Clients As Change Agents: What Color Could My Parachute Be?

Abstract

Morrill and Forrest (1970) advocate an approach to career counseling (Type 4) that helps clients (a) understand career choice as a developmental process, (b) learn decision‐making skills, and (c) become active change agents in their own lives. Referring to the Morrill and Forrest article as a benchmark statement about career counseling, Remer and O'Neill present a decision‐making model that encompasses the tenets of Type 4 counseling. The model has 13 sequential steps; the authors indicate the role of the counselor and the objectives for the client at each. The article discusses the potential impact of this self‐directed, decision‐making model on career counseling. Specific counseling outcomes are discussed along with anecdotal evidence that supports the power of the model to create these outcomes.

Empowerment as a Function of Contextual Self-Understanding

“…Informed choice in rehabilitation counseling refers to the process by which consumers make insightful decisions about personal goals and necessary services. Self-determination refers to directing one's own course of action, which requires active personal agency (Remer & O'Neill, 1980) in implementing informed choices. According to Kosciulek and Wheaton, "The informed choice process begins with the individual's values, interests, characteristics, and proceeds to an evaluation of availability of resources and alternatives" (p. 209).…”

“…Other interventions that could be conducted effectively and expeditiously during vocational assessment include addressing consumer contextual self-understanding of aptitudes, academic achievement, personality, motivation, temperaments, work-readiness, and other personal variables; as well as environmental variables related to the nature and scope of available services, the rights and responsibilities of all parties involved, and the provisions of disability-related legislation. With regard to research implications, empowerment-related variables of particular interest include (a) informed choice, self-determination, consumer-counselor working alliance, decision-making skill, goal-setting skill, planning skill, negotiation skill, personal adjustment skill, knowledge of available resources and alternatives, and learning facilitated through outcome experiences (Kosciulek & Wheaton, 2003); (b) active agency, skill in accepting personal problems as challenges rather than as immutable obstacles, and the development of a sense of personal power (LOC; Remer & O'Neill, 1980); (c) SE (efficacy expectations and outcome expectations) with adjustment through mastery experiences, modeling strategies, social persuasion, and changes in physiological and emotional states and related perceptions (Bandura, 1998;Ozer & Bandura, 1990); and (d) LOC, with reorientation through learning and reinforcement (Rotter, 1966;see also MacDonald, 1971;Spector, 1988;Skinner, 2003). R. Richard Breeding, EdD, CRC, is a vocational analyst and adjunct professor of rehabilitation counseling, having served with the master's degree programs in rehabilitation counseling at Arkansas State University and the University of Kentucky.…”

Multiple outcome evaluation of a life-career development course.

“…The course's curriculum was based on the COCA model proposed by Remer and O'Neill (1980). This 13-step decision-making model focuses on having participants learn decision-making skills, achieve career self-concept crystallization, and become "change agents" in response to barriers to their career choices.…”

Integrating Leisure Guidance into a Career Counseling Center

“…Counselors often have their own methods of facilitating client decision-making. If they do not, useful decision processes appear in articles by Hazler and Roberts (1984), Remer and O'Neill (1980), and Tolbert's 1980 text. The aim of work/leisure decision-making strategies is to strike a balance in the client's life so that important needs may be fulfilled by a combination of work and leisure activities.…”