09/01/2024

Bringing Theories to Life in the Classroom: Chaos Theory of Careers

By Barbara Parker-Bell, Nathaniel O. Brown, and Jonathon Wiley

Chaos Theory of Careers (CTC), developed by Australian career scholars Robert Pryor and Jim Bright (2011), considers the wide range of influences in clients’ lives and how these influences contribute to career development in a non-linear fashion. Initially published over 20 years ago (Pryor & Bright, 2003), CTC provides a perspective on career development as one that emerges through the dynamic interplay of “context,” “complexity,” “connection,” “change,” and “chance” (Pryor & Bright, 2014, p. 4). With concepts more familiar to the natural sciences (e.g., emergence, fractals, attractors), teaching CTC carries a level of complexity that can seem daunting for counselor educators. Additionally, CTC’s emphasis on experimental interventions designed to foster awareness, aspiration, and agency require practitioners to approach career development with imagination and care (Bright, Pryor, and Pennie, 2023).

In general terms, CTC focuses on helping clients embrace the unpredictable developments in their career journey by helping them be ready (Pryor & Bright, 2011). From the perspective of CTC, emphasizing the complementary dynamics of convergent thinking based on probability, and emergent thinking based on possibilities can help clients embrace uncertainty (Pryor et al., 2008). By embracing uncertainty, CTC helps clients develop their capacity for flexibility and resilience for use along their holistic life-career journeys.

Teaching/Counseling/Interactive Processes

The philosophical foundations of constructivism, which presuppose that the world is experienced uniquely by individuals, aligns with the teaching of dynamic and unpredictable chaotic systems highlighted in CTC (McAuliffe et al., 2011). Career counselor educators can model CTC through their instructional methods. Constructivism is an effective pedagogical model that allows students to construct their knowledge of the content through learning experiences developed by the instructor. Constructivism encourages counselor educators to construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct how to teach and challenge students to learn new theories in career counseling.

Constructivist career counselors help clients discern patterns (i.e., meaning) from previous life experiences and assist with understanding in giving voice to their life stories while constructivist counselor educators help counselors-in-training (CIT) discern those same patterns in their life experiences to better support and model this experience for future clients. Therefore, experiential learning lends itself naturally to classroom learning by utilizing a constructivist pedagogy where knowledge and meaning are co-constructed (Binkley & Minor, 2021). Examples of creative and transformative constructivist activities are provided to teach CTC in a more fluid and flexible way to support CITs understanding of CTC career counseling concepts and practices. In turn, CITs will be prepared to address clients’ awareness of how chance and change influence career exploration and decision-making. 

Classroom and Career Counseling Creative Processes

One way to engage students in the exploration of CTC is the use of visual and creative methods (Bright & Pryor, 2003; Parker-Bell & Osborn, 2023; Pryor & Bright, 2011, 2014). Visually oriented exercises may be used to illuminate clients’ and students’ attraction to stability or change and preferences for emergent or convergent strategies for approaching career development (Pryor & Bright, 2003, 2011). For example, an instructor can show images of kinetic sculptures (art that moves and changes in concert with environmental influences) and static sculpture (unmovable forms that are firmly planted on a base) to elicit responses about stability or change preferences and to foster discussions about external forces that may influence career trajectories. Alexander Calder’s mobile and stabile sculptures (Calder Foundation, 2024) provide excellent examples for stimulating these discussions.

Additionally, Pryor and Bright (2003, 2011) encouraged participants to creatively reflect on the role of unplanned events on their career related decisions. In their “Circles of Influence” exercise, they asked participants to represent career decision-making influences as concentric circles, varying the size of each circle to represent the scale of each influence. Categories of influences included: talents, interests, and skills; teachers and advisors; family; friends and family; media; and unplanned events. Upon review and reflection, participants were often surprised about the impact of unplanned events and were motivated to reevaluate unplanned events as important opportunities. Figure 1 shows an adapted Circles of Influence prompt (Parker-Bell & Osborn, 2023). With this adaptation, participants are encouraged to represent each influence with both size and color, adding another layer of association for discussion.

Instructors can offer the following materials for Circles of Influences creation:

• Drawing Paper
• Pencils, markers, colored pencils
• Circular objects of varied sizes for tracing
• Digital art software or art-making app option

Directions:

Step 1.  Identify three career development decisions that you have experienced. Examples: Selecting extracurricular activities to prepare for college; selecting a major or study emphasis; choosing a college or university; accepting a job opportunity; or choosing to change profession, etc.

Step 2.  For each of the 3 events selected, create a Circles of Influence diagram. The size of each concentric circle should relate to the extent that category influenced your decision. Students should be sure to include unplanned events within each of the three diagrams.

Step 3: Review the 3 diagrams. Pay particular attention to the unplanned events' influence. What do you notice? How have your ideas or perspectives on unplanned events been confirmed or challenged?

