View of CAREER PLANNING AND COUNSELLING PROGRAMME: TRENDS AND INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN THE INDIAN CONTEXT

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Vol.03, Issue 04, April 2018, Available Online: www.ajeee.co.in/index.php/AJEEE

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CAREER PLANNING AND COUNSELLING PROGRAMME: TRENDS AND INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN THE INDIAN CONTEXT

Ashish Kumar Upadhyay

Assistant Prof., Deptt. of Education, Ch. Bechelal P.G. College, Lakhimpur Kheeri, Uttar Pradesh.

Abstract:- Career choices of the students (age group: 14 to 21 years) are often influenced by their parents, peers, teachers, role models etc. The ability to make informed choices is limited in adolescence as this developmental stage is marked with rapid changes, like physiological, emotional, sexual and psychological changes. The Indian adolescents go through gamut of emotions like shame, guilt, as the elders believe in exerting control through a sense of moral obligation. Indian culture expects the adolescents to obey, conform and oblige the elders of the family. Though many families have moved to being nuclear families in the urban middle class, they conform to obedience to elders and restrictive encouragement to self-identity and often as authoritarian parents, autonomy is discouraged. Thus many times, adolescents see a gap between what they think they like to do and what they can do and they are expected to do. This gap often baffles them and may lead to stress and conflicts within themselves and also in their crucial relationships. The career choices made by the adolescents rests largely on societal norms and obligation to duty. Proper guidance and counselling can be a big support to the students at this stage.

Counselling process provides them with necessary assessment tools, objectivity and ability to think logically and at the same time, listen, respect and acknowledge their struggle in making these choices. This may offer adolescents the ability to make appropriate choices with heightened awareness. Parents and schools can play an important role in encouraging students to seek career planning and counselling. This can help students take steps toward their emotional well-being during this process. The presentation elicits various, innovative approaches used in career guidance and counselling and its impact on students, through various case studies, in the Indian context.

Keywords: Indian adolescents, career planning, case studies, emotional well being.

1. INTRODUCTION

In the global village view of the world, fast paced work, unemployment, career indecision, adjustment in work, career education, makes „Career decision making‟, an ongoing process in a person‟s life (Stead 2000). Developing a career is a process, not just a destination. Ample attention needs to be paid to the developmental process required to engage in thoughtful, thorough career development. Many students are confronted with substantial career and life decisions at an early age with limited opportunities for career exploration.

The attempt of this paper is to focus on career decision-making process from two perspectives: adolescents and caregivers, since career- making decisions impact both the parties. The focus on understanding on how the Indian families think and behave is of high importance.

The paper also offers suggestions to what is doable for the Indian families to benefit both the parties.

The modern Indian families do have enough influences of western culture

today because of media exposure and many other factors like many NRIs moving back to India. These influences cannot be neglected while speculating the process of career – making decision. In modern Indian context, a family may still have more than three generations living together, following a hierarchical pattern based on elements like generational status, gender etc. These role relationships and hierarchy may determine an individual‟s choice (Sue, 1981). The impact can be understood from the high premium placed on conformity in Indian families and thus inhibiting self-identity, fostering interdependence and rewarding a conservative orientation, which is resistive to change. This is prevalent in families of modern India in spite of many changes, adaptations of pseudo Western culture, which includes middle class Indian families‟ move towards nucleation (Segal, 1991).

Thus even today, Indian culture expects the adolescent to obey, conform

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and oblige the elders of the family.

Though many families have moved to being nuclear families in the urban middle class, they conform to obedience to elders and do not extensively encourage self-identity and thus autonomy is discouraged (Whiting, 1961). A close look at the traditions followed in Indian families helps us understand that for majority of Indians, self-identity has a lower priority to family welfare and integrity. The hierarchical view of the family exerts control on the youth by fostering sense of moral obligations, guilt and shame and this is the primary method to exert the expectation of conformity and obedience (Sue, 1981).

This intergeneration tradition of family, no doubt, binds the family and keeps the family stability strong, but this is achieved at the expense of the person‟s individual autonomy (Triandis et al, 1988).

