AOSIS invites authors to submit their latest manuscripts towards the topical issue to be published in the African Journal of Career Development (AJCD).

Theme: Looking through a ‘hope- and purpose-enhancing career development’ lens: The key to promoting adaptability, employability, and meaning-making

Editor: Jacobus Gideon (Kobus) Maree

Deadline for submissions: 15 July 2022

In your proposal, please include

• the proposed title,
• a brief abstract (maximum word count of 250 words), and
• author’s name, e-mail address, and affiliations.

To submit your article, please visit the website at ajcd.africa. For submission guidelines, click here. All submissions will undergo anonymous review to guarantee high scientific quality and relevance to the subject. A final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will be based on the reviews received from the reviewers and at the sole discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

Background on the issue:

According to Savickas (2006), career counselling paradigms reach their limit of effectiveness after a period of 50 years or so. After that, they lose their capacity to stimulate career counselling intervention, and inevitably this influences the actual practice of career counselling. Perusal of career counselling intervention models over the past 120 years (Duarte, 2017a, b; Hartung, 2018; Savickas, 2019a, b) reveals that three distinctive career counselling-related paradigms have governed theory and associated interventions in the career counselling field: (a) vocational guidance (career advising), (b) career education and coaching, and (c) career constructing. Each of these interventions has i. a discernible focus and application; ii. a focus on a different psychological self (actor, agent, or author) (McAdams, 2013); and iii. its own, distinct aims that relate to a unique style of intervention. Savickas (2019a, pp. 11-12) states that i. vocational guidance (which emphasises the “objective perspective of individual differences”) “matches an individual to an occupation”; ii. career education and coaching (which emphasises the ‘subjective perspective of individual development’) “develops a career”, and iii. career constructing (which advocates “the project perspective of life design”) “designs a life”. Savickas (2019a) stresses that these three different but related paradigms, theoretical orientations, and associated career counselling intervention styles remain valuable and relevant today, depending on the idiosyncratic needs of different people (Maree, 2019a).

Over time, ‘life purpose counselling’ will become increasingly important in promoting people’s wellbeing in a rapidly changing world. Against this background, this Call for Manuscripts – hope and life purpose counselling – calls for contributions on how counsellors can best help people design themselves, choose and construct careers, develop life story narratives, and make meaning in their personal and work lives in addition to advancing goals such as social justice, ethical behaviour, and reconciling the capabilities of robots with the needs of human beings (Lindsay, 2019; Lindsay & Hudson, 2019; Maree, 2019b, c; 2020; Ratts, 2009; Savickas, 2019a, b). In this process, people’s (career) adaptability and consequently their employability can be improved in terms of three key factors, namely career identity, career adaptability, and (social and human) capital (Fugate & Kinicki, 2004; Koen, 2013). In the case, especially, of low skilled, under-skilled, and unskilled workers and work-seekers, as well as the unemployed and learners at all levels, it is becoming increasingly difficult to promote their career adaptability and employability, much less their sense of hope and purpose. The Covid 19 pandemic has exposed the employment, poverty, and skills-related fault lines in the world of work. For example, i. young people’s employment rates have decreased 2,5 times more than those of older people; ii. 90% more women than men that have lost their work have exited the workforce; and iii. workers in the informal economy are three times more likely than workers in the formal economy to have lost their jobs (ILO, 2021; Samans, 2021). The need is thus heightened to retrain, re-educate, reskill, and upskill low, under-skilled, and unskilled workers, as well as work-seekers, the unemployed, and learners at all levels.

Career development must be redefined and contextualised constantly and applied in a way that addresses people’s changing career development needs (Maree, 2019c). Career development practitioners will therefore need to engage critically with the prevailing social, cultural, political, contextual, and economic realities in the areas where they offer career counselling. Of equal importance is understanding how these realities promote or impede people’s choice of careers (Irving et al., 2020). Reflecting, meta-reflecting, and reconsidering the content, mode, and levels at which career development (including e-career development) is administered will be needed, and more research done on the value of e-career development in individual and especially group contexts in Global North as well as Global South contexts. Similarly, the key aspects of contextualised, online, in-person, as well as hybrid individual and group career development will require scrutiny (Maree, 2021).

According to Savickas (2019b): “The future of the profession rests on our ability to develop new models and methods to help individuals cope with the new organization of work that is becoming increasingly less predictable, regulated, stable, and orderly” (n.p.). That said, the key aims of career development are to enhance people’s adaptability, improve their employability, and promote their ability to make and experience meaning in their work and personal contexts. The aim of this special issue of the AJCD is to contribute to this conversation.

Types of manuscripts we are looking for: We are seeking innovative contributions that address the following questions.

• What are some of the leading paradigms for promoting ‘hope- and purpose-enhancing career development’ and how can these paradigms be shifted towards enhanced utility and implementation?
• How can ‘hope- and purpose-enhancing career development’ interventions be promoted and enacted?
• How can ‘hope- and purpose-enhancing career development’ be implemented in primary and secondary schools as well as in tertiary education and training environments?
• How can the public and private sectors, individuals, civil society, researchers, and policy-makers join hands to expedite ‘hope- and purpose-enhancing career development’ and improve the career adaptability and employability in particular of (female) workers, work-seekers, learners, and students?

We welcome thought-provoking, positive manuscripts that cover the theoretical and practical issues associated with the topic of this special issue and that report on research across the methodology spectrum (quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, and integrative qualitative-quantitative methodologies) (Hartung & Santilli, 2018; Maree, 2013, Savickas, 2019a, b).

For the purposes of this special issue, contributors should consider ‘career development’ as including constructs such as general, psychosocial, and psycho-educational information provision; vocational guidance; career education; career guidance; psychological counselling; self- and career constructing, as well as life designing and healing (Savickas, 2015).

For more information, please visit ajcd.africa

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