Life Design and Career Construction in Children

Abstract

Fred Vondracek was one of the first scholars to highlight since at the beginning of 21st century that vocational psychology should consider social and work context changes to help people to cope with the future times (Vondracek, Ferreira, & dos Santos, 2010). In relation to this, and taking into account the rapid changes in the currently labor market, Fred Vondracek highlights the important roles of some positive resources, such as career adaptability, positive career orientation, proactive career behaviors (Hirschi, Lee, Porfeli, & Vondracek, 2013). In this chapter, celebrating Fred Vondracek as a scholar who has greatly contributed to the development of our discipline and on the base of his reflections, theoretical assumptions of Life Design, and Psychology Youth Development approach, we consider some relevant resources to cope with difficult times that we are going through, such as hope, optimism, future orientation, resilience, occupational knowledge, and career adaptability. For each of those constructs research studies underscoring their role in personal and professional development in childhood, preadolescence, and adolescence, are presented. Then, as Fred Vondracek claimed, we highlighted the importance of involving people in vocational guidance projects, as soon as possible in order to prepare adults to cope with the today complex reality. The chapter also reports some important assessment tools useful to analyze strengths and improve training activity to promote positive resources such as hope, optimism, future orientation, resilience, occupational knowledge, and career adaptability.