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Career Development of Youth: A Nationwide Study

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Career education and career guidance are currently high-priority items on the national agenda. Many believe student career development to be the unifying theme and primary goal of career education efforts. It was in the context of this national interest and the new developments in career education and career guidance that the Nationwide Study of Student Career Development (Prediger, Roth and Noeth 1973) was conducted. The primary purpose of the study was to assess and summarize core aspects of the career development of American youth enrolled in grades 8, 9, and 11. This is a particularly crucial period in the career development of students, one in which many experiences and decisions related to the post-high-school transition occur. Information on students' preparation for these decisions is certainly desirable as a basis for determining what is being done now and what needs to be done in the future.

Career Development of Youth: A Nationwide Study

The purpose of this article is to present some of the more significant findings of the study, findings that have implications for all counselors, but especially for those in school guidance programs. The article focuses primarily on what students say about their career development and about their current guidance needs. In addition, what students have done about career planning and what they know about career development are covered briefly.



Because the large amount of data obtained in the study precludes a complete discussion, we have attempted to identify some of the more salient findings and to draw some implications from them. Admittedly, this is a subjective process. Readers are therefore reminded that judgments concerning the implications of the findings are the authors' and that detailed study results are available for readers who wish to draw their own conclusions after inspecting the data.

The target population for the study was defined as all full-time 8th, 9th, and 11th grade students enrolled in public or Catholic schools in the United States in the spring of 1973. The sample, which consisted of approximately 32,000 students in 200 schools located in 33 states, was selected by Research Triangle Institute using sampling frame data developed for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Stratification variables included region of country and size and socioeconomic status of community. When it was not possible to test all students, students in the specified grade within each selected school were randomly chosen. Weights were applied to sample data to insure that study results would be nationally representative. A detailed description of sampling procedures has been provided by Bayless, Bergsten, Lewis, and Noeth (1974).

Under the supervision of local school personnel, students in the sample completed the Assessment of Career Development (ACD), a 267-item paper-and-pencil inventory/test. The ACD, which was developed from detailed content specifications drawn from career development theory and guidance practice (American College Testing Program 1974), covers the following core components of career development: (1) occupational awareness, including occupational knowledge and exploratory experiences; (2) self-awareness, including career plans and perceived needs for help with career planning; and (3) career planning and decision making, including career planning knowledge and involvement in career planning activities. The ACD also elicits student reactions to career guidance experiences, provides scores for 11 scales, and summarizes student responses to 42 specific questions.

Results and Discussion

Student-Perceived Needs for Help

One of the most striking findings of this study is students' apparent receptivity to receiving help with career planning. If recognition of the need for help with career planning is interpreted as an indicator of readiness, then American teenagers appear to be anxious to get on with career development.

Help with "making career plans" is by far the major area of need indicated by 11th graders; "finding after-school or summer work" is in second place. Far down on the list is "discussing personal concerns," the primary task for which many school counselors have been trained.

Reactions to School Guidance Services

The incidence of student-expressed need for help with career planning is in sharp contrast to the amount of help students say they receive. It would appear, then, that a need exists that remains for the most part unfulfilled.

One explanation for the large number of students who feel they receive little or no career planning help might be the unavailability of school counselors. An overwhelming 84 per cent say that they can usually or almost always see a counselor when they want to. The implication, then, is that many counselors are simply not providing help with career planning, either on a one-to-one basis or through group guidance activities. Perhaps time constraints and conflicting responsibilities are the chief cause. We believe, however, that many counselors and administrators have failed to accept and communicate career planning as an appropriate responsibility of the school and that, as a result, students do not expect or request help with career planning.

For many years teachers have been urged to make their subjects relevant to the "real world." More recently, and particularly in career education programs, attention has shifted to "the world of work."

While the emphasis of these efforts is on instructional effectiveness and career awareness rather than on career planning, certainly help with the latter would be a reasonable concomitant to expect. However, a similar proportion of students indicate that help is "not provided" in class discussions of this type-possibly because a large number of teachers have yet to accept the career-relevance approach to instruction.

