career development with the challenges of the school-to-work movement is a match made in heaven. As a whole, the articles by Savickas ( 1999), Krumboltz and Worthington (1999), Swanson and Fouad (1999), and Lent, Hackett, and Brown ( 1999) are thoughtfully written, innovative, and far-reaching in their implications. In fact, a significant part of my reaction to these papers affirms the belief that a careful integration of the school-to-work transition with the four bodies of theory detailed in these articles represents a great opportunity for both work-bound youth and for the continued vitality of the theoretical foundation of our discipline. However, when I consider these articles in light of the knowledge I have gained in my recent research into the school-to-work transition (Blustein, Phillips, JobinDavis, Finkelberg, & Roarke, 1997), my reactions become more complex and equivocal. In this discussion, I seek to reconcile these views to create space for applications of existing theories as well as new perspectives derived from the contemporary experiences of work-bound youth.
COMMON THEMATIC ELEMENTS
Much of the school-to-work literature, although rich with ideas from sociology, economics, and education, tends to downplay the experience of the individual (Worthington & Juntunen, 1997). The advantage of the articles in this issue, however, is that, taken together, they emphasize the psychological experiences of youth who are making the transition from high school to work.
In contrast to the human capital theory assumptions that underlie many of the policy-based initiatives undertaken in this decade (Sweetland, 1996), career development theory emphasizes that individuals have the potential to exercise some agency in the school-to-work transition, assuming that certain psychological and social factors are in place (Krumboltz & Worthington, 1999; Lent et al., 1999; Savickas, 1999; Swanson & Fouad, 1999). The explicit application of existing career development theories, therefore, provides scholars with the conceptual tools they need to understand more fully the antecedents and consequences of an active and involved approach to the school-to-work transition.
In each of these articles, the focus on the individual reveals important insights about how work-bound youth can optimize their influence in a process that is very much dominated by broader social and economic forces. Savickas's (1999) thoughtful conclusions about the importance of awareness, information, and planning are generally consistent with a growing body of literature on the school-to-work transition that has emerged from other scholarly arenas, such as sociological analyses and narrative studies of working-class youth (Borman, 1991; Evans & Heinz, 1994). Swanson and Fouad ( 1999) present an excellent synthesis of the challenges of the school-towork transition from the perspective of person-environment (PE) fit theories. In contrast to the evident focus on the environment in current discourse on the school-to-work transition (Worthington & Juntunen, 1997), both the developmental and PE Fit theories encourage balanced perspectives that focus on the space between the individual and the context.
Krumboltz and Worthington ( 1999) present an excellent application of social learning theory to the school-to-work transition that highlights the inherent flexibility and elasticity of human experience. In an era when genetically based theories are receiving considerable public exposure (e.g., Hernstein & Murray, 1994), I applaud Krumboltz and Worthington as well as the social cognitive theory of Lent and his colleagues (1999) for underscoring the inherent flexibility of human behavior.
The social cognitive perspective advanced by Lent et al. ( 1999) is one of the most influential new theoretical perspectives in career development. Lent and his associates used social cognitive and social learning theory to propose a model that can account for a wide array of individual and social factors in the career choice and development processes. For example, these theorists' emphasis on self-efficacy beliefs provides a rich explanatory construct for researchers along with some tangible implications for practitioners. Self-efficacy beliefs may furnish work-bound youth with a critical internal psychological structure that will help them confidently negotiate the transition from school to work.
Another important common theme of these four articles is the acknowledgment that the school-to-work transition is a developmental process with both life-span and life-space dimensions (Super, Savickas, & Super, 1996). Regarding the life-span dimension, we, as career development theorists and practitioners, have been encouraged to look at the transition as entailing far more than a simple choice point in the later part of high school. Although this observation will certainly be music to the ears of the followers of the life-span, life-space developmental position, it also suggests a very welcome infusion of this very basic assumption of Super and his associates (Super et al., 1996) into the fabric of our major theories.
In addition, the authors of these articles were clear that the transition occurs in a highly complex and textured life space. Although the precise nature of the context varies among these theoretical perspectives, they share the view that the transition can be significantly facilitated or inhibited by one's access to supportive individuals and institutions.
Despite the intuitive and logical appeal of these four articles and the theoretical integrations they make, the articles raise some questions about the assumptions embedded in a direct application of traditional theories to the school-to-work transition.
QUESTIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
In short, I am concerned that by relying solely on existing theories, we may be inadvertently relegating the experiences of the workbound to the margins of our analyses. Moreover, we may be making some general assumptions about work-bound youth that are not necessarily based on contemporary empirical observations. The major elements of my argument are as follows:
1. Much as we would do as counselors, we need to be aware of the differences between ourselves and our research participants and find some meaningful, experience-near way of crossing that space. One of the hallmarks of recent inquiry into the school-to-work transition is the focus on understanding the way in which work-bound youth make sense of their experiences (Blustein et al., 1997; Borman, 1991; Evans & Heinz, 1994). Thus, depending exclusively on an existing array of theoretical ideas may result in a loss of information; more importantly, such an approach may inadvertently result in scholars and practitioners missing an opportunity to build ideas from the voices of work-bound youth and working-class adults, whose input into policy and educational reform efforts to date has been minimal at best.