Step 4: Discuss observations in small groups, online discussion boards, or a broader class discussion to link student experiences with Chaos Theory of Careers concepts and practices.

Figure 1

Circles of Influence exploration structure adapted from Pryor and Bright (2003, 2011)

^{Note: This visual diagram may be used by instructors to explain the Circles of Influence activity}

Expanding Application and Learning

Teaching CTC theory to students may seem daunting. However, counselor educators can help students understand this perspective, which applies to an ever-changing world of work and lifestyle. As highlighted in this article, this can be done by using visual and creative methods to facilitate a better understanding of CTC theory.

_{This article continues the “Bringing Theories to Life in the Classroom” series offered by the 2023 NCDA Counselor Educator Academy team. View all Career Convergence articles in this series:}

_{Chaos Theory of Careers (CTC; Parker-Bell, Brown, Wiley, 2024, September)}

_{Theory of Work Adjustment (Charnley & Harris, 2024, June)}

_{Grief and Loss Theories (Hartman & Brown, 2024, May)}

_{Super’s Life Span Life Space Theory (Parker-Bell, Shao, & Cardello, 2024, April)}

_{Career Construction Theory (Cardello & Wiley, 2024, March)}

_{Holland’s RIASEC (Williams & Charnley, 2024, February)}

_{Psychology of Working (Wright & Harris, 2023, November)}

References

Baldwin, A. L. (1969). The measurement of social expectations and their development in children. University of Chicago Press.

Binkley, E. E. & Minor, A. J. (2021) Constructivist pedagogy to promote cultural learning in counselor education. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health,16(3), 348-359. https://doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2020.1763222

 Bright, J. E. H., & Pryor, R. G. L. (2003). The exploring influences on career development technique. In M. McMahon & W. Patton (Eds.)., Celebrating excellence in Australian career practice: Ideas for career practitioners (pp.49-53). Australian Academic Press.

Bright, J. E. H., Pryor, R. G. L., Pennie, O. (2023) Chaos theory of careers: Standing out not fitting in.  Asia Pacific Career Development Journal, 6(1),122-134. http://AsiaPacificCDA.org/Resources/APCDJ/A0006_1_09.pdf

Calder Foundation. (2024). Calder’s life and work.  Retrieved, August 2, 2024, from https://calder.org

McAuliffe, G. J., Eriksen, K. P., & Association of Counselor Education and Supervision (Eds.) (2011). Handbook of counselor preparation: Constructivist, developmental, and experiential approaches. Sage Publications, Inc.

Parker-Bell, B., & Osborn, D. (2023). Art therapy and career counseling: Creative strategies for career development across the lifespan. Routledge.

Pryor, R. G. L., Amundson, N. E., & Bright, J. E. H. (2008). Probabilities and possibilities: The strategic counseling implication of the chaos theory of careers. Career Development Quarterly, 56(4), 309-318. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.2008.tb00096.x

Pryor, R. G. L., & Bright, J. E. H. (2003). The chaos theory of careers. Australian Journal of Career Development, 12(3), 12-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/103841620301200304

Pryor, R.G.L., & Bright, J.E.H. (2011). The chaos theory of careers: A new perspective on working in the twenty-first century. Routledge.

Pryor, R.G.L., & Bright, J.E.H. (2014). The chaos theory of careers (CTC): Ten years on and only just begun. Australian Journal of Career Development, 23(1), 4-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1038416213518506

Dr. Barbara Parker-Bell, PsyD, ATR-BC, is a Registered and Board-Certified Art Therapist, Professor, and Director of Art Therapy Programs at Florida State University where she teaches a career development course for art therapists and counselors in training. She has recently co-authored the book, Art Therapy and Career Counseling: Creative Strategies for Career Development Across the Lifespan, published by Routledge with Dr. Debra Osborn, also from Florida State University.  Dr. Parker-Bell is currently collaborating with Dr. Osborn on the development and research of the Design Your Career guide which combines Cognitive Information Processing Theory and art therapy approaches in an accessible creative guide for exploring career decision-making processes for adolescents. Barbara may be contacted at bparkerbell@fsu.edu

Nathaniel Brown, PhD, CSWA, LMSW, LPC, NCC, is a licensed professional counselor, an assistant professor of clinical mental health counseling, and clinical director of field experience placement in the counseling program at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include college mental health counseling and career development, grief and loss, and hidden student populations in postsecondary education.

Jonathan Wiley, Ph.D., LPC, NCC, is an assistant professor of counseling in the Department of Counseling & Psychology at Tennessee Tech University. He was chosen as a 2023 Counselor Educator Academy cohort member by the National Career Development Association. Before his current role as a counselor educator, Dr. Wiley worked as a counselor and supervisor in multiple counseling settings ranging from individual, group, and family counseling to crisis counseling, school-based mental health counseling, and residential treatment. Jonathan may be contacted at jwiley@tntech.edu.