Career Plans

One of the questions in the study asked students to indicate their first occupational preference and then to select, from a list of 25 job families, the job family appropriate to this preference. While several discrepancies with U.S. Department of Labor employment projections are evident in the distributions of student preferences, the most striking feature of the data is the evidence of differences in responses of the two sexes. The nature of these differences is not surprising, but their extent is quite dramatic. For example, over half of the 11th grade girls choose occupations falling in only 3 of the 25 job families: clerical and secretarial work, education and social services, nursing and human care. By contrast, 7 percent of the boys prefer occupations in these areas. Nearly half of the boys' choices fall in the technologies and trades cluster of job families, in contrast to only 7 percent of the girls' choices. Results for 8th, 9th, and 11th graders are essentially the same. It is obvious that efforts to broaden the career options and choices of both males and females must overcome the pervasive influence of work role stereotypes related to sex.

Whether more 11th graders should be "very sure" of their first occupational preference depends on one's views about the career development process. Certainly there is ample testimony in the professional literature and labor market projections that youth should "stay loose" occupationally and keep doors open as long as possible. However, if vocational choice is the zeroing-in process that some believe it to be (Super 1963), one might expect that students finishing the 11th grade would be "fairly sure" of their occupational preferences. This would imply that they have at least given them a lot of thought; 55 per cent of the 11th graders say they have.

What Students Do and Know About Career Development

The following are capsule highlights of conclusions based on a large amount of additional information gathered in the study.
  1. As indicated by a 32-item self-report inventory, 20 per cent of the nation's 11th graders exhibit what can only be called a very low level of involvement in career planning activities. Another 50 per cent barely approach a minimally desirable level. Responses to specific items indicate that a substantial number of 11th graders have had very little involvement in frequently recommended career guidance practices (for example, field trips, worker interviews, role-play job interviews).
     
  2. As indicated by six scales covering job-related activities and experiences organized by occupational cluster, the exploratory occupational experiences of most students appear to be quite limited. Although many of these experiences occur outside of the school, none require actual employment. Rather, they represent a component of career awareness that schools can do much to develop.
     
  3. When the exploratory occupational experiences of males and females are compared, the results suggest distinct patterns related to sex roles endemic to American society. Again, schools can do much to broaden these experiences through the career awareness and career exploration programs now being developed.
     
  4. Results obtained from a 40-item career planning knowledge scale show both a lack of knowledge and a substantial amount of misinformation. For example, 53 percent of the 11th graders believe that more than one-third of all job openings require a college degree; 41 percent of the 8th graders believe that few women work outside of the home after marriage; and 61 percent of the 11th graders believe that most persons remain in the same jobs throughout their adult lives.
Implications

What, then, can be said about the career development of the nation's youth? First and foremost, student-expressed need for help with career planning is in sharp contrast to the amount of help students feel they receive. This discrepancy is reflected in what students have (and more often, have not) done to prepare for the difficult career decisions they face. Their lack of knowledge about the world of work and about the career planning process also testifies to their need for help. We believe that, considered together, these vantage points for viewing student career development-what students say, do, and know-provide a consistent and dismal picture. If we were speaking of physical development rather than career development, we would describe American youth as hungry, undernourished, and physically retarded.

Does this mean that 11th graders will be unable to cope with the career development tasks posed by society at the difficult high school to post-high-school transition point? Certainly youth in the past have been able to muddle through. However, we believe study results presage unfortunate amounts of floundering and prolonged states of indecision that are costly both to the individual and to society. Perhaps society can continue to absorb these costs while it avoids the costs inherent in the remedy. This is the course of least resistance, and its acceptance may involve the least controversy, especially since the remedies currently receiving attention are largely untested. However, thoroughly researched and proven effectiveness is seldom a prerequisite for programs designed to meet demonstrated human need. If it were, most of what is provided in the name of education (both lower and higher) would be recalled for further research and development. While efforts to facilitate student career development should not proceed haphazardly, it would appear from the results of this study that current attempts to implement new approaches to career guidance and career education are amply justified.

We firmly believe that the traditional one-to-one counseling model for helping youngsters "choose their life's work" can no longer be justified. This model must be reoriented to encompass what is known about how careers develop and must be broadened to include the resources of the classroom and the community. As counselors and counselor educators come to recognize work as one of the central experiences of men and women, as the making of a life as well as a living (Super 1957), we are hopeful that they will accept the challenge posed by the career development needs of American youth.
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