EDCO 547 Career Development: Theory and Practice Syllabus

Summer A 2011, Mondays & Wednesdays 7:00 – 9:40 p.m. Room WPH 205

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Instructor: Greg Henderson, Ph.D., E-mail:

Clinical Offices: 920 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, CA 90291 or

and 9171 Wilshire Blvd., PH, Beverly Hills, CA 90210 Phone: (310) 276-8600 Office Hours: By Appt.

Masters Program Office: WPH-602 Phone: (213) 740-3255

Rossier School of Education Theme:
“The Rossier School of Education focuses on redefining excellence in urban education through research, teaching and service in the areas of leadership, learning, accountability and diversity.”
Course Overview
This course provides students with a survey of the career development and counseling field. It is intended to introduce students to major theories in this field and to expose them to various career assessment instruments. Applying these theories and assessments to one’s self first, and then to a variety of client populations, students will be encouraged to use a holistic approach towards career counseling. This includes encouragement to think critically about the utility, validity and efficacy of these theories and assessment tools. Additionally, this course is designed to assist counselors in discovering a wide variety of career counseling resources, techniques, and theoretical perspectives that are culturally appropriate, gender-aware, and fit for diverse populations.
Course Objectives
1.  Students will be able to trace the evolution of the field of career development.
2.  Students will demonstrate a holistic understanding of career development across the lifespan, and will understand how it might be integrated into individual and family psychotherapy, as well how it might be used in educational counseling,.
3.  Students will articulate the major theoretical perspectives that aim to explain, predict, and expand the conception of academic and career development.
4.  Students will have a basic understanding of the current research on vocational behavior, values assessments, and career counseling approaches.
5.  Students will examine career counseling for special populations, including individuals and families with unique challenges, from marginalized groups, and of various genders, cultures, and sexual orientations. Collectively students will create a resource guide that addresses the career needs, strengths, challenges and resources for these special populations.
6.  Students will identify major career assessment tools, and will know how to interpret/use this data to assist clients in career planning and in nurturing their self-awareness, their occupational opportunities, their job-satisfaction and their overall career identity.
7.  Students will learn how to access information about a wide array of occupations and career fields, including the necessary qualifications, education and training required for each job.
8.  Students will demonstrate awareness of the importance of an individual’s cultural, ethnic, socio-economic, and educational background in his/her career development.
9.  Students will identify usual career development milestones, challenges, and choices across the lifespan, and develop a curiosity about the meaning of deviations from these norms.

