Career Endeavour: Pursuing A Cross-Cultural Life Transition

Australian Journal of Career Development, Autumn, 2008 by Cathy Hughes

CAREER ENDEAVOUR: PURSUING A CROSS-CULTURAL LIFE TRANSITION

Charles P. Chen, hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006, 164pp., ISBN 978-0-7546-4621-1

Charles Chen states that the purpose of this book is to illustrate the complexity of life career transition in the context of cross-cultural adjustment. To achieve this purpose, he presents a descriptive study of the life career experiences of eight professional adults from non-Western cultures who leave their home countries to make a new life in Canada and pursue professional counsellor training at a Canadian university. The author identifies the main audience as persons who are experiencing career transition, especially those simultaneously experiencing career transition and cross-cultural adjustment. Vocational and career psychology practitioners and those involved in counsellor education are identified as additional audiences. Chen notes that the that the book may be of interest to a range of others, including student service providers in higher education, human resources development personnel in institutional settings, social workers, immigrant settlement workers and others in the helping professions.

SUMMARY OF THE BOOK

Chapter 1 of Career Endeavour sets the scene for the research study. The central research question is identified as, 'How can the experiences of counsellor trainees with non-Western cultural backgrounds (NWC counsellor trainees) be described and understood?'. Chapter 1 identifies the issues to be explored, including the interplay of a range of variables associated with the domains of career development, transition to higher education and cross-cultural adjustment. The literature associated with these three domains is comprehensively covered in the second chapter. The career development literature review is a comprehensive and in-depth integration of theoretical ideas associated with career as a life process, career as individual agency and career as meaning-making. Chen discusses the developmental nature of career, the diverse interacting and overlapping life roles that provide the social context for career construction, and self-concept as '... a core that coordinates and manages the person's self-agency in designing his or her life career blueprints' (p. 15). He also investigates self-efficacy, including the constructs of outcome expectations and personal goals and their role in the formation and functioning of human agency. The influence on career of interrelated and interacting contextual factors and circumstances is discussed, as are the concepts of subjective career and meaning interpretation, and narrative as an element of interpretation. The literature reviewed on the transition to university life focuses on identity negotiation in the context of role change, social connectedness and social support as mediators of role adjustment and academic competence. The cross-cultural adjustment literature reviewed focuses on issues that confronted people from non-Western cultures who have chosen to live in North America and pursue academic study in higher education contexts. These issues include second language difficulties, academic adjustment, academic performance expectations, adjustment to a different education system, adjustment to pedagogical differences, culture shock, social isolation, financial concerns and racial discrimination and prejudice.

Chapter 3 describes the study methodology and design. Consistent with the study's goal of understanding the life career experiences of NWC counsellor trainees in a cross-cultural context, a qualitative methodology was adopted, specifically, ethnographic fieldwork. Within the context of this study: (a) non-Western culture was defined as that existing in places other than Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America; and (b) counsellor trainee referred to enrolment in, or timely completion of a counsellor education or counselling and guidance training program in a university in British Colombia, Canada. Using a multiple case study design and in-depth interviews to obtain narrative data, eight NWC counsellor trainees (4 male, 4 female) aged 27-55 years participated in a semi-structured interview comprised of a range of theme questions designed to yield a narrative with a structure consisting of a beginning (a conflict, problem or disequilibrium), a middle (efforts to resolve the conflict, problem or disequilibrium) and an end (closure). To this end, interview questions were concerned with: (a) life experiences before moving to Canada; (b) transitional experiences during the initial period in Canada; and (c) experiences associated with becoming a counsellor trainee in a large Canadian university. The narrative of each individual study participant was written up and sent to the study participant for validation. Suggested changes were included and a second validated narrative was constructed. A general narrative then was constructed which reflected and synthesised the key features of the eight individual narratives.