The vocational ID – connecting life design counselling and personality systems interaction theory

ABSTRACT

We introduce the Vocational ID that integrates linguistic and visual representations of a career counselling client’s self. Based upon findings from the Life Design paradigm [Savickas, M. L., Nota, L., Rossier, J., Dauwalder, J.-P., Duarte, M. E., Guichard, J., … van Vianen, A. E. M. (2009). Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the twenty-first century. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 75(3), 239–250. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2009.04.004] and the Personality Systems Interaction theory [Kuhl, J. (2000b). The volitional basis of personality systems interaction theory: Applications in learning and treatment contexts. International Journal of Educational Research, 33(7–8), 665–703. doi:10.1016/S0883-0355(00)00045-8], the Vocational ID facilitates working on clients' vocational identity. In this article, we present the theoretical framework, its practical applications, and a case study.

KEYWORDS:

• Career construction interview (CCI)
• life design
• PSI theory
• volitional control
• self-growth

Acknowledgments

We thank the following colleagues for their valuable contributions to this article: Ladina Schmidt of the IAP Institute of Applied Psychology of the ZHAW co-developed the Vocational ID together with the corresponding author. Sonja Schlaepfer, Noemi Blumer, and Ida Marie Mueller edited our case study, being students or interns at that time. We would also like to thank an anonymous reviewer who gave us insightful feedback on the Life Design section.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Marc Schreiber, PhD, is a professor at IAP Institute of Applied Psychology, Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland, where he works as a researcher and lecturer in Psychology and Career Counselling as well as a career counsellor. He is responsible for the Master of Advanced Studies in Occupational, Educational and Career Guidance Counselling at the IAP.

Adrian Gschwend holds a Bachelor of Law and a Master of Advanced Studies in Occupational, Educational and Career Guidance Counselling, both from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland. His professional, academic, and research interests include vocational and narrative identity, constructivist and social constructionist paradigms in career counselling, and personality development. Adrian works as a self-employed career counsellor with a special emphasis on life-design counselling in St. Gallen and Zurich, Switzerland.

Marie-Louise Susanne Iller holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Psychology from Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), Switzerland, and is close to completing her studies for the Master of Science in the same discipline. Her specialisation is Developmental and Personality Psychology. Currently, she works as a research assistant at IAP Institute of Applied Psychology. She is interested in qualitative and quantitative assessment of personality and her professional goal is career counselling.

ORCID

Marc Schreiber http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6468-178X

Notes

1 Very interestingly and congruent with our approach in combining PSI theory with Life Design, Kuhl (2018) suggests that motives should be measured qualitatively: “Motives develop from an extensive web of autobiographical episodes, i.e. from personal ‘stories’. The high level of cognitive integration characteristic of motives is best attained by asking respondents to generate stories of their own” (p. 567). Even though the practical implications of the implicit and explicit motives for career counselling are considerable, we will not further elaborate on motives throughout the article because of space restrictions. For an in-depth view of the interplay of motives and affect modulation, see Alsleben and Kuhl (2011).

2 Kuhl emphasises the positive precondition of action-orientation compared to state-orientation as “state-oriented individuals report having uncontrollable ruminations following failure experiences” whereas “action-oriented individuals have no difficulty disengaging from (i.e. ‘downregulating’) unwanted thoughts and emotions even following aversive experiences” (2000b, p. 672).

3 see www.laufbahndiagnostik.ch/en/tools

4 The German version of the ORVIS has been translated at our institute.