Beatriz,
I teach vocational guidance at Reading University,UK, and was a careers
adviser for twelve years, during which time I used repertory grid and
personal construct theory to help clients from time to time. I am extremely
interested in the application of personal construct theory to careers
guidance, but I think that one should not concentrate on repertory grid
techniques alone. The simple elicitation of constructs, the use of
"laddering" and "pyramiding", the associated "ABC technique", can all
contribute to our understanding of career and educational choice. Indeed
the whole basis of personal construct theory has choice built into it - a
construct is a pathway between alternatives - so it is ideal for use in
careers guidance. In addition there are Kelly's ideas about decision
making - the CPC cycle - the Experience Cycle and the Creativity cycle. All
of these are very rich sources of ideas for understanding the nature and
process of career choice and careers guidance.
We recently had a PhD student at Reading, called Chi-Yi Wu (from Taiwan)
who did some very interesting work with
grids and the CPC cycle, to explore the nature of decidedness and
undecidedness in Taiwanese students making exactly the kind of choices
you appear to be talking about. She also examined the notions of
differentiation and integration, as aspects of this, and developed a very
interesting model of types of decision making problem. She was supervised
by Professor Maureen Pope,also of Reading University. I believe Professor
Pope is also on the list of this mailbase - so maybe she can help?
I shall be interested to read the material you have sent us. I can read
some Spanish, but rather slowly, but a brief summary in English would help,
if you are sending larger documents in Spanish.
You may also be interested to talk to Peter Beven, of the University of
Northumbria, UK (www.unn.ac.uk/academic/ss/employment) who is also
interested in this topic.
A book that may be worth looking at is Beail, N. (1985) Repertory Grid
Technique and Personal Constructs, Croom Helm
In addition, if you enter "career" or "vocational" as a search word, you
can get some useful references from the on-line database of personal
construct theory research at
http://brain.psyc.uow.edu.au.pcp/
Best wishes
Marcus Offer
At 12:42 01/12/94 +0100, you wrote:
>Hello:
>My name is Beatriz Martínez, i belong to the psychology university of
>Valencia (Spain). i am doing the doctoral thesis with Francisco Rivas,
>which subject is the vocational grid and the vocational constructs. the
>group where i work is specialized in the vocational counseling concerning
>the
>final decision at the moment of chosing a degree or profession.
>another subject i am interested is the cognitive rates, particularly
>differentation and integration.
>i would like to contact with people that is interested in this matter to
>exchange information.
>thanks in advance.
>
>best regards
>beatriz
>
>
>
>
Marcus Offer
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