Guidance theory and practice: the status of career exploration

British Journal of Guidance & Counselling,
Vol. 31, No. 2, May 2003
Guidance theory and practice: the
status of career exploration
MARIA DO CEU TAVEIRA
Department of Psychology, University of Minho, Campus Gualtar, 4700 Braga, Portugal
M. LUISA RODRÍGUEZ MORENO
Departament de Mètodes d’Investigació i Diagnòstic en Educació, Universitat de
Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall Hebron 171, Barcelona 08035, Spain
ABSTRACT Career intervention can be designed to enhance constructive attitudes, emotions and
behaviours that will improve clients’ career attainment. In this sense, mobilisation of career
exploration constitutes one of the most important tasks of career counsellors, particularly with
emphasis in developmental career guidance models, first developed in the 1950s. The authors present a
brief review of career exploration conceptualisation and empirical research lines. The implications for
career guidance and counselling are addressed.
Recently, a renewed interest in career exploration has emerged in the career
development literature. Career exploration refers to those purposeful activities,
directed toward enhancing self- and environment consciousness and knowledge, that
individuals engage in to foster progress in career development (e.g. Jordaan, 1963).
During the last three decades, several researchers have focused on the nature and
contexts of career exploration, encouraging career development professionals to
increase their understanding of the career exploration process across the life-span
and for diverse populations (Luzzo & McGregor, 2001). The purpose of this article
is to briefly review the conceptualisations of the career exploration process and
related research and to suggest ways to apply career exploration theory and research
to career guidance and counselling.
Career exploration: theory and practice
The theory of career exploration was developed only in the early 1960s, when it first
started being considered as a category of general exploratory behaviour (Jordaan,
E-mail: ceuta@mail.telepac.pt
ISSN 0306-9885/print/ISSN 1469-3534/online/03/020189-19 # 2003 Careers Research and Advisory Centre
DOI: 10.1080/0306988031000102360

190 Maria do Ceu Taveira & M. Luisa Rodríguez Moreno
1963). Recent reviews of the topic by Taveira (1997, 2001) identify four different
conceptions of career exploration, which clearly illustrate the evolution of the
construct during the last century, and can now be viewed as complementary to one
another.
The first and more simplistic concept, which originated in theories such as
Krumboltz’s learning theory of career choice and counselling (Krumboltz, 1979),
considers career exploration as a type of information-seeking behaviour or as a career
problem-solving behaviour. A second concept, derived from career decision theory,
considers career exploration as an important phase in the process of career decisionmaking,
involving the identification and evaluation of options and informationseeking
behaviour (e.g. Gelatt, 1962; Tiedeman & O’Hara, 1963). A third concept,
with origins in normative career development theories, defines exploration as a major
life stage, that of adolescence (from ages 14 to 24), and comprising the career
developmental tasks of crystallising, specifying and implementing an occupational
choice (Ginzberg et al., 1951; Super, 1957). The fourth and final concept is a recent
position that describes exploration as a life-span process underlying career learning
and development (Atkinson & Murrell, 1988; Blustein, 1997; Jordaan, 1963; Super,
1995; Taveira, 1997).
Consistent with this last position, career exploration has been referred to as a
complex psychological process, which sustains the search of information, as well as
hypothesis testing about self and environment, in order to attain career goals. It
involves both cognitive and affective activities of interpreting and recreating past and
present experiences and, moved by intrinsic or instrumental motives, of projecting
them into the future. In addition, according to the processual view of the construct,
self- and environment exploration are conceived as two dimensions of the same
process, that of career exploration, rather than as two distinct exploratory processes.
Furthermore, it is assumed that what best distinguishes career exploration from
general exploration is the nature of exploratory activity goals, and not the process or
context of that activity. In short, the mere presence of information-seeking behaviour
or of self-appraisal does not in itself guarantee that we are in the presence of a career
exploration process. Rather, career exploration requires career-goal-orientated
behaviour.
Jordaan (1963) is a key figure in the theorisation of career exploration. He and
his team initiated a line of work which has had and continues to have a tremendous
impact upon career exploration thinking and research, even outside vocational
psychology (e.g. Grotevant & Cooper, 1988; Kracke, 1997). Throughout the 1970s
and 1980s, Stumpf et al. (1983) and Blustein (1987, 1988, 1989a,b), among others,
largely operationalised the construct of career exploration for research purposes.
Subsequently, and as a consequence of a more in-depth approach to the topic, two
related main lines of research have been encountered in the domain: (a) the
development and validation of career exploration assessment devices, and (b) the
study of the conditions and results of career exploration. The following sections
briefly review each of these lines of work.

