Postmodern Guidance and Career Counseling: The Need for New Qualitative Tools for Evaluating Intervention Effectiveness

This chapter presents an argument for the development of new qualitative tools to evaluate the effectiveness of guidance and career counseling interventions in the postmodern age. The vast changes that have and are continuing to take place in the world of work (e.g., globalization, rapid spread of technology, instability, unpredictability, liquidity, acceleration) across the twenty-first century have contributed to innovations in the paradigms and interventions that guide the fields of vocational psychology and career counseling. The psychological skills and resources that are needed to effectively manage one’s life and career in this context have changed. Constructs, such as adaptability, purposeful identitarian awareness, grounded reflexivity, and fluidity management, represent some of the important psychological abilities that are now needed to effectively navigate and manage one’s life and career. New theories and career counseling interventions have emerged that reflect shifts in the field from an emphasis on career development to a concern for career and self and relational management. This chapter describes the evolving understanding of important individual psychological competencies, the emergence of conceptual paradigms, and the creation of new interventions that demand innovative instruments that will qualitatively assess the outcomes and effectiveness of these interventions.