Expectations, recall and evaluation of careers guidance interviews by pupils and careers advisers: a preliminary study

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the perceptions of initial careers guidance interviews as expressed by pupils and careers advisers. A sample of 51 careers guidance interviews were studied, which were carried out by 16 qualified careers advisers operating under normal working conditions. The school pupils were from the lower streams of 16 different secondary level schools, half were male, and the majority were either unsure of leaving or were planning to leave school at the earliest opportunity. The study adopted a quantitative repeated measures design where both interview participants completed pre-interview expectation questionnaires, post-interview recall questionnaires and scales measuring interview evaluations. The results suggested a range of differences between careers advisers' and pupils' expectations, recall and evaluations of careers guidance interviews. However, both participants' overall satisfaction with the careers interview was significantly related to the interpersonal aspects of the process, while the provision of careers advice contributed to overall satisfaction expressed by careers advisers only. The findings are discussed in relation to evaluation of provision and the preparation of clients for participation in careers guidance interviews.     

Computer-Assisted Careers Counselling: A New Approach

This paper describes the outcome of a research and development project concerned to construct a computer aid for careers advisers and career decision-makers which differs in basic philosophy and design from others currentiy in the field. The resulting Careers Decision Aiding System (CDAS) is principally concerned with improving the quality of the decision-making strategy employed by clients by raising their awareness of the way in which their career choice is made, ratherthan with employing computer technology to attempt to match people to careers. The use of the CDAS by clients and careers advisers is illustrated by two case-studies.     

The Role of Interest in Understanding the Career Choices of Female and Male College Students

Mismatch between college students' work goals and perceived goal affordances of physical/mathematical science careers may help explain gender differences in interest and career choice. In Study 1, the desire for interesting work was cited by most students in the sample (89% White, 6% Asian, 5% other). Compared to men, women reported interpersonal work goals more and high pay and status work goals less frequently. In Study 2, students (79% White, 12% Latino, 5% Asian, 4% other, predominantly middle class) perceived physical/mathematical science careers as less likely to afford interpersonal goals and more likely to afford high pay and status goals compared to other careers. Interpersonal goal affordances predicted greater interestingness for all careers, whereas high pay and status goal affordances predicted greater interestingness only for physical/mathematical sciences. Interestingness positively predicted likelihood of career choice.     

the career wheel: an exercise for exploring and validating one's career choices

Students are often uncertain and at times misinformed about the careers they are pursuing. Thus, they often make poor career decisions that they ultimately regret. The career wheel exercise is designed to help an individual to be better informed and thus make better career‐related decisions. This article describes the career wheel exercise, which is an active career exploration device. Through this exercise, students validate or invalidate their beliefs and assumptions about the careers they are actively pursuing or contemplating. Thus, they are able to make a more informed career and job choice.     

Matching Abilities to Careers for Others and Self: Do Gender Stereotypes Matter to Students in Advanced Math and Science Classes?

Interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers falls off more quickly for young women than for young men over adolescence, and gender stereotypes may be partially to blame. Adolescents typically become more stereotypical in their career interests over time, yet they seem to become more flexible in applying stereotypes to others. Models of career interest propose that career decisions result from the alignment of self-perceived abilities with occupation-required skills and that gender stereotypes may influence this process. To investigate the discrepancy between applying stereotypes to self and others, we examined if these models can be applied to perceptions of others. Focusing on students from fifth grade through college enrolled in advanced STEM courses, we investigated how STEM occupational stereotypes, abilities, and efficacy affect expectations for others’ and own career interests. U.S. participants (n = 526) read vignettes describing a hypothetical male or female student who was talented in math/science or language arts/social studies and then rated the student’s interest in occupations requiring some of those academic skills. Participants’ self-efficacy, interest, and stereotypes for STEM occupations were also assessed. Findings suggest that ability beliefs, whether for oneself or another, are powerful predictors of occupational interest, and gender stereotypes play a secondary role. College students were more stereotypical in their ratings of others, but they did not manifest gender differences in their own STEM self-efficacy and occupational interests. Experiences in specialized STEM courses may explain why stereotypes are applied differentially to the self and others.     

Counseling would‐be entrepreneurs

The aim of this article is to provide counselors, academic advisers, and career coaches with a basic understanding of entrepreneurial careers. After presenting a brief history of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss various psychological, social, and economic factors associated with selecting, preparing for, and remaining successful in an entrepreneurial career. They also discuss various ways counselors can help aspiring entrepreneurs achieve their goals. An extensive annotated bibliography of online entrepreneurship resources is included.     