Guidance theory and practice 191
The development and validation of career exploration assessment devices
During the last two decades, several methods and instruments for the assessment of
career exploration have been developed, according to the different conceptions of the
construct. Some very well-known assessment devices stand out, such as structured
interviews and questionnaires, checklists, vocational maturity inventories, and the
direct observation of career information-seeking behaviour, either in real or
simulated situations (Blustein, 1990). More recently, occupational card sort has
been suggested as an additional career exploration assessment procedure (Peterson,
1998; Petterson & Lenz, 1992), permitting the analysis of individual integration of
occupational knowledge.
Amongst the most significant measures is the Career Exploration Survey (CES)
by Stumpf et al. (1983), which operationalises a complex hierarchical model of the
career exploration process, including cognitive, behavioural and affective dimensions
of the construct.
The CES is a self-administered scale of 62 items using Likert-type response
format, designed to assess six beliefs about exploration (employment outlook,
certainty of career exploration outcomes, external search instrumentality, internal
search instrumentality, method search instrumentality and importance of preferred
position), seven dimensions of the exploration process (extent of environment and
of self-exploration, intended-systematic exploration, frequency, amount of information
acquired, number of options considered and focus of exploration) and three
reactions to exploration (satisfaction with information, exploration stress and
decision stress). The questionnaire was initially developed for young adults and
was later adapted for adolescents by Blustein (1988). A new version of the CES
was adapted for Portugal by Taveira (1997). The dimensionality and structure of
the CES was tested in a confirmatory factor analysis and different profiles of
career exploration were identified among Portuguese adolescents (Taveira et al.,
1998). After that, the CES was adapted in Spain by Rodríguez-Moreno et al.
(2000), who developed a criterion-based system to categorise scale results.
Furthermore, to enable the development of career exploration studies with socially
excluded groups these same authors adapted the content of the CES scales to that
population.
Although the increased efforts to assess career exploration are evidence of a
renewal of interest in the process, much work has yet to be done regarding the
dimensionality and structure of this vocational construct. In the past few years, much
of the available research has used revised versions of the Career Exploration Survey.
Nevertheless, most studies are restrictive, adopting a simplistic operational definition
of the career exploration process through the exclusive use of the self- and
environment exploration scales of the CES: that is, assessing only the extent of
self- and environment exploration. Future research and discussion on the dimensionality
and structure would constitute an important development of career
exploration assessment.

192 Maria do Ceu Taveira & M. Luisa Rodríguez Moreno
The study of career exploration process and outcomes
The second main line of research involves the study of career exploration process and
outcomes. One line of inquiry focuses on the contextual and personal conditions of
career exploration, which have been studied over the past three decades under a
broad range of perspectives. The first studies were developed under the social
learning paradigm and indicate that vicarious reinforcement and modelling have a
positive impact on the amount and frequency of career exploratory behaviour (e.g.
Krumboltz & Schroeder, 1965). Other studies indicate that this impact is also a
function of individual personality and developmental stage (Aiken & Johnston, 1973;
Hosie, 1975; Lazarick et al., 1988), highlighting the role of external reinforcement in
the qualitative aspects of exploration.
In this context, most of the studies that consider implicitly or explicitly the
contributions of motivation theory have produced interesting findings about the
variance of career exploration explained by personal variables. A first group of
studies, based on expectancy-value theories, suggest that activation of career
exploration is associated with work role salience, the importance of preferred career
domain, attainment of valued career goals, decision satisfaction and instrumentality
of career exploration (see Blustein & Flum, 1999; Flum & Blustein, 1999, 2000;
Taveira, 2001). To summarise, there is evidence to conclude that career exploration
is influenced by the importance attached to the career development domain and by
the satisfaction with career results and the consequent effect on outcome expectations.
The studies based on theories of motivation such as self-determination theory
by Deci and Ryan (1985) also suggest that some career exploration may be selfdetermined
(Blustein, 1988), which means that it can be either intrinsically
motivated or motivated through the internalisation of extrinsic regulations. In fact,
some empirical evidence suggests that feelings of self-determination, perceived
competence, internal locus of control, self-efficacy expectations, self-esteem and
moderate levels of stress are related to career exploration intentions and/or activation
(e.g. Betz & Voyten, 1997; Blustein, 1988, 1989a; Solberg, 1998; Taylor & Pompa,
1990).
Overall these results indicate that external incentives to career exploration may
not always be beneficial, and that psychological confidence, self-direction, and other
positive feelings about the self and the context, as well as some sense of imminence
regarding career development tasks, increase the probability of career exploration
involvement by individuals.
Despite the empirical evidence suggesting that career exploration may be selfdetermined,
the case of those adolescents and adults who are not interested in career
exploration or who offer resistance to extensive self- or environment exploration
deserves further attention. For instance, attachment theory and research suggest that
individuals who grow up in familial environments that favour insecure attachment
representations do not get actively involved in exploration and may exhibit high levels
of anxiety in this type of activity (see Soares, 1992, 1996). On the other hand,
research inspired by the identity status paradigm formulated by Marcia (1966)
suggests that ‘foreclosure’, one of the four identified statuses of identity, characterises

