The field of career guidance is replete with theories and models that take multiple perspectives on career development and people’s work lives. Ideally, career theory should provide a foundation for practice. To a large extent, however, throughout the history of career guidance, theory and practice have travelled on parallel tracks. The esoteric nature of some theories makes them seem remote from practice producing a theory-practice divide. In an effort to address this divide, the presenters published an edited collection featuring more than forty chapters written by authors from four continents and nine countries that specifically focused on the application of career theory and models to practice. To this end, each chapter concluded with a set of practice points specifically intended to bridge the theory-practice divide. Although some practice points were theory or model specific, others were more generic in nature and were evident in several chapters. In total, 295 practice points were presented across the chapters. In order to provide a succinct resource for practitioners, the presenters distilled a set of key practice concepts by conducting a thematic analysis of the practice points.
This presentation reports on a project to bridge the theory-practice divide. It first considers contributing factors to the theory-practice divide and outlines the background to the project. The process of data analysis is described and the results, in the form of a set of key practice concepts across the domains of practitioner competencies and practice considerations, are presented. Practitioners are encouraged to reflect on their own practice from the perspective of the key practice concepts.