Parental Identification and Educational Dissatisfaction in Troubled College Students

Summary

The hypothesis was tested that the greater development of career interests associated with a masculine-parent identification would contribute to the educational problems of the troubled liberal arts college student. This was ased upon the anticipated frustrative effects of low career relevance of liberal arts curricula upon students with clearer career interests. Eighty liberal arts students (45 males and 35 females), clients at a college counseling agency, were subdivided into groups based upon primary parental identification (father versus mother) and masculinity-femininity of the identification model. Masculine-identified males (but not females) more frequently demonstrated less satisfaction with their majors relative to their feminineidentified counterparts when subjective ratings of certainty, relevance, and general satisfaction were considered. A higher incidence of choice problems (no chosen major or one or more changes of major) was found for masculineparent identified Ss of both sexes.     

Giving voice to the dual-career couple

Changes in the nature of careers, and also of families, mean new challenges for the increasing number of dual-career couples in society. Each couple faces multiple concerns, including two individual careers, a shared relationship and the interdependence among all of these elements. This paper contributes to the counselling literature by reporting two case studies in which a new methodological approach was adopted, intended to make a couple's concerns explicit and provide a platform for further action. Using the holistic model of the intelligent career, a facilitated process was used to elicit first subjective, then inter-subjective career data, enabling the partners to make sense of their individual careers within a context of their shared relationship. The preliminary results suggest the methodology may provide a novel and useful way to give 'voice' to—and in turn facilitate action by—the dual-career couple.     

High School Biology/Life Science Teachers’ Presentation of Genetic Counseling and Health Care Career Options in Their Classrooms

Studies show teachers play an influential role in the career decision-making process of students and early knowledge of genetic counseling (GC) increases the likelihood students will consider this career option. This quantitative study is the first to explore the presentation of GC and other health care career options by high school (HS) biology/life science (B/LS) teachers in their classrooms. Our findings indicate most B/LS teachers present GC as a career option to HS students, agree it complements classroom activities, and perceive students as interested in learning about the profession. However, teachers note many barriers to spending class time presenting GC careers. Consequently, a substantial number of teachers spent a minimal amount of time presenting health care careers in general. We discuss ways genetic counselors can enhance career resources, reduce barriers, and foster student interest in pursuing a career in GC by developing partnerships with HS B/LS teachers.     

Careers lessons and career awareness of fifth-form students

A questionnaire designed to assess the 'career awareness' of fifth-form students was completed by 274 students from six different schools. The results were used to investigate differences between students who were having and not having regular careers lessons. The results indicated: (a) that those having regular careers lessons, especially the less-able, had a greater knowledge of the world of work than their peers who had no such lessons; (b) that those having regular careers lessons were less reliant on their family for careers advice, and in general used a wider range of sources for career knowledge; and (c) that those having regular careers lessons were more aware of the preparations necessary for job interviews.     

Willingness to help as determined by the sex-role appropriateness of the help-seeker's career goals

College students were asked if they would be willing to serve as student contacts for high school students applying for admission to the university who wanted more information about student life. Students volunteered to spend more time helping a female applicant if she wanted to become a librarian than if she wanted to become an engineer, while they volunteered to spend more time helping a male applicant if he wanted to become an engineer than if he wanted to become a librarian. Results were the same when the dependent measure was the amount of time volunteered for interviews, for telephone conversations, and for letterwriting, indicating that the amount of personal contact required did not influence subjects' preference to help those whose career aspirations were sex-role appropriate more than those whose career goals were sex-role inappropriate.     

Examining Career Readiness in a Liberal Arts Undergraduate Career Planning Course

This study explored a career planning course at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities’ College of Liberal Arts. The course aimed to improve students’ career readiness through reflections about their liberal arts education. Individual interviews explored how the course affected students’ ability to articulate the value of their education to potential employers. The authors found that students learned how to articulate career competencies and developed an understanding of what a liberal arts education entails and how it aligns with career readiness. Implications for career development practice are highlighted.     

Living in Alternative and Inner Worlds: Early Signs of Acting Talent

In an exploratory, qualitative study, 11 professional actors were interviewed about their childhoods to investigate the early predictors of acting talent. To control for verbal talent, scientists-turned-lawyers were selected as a comparison group. Participants were asked about their families, schooling, and training, as well as about their early propensities for play and imagination, their orientation towards fiction, and their emotionality and attunement to others' mental states. Actors' childhood memories differed from those of the lawyers in the following respects. The actors recalled greater engagement in alternative worlds (imaginary and fictional worlds) and in inner worlds (emotional and other mental states). Not surprisingly, then, they were also more likely to recall feeling different from others and unable to engage fully in school. Unlike the lawyers, the actors recalled practicing for their adult roles as early as age 4—by inventing and directing plays in their backyards. Unlike lawyers, actors chose their careers despite parental discouragement: although their parents valued the arts, they discouraged the choice of acting as a career. Taken together, the results suggest that an early interest in alternative and inner worlds and an identification of oneself as different from others are predictive of early and steady involvement in theater—a choice of career in which one can live daily in another world of imagined lives and in the other world of others' mental lives.     

