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Willie Chinyamurindi

Photo of Willie Chinyamurindi

Research student

You can email Willie Chinyamurindi directly; but for media enquiries please contact a member of The Open University's Media Relations team.

Current research

Using narratives and story-telling in career development: A South African distance learning perspective

Research within the career psychology field has been equivocal with regards to understanding careers and career development. Work done in this regard can be summarised along three strands: 

  1. research using models and theories set within an American & European context
  2. research leaning towards mostly a positivist stance manifest in quantitative methods and experimental design
  3. research using various sample groups to understand careers and career development.

Despite this focus, much still needs to be done to understand careers in contexts outside the ones stated. In the South African higher education sector no work has explored career development taking into consideration previous disadvantage amongst distance learners; whose careers can be thought to be in progress and having greater variation in terms of demographics and activity. This study aims to explore and understand career development using this sample. Attention is given to indigenous psychology and seeks to understand psychology while taking into consideration the local condition of the people.

This research seeks to answer the following question: How do the personal narratives of career development processes in South African distance learners vary and to what extent are elements of previous disadvantage the source of that difference?

Supervisors