Abstract
This article reports on the use of integrative career counselling to promote autobiographical reasoning in a purposively sampled gifted 16-year-old female learner with moratorium career identity status. I implemented an explanatory, mixed-methods (QUALITATIVE-quantitative; uppercase denoting the bigger weighting given to the qualitative aspect) research design and used qualitative and quantitative career construction counselling techniques and methods and quantitative career construction counselling techniques and methods and strategies to construct data. The Maree Career Matrix (MCM) was used to gather the participant’s career interests (“scores”) quantitatively, and the Career Interest Profile (CIP) was used to elicit her micro-narratives (“stories”) qualitatively. An adapted version of thematic data analysis was used to analyse the data. The intervention promoted the participant’s (self-)reflection and reflexivity, transformed her tension into intention, led to an increase in her career options, and helped her revitalise her sense of meaning, purpose, and positivity. While the findings are encouraging, future (longitudinal) research is needed to establish the long-term influence of the intervention espoused here.
Highlights
The need to respond innovatively to fundamental changes in the occupational world has never been greater
Ashleigh and her parents agreed that an integrative QUALITATIVE-quantitative career counselling intervention should be implemented; in other words, a qualitative and quantitative assessment was conducted
This article shows that the career counselling approach described here helped a gifted young woman with moratorium career-identity status deal satisfactorily with career decision-making challenges and helped her turn tension into intention and action [1,3]
Summary
The need to respond innovatively to fundamental changes in the occupational world (including the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic) has never been greater. Factors, such as substantial job losses, increasing insecurity in the workplace, as well as disruption in educational programmes, have led to a generalised feeling of uncertainty about the future among learners. The need exists to help learners navigate many workrelated transitions. In the prevailing atmosphere of turmoil, people need assistance to take advantage of the changes taking place and to convert challenges into opportunities [1]. Every crisis creates an opportunity, and it behoves us to explore the “silver linings” [2].
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