ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the long tradition of the developmental and competence-based approach to career development. It focuses on the career strengths and strengths-enhancing environments relevant for school counselors, and outlines the shifting priorities and traditional and contemporary school-counselor role in career development. The Comprehensive Developmental Guidance Programs model suggests that career-development services are provided as part of the school curriculum and that career guidance is a shared task between school counselors, teachers, and parents. Contemporary influences on the school counselor role in career development suggest a sequential, developmental, integrated, and competency-based approach. The Career Development Inventory and the Career Maturity Inventory emerged from the early studies and have been utilized extensively over the past few decades to further explore the concept of career maturity, which has become one of the most prevalent variables in research on career development. Computer programs are another form of intervention that have been shown to impact the career-development strengths highlighted.
