The role of dialogic processes in designing career expectations

This article examines the role played by dialogic processes in the designing or redesigning of future expectations during a career guidance intervention. It discusses a specific method (“Giving instruction to a double”) developed and used during career counseling sessions with two recent doctoral graduates. It intends both to help them outline or specify a career expectation and to create a means to observe the involved dialogic processes. This method was designed within the framework of the “making oneself self” model (Guichard, 2004, 2005, 2009). Dialogic processes were analyzed by referring to (a) this model's conceptualization of individual reflexivity, (b) the Benveniste general linguistic theory, and (c) the concept of “acts of thought”, as recently developed from the Peirce semiotic theory. It appeared that each of these two graduates favored different dialogic processes and acts of thought and evolved accordingly. One of them re-read her whole life and created a new career expectation. The other worked on his previous one to move it from the past university laboratory where he wrote his thesis to a future expected job in a specific private company.

► The role of dialogic processes in a career guidance intervention is described.
► The processes of (re)designing their career expectations by 2 recent Ph.D.s are shown.
► Analyses were conducted in referring to the “making oneself self” model and to Peirce's and Benveniste's theories.
► Clients appeared to rely mainly on either one of 2 forms of reflexivity during such interventions.
► One client created a new career expectation. The other one retained his previous one but modified its anchoring point.