Hardback
Rethinking Adult Career Development
A Critical Perspective
9781035309122 Edward Elgar Publishing
Rethinking Adult Career Development explores the challenges, transitions, learning, and change adults experience as they navigate careers across their lifetimes. It considers what happens when adults realise they have chosen the wrong career, lose their jobs, experience injustice and discrimination, or are forced to make career shifts for which they are underprepared.
More Information
Critical Acclaim
Contents
More Information
Rethinking Adult Career Development explores the challenges, transitions, learning, and change adults experience as they navigate careers across their lifetimes. It considers what happens when adults realise they have chosen the wrong career, lose their jobs, experience injustice and discrimination, or are forced to make career shifts for which they are underprepared.
Laura L. Bierema discusses careers as lifelong learning, development, and change processes that are individual learning experiences and engagements within organizational, cultural, and community contexts. Chapters distinguish career explorers (those looking for an ideal vocation), from career sustainers (those maintaining their current vocation) and career changers (those seeking to shift to a new vocation). Assessing career development theories, practices, and outcomes using a critical, intersectional, feminist lens, the book emphasizes the importance of a healthy career-life balance. Theoretically grounded, the book also has practical applications, and features prompts for reflective practice to encourage interactive learning.
Providing a critical analysis of adult work and career issues, Rethinking Adult Career Development will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of business, human resources and organizational behaviour. Business managers, career advisers, career coaches, team leaders and policymakers will also benefit from the book’s exploration of systematic issues that can broadly affect careers.
Laura L. Bierema discusses careers as lifelong learning, development, and change processes that are individual learning experiences and engagements within organizational, cultural, and community contexts. Chapters distinguish career explorers (those looking for an ideal vocation), from career sustainers (those maintaining their current vocation) and career changers (those seeking to shift to a new vocation). Assessing career development theories, practices, and outcomes using a critical, intersectional, feminist lens, the book emphasizes the importance of a healthy career-life balance. Theoretically grounded, the book also has practical applications, and features prompts for reflective practice to encourage interactive learning.
Providing a critical analysis of adult work and career issues, Rethinking Adult Career Development will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of business, human resources and organizational behaviour. Business managers, career advisers, career coaches, team leaders and policymakers will also benefit from the book’s exploration of systematic issues that can broadly affect careers.
Critical Acclaim
‘Without doubt, this book is the best source available that challenges us to rethink career development as an adult learning and change journey. The author has masterfully used a critical intersectional lens to interrogate the dominant paradigms of career development and presented an insightful guide on how to align career development with meaning in life and work!’
– Rajashi Ghosh, Columbia University, US
‘Rethinking Adult Career Development will be a source of solace and hope for anyone who finds themselves at a career crossroads. It provides readers with a grounding in career development theories, in addition to practical activities, tips, and tools that encourage reflection on the social context of careers. Dr Bierema''s introduction of intersectionality and critical theory, and discussions of career development, provide a much needed recognition of the complexity of careers, and why some workplaces are more equitable and inclusive than others.’
– Carole J. Elliott, Professor of Organisation Studies, University of Sheffield, UK
– Rajashi Ghosh, Columbia University, US
‘Rethinking Adult Career Development will be a source of solace and hope for anyone who finds themselves at a career crossroads. It provides readers with a grounding in career development theories, in addition to practical activities, tips, and tools that encourage reflection on the social context of careers. Dr Bierema''s introduction of intersectionality and critical theory, and discussions of career development, provide a much needed recognition of the complexity of careers, and why some workplaces are more equitable and inclusive than others.’
– Carole J. Elliott, Professor of Organisation Studies, University of Sheffield, UK
Contents
Contents
Foreword viii
1 Introducing Rethinking Adult Career Development 1
2 Situating adult career development in social context 20
3 Understanding adult career development theory 41
4 Exploring critical, intersectional adult career development 70
5 Interpreting career development as adult learning and change 96
6 Connecting career development with meaning in life and work 127
7 Appreciating work and career challenges based on
positionality and intersectionality 158
8 Considering work and career challenges, and making
interventions 180
9 Introducing a critical, intersectional, feminist model of
adult career development theory 205
References 216
Foreword viii
1 Introducing Rethinking Adult Career Development 1
2 Situating adult career development in social context 20
3 Understanding adult career development theory 41
4 Exploring critical, intersectional adult career development 70
5 Interpreting career development as adult learning and change 96
6 Connecting career development with meaning in life and work 127
7 Appreciating work and career challenges based on
positionality and intersectionality 158
8 Considering work and career challenges, and making
interventions 180
9 Introducing a critical, intersectional, feminist model of
adult career development theory 205
References 216
