A Study On American Career Guidance Theory Paradigm

How to construct the curriculum system of career eduation and promote the level of career guidance for students are two important problems in deepen the fundmental education curriculum revolution and advancing the new college entrance examination reform.As a country which developed career guidance in an early time,the United States has rich experience in this field.However,related researches at home and abroad focus on single scholar or school and lack of systematic understanding of the whole field.It is meaningful for us to realize the history of career guidance and construct a useful framework by absorbing the relevant achievements in the US critically.The main question of the present research is that,based on the debates between efficiency and democracy,and between scientism and humanism,what kind of influential paradigms have been formed by the career guidance theories that have emerged in the United States?And there are some related questions.First,what are the key factors that affected the formation and development of these paradigms?Second,what are the different propositions and discourse power disputes among these paradigms,and what are internal relationships among them?Third,what are the value orientations behind these paradigms?How do these different value orientations compete for discourse power?Fourth,what can we learn from the development and disputes of American career guidance theories?At first,the thesis discusses the social transformation and the development of American career guidance,examines the development form of career guidance theory in each historical period from the early industrial society,late industrial society and information society of the United States.The study found that Dewey has entered this field and become an important figure in this field by advocating "integrating general and vocation education" and "educate through vocation" since the gestation period of career guidance theory.At first,Dewey's ideal of career education was not valued,but it won wide recognition and support in the career education movement in the late 20th century.In the slogan "return to Dewey",Dewey became a key person in the field of career guidance research in the United States again.This study then focuses on the common programs within different paradigms in the development of American career guidance,as well as the paradigm conflict and mutual opposition or exclusion among them.In this regard,it is the debate among three paradigms:vocational choice paradigm system represented by Holland's model;career development paradigm system represented by Super's model;career education paradigm represented by the career education movement.Among them,the first two can be integrated into career counseling.Through analyzing of the internal development and differences among these three paradigm,exploring the development logic hidden behind the career guidance theories,the present study,it can provide a useful reference to construct an appropriate local career guidance framework by critically absorbing the relevant researches in the US.This study finds out that different career guidance theories imply different value orientations of researchers,which are mainly shown as the dispute between efficiencism and democracy.The related value orientation is the dispute between scientism and humanism.Efficiencism and scientism focus on vocation-centered job matching on the issue of Person-Environment Fit.Democracy and humanism often attach importance to the human-centered on the issue of Person-Environment Interaction.Five important experiences of the development of career guidance theory and practice in the U.S are analyzed.The experiences have important enlightenment to the career guidance theory and practice reseach in China.First,study of career guidance theory should be catered to the social transformation.Second,intergrate career counseling and career education model.The third is to attach importance to the localization of occupational classification and the scale of career choice.The fourth is to expand the career choice in adulthood period into lifelong career development.Fifthly,we should attach importance to the career education of the integration of general education and vocational education,and strengthen the curriculum development and teaching design of career education.Some people regard the rise of American career guidance practice as "the beginning of the most fundamental educational revolution since the Renaissance".It brings not only the methods and strategies of career counseling,but also the complete change of the school curriculum,so as to change the traditional general education to the integration model.The development direction from career counseling to career education is the basic trend in the field of career guidance research in the United States,and it is also an important idea of career education research in China.Not only do we need to provide high school and college students with career counseling and related scales of career choice,more importantly,we need to provide career guidance throughout their lives.Special attention should be paid to early childhood career education and family education for children.Moreover,once the idea of integrating general education and vocational education is adopted,the research field of career guidance in China will not only lead to a major transformation,but also bring great changes to the whole curriculum reform of primary and secondary schools.