Promoting Career Counselors’ Sustainable Career Development through the Group-based Life Construction Dialogue Intervention: “Constructing My Future Purposeful Life”

Abstract

Continuous professional development refers to maintaining, enhancing, and broadening individuals’ knowledge, skills, and the personal qualities required in their professional lives. The present experimental study attempts to explore the way(s) that the Life Construction intervention: “Constructing my Future Purposeful Life” contributes to career counselors’ sustainable career development. Two groups of career counselors participating in a training program delivered by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens were involved, namely, an experimental group (N = 33) that received the intervention and a control group (N = 27) that did not receive any intervention. The effectiveness of the intervention was verified through qualitative and quantitative analysis, including the calculation of effect sizes, of the data obtained through the Future Career Autobiography, and the Greek version of the Life Project Reflexivity Scale. The results indicate that the Life Construction Intervention improved career counselors’ reflexivity and self-awareness, while, concurrently, the need for practical training in contemporary interventions to support their sustainable career development is highlighted. The main conclusion refers to the fact that the career counselor needs to construct his or her own Self as a sustainable project beforehand, in order to be able to support individuals in their own Self construction and promote their well-being.