A bit of ‘career’ history

Before ‘the early days’…

In the 19th century, career guidance wasn’t formalised and as far as I’m aware, there weren’t any official theories of career choice. People went into the trades that fitted ‘their station in life’. Choice, if there was choice at all, was more pragmatic than planned. There were some publications about careers/trades before Frank Parsons; one of them was ‘The Book of English Trades and Library of the Useful Arts’, published in 1807. I found a copy from 1815 in an online library (you can use google to try and find a copy…). This was a list of known trades with a couple of pages on each trade in the shape of a description, how to qualify and sometimes some of the history and context. Non-judgmental practice wasn’t really ‘a thing’ in those days and if you can get hold of a copy, it’s a fun read (for a while). Each of these trades is accompanied by an illustrative woodcut, which is interesting to study. Much, much earlier, similar and in German, there is also the ‘ Eygentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auf Erden‘ (Factual Description of all Professions on Earth) published in 1568. There are some other similar works in other languages, but this would lead us too far and is beyond the scope of this website… or timeline on this page. I hope this brief escapade into the past will at least explain why I, and most other people, start with Frank Parsons. 

Even Parsons can be seen as an advocate of ‘vocational guidance’ rather than career guidance, as is clearly evidenced in his matching theory.  

The early days…

Theory around career guidance arguably officially started in 1908 with Frank Parsons, and has since then seen major developments and, quite frankly, a lot of progress and change, as has society. Theory has generally matched developments in the world of work, education and society at large, in that it always has mirrored requirements of individuals in the world of work. In Parson’s time, this meant the needs of society ‘as a machine’ in the industrialised era at the start of the 20th century Europe, which was on the brink of it’s first industrialised war.

Career guidance in the 21st century

Career theory at the start of the 20th century differs starkly with the requirements of the early 21st century, where the job market is increasingly highly technological, fragmented and uncertain in a very different way to that a century or so ago. See my page on work in the 21st century. Career guidance reflects this. The difference in attitude is one from ‘the good of the nation’ to that of ‘the good of the individual’. In spite of the frequent mentioning in the news about skills shortages in industry, career guidance doesn’t focus as much on ‘what the nation needs and wants’ as it does on ‘what the individual needs and wants’ in the first decades of the century and the new millennium.

Some considerations

It’s important to make a couple of observations around how we work with theory however:

• Different people categorise theories in a different way. No categorisation is fixed but I follow the one indicated in the learning outcomes for the Level 6 qualification in career guidance and career development, where appropriate.
• Theories are not fixed on the day they become established. Theories continue to develop over time, either by the theorist (eg. Holland) or through the interpretation of others in the context of a new reality (eg the difference between the original conception of trait and factor and the way it’s interpreted now in a very different social and theoretical/philosophical context).
• Equally, theories are not developed out of thin air but are always developed out of ‘what went before’ and ‘what is around’. They always have a history and a sociocultural context. Judging from the sometimes fixed dates and years we ascribe to their appearance, their development and conception can appear to be sudden, but they are often difficult to pin down to a precise date, or even year.

Categorisation

The timeline on this page can therefore only offer a general idea of the development of career guidance theory and it is important to see it in that way: as an introduction and overview, rather than as a fixed model. As an introduction to this, please feel free to explore the timeline below. There is a full index organised by theory and one organised by theorist on the other pages on this website. I have, as far as possible, classified theories using the different icons below with the sole intention of making it possible to discover trends over time. Classification is not always clearly possible or easy and some theories fall in between, or straddle, two or more categories. The categorisation I made is therefore slightly tenuous. It should fit in with the requirements for the Level 6 Qualification in Career Guidance, however.