David V. Tiedeman

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David Valentine Tiedeman (born August 12, 1919 in Americus , USA ; † September 25, 2004 ) was an American educational scientist , psychologist and counselor . He founded a constructivist theory of career choice and professional development and counseling concepts aimed at this.

Life

Tiedeman first studied at the University of Rochester , where he was involved in the selection and training of pilots from 1941 to 1943 and worked in the statistics department of the Manhattan Project from 1944 to 1946 . He graduated in 1948 with a Master of Education and in 1949 with a Ph.D. in the same subject at Harvard University . 1952-1971 he worked as a lecturer and (from 1959) as a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education . From 1963 to 1966 he was an associate director at the Center for Research in Careers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

In 1973 Tiedemann became a professor at Northern Illinois University and in 1981 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles . In 1984 he retired. He was a member and often chairman of numerous university and government agencies that deal with career planning and career guidance . I.a. he was 1965/1966 President of the National Career Development Association (NCDA).

Tiedemann was married twice, most recently to Anna Miller-Tiedeman, the co-author of some of his publications, and had two children.

Theoretical approach

After initially dealing with statistical analyzes of professional behavior, Tiedeman developed a constructivist approach to understanding careers, which he interpreted as the result of purposeful professional behavior in which “the whole” of the person organizes the individual elements. He defined career development as the making of a life and the evolution of existential meaning . With existential meaning is meant the meaning that people ascribe to their experiences. According to Tiedemann, three factors are decisive for the success of career development: firstly, processes of self-organization , in which the specific professional adaptation to the environment is controlled by the regulatory mechanism of the career , which can be interpreted as an overarching growth goal ; second, appropriate targeted activities to bridge professional discontinuities and breaks; and thirdly, decisions that move between differentiation (e.g. through specialization) and integration (of one's own person or their skills or integration into a team). This can lead to paradoxical developments if z. For example, a person tentatively takes on a certain activity, but devotes himself to it without hesitation. According to Tiedeman, both constant, non-binding attempts and overly strong unreflected commitment involve specific risks; both attitudes are occasionally reinforced by counselors.

According to Tiedeman, the psychology of career choice should relate to the development of personality and career, but not primarily to the competencies and adaptation processes required for immediate task management. Such a functionalist perspective was only in the foreground in his earlier work (e.g. in the selection of pilots); later he considered it to be shortened positivistic and (because of the numerous dimensions in which job-related behavior and competencies can be theoretically subdivided) as fragmented. He therefore tried to place older theories such as Donald Super's model of development stages or his idea of recycling earlier career paths and John L. Holland's RIASEC model in the context of a comprehensive process model of career development. He also formulated the idea of ​​the possibility of a positive reverse development to earlier career paths.

Influence on practice

His work has influenced the theory and practice of career counseling in the USA in the sense of the development of a more targeted behavior that is not primarily determined by personality types, development stages, maturation processes or the functional fit of work tasks on the one hand and behavior or skills on the other. According to Tiedeman, the counselor's task is rather to clarify the clients' subjective ideas about their professional development and thus to contribute to the development of a well-planned career plan that can serve as a regulator for pending specific decisions and adjustment processes. However, his conceptually complex works were not always understood by practitioners, which hindered their reception. Above all, the subjectification of the concept of career, through which Tiedeman focuses on the subjective professional reality that is difficult to operationalize, was not understood everywhere.

Works

  • with RP O'Hara: Career Development. New York 1963.
  • The role of decision-making in information generation (ISVD): Cultivating the possibility for career through operations. Cambridge 1966.
  • Career Development: Designing our career machine. Schenectady, NY 1979.

literature

  • SK Olson, VF Roberts: David V. Tiedeman: Statistician, scholar, and sage. In: Journal of Counseling and Development. 63 (1985) 10, pp. 597-604.
  • Mark Savickas: David V. Tiedeman: Engineer of Career Construction. In: The Career Development Quarterly. 56 (2008) 3, pp. 217-224.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tiedeman, O'Hara 1963, p. 4.
  2. ↑ Savickas 2008, p. 222 f.
  3. ↑ Savickas 2008, p. 217.
  4. ↑ David A. Jepsen: A Tribute to David Tiedeman. In: The Career Development Quarterly. 56 (2008) 3, pp. 225-231.
personal data
SURNAME Tiedeman, David V.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tiedeman, David Valentine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American educationalist, psychologist and counselor
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Americus , USA
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 2004