Back to the Future: Child Career Development

Abstract

This chapter considers the need to revisit the career lifestage of childhood within the conceptualisation of career development as a lifelong process inclusive of all life stages. After an initial description of established theories of child development and child career development, the influence of psychosocial, cognitive and sociocultural child development theories on child career development theories is discussed. Two established theories of career development in childhood are presented, Super’s lifespan-lifespace theory and Gottfredson’s circumscription and compromise theory. The chapter then considers emergent theories of child career development, specifically Howard and Walsh’s Conceptions of Career Choice and Attainment model that describes three approaches to children’s reasoning and Savickas’s Career Construction Theory. A critical overview of research on child career development demonstrates the limitations of such research to date. The chapter then discusses how career development interventions can stimulate intentional career development learning in children. The lack of recursiveness between career theory, research, practice and policy in the child career development literature is identified and the chapter concludes by considering the way forward in this regard.