In modern Indian families‟ life styles, belief, and traditions, it is noticed that, they are allocentric and the youngsters are expected to sacrifice themselves and their needs for the welfare of the family. Indian families expect their children to be docile and obedient, to unconditionally respect the elders of the family, remain emotionally and socially dependent on their parents and bring laurels and honour to the family through expected achievements. The genders are also treated differently where males are expected to be the ordinates and females, as sub ordinates and thus are groomed differently. Parents heavily influence children‟s choice of mates, careers, and thus control most of the areas of their lives. Considering numerous factors like honour of family very often forms these choices and is unrelated to the children‟s emotional desires. Thus many times, adolescents see a gap between what they think they like to do and what they can do and they are expected to do. This gap often baffles them and may lead to stress and conflicts within themselves and also in their crucial relationships. The career choices made by the adolescent rests largely on societal norms and obligation to duty (Segal 1991). Any behavior, which brings dishonor to the family, is considered shameful. And thus career- decision making is not an easy process for Indian families.

2. CHALLENGES OF THE INDIAN ADOLESCENTS

The Indian adolescents go through gamut of emotions like shame, guilt, as the elders believe in exerting control through a sense of moral obligation (Sue, 1981).

An Indian adolescent grows up in an environment, which is protected and unidirectional. The modern teenager faces conflicts and this makes their adolescent journey turbulent. These turbulences are caused by the several factors, one of them being, the modern day exposure of the teenager to the Western world and their psychological need to abide by their family role models and elders (Segal, 1991). The uni-directionality of upbringing, communication gap between the parents and their children causes internal conflict for children as well as parents. The Indian adolescent experiences a different growing up environment than the westerners. The modern Indian families today, because of exposure to western culture, face problems of dual culture (Segal, 1991).

According to the literature of Erikson, Blos, Newman and Newman, the adolescents are more willing to follow and conform to their peers suggestions than their parental ideas and norms. The conflict experienced is severe when the peers have orthogonally radical ideas than the parents. This can lead to stress in adolescents. This is witnessed in modern Indian adolescents. When we take a closer look at the biological and psychological aspects of an adolescent growing up, at puberty the adolescence starts while its end is seen in the development of a stage at which one‟s psychological identity merges with establishment of a goal – oriented life (Seltzer, 1982). In Indian families, however, the adolescence does not see this phase, as the individual continues to follow, abide and obey parents‟ views and ideas, even after being employed, financially independent and married.

The individual remains submissive and the autocratic parent child relationship continues to affect the adolescent‟s life. (Sue,1981). Attempt of an adolescent to emerge as a well- functioning individual with discreet self- identity and autonomy can lead to high levels of stress especially if the adolescent and adults at home, caregivers and parents have differences of opinion about

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values and duties. (Segal, 1991) The adolescent may feel unsupported, unaccepted and challenged. These feelings are not easy to handle and thus when the adolescent has to make a career choice in this phase, there are conflicts and high stress. These situations can lead to confusion as the adolescent may sometimes succumb to pressure to conform or may rebel and cause emotional distress. The appearance of psychologically induced somatic symptoms often exhibits this emotional stress (Ho, 1988).

Indian families rarely look into mental health services and counselling as a support, as the literature shows that traditionally, in Indian families, difficulties such as financial, emotional, or difficulties related to health are tackled within the family boundaries. Like the Indian immigrants in the western countries, modern Indian families today experience reactions from their adolescents where the individual may choose to remain completely loyal and allied to eastern and Indian culture or may choose to completely dissociate from the Indian culture, or may choose to integrate appealing features and aspects of both cultures to suit one‟s life choices and work towards establishment of self- esteem and self-worth and self-identity (Sue, 1973).

The opinions of the parents and adults of the family significantly affect one‟s sense of self-worth. The validation from the significant adults in the adolescent‟s life is highly related to one‟s self esteem in that relationship. This indicates that the adolescent is susceptible and sensitive to potentially different opinions and benchmarks of significant others present in their lives.

The adolescent experiences high self- esteem around friends and supporters who believe that the adolescent is capable and experiences low self-esteem around parents and others who label the adolescent incapable. Idea of what a stranger thinks of the adolescent also affects his or her idea of self-worth. The adolescent experiences heightened concerns with reflected appraisals of others (Cohen, 2006). The difference of opinion, like criticism from parents leads to variability in the self-concepts (Rosenberg, 1986). During career –

making decision process, there are continuous feedbacks and opinions about the adolescent that gets discussed and analyzed. Thus, it may cause high levels of anxiety, confusion, conflicts and stress for the individual.

The adolescent may resort to showing rebellious behavior or extreme compliant behavior, both of which lead to distress in the adolescent. If the adolescent is given enough opportunity to voice out his or her emotions, the stress may be managed in a healthy manner.

But, quite often than not, Indian families tend to keep it amongst the family boundaries and starts viewing the adolescent disobedient or considers adolescent‟s rebel or queries as a mark of disrespect to the elders. Many Indian families fail to recognize the adolescent‟s ability to make valid decisions and view their adolescent‟s desire to make independent decision as a mark of deviant behavior and contamination of culture.

