ABSTRACT
In a “postmodern” world where notions of secure and linear career progression have been overturned, career counsellors need new ways of working with their clients. Many established theoretical models seem narrow, overly classified and at odds with the dynamic realities of real lives in a rapidly changing world. Constructivist approaches appear to offer alternate ways to understand the diverse meanings given to behaviour and action. Constructivist, interpretive, narrative and biographical approaches emphasise the need to explore “meaning” and perceptions of “truth” from the client’s worldview. Such approaches score highly in terms of truthfulness as lives, pre-occupations, context and subjective experience are placed in the foreground. Constructivist perspectives are not new (Collin and Young, 1986) but they are gaining credence in the career development literature. Savickas (1997a) refers to this development as located within a twenty-first-century preoccupation with meaning, in contrast to a twentieth-century focus on facts.
