The Career Counseling Case Study Project

Taneka, a 17-year-old African American female, is a high school junior. She is the oldest of three siblings living with her single-parent mother. Her mother has worked for the past 15 years at a manufacturing plant. Her father has not been a part of Taneka’s life.

As the oldest child, Taneka has held major responsibilities throughout her life to support her working mother, such as carrying for her younger siblings, Derrick, now age 14, and Kenya, age 12. These early duties reinforced development of her natural leadership skills. Taneka has been recognized from an early age for being mature, responsible, and dependable. As her siblings have grown, she has been able to have part-time jobs, most recently as a salesperson at a teen fashion store in the local mall. It was here that she first realized she had a knack for dealing with people, and they responded well to her—employers, co-workers, and customers alike. She was recently approached by her supervisor to consider participating in the company’s employee leadership training program.

This has started Taneka to think about post-secondary education possibilities. Previously she had thought college was out of her reach, due to the limited financial resources of her family and no history of anyone in her family ever attending college. As such, she had not previously given much importance to her grades. Rather than participating in extracurricular school activities, she focused on working. She s on track for graduating with her class next year and has a current grade point average of 2.05.

Taneka is now questioning her previous assumption about college or other post-secondary educational possibilities, but she does not have a clear idea of what she would like to pursue as a career. Choosing a career and a post-secondary program to prepare for it, seeking financial support, and navigating the admissions procedure all remain mysteries to her. When her school counselor invites her in for her junior-year session to plan for life after high school, Taneka starts to open up about this and seeks help to start the process of planning for the rest of her life.

The Career Counseling Case Study Project provides the opportunity to demonstrate your critical understanding of how career counseling is applied by providing a synthesis and evaluation of career counseling and consultation when working with clients. You will use a case study scenario as the basis of your project paper.

Please be aware that this project is designed to assist in your acquisition of career theory knowledge and therefore, you must apply the concepts that have been taught in this course. In other words, apply concepts unique to career counseling and not for other counseling disciplines such as marriage and family or school counseling.

To assist you in developing a complete case study, the course project includes three components:

In the Career Counseling Theory and Relationship Strategies assignment, you will focus on counseling theory and relationship strategies relevant to your selected case. Specific information regarding instructions for this assignment are located in Unit 3.

In the Diversity Issues in Career Counseling assignment, you will analyze the impact of diversity issues on career counseling. Specific information regarding instructions for this assignment are located in Unit 6.

In your final project assignment, Career Counseling Case Study, you will compile the previous assignments as well as add sections relevant to legal and ethical issues, assessment tools, and the impact of crises, emergencies, and disasters.

To successfully complete this project, you will be expected to:

1.       Apply relevant theory and research to career counseling practice.

2.       Explain strategies for establishing and maintaining effective relationships.

3.       Articulate how biases and assumptions can impact the career development process.

4.       Analyze legal and ethical issues related to the career development process.

5.       Write effectively in issues related to career counseling and consultation.

6.       Analyze the impact of crises, emergencies, and disasters on a person’s career planning and development.

To achieve a successful project experience and outcome, you are expected to meet the following requirements.

Your final project assignment should address the following topics. Please note that the number of pages per topic is provided as a guideline and is not a requirement.

1. Theory and Relationship Strategies – Include the information from your Career Counseling Theory and Relationship Strategies assignment to meet the expectations for these topics. Be sure to integrate any feedback you received from your instructor to ensure you meet the grading criteria. While you may use sections of your original paper as it is, be sure to integrate this to create a cohesive assignment. In other words, be sure the section flows with the rest of your paper. (2–3 pages)

2. Diversity Issues – Include the information from your Diversity Issues in Career Counseling assignment to meet the expectations for these topics. Be sure to integrate any feedback you received from your instructor to ensure you meet the grading criteria. While you may use sections of your original paper as it is, be sure to integrate this to create a cohesive assignment. In other words, be sure the section flows with the rest of your paper. (1–2 pages)

3. Legal and Ethical Issues – Interpret and evaluate at least two ethical codes or standards that could be considered for this case. You need to cite which codes you are referencing and which organization it comes from. Appropriate resources include: NCDA, ACA, NBCC, AAMFT, ASCA, AMHCA, NAADAC, and so on (1 page). Be sure to access the most current code of ethics for the each organization.

4. Career Counseling Approach – Appraise your understanding and application of the three steps towards career identification. These include self-awareness, identifying skills, and prioritization. Choose ways in which you can apply this knowledge to this case scenario. You may use the Career Diamond as a guide. (1–2 pages)

5. Assessment Tools – Propose the appropriate selection of an assessment tool for your client. Examples may include card-sort, O*NET, or a Self-Directed Search (SDS). You may create this segment of your project in any way that meets the criteria stated in the rubrics. For example, you can state why you would suggest taking the SDS and then pretend to go through some of the more interesting results. This should demonstrate the skills of interpretation and relationship building with your client. You do not have to go through an entire assessment; just demonstrate that you can select an appropriate assessment tool. (1 page)

6. Impact of Crises, Emergencies, and Disasters – Choose one area that may be affecting your client and address this consideration. You can create either a crises, emergency, or disaster. Examples may include job loss, family illness, or a neighboring earthquake. (1 page)

7. Conclusion – Conclude your project with a summary of career counseling and how it can be beneficial to this client. (1 page)

8. General Project Requirements:

9. Written communication: Written communication must be free of errors that detract from the overall message.

10. APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to APA (6th Edition) Style and Formatting.

11. Number of resources: Minimum of 6 resources.

12. Length of paper: 8–10 typed, double-spaced pages.

13. Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

• Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
• Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
• One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
• I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.

Weekly Participation

• Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
• In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
• Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
• Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.

APA Format and Writing Quality

• Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
• Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
• I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.

Use of Direct Quotes

• I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
• As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
• It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.

LopesWrite Policy

• For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
• Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
• Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
• Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

• The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
• Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
• If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
• I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
• As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

• Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
• Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
• Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.