CAREER EXPLORATION: THEORY AND RESEARCH
The theory of career exploration developed tardily in the early sixties, when it first started being
considered as a category of general exploratory behavior (Jordaan, 1963). Recent reviews of the topic
by Taveira (1997, 2000) enables the identification of four different conceptions of career exploration,
that clearly illustrate the evolution of the construct during the last century, and that can be viewed
presently, as complementary. The first and more simplistic one considers career exploration as a type
of information seeking behavior or as a career problem-solving behavior, and it is originated in
theories such as that of Krumboltz’s learning theory of career choice and counseling (Krumboltz,
1979). A second conception, derived from career decision theory, considers career exploration an
important phase of the process of career decision-making, involving the identification and evaluation
of options and information seeking behavior, and the absence of a strong compromise with an option
(e.g., Gelatt, 1962; Tiedeman, & O’Hara, 1963). A third conception, originated in normative career
development theories, defines exploration as a major life stage, that of adolescence (ages fourteen to
twenty-four), comprising the career developmental tasks of crystallizing, specifying and
implementing an occupational choice (Ginzberg, Ginsburg, Axelrad & Herma, 1951; Super, 1957).
And, finally, a recent position that describes exploration as a life-span process underlying career
learning and development (Atkinson & Murrell, 1988; Blustein, 1997; Jordaan, 1963; Super, 1995;
Taveira, 1997). Consistent with this last position, career exploration has been referred to a complex
psychological process which sustains the search of information as well as the hypothesis testing about
self and environment, in order to attain career goals. It involves the concomitant cognitive and
affective activity of interpreting and recreating past and present experiences, and of projecting the