CAREER COUNSELLING MODELS- A STUDY OF HOLLAND'S THEORY Holland's approach to career development

The greatest contribution Holland made and his most popular work has to do with his theory (Holland, 1959, 1966b, 1973, 1985, 1997c) of work environments and vocational personalities. The idea that most people have close resemblance with a combination of six different personality types is the theory's core foundation. The personalities are Investigative, Realistic, Artistic, Social, Conventional, Enterprising (commonly known with the acronym RIASEC). Each of these personality types is characterized by a collection on interests, beliefs, preferred activities, abilities, characteristics, and values. A Holland system (usually the first three RIASEC types the person has more resemblance for) can be produced based on analyses, though Holland (1997c) made the recommendation of making use of the class ordering of the six different types to make a description of the individuals. In the same way, job environments can be grouped based on how they resemble a particular combination of the types of RIASEC, and the Holland systems are mostly utilized to illustrate them well (Nauta, 2010).

Person-in-environment

Four conventional social work practice theories uses different approaches to the individual and lays varied emphases on the individual, his environment, and the relationship between the two. These theories include concepts of ego psychology, psychoanalytic theory, radical theories, and constructivist theory that stand for a wide range of hypothetical traditions and that have difficulties with the integration of how a person is balanced in his environment point-of-view (Cornell, 2006).

Psychoanalytic theory: According to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of individuality, the overall human behavior is the outcome of how the three parts that constitutes the mind interact, and lays much emphasis on the important role of involuntary psychological disagreements in shaping behavior and personality (Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality, n.d.).

Ego Psychology Theory: Subsequent to Freud's era, several famous psychoanalytic theorists elaborated on the ego functionalist version ascribed to Freud. Much effort were put into the theorization of various functions of the ego and how best to impair them in psychopathology. They focused on how to strengthen their ego to make it more suitable for coping with all the pressures from the super-ego, id, and society generally. The major task of the ego was conventionally believed to be reality-testing, judgment, affect tolerance,...

Integrated on development psychologists' works, constructivism argues that people create meaning based on their interpretive connections with the practices in their community settings. It assumes that previous experiences and knowledge play very important role in knowledge and lay the foundation for succeeding actions. It directs the scholars attention to the why of the study and paves way for intellectual development and critical thinking (What is Constructivism?, n.d.).
Radical Theory: Radical theory portrays the Marxist ideologies and lays much emphasis on class conflict, politics, ideological hegemony, and socialism (Thompson, 1992). It exposes structural injustices, that exist in capitalist societies and the roles played by beliefs systems and culture in the perpetuation of inequality. Radical theory has the ability to dehumanize the person sometimes by focusing solely on all sociopolitical determinants with no acknowledgement of the roles personal choices and actions play (Cornell, 2006).

Similarities

Going by the ever-increasing need to assess vocational interests in different traditional settings, there is an increased need to carry out more investigative works as a way of examining the cross-cultural soundness of Holland's assumption and the different instruments of interest assessment formed. Similar to the vocational interest types classification, Holland (1985,1997) suggested that it is possible to arrange vocational environments into related typologies. In the development process and career choice, people seek for environments that would let them exercise both their abilities and skills, as well as expressing their values and attitudes. In all vocational environments, there is a propensity to profile its composition to give its characteristics the resemblance of the principal individuals in there, and people who are not similar to the principal types have the tendency to feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Holland uses the idea of congruence as an indication of the interaction between a person and the environment. The great similarity that exist between the personality of an individual, the individual's types of interest and the principal work environmental forms (which shows, his level of congruence), may result in instability, and vocational dissatisfaction. There is a great similarity between the idea of a relation between the person and the environment as contained in Holland's theory…