The Xhosa-speaking people of South Africa have a saying, xa umculo utshintsho nomduda uyatshintsha, which means that when the music changes so does the dance. The saying provides an appropriate metaphor for describing the development of the construct of career maturity and its assessment since its introduction over 50 years ago (Super, 1955). This chapter describes the development and adaptation of career maturity against the macro factors that changed the musical score to which it danced. The first section of the chapter describes the historical development of career maturity and its assessment within the modernist times in which it was conceived. The second section describes factors that changed the tune, with a specific emphasis on the relevance and validity of transporting career maturity from its westernised, middle-class, modernist roots into multicultural, post-modern contexts. This section raises issues of cultural relativity, cultural validity, cultural specificity, as well as psychometric issues concerning conceptual equivalence. The third section of the chapter considers how career maturity and its assessment will need to adapt if it is to stay in step with the present times within which individual career development takes place.
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Watson, M.B. (2008). Career Maturity Assessment in an International Context. In: Athanasou, J.A., Van Esbroeck, R. (eds) International Handbook of Career Guidance. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6230-8_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6230-8_25
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