This leads to a power struggle where verbal retaliations, rebelliousness, or passive-aggressive behaviors is often witnessed in an Indian household (Parasuraman, 1986). The adolescent can be provided with environment in which these issues are openly addressed and the situations, across the families, are normalized. Making the families aware of services like counselling and career assessments guidance can do this.

Schools can play an important role by getting actively involved by sensing and addressing these issues and encouraging them to trust these services.

3. UNDERSTANDING THE INDIAN CAREGIVERS AND THE ATTACHMENT The Indian caregivers also are affected by the stress involved in career – decision- making process. It is true to notice that majority of Indian parents, unwilling to accept adolescent during the maturation phase, experience considerable role conflict and discrepancies leading to role partialisation. They continue to pressurize the adolescent to obey and conform to their demands. This shakes the family stability. However, parents often view these conflicts as degradation of family and accuse the teenager for disrespecting and bringing the family to that state (Segal, 1991). The parents, in this situation, start analyzing the situation

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and often blame themselves for not adhering to accepted Indian parenting styles and start feeling guilty and ashamed of the situation.

More often, the parents are still answerable to their significant adults or parents and this leads to stress and further conflicts in the family. Parents then face questions from the hierarchical adults to save the family esteem. The parents are often caught between the demands of their higher order family members and their children. This causes distress and further coils into adding stress into their significant relationships.

Striking harmony in thinking rationally, making decisions and keeping the welfare of the family in mind becomes challenging for the parents. The couple chemistry also plays out during these times along with other relationship dynamics. Addressing these issues are equally important while handling adolescent‟s career – making decisions, which is impactful to all.

The financial stability of the family is also impacted due to these decisions.

Thus, it‟s important for the parents to focus on their communication with the adolescent. Most Indians are role modeled for one-sided communication, where parents speak and children obey, thus parents, if they continue with these poor communication techniques, can lead to adolescent feeling dissatisfied and unheard (Segal, 1991). Poor communication techniques are found to be one of the causes of stress. Open communication is possible as according to Bowlby, in the middle childhood and adolescence, child‟s ability to verbalize and communicate feelings is good enough to allow open communication.

4. ROLE OF CAREER GUIDANCE PERSONNEL

Parsons (1908) is regarded as the founder of the vocational guidance movement.

Parsons said that people perform better and are highly productive when they are in jobs suited to their abilities, personalities and interests. This talent matching approach later developed into the Trait and Factor theory of Occupational Choice in the evolving discipline of Differential Psychology.

“Matching” was the key element here.

While matching is important and helpful, yet the individuals need to be prepared to

adapt to the changing job market scenario. He suggested that occupational choice occurs best when people have achieved an understanding of their individual traits (e.g. personal abilities, aptitudes, interests, personality traits); a knowledge of jobs and the job market at present and have made an objective judgment about the relationship between these two groups of information collected.

The main assumption in the Trait and Factor theory is that it is possible to measure both individual talents and the attributes required in particular jobs.

Along with awareness about inherent personality traits a match can be made and viable career options can be suggested to the client. The domain of career counselling has known success and recoil of using various assessment methods and techniques (in the beginning mostly psychological tests, currently mostly questionnaires and inventories of Interests, preferences, aptitudes, attitudes and values and personality traits). Central goal of career counselling is to help individuals make congruent work or career choices that will allow them to have a job, a career and a satisfactory life in a changing society. According socio- dynamic counselling, career is no longer seen as a vocation but a life seen as a career. (Roysircar, 2010)

5. ROLE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELLING OR PSYCHOTHERAPY According to UNESCO guidelines, counselling is a learning – oriented process which aims to help a person in distress in an interactive, confidential relationship. In this process, the helper, that is the Counsellor, expresses care and concern towards person in distress and facilitates person‟s personal growth through self-knowledge and awareness.

The counselling explorations are designed to understand and clarify views, and are oriented towards self-determined goals through meaningful and well-informed choices and resolve emotional and interpersonal conflicts. Counselling can help people any age group and gender. It can empower individuals to confront social inadequacies with skills, awareness and knowledge.

Counselling also assists contributing to healthy attitudes towards healthy relationships and foster a sense of

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adequacy in one self. It also helps awakening the students to educational and vocational opportunities. There are various techniques involved in psychological counselling like person- centered approach, REBT, CBT etc.

