The notion of career in pedagogical work

It is clear that the term "career" is still understood in different ways. Such lack of conceptual clarity maintains ambiguity and continues to prevent development of a common ground of thinking in this area. The concept of career has expanded to include pre-vocational and post-vocational activities, like it was in the definition proposed by Super in 1976: "the sequence of major positions occupied by a person throughout his pre-occupational, occupational and post-occupational life, includes work-related roles, such as those of student, employee, pensioner, together with complementary vocational, familial and civil roles". A number of writers have gone further and have proposed alternative terms to describe career, such as working life and work history. These authors recommend use of the more neutral term, "work histories" to denote sequences of job experiences and reserve the term "career" for the sense people make of them. These broader definitions of career draw attention to the concept of career development, which can be described as being for most people a lifelong process of getting ready to choose, choosing, and typically continuing to make choices from among the many occupations available in our society. So career development involves one's whole life, not just occupation. As such, it concerns the whole person, him or her in the ever-changing contexts of his or her life. The environmental pressures and constraints, the bonds that tie him or her to significant others, responsibilities to children and aging parents, the total structure of one's circumstances are also factors that must be understood and reckoned with. In these terms, career development and personal developmen converge. In terms of career choice and satisfaction the evolution of a personality as the mechanism that guides cognitive processes at times of career choice, whether those choices have presented themselves for external or internal reasonsVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij