Changes that take place in a job environment, job structure, job perception, as well as in the sphere of features, meanings and values ascribed to work are constituents of changes in the contemporary world, particularly of the development of the free market economy. It is difficult to overestimate the significance of these changes for the quality of career construction, its development and modification of its individualized paths. The contemporary study of career requires taking into account multicontextual changes in the world of work, that make employees face new challenges. In the economy based on knowledge, which in turn determines the orientation of the modern society to knowledge, the career development of its members and investing in their „portfolio” become the key elements of such an economy. The development of a career “portfolio” means the investment and renewal of the career capital on the path of proactivity.

In the article the author discusses the relationship between education and socio-cultural needs. The socio – cultural reality is the reality of a permanent change. It is difficult to describe and even more difficult to understand. The specific character of qualitatively new changes in the relations between globality and locality implies a completely new perception of reality, ways of interpreting the world, and a new quality of judgments about the condition of the modern man. This reality is also a ”multiplicity of worlds”, which means a large number of possibilities to create oneself. What individuals perceive as their ”own” has the biggest developmental potential when it is worked out on the proactivity path. proactive people are distinguished by interrelated features: the search for a possibility of change (the environment examination, going beyond limitations of a given situation), establishing effective and change oriented goals (opening new paths of action), foreseeing problems and remedia measures (the analysis of one’s own achievements, looking for signals of threats or dangers), looking for new ways of achieving goals (the ambition is to make a new tradition).

In knowledge based economy, which actually reflects the knowledge oriented modern society, career development of its members becomes the key factor, same as investing in career “portfolio”. In the article a career construct is invoked as an individual’s property considering individual career choices, individual career development planning and monitoring strategies. When addressing career related matter, one cannot overlook the issue of subjective meaning given to a career in the context of satisfactory outcome and success achievement experienced by the subject. Cognitively interesting issue addressed by the author are the results of research into evaluation of one’s own chances to succeed from the perspective of university students who are in the transition period from academic education to entering a job market.

Born and died in Warsaw. Irena Wojnar started studying the humanities during World War II, at the clandestine University of Warsaw. Between 1946 and 1949 she continued her studies at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Warsaw, in the so-called Seminar of Pedagogy II. In 1949 she was formally employed at the University and remained there until her death. Between 1958 and 1960, as a holder of the Ford Foundation scholarship, she studied at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where she defended her doctoral dissertation “Situation actuelle de la jeunesse par rapport a l'art”. She did her fellowship and obtained habilitation at the University of Warsaw in 1965. In 1976 she became an associate professor and in 1985 a professor. From 1967 to 2004, prof. Wojnar headed the Laboratory and afterwards the Department of the Theory of Aesthetic Education at the Faculty of Pedagogy of the University of Warsaw. Professor Irena Wojnar was a member of the Committee on Pedagogical Sciences at the Polish Academy of Sciences (1976–2012, since 2016 an honorary member), the Prognosis Committee “Poland 2000 Plus” at the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1970–2011, since 2011 an honorary member). Professor Irena Wojnar is an author of almost 300 publications: monographs, edited and co-edited collections, scripts, anthologies, translations and scientific articles. She promoted more than 400 MA and 29 PhD works.