The present study purposed to examine the relation between rural high school students' career self-efficacy and their work values and to establish desirable work values for the development of career self-efficacy and the wise selection of future occup...
The present study purposed to examine the relation between rural high school students' career self-efficacy and their work values and to establish desirable work values for the development of career self-efficacy and the wise selection of future occupations, which are important tasks during the time of high school.
The subjects of this study were 615 male and female high school students selected through convenient sampling from six high schools at Namhae-gun and Hadong-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do.
The tool used to measure career self-efficacy was CDMSES-SF developed by Betz, Klein and Taylor, which was a short form of 'Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale' developed by Taylor and Betz, and revised and complemented by Lee Eun-gyeong. The tool used to measure work values was 'Work Value Scale' developed by Lim In-jae and Ryu In-ja, partially modified by Byeon Jeong-jin and revised and complemented by the researcher. After the questionnaire survey was conducted, t test was carried out depending on the characteristic of research questions.
The results of this study are as follows.
First, no significant difference was observed in the sub-areas of rural high school students' career self-efficacy according to school year except goal setting although there were slight differences in the averages. Significant differences were observed in four sub-areas - job information, goal setting, planning and problem solving excluding self-evaluation - of rural high school students' career self-efficacy according to gender. In addition, female students' career self-efficacy was generally higher than male students' in the five sub-areas, namely, job information, goal setting, planning, self-evaluation and problem solving and in general career self-efficacy.
Second, no significant difference was observed in work values according to rural high school students' school year. In altruism, one of internal values of occupation, 1^(st)-year students showed a significantly higher average than 3^(rd)-year ones, but 3^(rd)-year students showed significantly higher averages than 1^(st)-year ones in the sense of achievement, aesthetic sense among the internal values of occupation as well as in independency and diversity among the external values of occupation. A significant difference was observed in the tendency of work values between male and female students. Male students showed significantly higher averages than female ones in economic reward and honor among the external values of occupation, and female students showed significantly higher averages than male ones in the sense of achievement, altruism and aesthetic sense among the internal values of occupation and cooperativeness, independency, stability and diversity among the external values of occupation.
Third, with regard to rural high school students' work values according to their career self-efficacy, the group with high career self-efficacy showed higher internal and external values than the group with low career self-efficacy. That is, when their career self-efficacy is high, high school students tended to have clear purposes of and reasons for working and to value occupation as a means not only of making money but also of feeling sense of achievement and fruitfulness, having wide human relations through various career activities and pursuing honor and status.
The results of this study presented above suggest that career self-efficacy has a significant effect on rural high school students' work values and their work values are different according to their career self-efficacy level. Accordingly, career education should be executed continuously in consideration of the trend of social changes so that high school students may develop positive career self-efficacy, which in turns establishes desirable work values, and ultimately they may explore various career paths, choose a desirable job and have a successful career life.