Career Development Narrative
After traveling to Canada as an immigrant, I had to change my career path. I am a registered nurse in the Philippines. While studying nursing in my home country, students are exposed to a variety of courses to equip them with the necessary skills to handle all types of patients. One of the useful skills that I learned in nursing school was counseling. The mastery in psychology was necessary for a nursing student and professional to help them understand their patients and counsel them. After three years of study, I graduated and got a placement in one of the hospitals in the Philippines.
Later, I got a chance to travel to Canada. I had plans to continue with the nursing career in the new country. However, upon arrival and settlement, I learned that I had to go back to school for 3 years to study nursing again before getting into any employment or getting a work permit. The nursing field is very instrumental in my life as it helped to set the foundation of my psychology career. I enjoyed doing the counselling and psychology a bit more than other duties of the nursing profession. If I had continued with the nursing career in the Philippines, I would have ended in the psychology and the counseling area of specialization. Alternatively, I would have continued with the nursing career with no specificity. This means I would have risen through the ranks of the nursing profession until retirement.
Reflection on Benefits of the Activity
One of the benefits realized from the activity of narrative counseling is that it allows the client to personally explore their journey in career development. The client evaluates the effectiveness of the choices that were made in the past, the present, and the possible future. Fedyk and Xu (2018) note that self-analysis through narratives allows a client to experience their life which makes them develop knowledge and insights about the world. In addition, the narrative activity is vital because it makes the client participate fully in presenting their happenings, therefore constructing a theory (Aljohani, 2017). By writing a story about their career life and events, the client does not rely on the information in the universe to develop a theoretical construct but they rely on personal occurrence more.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Activity
Narrative counseling has its pros and cons. According to Pande and Bharathi (2020), it is an active mode of learning because the learner applies the real life happenings to gain knowledge and constructs. Another advantage is that it makes learners develop other skills such as critical thinking, analysis, and creativity. For example, the ability of the client to make a story about their career development is a creative skill learned during the process of narration. However, a major disadvantage is that it may be biased as the narrator only focuses on their own events with little consideration of available information to develop knowledge.
Theoretical Constructs to Interpret the Clients Experience
Theoretical constructs are explanatory concepts that cannot be seen directly but can be deduced from the data that is measured. One of the key theoretical constructs includes the abstractive one, which refers to the directly observable constructs (Aljohani, 2017). Secondly, there is the hypothetical construct which are not observable in normal circumstances unless under research or presentation of the measurable data (Aljohani, 2017). In this case, the client is able to present their career life and develop different possible endings. The story is the measurable data, and therefore, the writer exhibits hypothetical constructs. Through the narrative, the author shows hypothetical constructs of motivation and intelligence noted through documentation of their career path. In addition, creativity is observed as an abstractive construct when the writer makes a narrative about their career growth.
Understanding of Constructivist Theories
The constructivist theory infers that every individual develops and constructs personal perception and knowledge about the world based on the experience that they have been through. According to Jung (2019), the events and reflection of people on their life help them to develop personal perceptions of the world. Fedyk and Xu (2018) indicate that the guiding principle of the theory is that knowledge cannot be transferred or transmitted via information alone. There has to be a combination of information and experience. This process of knowledge development needs purposeful activities such as documentation of life’s events.
Based on this theory and my career story, the key construct that is present is the ability of the narrator to develop a creative story to illustrate their career growth and development. It is observable that the client in the scenario has knowledge about the events that can impact one’s career choice. For example, when the client migrated to Canada, a choice had to be made to change her choice of career to a new field of study. Moreover, hypothetical theoretical constructs of motivation are notable after the writing exercise motivation seen when the client states that nursing motivated the urge to do psychology.
References
Aljohani, M. (2017). Principles of “constructivism” in foreign language teaching. Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 7(1), 97-107.
Fedyk, M., & Xu, F. (2018). The epistemology of rational constructivism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 9(2), 343-362.
Jung, H. (2019). The evolution of social constructivism in political science: past to present. SAGE Open, 9(1), 2158244019832703.
Pande, M., & Bharathi, S. V. (2020). Theoretical foundations of design thinking–A constructivism learning approach to design thinking. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 36, 100637.