Using Creative Strategies to Explore Career Theories with Counselors-inTraining U
nderstanding how people make career decisions is rooted in career theories and is an essential step for counselors-in-training (CIT) to establish a knowledge base of the career counseling process (Osborn, 2009).The study of theories can oftentimes be dry and lead to boredom and, for counselor educators, finding a way to bridge theory with practice can be challenging. According to Oberman and Studer (2009), “the use of creative strategies facilitates students’ learning and further comprehension of career development” (p. 1). CIT’s may develop a greater appreciation for the influence that career philosophies have through a counselor educator’s ability to formulate exceptional collaborative strategies that are relevant and pertinent to counseling theories (Oberman & Studer, 2009). If the CIT can connect with the material on a personal and professional level, the more meaningful the theories become, and increases the likelihood to utilize this learning in their future practice. This article explores some best practices counselor educators may use when teaching career theory to CIT’s. Theory Collage Oberman and Studer (2009) created a collaborative teaching strategy known as the
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October 2021 InSession | FMHCA.org
theory collage. This activity would take up to 60 minutes to complete the assignment. Students are randomly placed into small groups that are each assigned a specific career counseling theory, then directed to create a collage that represents the concepts of their assigned theory. The trainees may use available classroom resources to research their career theory and are required to include no more than ten pictures that would best describe the key strategies of their assigned career counseling theory. The students would then create a brief slide presentation, carefully arranging the photos that concisely summarize the assigned career counseling theory. Upon completion of the task, the collages would be posted to the class website with each group presenting their assigned theory to the rest of the students (Oberman and Studer, 2009) This in-class assignment allows students to work together in groups of two or three to formulate a visual understanding of career theories. The Theory Collage is an interactive method that would result in a brief overview of the key concepts of each of the theories and provides a sense of ownership to the students who illustrated them. This type of method may appeal to various learning styles. Flipped Class Design Common core curricular areas such as career counseling that require some explanation of the subject, however profit from application-based activity and practice in the classroom, are the best choices for a flipped class design. When learning about career theory, Merlin (2016) proports that the flipped class design helps to avoid student negative expectations such as dry content material and boredom, and instead affords learners increased class