Guidance theory and practice 193
those adolescents who ‘remain closely tied to their families, with guilt and anxiety
attendant to questioning parental values. Thus to invite a foreclosure to explore, ‘is to
ask him or her to do and be the opposite of what he or she learned under anxietyarousing
conditions to not do and not be’ (Marcia, 1994, p. 39). Furthermore,
diffusion, another identity status, ‘characterises adolescents who lack firm commitments
and who are not currently in the process of active self-exploration’ (Berzonsky,
2000, p. 21).
As might be expected, career exploration research inspired by attachment theory
(Bowlby, 1982) indicates that motivation for, and competence in, career exploration
is associated with securely based and supportive family relationships (e.g. Blustein et
al., 1995; Felsman & Blustein, 1999; Ketterson & Blustein, 1997; Kracke, 1997;
Ryan et al., 1996; Schmitt-Rodermund & Vondracek, 1999). It is thus important to
consider these relational and developmental factors of career exploration, and to
influence parents to foster attachment along with autonomy in their relationships
with their children. At the same time, it is important that counsellors offer that kind
of relational support in educational and counselling contexts as a basic condition for
self- and environment-oriented exploration (Blustein & Flum, 1999; Vondracek,
1993).
Moreover, studies influenced by the identity status paradigm (Marcia, 1980)
also reveal that career exploration is associated with ego-identity (Blustein &
Noumair, 1996). More recently, adopting a specific domain approach in the
assessment of identity, Taveira (1997) has found that vocational identity (Dellas
Identity Status Inventory-Occupation, DISI-O; Dellas & Jernigan, 1981) and the
level of career indecision (Career Decision Scale, CDS; Osipow, 1987) of junior and
senior high school adolescents are better predictors of career exploration (Career
Exploration Survey, CES; Stumpf et al., 1983) than are gender, age or education.
The results of a cluster analysis also indicate that vocational identity status is
associated with four distinct career exploration configurations and with different
levels of career indecision. Moreover, Bartley and Robistschek (2000), in their search
for career exploration predictors, have found that ego-identity along with motivational
processes, career-decision-making, self-efficacy, career decidedness and
gender account for less than one third of the variance of career exploration
behaviour. Their findings suggest that ego-identity exploration and career exploration
are not overlapping constructs, and that researchers should consider the study of
metaconstructs in the prediction of carer exploration.
Another simultaneous line of research on career exploration is based on career
decision-making theory and on the research done in the domain of social cognition
and of human information processing. Overall, the main conclusions of this line of
research are: (a) a rational career decision-making style and vocational cognitive
differentiation and integration are related to career exploration; (b) individuals are
parsimonious and selective when exploring; (c) they use different strategies for
collecting and processing information in career exploration; and (d) they exhibit a
confirmatory bias when testing hypotheses about self and environment (see Taveira,
1997). This type of results suggests that it is important to increase individuals’
feelings of self-efficacy regarding career exploration, and self-consciousness, in terms