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Course Requirements
There are four components to the requirements of this course : discussion, testing, writing and presentation, each of which will be assessed and will make up your final grade. Specifically these include: class involvement/participation in discussions, small groups and triad role plays (discussion); online quizzes to ensure that you are keeping up with the assigned readings, as well as several assessments to help you examine your own career identity (testing); a personal career autobiography, based on creative writing exercises and various assessment measures you will be administered (writing); and a well-researched presentation on special populations, which you will give to the rest of the class in groups of 3-5 (presentation). The intention is to give you multiple ways to learn and various methods by which to demonstrate your learning.
Class Involvement and Participation: 20 Points total (see rubric sheet)
Students’ professionalism, preparation, attendance, and active participation are critical to learning and succeeding in this class. The interactive nature of the class encourages the sharing of individual ideas and reactions related to the course content. Though individual personality and sharing styles will be honored, all students are expected to come to class prepared, to share actively in class discussions, to be respectful of their fellow classmates, and to be mutually open to the sharing of ideas, feelings and personal experiences. (General class participation = 10 points)
Small group discussions will occur at nearly every class meeting and students are expected to participate in them. Additionally, students will periodically be broken into triads and asked to alternate between the roles of counselor, client, and observer. During these small groups and triads especially, you will be graded on your participation and willingness to be open in sharing your thoughts and feelings and on your ability to be supportive of your fellow group members.
(Small group & triad participation = 10 points)
Students are also encouraged to ask questions and actively participate in both planned and impromptu class discussions so long as the discussion forwards the purpose of the class (i.e., excessive talking or sharing of irrelevant information is discouraged and will not count as active participation). Effort invested during class will reduce the effort necessary outside class. If you do the readings and quiz before class, you will be adequately prepared for each week’s discussion.
Students who miss class without a documented excuse will lose 3 pts per occurrence from their total grade. Unexcused tardiness (20 mins. +) will incur a 1.5 pt deduction per occurrence.
Online Quizzes (60 points total): Due 5/23, 5/30, 6/6, 6/13, & 6/20
Students will complete 5 online quizzes that will cover the reading assignments given each week (generally 2 chapters of the book at a time). Please note that the chapters are NOT assigned in chronological order. Make sure you review the reading assignment schedule for the proper order and dates of quizzes. All quizzes will be taken via BLACKBOARD and must be completed before the beginning of the Monday’s class on which they are assigned. The quizzes will be available on Blackboard for one week, prior to their due date. Please take the quizzes as soon as you have read the material. They are designed to assess your understanding of the reading AND to prepare you for class discussions. The quizzes will be multiple choice in nature and are based on the readings assigned that week. No make up quizzes will be allowed. If you forget to take the quiz, you will lose those points. There are 5 quizzes in all (for a total of 60 points), one for every Monday during the session (with the exception of the last Monday on the last day of class). Take special note that the 2nd quiz is due on Memorial Day, when we are not scheduled to have class. As with all quizzes, this quiz will be available for one week prior to its due date so that you may take the quiz well in advance of any vacation plans you may have.
Career Autobiography (60 points total): Due 6/22
Page requirement: 6 -8 PAGES (not including title and reference page). Papers that are longer or shorter that 6-8 pages WILL NOT be accepted. This paper will be a description of your career development from your birth until now, and will consider where your career might be headed in the future. The assignment is part self-reflection, part academic/theoretical exploration, and part integration of various assessments you will take during the course. In order to ensure that you address all of these parts adequately, please respond to each of the following sections (using the “points available” as a guide for how much space/time you should allot for each section). Generally, each section should be somewhere between 1-2 pages in length, and should adequately address the questions posed below. However you may also use your discretion in the specific allotment of time and space for each topic, as long as it reads as a cohesive whole and as long as you satisfy the gist of each section. Please note: you will not be able to answer every single question. Instead please use these questions as a guide to help you satisfy each section thoroughly.
Please use these as sub-headings in your paper:
Autobiography (10 points)
1.  Using the forced writing assignment done in class as both source material and spring board (as well as your notes and memories from class and small group discussions), please answer the following questions: What have you been paid to do in your life? What do you currently get paid to do? Do you like that question – why or why not? What did you dream of doing “when you grow up”? How did you get to where you are now and do you like it – why or why not? Describe the most important events, experiences, and people that have influenced your choices leading to the present point in your career. Obviously, you cannot mention every event, experience, or person in your life, so you should carefully think about your past and identify only the most significant influences. In other words, you should write a concise story of your career development as it stands now – from your earliest memories until now.
Assessments (15 points)
2.  Using the instructions at the back of the syllabus, take the Strong Interest Inventory (SII), the Meyers Briggs Typology Index (MBTI) , and the Personality Research Form (PRF). Follow the instructions to obtain the results from all three tests. Using the information from these three assessment tools (and possibly from any alternate assessments you might choose to add, such as the MIQ, MSQ, or the Rokeach Values) answer the following questions: How do the results from the assessments fit with your understanding of yourself? How did the results of one test change the meaning of the results of the others? Did any of the results surprise you? What do you know about yourself , the job market, and/or your career potential as a result of these assessments that you didn’t know before.
Self-Reflection (10 points)
3.  Reflecting on the writing, thinking and group discussions you have done in this class, summarize what you have learned about your own career experiences, needs and ambitions. What initially drew you to this field and to this program specifically? How have your thoughts about that decision changed, if at all, in light of your experiences so far in this course? Why do you want to be a marriage and family therapist, or any other career you might be considering? What is the “shadow side” of that desire? How might you guard against acting that out unconsciously with future clients, employees etc.. How has this process allowed you to be more conscious about your own career identity, needs and desires?
Synthesis (10 points)
4.  Analyzing your career autobiography and career assessments in light of your self-reflections, develop a number of alternate career options that are interesting to you. Discuss why these are options you are considering, and how they may or may not support your current career and educational trajectory. Look up the career options you have developed on the O*Net database (www.onetonline.org) and the Occupations Outlook Handbook (www.bls.gov/oco/). From the information you have been given on these sites narrow your options to the ones that would be a good fit for you. In your essay, discuss what you learned from these sites about your career options and how you are using this information in conjunction with the self-exploration and assessment you have done thus far.
Integration of Theory (15 points)
5.  Part of this assignment is to integrate theory into the paper. Reflecting on what we have covered thus far, discuss which theories (e.g., person-fit, development, post modern) you find to be most useful in integrating your career experiences with the information garnered from the assessments taken. In what ways do these theories help to focus or expand your career options and outlook? How do they help to integrate your past experiences with the results from the assessments taken? How has this assignment impacted your overall thinking, feeling and action with regard to your career, your occupational identity and your plans for the future? How do you see this process working for a client who comes to you with career related counseling issues? Would this process, or any part of it, be useful? What knowledge have you gained about the career counseling process from this assignment that you didn’t have before and why is that knowledge valuable to you as a counselor?
Please submit your paper to TURNITIN via Blackboard. You will find the TURNITIN assignment under “Assignments” on Blackboard. You should submit your file electronically by noon on the day you turn your hardcopy in to me (6/22/11).
Special Population Presentation and Resource Guide (60 points) Due ______
Special Populations Groups
Students will be broken into groups of 3 to 5 and each group will be assigned a special population on which to present. These selections will be based off of the suggestions submitted during the 1st class (based on current practicum sites.) Examples include, but are not limited to:
® Racial/Cultural/Religious minority clients: Native Americans; Persian Jewish
Americans; Arab and Muslim Americans; Hispanic/Latinos (Catholic?); Asian
Americans; Newly immigrated or “1st generation” clients
® LGBT clients
® Clients of varying ages (Students, Mid-life Adults, Older Age)