Who seeks career counselling? A prospective study of personality and career variables among Swiss adolescents

This study investigated whether career adaptability, personality, attitude towards career counselling and some demographic variables predict the help seeking behaviour in career counselling among 330 Swiss adolescents in eighth grade. The results indicated that boys were less likely to seek help and that career related variables and attitude but not personality significantly predicted help-seeking. Specifically, help seeking related positively to undecidedness and positive perception of career counselling. Implications for school and career counsellors and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Career coping styles: differences in career attitudes among secondary school students

The types of difficulties associated with career attitudes were studied using Super’s model of career maturity (1990) in a group of 620 Portuguese students from grades 9 and 12. A cluster analysis identified four styles with different patterns of association between time perspective, attributional beliefs, self-esteem and career attitudes. The adaptive style showed more committed career attitudes, and the other three styles—superficial, insecure and pessimistic—showed lower levels of career maturity. Implications for career counselling are further discussed.     

Career guidance and counselling efficacy studies: an international research agenda

More efficacy studies, experimental designs, and longitudinal research in career guidance and counselling in educational and organizational settings, and for diverse cultural and economic backgrounds are needed. Research on the effectiveness of career guidance and counselling that demonstrates gains on a variety of levels is necessary to enhance the future of the field. Recommendations for internationalizing career guidance and counselling research by using a scientist practitioner model, diverse research methodology, and instruments to measure career outcomes are made.     

Students’ career concerns: challenges facing guidance providers in higher education

The study reported here examined higher education career guidance at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. In a survey (N = 880), students were asked to describe how much thinking they had done about their future career and forthcoming transition from university to working life. The use of different sources of guidance and counselling service providers was examined from the perspective of a student-centred holistic model of guidance. On the basis of the empirical findings, challenges facing career guidance in higher education are discussed.     

Increasing the career choice readiness of young adolescents: an evaluation study

A career workshop that applies models of the Cognitive Information Processing Approach (Sampson, Reardon, Peterson, &; Lenz, 2004) and incorporates critical ingredients (Brown and Ryan Krane, 2000) to promote the career choice readiness of young adolescents was developed and evaluated with 334 Swiss students in seventh grade applying a Solomon four group design with a three-month follow-up. Participants significantly increased their performance in terms of career decidedness, career planning, career exploration, and vocational identity. Implications for evaluation research and counselling practice are presented.     

A Developmental Perspective on Vocational Behaviour: Career Patterns, Salience, and Themes

Donald E. Super's signal contribution to the science of vocationalpsychology and the practice of career counselling arose from his takinga developmental perspective on occupational choice and work adjustment.He asserted that the individual differences view of occupations andworkers ignored the longitudinal vantage point from which one canobserve how individuals expand their vocational coping repertoires andmove into more congruent positions. From this seminal insight, heelaborated important hypotheses about career maturity, salience, stages,patterns, and themes. Super's models and measures of these constructsremain as valuable today as when he first introduced them in the1950s.     

To be or not to be? Discursive resources for (Dis‐)identifying with science‐related careers

One of the main objectives of many science educators is to enroll students into science majors and careers. Researchers have investigated students' views of science in terms of factors and influences that guide students to choose science as a career. However, few investigations exist that have studied the forms of language culture makes available for articulating possible careers generally or the ways of grounding (justifying) these possibilities particularly. The purpose of this study is to investigate ways of using language for supporting justifications of career choices in an interview situation. Thirteen high school biology students were interviewed about their career choices. Drawing on discursive psychology as theory and method, we identify four interpretative repertoires that are deployed during the interviews: the (a) formative, (b) performative, (c) consequent, and (d) potential repertoires. These interpretative repertoires do not merely characterize the discourse about different science‐related professions but in fact co‐articulate different science‐related identities. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 1114–1136, 2009     

Urban High School Students’ IT/STEM Learning: Findings from a Collaborative Inquiry- and Design-Based Afterschool Program