194 Maria do Ceu Taveira & M. Luisa Rodríguez Moreno
of cognitive functioning. In addition, to avoid the premature exclusion of options that
do not fit their actual self-concept, adolescents and young adults should learn with
career counsellors how to be more objective in self- and environment information
processing.
Recently, closer attention to the nature of contextual factors of career
exploration has defined the focus of an emergent line of research in the field. In
short, researchers have noted that the content and process of career exploration are
influenced by the nature of social, economic and cultural opportunities, and that
career exploration can be fostered by social contexts that offer access to a wide range
of options and which are consistent with the individual’s own interests and abilities
(e.g. Blustein et al., in press). Studies that include the analysis of correlates of
exploration such as age, gender, socio-economic conditions and education offer
some evidence for the role of life-development contexts in career exploration.
It has been found that age is related to career exploration, with older adolescents
and young adults more likely to be engaged in self- and environment exploration
(Ketterson & Blustein, 1997; Taveira et al., 1998). Referring to the relationship
between gender and career exploration, the traditional sexual orientation of career
preferences has been documented (e.g. Afonso & Taveira, 2001; Betz & Hackett,
1997; Fitzgerald et al., 1995; Harmon, 1999). On the question of career exploration
processes, empirical evidence is inconclusive, with some studies documenting
differences in career exploration as a function of gender (e.g. Afonso & Taveira,
2001; Afonso, 1987; Stumpf et al., 1983; Stumpf & Lockart, 1987), and others
showing no such differences (e.g. Blustein, 1988, 1989a,b; Blustein & Phillips, 1988;
Ketterson & Blustein, 1997; Sugalsky & Greenhaus, 1986). Additional studies on the
role of gender in career exploration are needed to resolve this issue.
Brown et al. (1999) found that urban students scored significantly higher on
career exploration than their suburban counterparts. Moreover, Afonso and Taveira
(2001) found that the content and process of 12th graders’ career exploration varies
in relation to socio-economic status. Individuals of lower socio-economic status
excluded more options in the fields of science and arts than did their colleagues of
higher socio-economic status. On the other hand, individuals from a higher socioeconomic
status, registered higher levels of self- and environment information and a
greater involvement in environment exploration activities than did those of a lower
socio-economic status. These types of results lend support to the idea that social and
cultural factors influence the content and process of exploratory activity for
vocational purposes (Blustein & Flum, 1999; Gottfredson, 1981). On the other
hand, it is evident that in the intervention process it is desirable to utilise self- and
environment exploration tools and activities that are sensitive to the contextual
factors of vocational exploration (e.g. to expose the client to an interview or selfadministered
system that is consistent with his or her own values, life experiences,
expectations and contextual conditioned way of thinking and, to pursue activities
that helps clients deal with their own, biases, stereotypes, values and assumptions
about career phenomena; to develop systemic materials designed to prevent parents,
teachers, other helping professionals, employers, and community leaders to engage in
practices and policies that may discriminate minority groups).

Another main line of inquiry concerning career exploration attempts to analyse
the effects of this process with regard to various aspects of vocational development
and career decision-making. In general terms, it has been found that career
exploration has a significant impact on vocational interests and on future time
perspective, and that it promotes vocational maturity and self-concept crystallisation
(e.g. Roeding, 1989; Savickas, 1990; Taylor, 1985). These results are consistent with
the role ascribed to exploration by Super (1995), in his interactive model of career
development in infancy. Additionally, career exploration seems to have a positive
impact on the decision-making process, in job search and placement, and on
occupational satisfaction and attainment (e.g. Blustein, 1989b; Noe & Steffy, 1987;
Phillips, 1982; Stumpf & Hartman, 1984; Werbel, 2000). More recently, it has been
found that career exploration contributes to the vocational adaptation of first-year
university students (Soares & Taveira, 1998), and that it is related to motivation for
personal growth (Urakami, 1996), to vocational identity (Robistschek & Cook,
1999), and to perceptions of hierarchical plateauing in an employee population
(Allen et al., 1999). Lawrence et al. (1998) have also shown that career exploration
predicts the competence to generate career options, while another group of studies
indicate that beliefs about exploratory behaviour are a significant predictor of careerdecision-making
self-efficacy (Brown et al., 1999; O’Brien et al., 1999). The results
of this line of research suggest that vocational exploration produces favourable results
in terms of career development, specifically when individuals explore significant and
useful information in relation to their eminent career developmental tasks (Blustein,
1989b; Lynch, 1990; Taveira et al., 1994).
In general, the study of career exploration effects reinforces the idea of
exploration as an important psychological life-span process with a significant role
in career learning and development, and with a positive effect, not only on career
planning and on career decision-making, but also on career adaptation.
Implications for career guidance and counselling
Guidance theory and practice 195
The literature relating to career intervention identifies career exploration as an
important goal or component. However, traditional conceptions of the construct
seem to prevail in professional practice. It is thus important that career counsellors
integrate existing knowledge on career exploration and conceive it as a multidimensional
process with specific dynamics. Table 1 offers a schema for the analysis
of career exploration dynamics in career intervention.
In particular, counsellors should assess the goals and personal and contextual
conditions of career exploration in order to organise career exploration mediums and
activities, and subsequently develop career exploration-related efficacy through, for
instance, the building up of clients’ confidence in career exploration. They should
also develop an understanding of the career development process and of the
questions or problems one is expecting to solve through exploration, learn how to
raise new questions that function as guidelines for future exploration experiences and
redefine old problems. Another task is to help to reflect critically on their own

