The joint actions of adolescents in peer conversations about career

Qualitative Relational Career Assessment: A Constructivist Paradigm

Consistent with calls for postmodern and constructivist approaches to career counseling and assessment, a systematic review of qualitative approaches to the assessment of work and relationships is timely. Situated within a constructivist paradigm, a conceptual rationale for the qualitative assessment of relational influences within the career domain is presented, together with a comprehensive review of the state of the art of current qualitative relational career assessment practices. This review is followed by a recommendation to move the field forward toward a more contextualized view of work embedded within the relational domains of life.

Connecting Relational Theory and the Systems Theory Framework: Individuals and Their Systems

The Systems Theory Framework (STF) facilitates the inclusion of relevant aspects of multiple existing theories within an integrated framework, wherein relevance and meaning is decided upon by each individual. Patton and McMahon emphasise that the application of the Systems Theory Framework in integrating theory and practice is located within the crucible of the individual, acknowledging that the individual is an open system recursively interacting with and within multiple systems. The present paper furthers a discussion of the potential for the Systems Theory Framework in theory integration, in particular with respect to relational theories.

Adolescent Peer Counselling: Enhancing the Natural Conversational Helping Skills of Young People

During the developmental stage of adolescence young people face many stressful challenges (Dacey & Kenny, 1997). Some adolescents manage these challenges adaptively but others do not and are therefore at the risk of adopting maladaptive responses to stress (Frydenberg & Lewis, 2002; Patton & Noller, 1990). Because adolescents are generally reluctant to talk in the first instance to parents, or other adults including adult counsellors, programs have been established to train adolescents in peer counselling. The present study examined the conversational skills that young people prefer to use when helping their peers and investigated their response to the use of traditional counselling skills with regard to ease of use and helpfulness. The results suggest that adolescents find some commonly used counselling skills difficult to use and unhelpful. Additionally the study suggests that young people found that some normal adolescent conversational behaviours which have been discouraged in adolescent peer counsellor training programs were helpful. The findings of this study have important implications with regard to training adolescents.

Turning adolescents into analysts of their own discourse: raising reflexive awareness of everyday talk to develop peer-based health activities

Adopting principles applied in discursive psychology and translated to suit the practice of participatory health education, we describe in this article the five steps of the discursive action method (DAM). With this method, adolescents are stimulated to explore their own everyday conversations to become consciously aware of how they talk about health issues with their peers. Using detailed accounts of adolescents' experiences with the method, we present some first indications of the kinds of results this method can achieve. We show that the strength of the method specifically lies in two closely related domains: (a) stimulating adolescents' attentiveness to interactional problems and strategies as they occur in their own everyday talk, and (b) operating as a catalyst for developing participatory health activities aimed at peers.

Current and prospective speech-language pathology students' reports of exposure to speech-language pathology

This paper presents findings of an investigation into the amount of exposure to the speech-language pathology profession that is reported by current and prospective speech-language pathology students. This study investigated both therapeutic and social exposures to speech-language pathology (SLP) as both were considered to play a role in providing information about the profession (e.g., work settings, professional demographics and caseloads). The results showed that the greater majority of both the current and prospective speech-language pathology students had some type of exposure to speech-language pathology either prior to entering or prior to considering entering the speech-language pathology program. Furthermore, both the current and prospective speech-language pathology students reported being influenced by their prior exposure the speech-language pathology profession. Finally, the results showed that parents played a large role in career choice for the current and prospective students, and this may have also included influence through parents' own exposure to speech-language pathology through work settings.

Indecisão profissional, ansiedade e depressão na adolescência: a influência dos estilos parentais

Este estudo investigou a influência dos estilos parentais percebidos sobre os níveis de indecisão profissional, ansiedade e depressão de adolescentes. Participaram do estudo 467 adolescentes, de 15 a 20 anos, estudantes do último ano do ensino médio em Porto Alegre. Os instrumentos utilizados foram um Questionário Sóciodemográfico, uma Escala de Indecisão Profissional, uma Escala de Estilos Parentais e os Inventários Beck de Ansiedade e Depressão. Houve correlação positiva entre indecisão, ansiedade e depressão. Filhos de pais autoritários e negligentes apresentaram maior depressão e ansiedade do que os outros. Os estilos parentais não influenciaram diretamente a indecisão profissional, mas sim o bem-estar psicológico dos adolescentes, indicando que o padrão de interação familiar é fundamental para o entendimento de como a indecisão está sendo vivenciada. Assim, enfatiza-se a importância do trabalho relativo à saúde emocional e à interação familiar nos processos de Orientação Profissional.