The Theory and Practice of Vocational Guidance. A Selection of Readings

497 Pages·1968·33.996 MB·English

by  Barrie Hopson and John Hayes (Auth.)

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T HE T H E O RY A ND
P R A C T I CE OF
V O C A T I O N AL G U I D A N CE
A Selection of Readings
BARRIE HOPSON AND JOHN HAYES
Vocational Guidance Research Unit
"To fill up a work with these scraps may, indeed, be considered as a
downright cheat on the learned world, who are by such means im­
posed upon to buy a second time in fragments and by retail, what they
have ah-eady in gross, if not in their memories, upon their shelves."
HENRY FIELDING, Tom Jones
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First edition 1968
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Foreword
PATRICK MEREDITH
THE editors of this compilation of readings in The Theory and Practice
of Vocational Guidance have performed an important service. Even a
cursory glance at the scope of its contents will reveal that this is a service
not only to psychologists professionally engaged in vocational guidance
but to a great many other potential readers, in fields as diverse as economics,
education, sociology, psychiatry, industrial relations, demography, govern­
ment, human geography, and even philosophy. These readings also carry
important implications for statistics, information-theory, computer-science
and decision-theory. And the emphatic stress on the central role of the
"self-concept" points to deep considerations of ethics and ontology.
This volume serves both to display the wide range of considerations which
have dominated the thinking of workers in the vocational field, but at the
same time to suggest, by the implication of topics omitted, some of the further
problems to which their attention should be drawn. In particular we have
a very far-reaching problem to solve which lies at the very roots of the pre­
vailing educational concept of the relation between school and occupation.
Some twenty years ago in a little book now out of print {Visual Education and
the New Teacher, 1946, Visual Education Centre, Exeter) I made the follow­
ing comments on the relevance of occupational fiteis to the school curriculum:
"Vocational Guidance ... has been conceived and developed hitherto
mainly in terms of tests and evaluations of the child's potentialities. But
there is something more fundamental than guidance by tests. It is the indi­
vidual's dominant interest which largely determines his success and helps
him overcome his limitations. And interest in a job depends, in turn, on a
clear mental picture of the job. A keen interest based on a misconception
of the nature of the job may lead to bitter disillusionment and failure. It is
therefore the business of the schools to acquaint their pupils with the way the
world works, in all its occupational diversity. 'The Occupatioruil Life of Man'
should be an integral feature of all curricula for at least the last two years
of school life when interests are crystallizing and vocational decisions are
being made. Now it is exactly here that the technique of the documentary
film can ideally fulfil its function. But it should not merely provide a spo­
radic film show to focus attention on one particular occupation. A long-term
programme is needed, based on consultations between the industrialist,
the educational and visual experts, the vocational psychologist and the Minis­
try of Labour, The progranmie must obviously take account of the national
situation. Any good film depicting a job is ipso facto propaganda for that
χ Foreword
job, and if that job is hkely to be overcrowded in the near future such
propaganda is in nobody's interest. Effort should be directed where it is
most needed. We thus require collections of occupational films, books, etc.;
lists of typical factories, offices, farms, etc., suitable for school visits; con­
ferences to bring together those concerned in this work; and arrangements
for supplying the schools with all the necessary information and material.
"In this way we can bridge a gap which ought never to have existed, the
gap between the school-world and the work-a-day world. Naturally the
attempt will meet with opposition from those who prefer to see education
as a 'spiritual' process having nothing in common with the solid material
activities of the workshop and the market-place.
"What defeatist cynicism is this which would carefully wrap up education
in cotton-wool while treating industry as something dirty, commercial
and (by implication) immoral? Is the child then to be carefully nurtured by
other-wordly religion until the age of fifteen or sixteen and then cynically
pushed into a world which recognizes none of the principles of his education
and encourages him to forget them as quickly as possible? This absurdity
can be quickly disposed of. Are all teachers, administrators, inspectors and
ministers of education so spiritually minded that they spend their time loving
one another and the children, never thinking for one moment about their
salaries, never struggling for position, or prestige, but devoting themselves
single-mindedly to one thing and one thing only, the spiritual welfare of the
children? What of industry on the other hand, or to take a wider term, the
occupational world? In this world do we never see a struggle for ideals, a con­
sideration of human values, a loyalty to fellow-workers, a disinterested pursuit
of patriotic aims, bravery in the face of extreme occupational hazard and many
other values which, if we are to use the term at all, can only be described as
spiritual? These things have only to be stated to blast sky-high the sickly
pretentiousness of this exclusive claim for the spirituality of education. This
is one world and we are all in it together, children, teachers, workers, and
the rest, all showing a blend of aspirations and imperfections. It is essential
for the health of industry and education ahke for the two to be organically re­
lated, all accepting the hard claims of material and economic fact, all struggling
by their own nature to achieve a life which triumphs over those facts."