196 Maria do Ceu Taveira & M. Luisa Rodríguez Moreno
TABLE 1. Analysis of career exploration process
Why do people explore? Goals of exploration (e.g. to gather information,
to construct meaning, to solve dilemmas and
problems, to reduce confusion, uncertainty,
anxiety, and stress, to test self and environment
hypothesis)
How much value do they attribute to
exploratory activity?
How confident are people in their ability to
successfully explore for career purposes?
Instrumental value of career exploration
Self-efficacy specific to the domain of career
exploration
Where do they explore? Extent of self- and environmental exploration
How do they explore? In a systematic and intentional mode or in a
fortuitous and unconscious manner
How much and what do they explore? Frequency of exploratory behaviour, nature and
amount of information obtained
Directness of exploration? Number of options explored
Focus of exploration
What type of conditions are facilitating or
inhibiting career exploration?
Personal
Developmental
Relational
Academic
Socio-economic
Political
What occurs after exploration takes place? Improvement of self-concept
Vocational maturity
Self-esteem
Vocational identity development
Differentiation of career interests
Progress in career decision-making
Career satisfaction
behaviour, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to problems and
then change their actions. Furthermore, it is important to help clients to learn to live
with an element of uncertainty and risk, give themselves adequate time to explore,
remain open and flexible.
During the last two decades, several suggestions in respect to intervention
strategies and programmes have been developed by diverse groups of career
development scholars, to foster career exploration in adolescence and adulthood.
Some of these contributions are consistent with career exploration theory and
research (e.g. Atkinson & Murrell, 1988; Betz, 1992; Blustein, 1992; Blustein &

Flum, 1999; Gottfredson, 1986; Luzzo et al., 1996; Morrow, 1995; Prediger, 1995,
1999; Prediger & Schmertz, 1998; Rodríguez-Moreno, 1999). Practitioners can
apply those strategies to assess and develop clients’ motivation and competency
related to exploratory activity. Furthermore, in our view, counsellors clearly need to
consider individual differences in career exploration and to adopt a client’s centred
approach in career intervention. Thus, for example, if one takes into consideration
the career exploration clusters identified by Taveira (1997) and the suggestion of
Atkinson and Murrell (1988) to adopt Kolb’s (1984) learning model to foster career
exploration in adolescence, relevant interventions can be designed. The following
section exemplifies how intervention can be tailored to different career exploration
profiles.
Career exploration profiles and intervention
Guidance theory and practice 197
Kolb’s (1984) model conceives cognitive development and learning along two
orthogonal dimensions, the concrete /abstract and the reflexive /active axes, and can
serve as a guide to the articulation of action with reflexive experiences in career
exploration-based interventions. Based on a cluster procedure mentioned above,
Taveira (1997) identified four distinct career clusters, which reflect the relationship
between career exploration, vocational identity and career indecision [1]. Briefly, the
four career profiles are as follows.
Confident exploration: identity achievement/low indecision. The adolescents included in
this cluster present very positive expectations about the world of work, believe in the
instrumental value of exploration and exhibit the highest involvement in systematic
environment exploration. Moreover, they have acquired the most significant amount
of occupational information and are very satisfied with it. They also register the
lowest levels of stress related to future career exploration activities or to career
decision-making situations.
That profile defines a configuration favourable to career exploration, with
positive beliefs of and reactions to exploration and the exploratory process. From the
perspective of vocational identity, however, the adolescents included in this cluster
punctuated not only in the dimension of identity achievement but also in that of
identity foreclosure, which means that the profile better represents commitment or
structure than that of exploration or flexibility and openness to change. Consistent
with this identity profile, the adolescents included in this cluster register the lowest
levels of indecision. This profile includes 12th graders of both sexes, from ages 16 to
22 (in other words, older students with more school experience that, from a
vocational identity perspective, are at a more advanced stage of the process of
commitment with more specific career options). Keeping in mind the career profile
referred to and the proximity of the moment of career choice they face, it is believed
that these adolescents can benefit from career intervention that requires a moderate
degree of investment on behalf of the client and counsellor (e.g. information, selfdirected
activities, structured group counselling, brief individual counselling),

