Career Writing is a narrative career-learning method where a facilitator or career counsellor uses creative, expressive and reflective writing exercises to assist students and clients in developing a career identity.
Career identity is defined in this context as the story that gives meaning and purpose to one’s life and points to direction in which one would like to develop career wise. Career is broadly defined and includes both paid and unpaid work.
The courses are generally given in group contexts; 10-20 people can do their career-learning together. This makes it more time and cost-effective for schools and universities to implement.
The method was developed by Reinekke Lengelle and Frans Meijers. Frans died in November 2018, though Reinekke Lengelle continues to develop and share this work with others. Her colleague, Kat McNichol, is trained in the method and is doing research into the effectiveness of this work in the corporate context.
There are several other people in The Netherlands who are trained in the method and offer it to their students. It is also part of a “Happy-U” research project at The University of The Hague.
Creative writing refers to exercises where participants try playful approaches in order to explore their own life themes.
Expressive writing refers to writing about difficulty, pain, and traumatic experiences in order to discover what motivates and blocks us.
Reflective writing is writing in a way that begins to create more structure in the discoveries made during creative and expressive writing.
Free webinar:
http://writingtheself.ca/2019/06/20/free-webinar-on-career-writing/
New research is being done in the corporate world by Kat McNichol. Kat holds a B.A. in English Literature, and an MAIS in Writing and New Media, and Literary Studies. She is currently completing a PhD at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands where she is using autoethnography and writing as a method to research the impact that therapeutic writing has on career identity.
http://dreamers writing.com/career-writing