My impression is that today the concept of the curriculum as a microcosm
of this world, rather than of the abstract fictitious world of the academic
imagination still haunted by Plato, is as far as ever from reahzation. And
children are still deprived of an adequate picture of the solid occupational
world in which they will find their destiny and for which they need guidance
in making their own choice, though as John Hayes shows in his paper on the
role of occupational information, there is no shortage of techniques for
bringing occupational knowledge into the school. It may be, however, that
vocational guidance has set itself a task whose information requirements
are too complex even for computer-aided techniques, a task which should
Foreword xi
properly be regarded as the responsibility of the educational system as a
whole rather than of a specialist corps within the system. If the curriculum
could be redesigned so as to make it mirror our actual culture as it is, and
as it is tending, so that the information-handling process became part and
parcel of curriculum-design, taking advantage of all modern aids, the
specialist counsellor could be left with a more manageable "client-oriented "
job. His would be the task of helping the uncertain individual to find his way
among conflicting choices, in which the uncertainty would not be due to
ignorance of the occupational world (for the curriculum would have remedied
this) but to uncertainty in his own self-concept.
This brings us back to the fundamental importance of the individual self,
and it is a pleasure to read the opening contribution by Donald Super
(whom I once had the privilege of instructing in English constitutional
history and elementary Greek at a school in Switzerland some thirty years
ago. I wonder who could have guided him then to his subsequent career?).
The self-concept is implicit in his phrase "work as a way of life". It would be
very wide of the mark to suppose that a curriculum which mirrors the
occupational world would simply replace academic training by vocational
training. It would redefine the academic task in truer terms which would
accept life as it is, a process in which man's attainment and self-discovery is
through occupation (including the occupation of parenthood).
An important medium for bringing the reahty of the occupational world
into the field of awareness of the school-child is the "occupational visit", as
Barrie Hopson demonstrates in his paper on the subject, so long as it is
competently planned and executed, with all necessary safeguards. And he
rightly points to the opportunity which such a visit offers not only to grasp
the occupational reality but to deepen the child's self-awareness in response
to a challenging experience.
One of the problems wide open for a fresh approach is that of the econo­
mics of guidance, counselling and selection, not merely in a financial sense
but in terms of eflfort, information and expert manpower. Cronbach and
Gleser have made a pioneering contribution to this problem (Cronbach, L. J.,
and Gleser, G. C. Psychological Testing and Personnel Decisions, 2nd ed..
University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1965) and it has important implications
for the traning of the counsellors themselves. Quis custodet ipsos custodes?
A viable career depends upon a reasonable economy in the disposition of
one's time and resources. Peter Daws, the Director of the Vocational Guid­
ance Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Leeds, under whose
leadership the compilation of this volume was made possible, shows a
sensible awareness of the oft-neglected need to avoid "biting off more than
one can chew ". In his contributions on " What will the school counsellor do "
he advises that, in this country at any rate, "Our own counsellors will need
to accept a more modest definition of their role." I would suggest that this
is not merely prudent parsimony dictated by national economic stringency.
xii Foreword
but an indication of wide application in many other professions. Perhaps
most of us tend to interpret our professional roles too ambitiously and do too
much inadequately instead of a reasonable amoimt adequately. Economy is
not parsimony but eflFectiveness and elegance of performance. An over­
worked counsellor, stretched beyond his resources, is going to give less than
his best to those whom he counsels.
And this brings an overlong Foreword to a provocative conclusion.
Rightly the many contributors are exploring the theoretical foundations of
vocational guidance in all directions and offer an impressive array of findings
and concepts. But the practitioner has a job to do and some one must tackle
the task of taking the perplexing imphcations of theory down to a manage­
able set of elemental principles. It was the merit of Alec Rodger, who must
surely be regarded as the founding father of vocational guidance in this
country, to perceive the need for an essentially simple and manageable
taxonomy of guidance-objectives into which a great mass of early theory was
unobtrusively packed. Theory has moved on a long way but it is right and
proper that his famous "Seven-point Plan" should find a place in this
selection, and not merely for its historic interest. It embodies an implicit
uneconomic and pedagogic principle of direct relevance to the training of
counsellors however modern their techniques. If they become over-elaborate
in their daily practice they will no longer see the wood for the trees and their
advice will be anxious, uncertain and confused. We may need a few more
than seven points, but we must not have so many points that they become a
blur. And it is here precisely that the effective use of the computer, in reliev­
ing the human brain of the necessity for handling vast areas of information,
will be seen at its true value. It is significant that Loughary, Friesen and
Hurst, in their paper on "Autocoun" conclude with the need to assure
ourselves, "That automated systems contribute to, rather than inhibit, the
freedom of the individual".
