ABSTRACT

Solution-focused counselling is constructivist in that counsellors encourage clients to describe, reflect upon, make meaning about and interpret things that are important to them. Though constructivism and social constructionism both address the nature of knowing and reject the idea of describing an objective reality. An essential element of solution-focused counselling is the paradigmatic shift in thinking, by client and counsellor, away from problems and concerns and towards possibilities and hope. In solution-focused career counselling the practitioner assumes that the client has already thought about the decision. Scales are one of the key techniques of solution-focused career counselling. They allow clients to articulate their career goals, notice progress they have made in moving towards those goals, identify their own successful strategies. Scales can take on a number of different formats. One format that encourages collaboration incorporates ideas from Kelly's personal construct theory by inviting clients to name the two end points of a scale.