This exploratory study examines the impact of a collaborative inquiry- and design-based afterschool program on urban high school students’ IT/STEM learning—using information technology (IT) within the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The study used a mixed methods design, involving 77 participants within two cohort groups, each participating in an eighteen-month intervention period. Data were collected from the pre- and post-surveys, analysis of the participants’ IT/STEM projects, external evaluation reports, and follow-up interviews. Findings indicate that the program had a significant impact on students’ technology and IT/STEM skills, frequency of technology use, and understanding of IT use in STEM-oriented fields. Some degree of impact on attitude changes toward IT/STEM and career aspirations in these fields was also in evidence. The study demonstrates that IT/STEM experiences supported through technology-enhanced, inquiry- and design-based collaborative learning strategies have significant impact on urban high school students’ IT/STEM learning. Effect of afterschool programs on attitude changes and IT/STEM-related career aspirations of urban high school students are recommended areas of further investigation.     

An Analysis of Teacher Discourse that Introduces Real Science Activities to High School Students

Most academic science educators encourage teachers to provide their students with access to more authentic science activities. What can and do teachers say to increase students’ interests in participating in opportunities to do real science? What are the discursive resources they draw on to introduce authentic science to students? The purpose of this ethnographic and discourse-analytic study is to investigate the ways in which the activities of scientists are discursively presented to high school students in a biology/career preparation course. Data sources were collected by means of observation, field notes, interviews, and videotaped lessons in an eleventh-grade biology/career preparation course. Drawing on discourse analysis, we investigate the discursive resources—or, more specifically and technically, the interpretative repertoires—teachers used to explain and promote opportunities to engage students in real science activities. Our analysis identifies and characterizes six types of interpretative repertoires: specialized, a-stereotypical, relevant, empirical, emotive, and rare-opportunity. To better understand the “big picture” of how these discursive resources are drawn on in the classroom, we also report on the frequencies of the repertoires in the discourse and the ways in which repertoires changed in the course of teacher-student interactions. The findings of this case study offer teachers and researchers with a better understanding of how specific forms of discourse—i.e., the repertoires—can serve as resources to enhance teacher-introduction of authentic science to students and provide students a bridge between school and authentic science.     

A look at the present — A step to the future: An analysis of career and employment counselling in Canada

This paper reports the findings from a major survey of career and employment counselling in Canada. It describes the current state of career and employment counselling in Canada and outlines several emerging issues for future consideration.Canadian Guidance and Counselling Foundation     

The cultural and educational transitioning of first generation immigrant undergraduate students in Quebec, Canada

The diversity of Canadian society and the significance of education for occupational mobility have prompted investigations into immigrant’s educational attainment, yet little research examines immigrant post-secondary students. This phenomenological study illuminates the institutional, societal, educational, and psychosocial barriers facing immigrant undergraduates in Quebec, and examines their mentoring and career counselling needs. Recommendations for career counselling and university programming are discussed.     

The effects of a 13-week career development programme on career-adapting thoughts and behaviours

This quasi-experimental design study investigated an interactive and practical Career Development Programme (CDP), a 13-week career guidance and counselling (CGC) intervention, on a sample of 224 Czech students. Students who received the CGC intervention and those from the “waiting list” who expressed interest in gaining support through the CDP were assessed at the beginning and at the end of the 13-week intervention. The findings indicated the benefits of CDP for the transition from university to working life: as hypothesized, the CDP increased career adaptability and cooperation, career construction and career maturity of students and graduates.

     

Counseling Services for Malaysian Gifted Students: An Initial Study

This is a preliminary study that was conducted in regard to 180 gifted students who attended the ‘Malaysian Gifted Centre’s School Holiday Camp’ in 2011. Data indicated that only about 7 % of the respondents had a tendency to seek a counsellor’s help to solve their problems, and the need for counselling services was higher among female than male students. It was also found that career counselling was the most preferred type of counselling service needed by the Malaysian gifted students. Findings from the study reveal five different elements that need consideration when providing counselling services for gifted students: counsellor personality, student issues, the therapeutic environment, approaches used by the counsellor, and the counsellor’s role.     

Dialogical approach applied in group counselling: Case study

This study utilizes structured group counselling and a dialogical approach to develop a group counselling intervention for students beginning a computer science education. The study assesses the outcomes of group counselling from the standpoint of the development of the students’ self-observation. The research indicates that group counselling can clarify students’ self-observation and create conditions for developing agency. The outcomes were examined individually by means of dialogical sequence analysis. At the conclusion of the group counselling sessions, three attitudes toward the study of computer science were found: committed, wavering and problematic.     

