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“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question that potentially irritates careers advisors just as much as it does teens. It’s a question that exasperates me so much that I’ve undertaken a PhD to investigate what questions and techniques we should use with adolescents. Let me explain why this is so important to me.
Working with teenagers for more years than I care to mention has taught me some of their unique idiosyncrasies. As I researched the reasoning behind this, I became increasingly intrigued by the development of the teenage brain. This is an area starting to gain more scientific attention. Although teenage behaviour has been maligned throughout history – with Aristotle, Socrates and Shakespeare all lamenting the lazy, hot-headed nature of teenagers – science only discovered in the early 2000s that all adolescents go through a period of brain restructuring that leads to some of the stereotypical behaviour we associate with this phase.
From an evolutionary perspective, this restructuring is preparing our teens for independence from the family unit. However, during this phase, the pruning and formation of improved conduction in synapses means our teenagers can display some classic behaviours such as inability to plan, failing to see other’s points of view and increased risk taking. Our young people are beginning to form their sense of self along with their executive functions. These executive functions deal with emotional and self-control, planning, organization and goal setting. They are thought to be housed in the prefrontal cortex of the brain – the last area to develop during adolescence. We can see why, if this area is still in development, teens get the stereotypes they do and why this is so crucial for us as careers advisors.
“Our young people are beginning to form their sense of self along with their executive functions.”
If the skills needed for career planning are still in development during adolescence, do we need to rethink the way we approach guidance during this phase? This is a particularly important consideration given that adolescence today covers a far longer period due to factors such as extended education. Indeed, adolescence is now thought to last from 10 to around 25-30 years old. The shifts and imbalances in this developmental phase mean that adolescents are sensitive to emotion, primed for learning and motivated to learn about themselves. These are areas we can capitalize on to support.
Asking young people what they want to be is archaic. We no longer have neat career categories that people slot into. Asking “what” seems detached from the exploration of self that adolescents are embarking upon. Young people seek independence, and they want to experience what self they might be in the future. We need to investigate tools that will support them in these endeavours.
I’m researching the use of storytelling with adolescents. Storytelling can be a powerful medium of exploration, has roots in cultural traditions and can provide a safe environment to experience pathways and emotions creatively and flexibly. I hope that by investigating new techniques in light of what we now know about the adolescent brain, we can support our adolescents to make positive decisions for the future. Then we can begin to answer not what they want to be when they grow up, but who they could be throughout their journey.
