Ginzberg's Career Development Theory (Ginzberg, 1951) hypothesizes that career choice is a process which extends from about age ten to age twenty-one, and that the most important factor determining career choice is a series of interlocked decisions the adolescent makes in stages over time (Your teen in the working world). Ginzberg also believed that the process of career choice is largely irreversible. The stages and sub-stages of the developmental process identified by Ginzberg are: Fantasy

Tentative - Subdivided into 4 stages

Interest

Capacity

Value

Transition

Realistic - Subdivided into stages

Exploration

Crystallization

Specification

According to Ginzberg, children are in fantasy stage with unrealistic visions of their career until about the age of eleven. But, between the ages of eleven and...

The realistic stage is where adults begin to zero in and identify what they'd like to know more about (exploration), form more concrete opinions about what they would like to do (crystallization), and to gravitate toward specific areas of interests (specification).
The implications of Ginzberg's Career Development Theory are significant for school counselors. First, and most importantly, the Theory would indicate that career guidance should begin during the tentative stage perhaps as early as when children are eleven years old instead of waiting for when teens are trying to make a decision about college or what they're going to do after they graduate high school. This…