Examination of a Group Counseling Model of Career Decision Making With College Students

The authors examined the effectiveness of a group career counseling model (Pyle, 2007 ) on college students’ career decision‐making abilities. They used a Solomon 4‐group design and found that students who participated in the career counseling groups had significantly greater increases in career decision‐making abilities than those who did not participate in the groups. Implications for counseling and future research are discussed.     

Guidance counsellor and student perceptions of counselling lessons in Finnish comprehensive school

The present study concerns counselling lessons in the final grade of Finnish comprehensive school. It focuses on the relevance of counselling lessons to the students on the basis of their personal assessments. Methodologically, the issues at stake centre around the simultaneous examination of the classroom setting from the point of view of different participants.The methods employed are the so called stimulated recall interview and the content analysis of qualitative interview data. The observations presented are based on interviews of guidance counsellors and of their students after the lessons, which dealt with work and students' future choices.According to the observations, the students' perceptions on the relevance of the lessons varied to a major degree. Most of them regarded them as easy and routine school work. Also the interpretations of the teacher and the students differed in many aspects. In particular, only a minority of the students shared the teachers' views about the aims of the lesson.In general, the implications of the study for career education are fairly obvious. If it is organized as an ordinary classroom activity, students are inclined not to consider it to be personally relevant to them.     

导入职业生涯规划建立高职高专就业指导新模式

在就业方面,高职高专的毕业生相对而言属于大学毕业生群体中的弱势群体,要改变这种状况,就应当考虑在就业指导中导入职业生涯规划,建立高职高专就业指导新模式,主要可以从个体的自我定位、职业生涯目标的确定、建立和发展职业咨询机构及开设有关职业生涯规划的课程四方面尝试如何建立新模式。结合具体实际,对高职高专学生进行职业生涯规划可从全程就业指导做起。     

IT项目课程开发案例研究

IT项目课程开发应遵循以职业生涯发展规划导向"教"与"学"的原则,并以IT项目工作过程为载体,提升学生综合职业能力.课程开发的前提是开展IT职位信息调研,建立IT职业能力素质模型,主要包括职业素养、通用知识技能、专项知识技能三个维度.按照项目课程设计原则和步骤,对<职业格式文档处理技术>课程项目进行设计,选择文档规范化、文档自动化、文档安全化三个项目并细分为若干个工作任务.     

Game-based career learning support for youth: effects of playing the Youth@Work game on career adaptability

Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions that youth has to take but many young people find this a hard issue to engage with. Current career counselling practice does not appear very compelling or motivating to young people. Professional games could provide a more engaging and motivating way of acquiring professional awareness and competence for career decision making and learning. We present the design and effects of playing a game that aims to increase career awareness and adaptabilities in youth (13–19 years). In a Randomized Controlled Trial, 93 high school students from Iceland and Romania were asked to carry out career-oriented activities, with half playing an interactive game and the other half performing a paper-and-pencil version of the same activities. The students were compared on career adaptability, career learning and career awareness scores before and after these interventions. Main results show that engaging players in these career-oriented activities has short term effects on outcome scores for career adaptabilities and for perceptions of career learning competences. Students who played the game report significantly faster growth on career adaptabilities that deal with “concern”, “control” and “confidence”. It can therefore be concluded that introducing game-based learning in career decision support for youth is a promising endeavour.     

Career Guidance Training: Dealing with Uncertainty

In career guidance training participants are given time and space in order to gather knowledge of current interest. Career-relevant and other issues are re-contextualized by experiences participants have acquired during the course period. New interpretations are frequently co-created in a student group. A student should be in the position of being the best expert to reach further conclusions and solutions. Though changes in the students' orientation are often discovered during the course process, the effects of counselling are not usually communicable in terms of measurable "effectivity". The kind of discourse that objectifies the students and reduces the outcomes of counselling to quantitative indicators is to be avoided. It would appear that a new language is needed which is transparent and accessible to various stakeholders in education and counselling.