Depending upon the situation and the case, appropriate technique may be used to help the individual. Thus, psychological counselling plays an important role in schools, especially in helping families take career – making decisions, as healthily as possible as it emphasizes on helping students develop their capacities to full which includes, intellectual, social, physical and moral capacities.

6. SUGGESTIONS AND PRESCRIBED METHODS

Attachment based interventions suggest that there can be a “cooperative”

partnership between the adolescent and the parents. The focus of the attachment is to enhance ways of managing relational stress by working on caregiver‟s ability to manage stress like addressing the importance of using other trust worthy adults (within the family or outside) as resources to manage stress. This will also help the caregiver identify the need to form therapeutic alliance and supportive relationship with the counsellor. This will highlight the benefits of interventions and thus effectiveness of therapy. (Cohen, 2006) It is imperative for the parents to get information about adolescent‟s needs and other influences that the adolescent may carry. The adolescent may be helped to trust the caregivers and empowered to convey their emotions.

Case Study 1:

Presenting Concern: Student (age: 15 years), Choice of vocation as career.

Details:

A boy, studying in class X, from a reputed school in Bangalore, was brought by the parents for career guidance and counselling, as the child was unsure of what he wanted to study further and pursue as a career. The child conveyed strong resistance to pursue science.

Parents and also grandparents were unhappy with his decision of opting out of science. This caused anxieties, conflicts between them. Parents and grandparents believed that the child would not have secure future without opting for science

as his career. The parents were also feeling humiliated by the child‟s decision as that would bring down their family status and everybody else in the family had and were pursuing science. They feared being out casted by the other family members. These thoughts had raised the anxiety levels in both the parties and they were unable to take a consensual decision. As a career counsellor, it became imperative that the anxiety of the parents be addressed in this context.

A career Counsellor does not negate the emotions of the parents or client nor focuses only on the queries raised by either but also analyses the situation and addresses emotional distress, if any. The career counsellor takes a note of the complete situation, like the discrepancies of thought patterns of the child and the parents, the cultural and societal impact of the career choice and the stress due the discrepancies. All this information is vital for the career counsellor. The assessment tools were one part of the career counselling process. The method of communicating the assessment results to the client and family in a session also played an important role and it required counselling skills to be used with a lot of sensitivity especially because there was a mismatch between the child‟s (client) expectations and the family‟s desires.

A revelation in terms of Aptitude, Interest and Personality traits is generally not seen to be easy to handle if the family or the client is unwilling to accept the results. In this case, the psychological tests revealed that the child did not have aptitude for science and showed orientation towards a creative field, art.

The career counsellor did not take sides, rather laid out the facts with reasons.

This helped the client make an informed choice, which was the central goal of career counselling. This case was dealt with sensitivity and the tools employed were helpful in assessing his aptitude, interest or preferences in different vocations and profiling his inherent personality traits. Person-centered approach was used to build the rapport and systemic approach was used to deliver the reports.

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Case Study 2:

Presenting concern: Student (age: 17 years), signs of suicide ideations due to failure in college.

Details:

A boy, studying in first year graduation, from a reputed college in Bangalore, was brought into counselling as he had attempted suicide. The first meeting was with the parents to understand the presenting issue and get a wholistic view of the situation. The parents filled the intake form and they mentioned that they had found suicide notes written by their son in his study. They were shocked as they were clueless about the situation.

The boy had stopped communicating with them and had started staying aloof. He had restricted his interactions with his friends and did not show any interest in any household activities. The goal set for counselling was to facilitate communication between the boy and the parents and also to help him address his emotions and to get back his enthusiasm in life. The boy was ready to participate in therapy. Then there were five sessions done with person-centered approach and a safe and confidential environment was created for him to express his concerns. It came to light that he was unhappy with his career choice and was feeling guilty about feeling disinterested in the choice of subjects made. He found it extensively difficult to study and as a result he had failed in all his assessments. The shame associated with failing in the first year was leading to suicide ideation. The parents and grandparents had made the career choice and he was not consulted and was expected to conform. He was also angry with them and called himself a failure. In the following sessions, he was empowered to speak to his parents about his situation, through rehearsals and homework, a CBT and systemic approach was employed. Once he made small but significant progress in establishing a communication channel with his parents, he then mustered the courage to talk

about his career plans. It was suggested that he meet with a career counsellor to help him make an informed choice about his future career.

7. CONCLUSIONS

The families receiving the career guidance could become emotionally vulnerable and many times need support of a counsellor to help them adapt to the systemic challenges. Hence, counselling along with career guidance assessment and reports could bring about family well-being in the process of career – making decisions.

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