Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Week 10: Chapter 13/18/Granello



Prior to the class activity, I had a hard time understanding and applying Granello's article. Granello (2001) presents a taxonomy is a hierarchy of six levels that provides an essential skill for students to write graduate level, advanced literature reviews. Going into class last week,  I was afraid that our group’s literature review was not at this level that Granello (2001) asserts writing should be at. In looking at the feedback from the rest of the class and observing other people’s literature reviews, I realized that we are probably at the application level, with our organization mainly by theme. Granello (2001) points out ways in which to move papers to the higher levels of taxonomy, which I believe was extremely beneficial to read and helpful moving forward.

In Chapter 13, Brown (2012) begins with statistics about underemployed graduates. I was not surprised to find out that 56 percent of graduates are underemployed, meaning their current job does not allow them to fully utilize their skills. I think that this can be accounted for the lack of career education or preparation in post secondary schools. Brown (2012) also notes that 54 percent of college graduates report being in their present career as a result of following a conscious plan. I believed that statistic. I feel like I am one of those students. However, I did go to an institution where I felt my career exploration and preparation needs were met. As I’ve said before, I started my undergrad in a completely different field than what I’m studying to do now, but I was able to come to an understanding of what I wanted to do through workshops, advisement, and the internship program at my previous institution.

While reading, I thought a lot about my friends who I just graduated with in May. Many of them are in jobs that are unrelated to what they studied because of the lack of jobs in those fields. For instance, a friend of mine who I studied Broadcasting with is now in a higher education job because the jobs simply were not available. Another reason would be lack of experience and qualifications. This is why  internships and many of the other brief activities Brown (2012) discussed are extremely important for undergrad students to participate in. 

Finally, in Chapter 18 Brown (2012) writes his predictions on the future trends of career development. One projection that stood out to me was the change in language to describe human careers in terms of life roles, life settings, and life events that develop over the lifespan. I was specifically interested in Super’s Life-Span Life-Space theory, which I wrote my paper based off of and continue to think about in relation to my own career development.


Brown, D. (2007).  Career information, career counseling, and career development  (9h ed.).  New York: Pearson Education, Inc.

Granello, D. H.  (2001).  Promoting cognitive complexity in graduate written work: Using Bloom's taxonomy as a pedagogical tool to improve literature reviews.  Counselor Education & Supervision, 40, 292-307.

No comments:

Post a Comment