The uncertain story of career development

In this paper, the central role of uncertainty in career development and its implications for counselling, coaching and education practice as well as policy will be explored. It is argued that although uncertainty was recognised in the earliest formulations of career counselling models, it was subsequently largely ignored or deemed unimportant in nearly all of the dominant theories of career development for the remainder of the 20th century. More recently theorists have begun to acknowledge once more the central importance of uncertainty in career development, and more broadly in areas as diverse as science and politics. The reasons and importance of this renewed focus is explored with particular emphasis on chaos and complexity theories. The Chaos Theory of Careers (CTC) (Pryor & Bright, 2011) will be presented as theory that provides a powerful way of understanding the relationship between order and chaos, pattern and surprise as composites not opposites. Accepting that uncertainty is an inevitable, inescapable and ubiquitous part of life leads to new approaches to career development practice, theory and policy.