198 Maria do Ceu Taveira & M. Luisa Rodríguez Moreno
centred on content and focused on closer career development tasks (e.g. the career
decision to be made at the end of the 12th grade), based on reflexive observation
strategies and abstract conceptualisation strategies of self- and environment
exploration. However, whenever possible, it is also important to assess to what
point these adolescents are confident or had the chance to explore in a systematic
way without diverting their values and career interests, and to what point their career
exploration profiles reflect the experience of ego-independence, promotion of feeling
of competency and autonomy that create motivation for future involvement in career
exploration. Or if, to the contrary, it is necessary to confront these adolescents with
the need to experiment a period of moratorium oriented toward a firmer test of
career choices.
Anxious exploration: moratorium and foreclosure/moratorium identity/high indecision.
This cluster characterises adolescents with the most positive career exploration
beliefs, and high involvement in systematic and intentional career exploration,
especially in what concerns self-exploration. These students are also satisfied with
the information obtained in exploration activities. However, contrary to what
happens in the former group, the students included in this cluster exhibit high levels
of stress related to exploration and decision-making activities. This group includes a
majority of 9th graders, of both sexes, ages 13 and 14.
That profile corresponds to a specific configuration of vocational identity, with
emphasis on moratorium and foreclosure modes and relatively high values of
achievement and diffusion. This result might mean that the students included in this
cluster have a relative differentiated vision of themselves (e.g. in terms of interests,
values, abilities) and of school and occupational environments and have difficulty in
defining career goals and in identifying means to attain them. This situation has been
defined in the vocational literature as a typical normative state of adolescence, which
can cause anxiety, confusion and indecision, and that should progressively give way
to a more defined vocational identity through exploration and commitment.
Consistent with this interpretation, the cluster is characterised by high indecision
and anxiety related to career exploration and decision-making. Above all, 9th graders
were included in this cluster. In other words, from the adolescents studied, it
included those who are in the more premature phases of the development process of
vocational identity and who, theoretically, have had fewer opportunities for career
exploration. Regarding the imminent challenge of career decision-making, it is
expected that these adolescents start to question and explore vocational issues, but
this activity may cause some anxiety and indecision if these experiences of
exploration do not acquire meaning and do not contribute to the resolution of
identity issues.
The adolescents included in this cluster may require a different intervention
than that suggested for the prior cluster. Thus, it is considered that with these
adolescents it would be important to develop longer interventions, oriented toward
the resolution of vocational identity issues, and which support them in dealing with
anxiety and stress, especially if these constitute a barrier in their constructive

Guidance theory and practice 199
involvement in activities of career exploration. It is possible that many of these
students seek quick answers and solutions to their vocational problems through
intervention (e.g. through tests), which decrease anxiety and stress derived from their
indecision or facilitate the resolution of conflicts (internal or external) that are at the
basis of it. However, even though it is acknowledged that it would be important to
decrease extremely negative sensations associated with the processes of career
decision-making, by the negative effects that those sensations can provoke in the
students’ motivation and efficacy of career exploration processes as well as by the colateral
negative effects they may have on their academic life (decrease in academic
progress and motivation), it is important not to give into immediate desires of this
type of request. Through emotional support and structure, it is important to help the
adolescents in these situations in getting to know themselves better and feeling more
confident and self-determined in the resolution of their vocational problems. The
development of competency in career exploration in such a supportive environment
can constitute a privileged context for the resolution of vocational identity issues. We
refer to interventions that allow the adolescents to learn to: better deal with social
expectations; confront alternative perspectives about themselves and surrounding
environment; expose themselves to other models of identity resolution; develop
social perspective; and acquire or develop competencies of reflection and decisionmaking.
Gender-oriented exploration: moratorium identity/highest indecision. This group,
although placing high importance on obtaining one’s career preference and believing
in the instrumentality of career exploration, register the most negative labour market
beliefs, and low activation of self- and environment exploration. Additionally, low
levels of satisfaction with career information, and the highest levels of exploration
and decision-related stress, define this profile. This cluster defines mainly the career
profile of 12th grade girls, ages 16 and 17, and of 9th grade girls, ages 13 and 14.
Regarding vocational identity, this cluster indicates a projection of the
moratorium and diffusion statuses. Taking career commitment as a criterion, this
cluster represents the opposite of the first cluster (achievement and foreclosure) and
reflects mainly the absence or difficulty in firmly establishing commitment to career
choices. In effect, this cluster presents higher values of vocational indecision. Other
than this, in terms of career exploration, this profile characterises lower expectations
of the labour market, high values of instrumentality of exploration and of importance
of career goals, low activation of exploratory behaviour, dissatisfaction with
information obtained, and high levels of anxiety related to exploration and
decision-making. The expectations of negative vocational results registered in the
group may be at the base of weak activity of the career exploration process. Keeping
in mind this type of expectations and the high level of importance given to career
goals, it is expected that the adolescents in this cluster can present high levels of
indecision and anxiety. The composition and characteristics of this profile suggest
that the quality of the career exploration process of the adolescents included in this
cluster may be compromised by factors of a social-cognitive nature related to gender.

