Fostering hope and career adaptability in children's career development

ABSTRACT

Today's children, more than ever, will live their life trajectories with indistinct and/or elusive maps, and must find their own ways of being in this world. While finding one's way of being in the world is difficult enough, it is even more challenging for children experiencing barriers and lack of opportunities, often resulting from oppressive forces. Nurturing children's hope and career adaptability can help support, sustain, and prepare them for successful lives as they navigate this ever-changing world. In this article, the author explores hope theory and the construct of career adaptability from career construction theory to inform and stimulate the promotion of childhood career development and life design, while also identifying potential avenues to help deconstruct and mitigate oppressive messaging and forces that can be absorbed early in life, often unconsciously.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood career development
• career adaptability
• hope
• life design
• career construction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jacqueline J. Peila-Shuster, Ph.D., LPC, NCC is an Assistant Professor in the Counseling and Career Development graduate programme at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S.A. She has been teaching courses in career development and counselling since 2007, provides clinical supervision for fieldwork experiences, and is the coordinator for the career counselling specialization. Jackie also has a Master's degree specializing in Counseling and Career Development, and a B.S. in Occupational Therapy. Her areas of teaching and research interest include life design, career counselling and development across the lifespan, gender issues in career development, counsellor education, and strengths-based approaches to career and life planning.

ORCID

Jacqueline J. Peila-Shuster http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8958-8140