Constructivism: What does it mean for career counselling?

It is 30 years since the seminal work of Collin and Young (1986), and their very early articulation of the need for vocational psychology to embrace a contextualist worldview. In 2012, following a search of abstracts listed in the PsychInfo database from 1986 until 2011 with narrative or story and career development as search terms, McIlveen reported a doubling of articles for each five-year period within all classification codes, and a continuing strong rise in the codes within a career development classification. It is timely, then, that this book is updated to this second edition. This first chapter will discuss the complex worldview underpinning of constructivism, and describe the theoretical fields from which its core components have been derived. The constructs which guide constructivism in career counselling will be outlined