200 Maria do Ceu Taveira & M. Luisa Rodríguez Moreno
As a consequence, the adolescents of this cluster could benefit from individual or
group counselling interventions based on a social-cognitive approach. In these
interventions, it would be important to support these adolescents in becoming more
conscious of their cognitive self-regulation mechanisms; in identifying sources of
negative expectations; in acquiring more precise and positive perceptions about
themselves and new experiences of success; and in developing exclusion of
alternatives.
Deferred exploration: diffusion and foreclosure/diffusion identity/low indecision. This
cluster is defined by negative career exploration beliefs, by deactivation of the career
exploration process, especially environment exploration and by the lowest levels of
exploration stress. This cluster defines mainly the career profile of 9th grade boys,
ages 13 and 14.
The last profile includes adolescents with high values of identity diffusion, and
of foreclosure and low values of identity achievement and moratorium. In other
words, it is defined as both positive and negative, by the statuses that are more similar
amongst each other in terms of exploration. Consistent with this configuration of
vocational identity, the adolescents within this cluster register low indecision and low
values in all dimensions of career exploration. In general terms, it is a cluster that
indicates a more passive pattern of resolution of vocational identity issues and weak
motivation for career planning and exploration. The adolescents included in this
cluster are, for the most part, male students, attending the 9th grade and younger. It
would be important that the vocational intervention to support these adolescents be
based on counselling, individual or in group, and that they be centred on the
development process of vocational identity, offering opportunities for career
exploration. Keeping in mind the contributions of the literature in identity regarding
this issue, it is suggested that professionals start intervention by stimulating interest
in the area of vocational identity. This strategy would be the starting point in
motivating these adolescents in their involvement in career exploration. Other than
this, keeping in mind the contributions of the motivation literature, it would also be
important to resort to the offer of external reinforcements in order to instigate the
start of exploratory activity and progressively substitute it, providing experiences that
promote an adequate internal regulation of extrinsic motivation and the progressive
development of self-determination and competency feelings in the career domain.
In conclusion, adolescents from Cluster 1 could benefit from brief and more
proactive career interventions, with minimal or moderate assistance from a
counsellor (e.g. information, self-directed activities, career education, brief structured
career counselling). These interventions should focus on fostering competency
in exploration and in life and career planning. Adolescents from the remaining
clusters could benefit from more intensive treatments, in terms of counsellor and
client investment (e.g. long-term individual or group career counselling), focused on
the resolution of vocational identity issues, adaptive social-cognitive functioning and
coping skills to bear non-adaptive anxiety (Clusters 2, 3 and 4) and on career
motivation (Cluster 4). The clients of each cluster would also benefit from a specific

TABLE 2. Design of intervention activities in relation to career exploration profiles
Type of intervention Examples of intervention activities Profile 1
Confident
Profile 2
Anxious
Profile 3 Gender circumscscribed
A. Concrete experience 1. Interact with a CACGS to explore self needs, values, and
interests
To promote the adolescent’s motivation to commit himself/herself
with concrete self- and environmental exploration activities
2. Write working life stories
3. Ask significant ones to speak of and evaluate their working life
4. Work shadowing
A2.4
B. Reflexive observation 1. Develop hierarchies of self-values, interests and aptitudes B1.1
To promote construction of meaning, identification of categories
or patterns of self and environment information, and to
articulate person /environment features
2. Analyse costs and benefits of specific performed or observed
work activities
3. Relate his/her own academic achievement with occupational
requisites
4. Discuss in small group personal and colleagues’ reactions to
CACGS use and work shadowing
C. Abstract conceptualisation 1. Formulate hypotheses of possible selves in relation to working
life
To develop knowledge of self, of work, and of life and career roles, 2. Learn how to formulate career plans based on tests and
as well as the ability to discuss, and to make inferences and inventories results
deductions
3. Become aware of decision-making process characteristics
through the retrospective analysis of personal and significant
others’ life decisions
4. Reflect, with counsellor’s help, the influence of aspects such as
gender, social class, family, school, and politics in his/her own
career exploration process and contents
Profile 4
Deferred
C1.1 C1.3 C1.4
D. Active experimentation 1. Write a résumé and send it to an organisation
2. Experiment supervised part-time work D2.4
To exercise abilities and skills to cope with people and situations, 3. Experience work and leisure in different contexts and discuss
and with self and environment hypothesis reality testing what could be changed in those contexts to fit personal values
4. Move to another city to renew experience in life and career
domains
D4.1
C3.2
Guidance theory and practice 201