2. There are some bodies of work that have in fact included a significant proportion of working class participants, such as Super's Career Pattern Study (Super & Overstreet, 1960) and many of the studies cited by Savickas (1999), but these were conducted at a time when economic options were far different than they are today; the possibility of obtaining a reasonably well-paying job with some security in a production-oriented industry is far less likely today than it was 40 or 50 years ago. The differences in the social and economic characteristics of the context are dramatic, thereby calling into question the applicability of assumptions drawn from a different era.
I am not proposing an either-or solution. I am deeply committed to ensuring that we conduct the sort of psychological research and inquiry that intentionally builds on the experiences of those on the margins of this country's socioeconomic structure. Yet it is also important to create new knowledge on the shoulders of our rich intellectual heritage. In this context, these four articles represent critically important contributions that should inform the next generation's research and theoretical innovation. However, by also grounding our theory development efforts in the experiences of workbound youth, we are more likely to acquire a knowledge base that is intimately connected to the targets of our efforts.
More precisely, I suggest that our efforts need to encompass two fronts: On one hand, examining the empirical validity of the ideas presented in these articles makes eminent sense. Yet at the same time, we need to use theory-building, qualitatively oriented strategies to develop ideas and inferences that emerge out of an experiencenear, empathic connection to work-bound youth. For example, in a recent review of the school-to-work literature (Blustein, Juntunen, & Worthington, in press), we found that many of the most important new ideas resulted from theory-building, discovery-oriented methods, which may not have emerged if the investigators had elected to define all of their constructs and theoretical premises a priori (e.g., Borman, 1991; Evans & Heinz, 1994).
The school-to-work transition offers vocational psychology a vast opportunity to be useful to a very large cohort of our population, and to reinvigorate itself with new ideas and methods. The work that needs to occur does not exclude theory-building or theory-testing studies; in fact, I believe that the synthesis of these perspectives offers the vocational counseling field the critical blend of intellectual rigor and cultural and social sensitivity needed to develop the most compelling theoretical perspectives, and, ultimately, the most useful interventions.
[Reference]
REFERENCES
[Reference]
Blustein, D. L., Juntunen, C. L., & Worthington, R. L. (in press). The school-towork transition: Adjustment challenges of the forgotten half. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Handbook of counseling psychology (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Blustein, D. L., Phillips, S. D., Jobin-Davis, K., Finkelberg, S. L., & Roarke, A. E. (1997). A theory-building investigation of the school to work transition. The Counseling Psychologist, 25, 364-402.
[Reference]
Borman, K M. (1991). The first real"job: A study of young workers. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Evans, K. & Heinz, W. R. (Eds.). (1994). Becoming adults in England and Germany. London: Anglo-German Foundation.
Hernstein, R., & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve: The reshaping of American life by differences in intelligence. New York: The Free Press. Krumboltz, J. D., & Worthington, R. L. (1999). The school-to-work transition from a learning theory perspective. The Career Development Quarterly, 47, 312-325.
Lent, R. W., Hackett, G., & Brown, S. D. (1999). A social cognitive view of schoolto-work transition. Career Development Quarterly, 47, 297-311. Savickas, M. L. (1999). The transition from school to work: A developmental perspective. Career Development Quarterly, 47, 326-336.
[Reference]
Super, D. E., & Overstreet, P. L. (1960). The vocational maturity of ninth-grade boys. New York: Teachers College Press.
Super, D. E., Savickas, M. L., Super, C. M. (1996). The life-span, life-space approach to careers. In D. Brown & L. Brooks (Eds.), Career choice and development (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Swanson, J. L., & Fouad, N. A. (1999). Applying theories of person-environment fit to the transition from school-to-work. The Career Development Quarterly, 47, 337-347.
Sweetland, S. R. (1996). Human capital theory: Foundations of a field of inquiry. Review of Educational Research, 66, 341-359. Worthington, R. L., & Juntunen, C. L. (1997). The vocational development of non-college-bound youth: Counseling psychology and the school-to-work transition movement. The Counseling Psychologist, 25, 323-363.
[Author Affiliation]
David L. Blustein
[Author Affiliation]
David L. Blustein is an associate professor in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at Boston College, Chesnut Hill, Massachusetts. Correspondence regarding this article should be sent to David L. Blustein, Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology, Boston College, Campion Hall, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167 (e-mail: Blusteid@bc.edu).