Women, careers, and work-life preferences

There are no sex differences in cognitive ability but enduring sex differences in competitiveness, life goals, the relative emphasis on agency versus connection. Policy-makers' and feminist emphasis on equal opportunities and family-friendly policies assumes that sex discrimination is the primary source of sex differentials in labour market outcomes—notably the pay gap between men and women. However, some careers and occupations cannot be domesticated—examples are given—and this also poses limits to social engineering. Recent research shows that high levels of female employment and family-friendly policies reduce gender equality in the workforce and produce the glass ceiling. Preference theory is the only theory that can explain these new trends, the continuing pay gap and occupational segregation. Preference theory implies that there are at least three types of career rather than one. However, the differences between men and women's career goals are smaller than sometimes thought.     

Bifurcations à partir/en direction de carrières artistiques : analyse structurale de récits biographiques

Referring to the artistic careers that particularly attract young people today, the article seeks to clarify the process of changing direction in the light of the chain of experienced events and the thinking involved when choosing a professional career. Considering training periods as a valuable opportunity to look back at past experiences and look forward to a professional future, it examines four cases in which the subjects decided to retrain, involving a shift to or from artistic careers. Structural analyses of the biographical interviews enabled us to compare the main life events of the subjects, viewed in relation to the past, present and future, the agents intervening in their career path, and the arguments underlying their decisions. On this basis, the factors that triggered the bifurcation, the interventions of significant others, and the relationship with time when making the change, are described and discussed from a counselling perspective.     

The effect of self‐regulated decision making on career path and major‐related career choice satisfaction

The present research examined the influence of self‐regulated decision making on satisfaction in career path (college major for Study 1, job for Study 2) and major‐related career choice. Results indicate a full mediating effect of fit in the relationship between self‐regulated decision making and satisfaction in career path. Self‐regulated decision making also influenced major–job congruence via satisfaction with a participant's college major. Findings suggest that individuals who possess self‐regulatory ability in decision‐making contexts were more likely to choose majors and jobs of good fit, experience satisfaction from their career decisions, and choose careers relevant to their college majors.     

Graduate Pre-Selection: Some Findings and their Guidance Implications

The application forms of graduate applicants to six organisations were analysed in two investigations. In the first, those features of the forms which predicted whether they were rejected or passed on for interview were discovered. These differed across organisational type, and included aspects of the way in which the form was completed and personal background factors, as well as experience and achievement. In the second investigation, the think-aloud protocols of recruiters as they read the application forms were analysed. Inferences from information rather than the information itself predicted decisions. It is concluded that careers advisers should offer instruction on a variety of matters relating to completion of application forms; and that graduate recruiters should continue to undertake the task of pre selection rather than seeking to 'farm it out'.     

The impact of education and selected traits on sex-role related goals and attitudes

Questionnaires that assessed educational goals, career goals, preferred and expected career commitment, sex-role attitudes, age, college class, height, and weight were completed by 884 male and female undergraduates representing two racial groups and two age groups. Age, size, and college class were unrelated to women's goals and attitudes, whereas men chose more traditional careers as their education progressed. Technical college students tended to be more traditional than university students. Implications for related research are discussed.     

MATHEMATICS ANXIETY AND SCIENCE CAREERS AMONG ABLE COLLEGE WOMEN

Abstract —Does mathematics anxiety deflect able students from pursuing scientific careers? We obtained the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of 1,366 students entering Barnard College and also questioned them about their career interests and their feelings about mathematics learning At every level of mathematical skill, math anxiety correlated negatively with interest in scientific careers Contrariwise, quantitative SAT score was unrelated lo career interests, within relatively homogeneous categories of math anxiety or confidence Students were also asked directly whether the desire to avoid math affected their career choices The responses suggested a mediating role for math anxiety or confidence in career choice.     

MATHEMATICS AND SELF-ESTEEM: IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN'S CAREER CHOICE

The relationship of math participation and success to self-esteem and career goals is examined in a sample of 64 women and 52 men college students at the end of their sophomore year. No gender differences were found in math anxiety or perceptions of the usefulness of mathematics, but women were less likely to select a math-related career goal. Among the men students, math participation and self-assessments of math ability were positively related to more general self-estimates of competence; among women, these variables were not related significantly. Women's choices for math-related careers were more closely associated with scholastic ability and math background than were men's career choices. These results are discussed in the context of societal pressures and supports for men and women in regard to math participation.