Equally significant is their finding that of the two counsellors involved
in the experiment the one whose statements and decisions were "more like
the machine" was the one whose additional data "were based on a know­
ledge of the pupils". This is reassuring and affords a valuable footnote to
Alec Rodger's remark that "Neither the Seven-point Plan nor any other is
likely to turn a bad judge of people into a good one".
A word of acknowledgement and appreciation of those who make possible
the establishment of our Vocational Guidance Research Unit at Leeds
University is due here. For without the resources of the Unit the production
of this volume might never have been undertaken. Our thanks are due to
the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and to the Department of Scientific
and Industrial Research (as it was then styled at the time of the award of
their grant three years ago). And lastly a tribute to Mr. Hans Hφxte r whose
persistent devotion to the cause of vocational guidance in this country
prodded us all into action.
Preface
IN BRITAIN there has been a resurgence of interest in vocational guidance
over the past few years. Several universities have established post-graduate
courses to train school counsellors, and many others are beginning to
introduce courses dealing with some aspect of vocational theory into their
undergraduate psychology, sociology, and education syllabuses. Courses in
careers work have also been introduced by a number of teacher training
colleges.
Students, teachers and practitioners in this field are faced with a common
problem: a paucity of available hterature. British research has been limited
and although a great deal of basic work on the theory and practice of vocatio­
nal guidance has been done, and is well documented in the U.S.A., its exist­
ence is not widely known in this country. Those who are aware of some of
this work are frustrated by the long delays in obtaining the material they
require, especially since many of the relevant journals are not taken by
British libraries. Most of the material has to be obtained direct from the
U.S.A. and not only is this an expensive process but it is also very time-
consuming.
It was this situation that encouraged us to prepare this collection of
material. We have selected contributions from amongst the best American
literature supplemented, wherever possible, by British work relevant to
vocational guidance in this country.
We would like to express our sincere appreciation to Peter P. Daws,
Director of the Vocational Guidance Research Unit in the University of
Leeds, for his active support and encouragement and for his invaluable
comments and criticisms. The work on this collection began when both the
editors were members of the Vocational Guidance Research Unit. The work
of the Vocational Guidance Research Unit is supported by the Gulbenkian
Foundation and by the Social Science Research Council, but neither of
these organizations necessarily shares the views expressed in this book.
Our thanks are due to F. P. G. Whitaker, Director of the Department of
Management Studies in the University of Leeds, who has also given this
enterprise enthusiastic support.
Finally we would like to express our appreciation to Miss W. Bee, Mrs.
A. V. Riddell and Miss C. L. Slater for efficiently preparing the manuscript
in the best traditions of "crisis" typing.
BARRIE HOPSON
JOHN HAYES
xiii
Parti. THEORY
"Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or
architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself."
SAMUEL BUTLER
Introduction
THE subject of Part I of the book is occupational choice. The major points
of emphasis are two: "why" people choose one job in preference to another,
and "how" this is accomplished.
People can always provide ready-to-wear answers to describe how they
came to choose a particular job, but subjective evaluation is notorious for
its attractive "red herrings". It is, therefore, most disappointing when we
look for objective investigations into the phenomenon of occupational
choice to discover that until quite recently the cupboards were depressingly
bare. Psychology, in the form of Mrs. Hubbard, did not really have a change
of heart until the early nineteen-iafties. As it transpired, the provider was
not a psychologist, but the economist Eli Ginzberg and his associates (1951),
who were to bring to the attention of psychologists and sociologists the
paucity of empirical information and theoretical interest existing at the time.
Prior to Ginzberg's book. Occupational Choice: An Approach to a General
Theoryy three generalized approaches to occupational choice can be elicited.
Part I of this book is concerned with theories of occupational choice and
decision-making; none of the following three approaches can justify the
title of "theory".
ACCIDENT HYPOTHESIS
This may be described as the "St. Paul on the road to Damascus"
approach. With a blinding flash of insight, a person suddenly "hits" on
the idea of being, for example, a plumber, by watching one at work on the
sink in his house. The anthropologist Malinowski explained his trans­
ference of interest from chemistry to anthropology following the experience
of reading Frazer's Golden Bough during a convalescence from tuberculosis.
Whistler relates how, if he had not failed a military examination, he would
have lived out his life as an army officer. These examples illustrating some
of the ways in which people describe the discovery of their raison d'itre, are,
in reality, emphasizing the role of chance occurrences in life decision-making
processes. This explanation of occupational choice sees chance as the im­
portant operating factor.
No one doubts the substantial element of chance operating in these
examples, but all that they illustrate is that chance was an important factor
reinforcing trends already existing at that point in time. The accident factor
is seen as the iceberg trip above the submerged mass of earlier experiences
and individual dispositions. Many people observe plumbers at work in
their kitchens but they are not all motivated to rush out to seek employment
3