202 Maria do Ceu Taveira & M. Luisa Rodríguez Moreno
TABLE 3. Development of activity C1 for Cluster 3
Goal
To help an adolescent with deferred exploration to generate and test hypothesis for his/her future
working life
Activity title
‘Exploring my working life’
Content
‘What type of work do you think it is more suitable for you?’ Explore that option, taking into
consideration your gender, social class, and academic achievement, according to the following
steps:
1. List your aptitudes and interests in one column.
2. Identify the requisites of your preferred work and list them in a second column, parallel to that of
your personal attributes.
3. Identify correspondences and gaps between personal attributes and work requisites.
4. Ask the opinion of your colleagues and tutor about your analysis.
5. Use the computer or the career counsellor to explore the requisites of your preferred work
option, and to test if that work requires your present aptitudes.
6. Try to ask the following questions:
a. Do you think that your preferred work is congruent to your social class? Justify.
b. If you are/were a girl, do you think you will have the same opportunities as if you were a boy to
do that type of work? Discuss.
c. Taking in consideration your social class, do you think you will be given the opportunity to do
that type of work? Discuss.
7. Discuss your opinions with your career counsellor or tutor.
Planning
Two hours per week of tutorial work.
Resources
1. Questionnaire.
2. Results of tests and of Career Exploration Scale (CES).
3. Human resources (career counsellor/tutor and classroom mates).
4. A computer assisted career guidance system (CACGS).
organisation of career exploration activities, by considering the learning model of
Kolb (1984) and the characteristics of each exploration profile. Examples of such an
organisation of career exploration-based activities is shown in Table 2; the design of a
specific intervention for Cluster 3 is exemplified in Table 3.
Kolb’s experiential learning model can be a useful frame of reference for career
counsellors structuring career exploration interventions with different levels of
complexity. Each mode of experiential learning requires specific abilities and skills
from the client. Concrete experience requires focusing on ‘here and now’ realities
and on intuitive and affective action. Abstract conceptualisation requires the use of
logical thinking and meaning construction. Reflexive observation relates to hypothesis
testing, relativism and perspective taking. Finally, active experimentation implies
action, participation, pragmatism and risk-taking.

Conclusion
The most up-dated status of career exploration theory and research is promising.
Currently, conceptualisations of career exploration portray the construct as a status
of the career decision-making process or as a vital process of career learning and
development. The simplistic notion of career exploration as information-seeking
behaviour has been progressively abandoned in the career literature, although much
effort is needed to replace this in practice. Research has been developed along two
main lines: the development of career exploration assessment devices and the study
of career exploration process and outcomes. Although there have been remarkable
developments in this domain since the appearance of the Career Exploration Survey
by Stumpf et al. (1983), the dimensionality and structure of career exploration
construct need further research. Most studies on the career exploration process and
outcomes use the ideas of Super and Jordaan, and of other developmental theorists
such as Eriksson, Marcia and Bowlby, to design empirical research, and or discuss
empirical results. This highlights the importance of career exploration as an
integrative construct, which permits the liaison of contributions from inside and
outside vocational psychology. Nevertheless, despite the recognition of the importance
of a very rich literature recently dedicated to career exploration, more efforts
are needed to integrate developmental perspective into theory, research and the
practice of career exploration. In this paper, we suggest the use of the developmental
grid of learning proposed by Kolb, in conjunction with the career exploration profiles
found by Taveira, to organise career exploration-based intervention in adolescence.
Moreover, because career exploration attitudes and behaviours are a product of the
individual’s interface with society, both individual and social dimensions must be
considered in interventions. Individual intervention requires the consideration of
clients’ cognitive and emotional development characteristics as well as their social
and cultural context. Social intervention requires group and organisational-focused
actions designed to change social groups and institutions so that they promote
individual’s career exploration attitudes and behaviour [2].
Notes
Guidance theory and practice 203
[1] The two other identity statuses*/moratorium and achievement*/are characterised, respectively, as a
state of intense exploration at the cost of much anxiety, with absence of commitment, and as the
presence of commitments after a period of exploration (Marcia, 1966).
[2] The sample of the study was composed of 1400 Portuguese students, 700 9th graders and 700 12th
graders, from 10 semi-urban northwestern secondary schools, who were facing an imminent career
decision. These students ranged in age from 13 to 18 years (M /14.8, SD /1.04) and from 16 to 22
years (M /17.9, SD /1.89). Only 15.2% of the students had previously received career guidance.
Descriptive analysis show that, in general, the adolescents studied were moderately undecided, and
questioning their identity in the career domain. However, the analysis of the career exploration
process of these adolescents, based on the CES results, shows evidence that although attributing
instrumental value to career exploration, those adolescents registered low involvement in self- and
environment exploration, low satisfaction with information obtained previously, and high exploration
and decision stress. This pattern of descriptive results is similar for both grade groups. In the
cluster analysis, 386 adolescents were categorised in Cluster 1; 355 in Cluster 2; 370 in Cluster 3;
and 289 in Cluster 4 (see Taveira, 2000).

204 Maria do Ceu Taveira & M. Luisa Rodríguez Moreno
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