Career studies as self-making and life designing

Abstract

Advocates of career studies in higher education propose teaching undergraduate students about careers, the labour market
and employability. According to McCash (2008), exploration and research about careers should empower students by helping
them to focus on ‘life purposes and meanings and the more prosaic matters of achieving these ends’ (p. 6). The recent International Career Studies Symposium, held at the University of Reading, sought to elaborate the content of a career studies curriculum and demonstrate ways of teaching ‘career.’ As a participant in this symposium, I asserted that career construction theory offers to a career studies curriculum a model for conceptualising and understanding work lives (Savickas, 2005). Furthermore, it emphasises the importance of a curriculum space for studying the self and a practical method for self-making and life designing (Savickas et al., in press).