In the process of the structural upgrade of industry and technology advancement, the transformed economic circumstance is changing job structure rapidly. Such a flow expanded a range of individual career selection, at the same time, causing uncertain...
In the process of the structural upgrade of industry and technology advancement, the transformed economic circumstance is changing job structure rapidly. Such a flow expanded a range of individual career selection, at the same time, causing uncertainty and ambiguity of juveniles' career development. Particularly, specialized vocational high schools are recently faced with many confusions on career. Since, along with institutional expansion of college entrance, the number of students selecting entrance by an additional reason increases rather than their own purpose of occupational education. As a result, there are many cases that students at specialized vocational high schools, considering about between entering a college or a profession, have conflicts by external factors even if they selected the career. Students who want to enter a college have to take occupational education unfitting for their aptitude and come to hesitate about employment because of a social atmosphere demand for higher education is increasing. Considering such phenomena, students at specialized vocational high schools may be regarded as a group needing for more career guidance and the existing career guidance shall be changed. Besides, given that the aim of systemic career education is cultivation of competencies of career development, it suggests that an attempt to measure and understand a level of competencies of career development is to be made for guidance to help such students' positive career development. For these reasons, students at Specialized Vocational High Schools need to provide more specific career guideline. Specially, career developmental process of adolescence has effect on job competence during a life. It is considered not only to improve active attitude of developing learner's competencies, but also to prepare their career for a long time. Hence, the purpose of this study is to put focus on career decision making self-efficacy, commitment to vocational exploration as the factors which can determine leaning orientation, dependent variable and create a model describing the relationship among them.
Commitment to vocational exploration is one of the sub-factors of career decision commitment. Highschool students should immerse themselves in a proper and rational career decision, and its preparation with objective understanding on themselves and their future occupations. At the same time, they are supposed to experience anxiety and the possibility of failure. For this purpose, one of the important developmental tasks is commitment to vocational exploration. Therefore, it shows that a higher level of commitment to vocational exploration process relates to successful career development. Also, it is a process to be emphasized for students at specialized vocational high schools who enter a such period earlier than their peers and have a relatively short time for career exploration and commitment.
However, learning orientation means the attention of developing learner’s capability through challenging new knowledge and learning tasks. In this respect, learning orientation should be considered as a factor of career development related to engage in profession.
This research set up influence variables of self-efficacy and outcome expectation – which effect two dependent variables and are considered as important factors in SCCT(Social Cognitive Career Theory), for motivating students to do certain actions and finally reach a successful performances. It is suggested that a more specific research for teaching-learning strategy is needed for students at Specialized Vocational High Schools to enhance outcome expectation in the area of career guidance, so that they can bring themselves a positive career development and improve their learning orientation.
Many existing precedent studies showed that career decision-making self-efficacy has significant relations with various career-related variables and especially is a strong predictor for career maturity. Also, it is expected that career decision-making self-efficacy having a close relation with career maturity has a significant effect on the career-related achievement variable in that selection of a specialized vocational high schools is an important career decision-making in adolescence and an event causing a change to career maturity. Outcome expectation based on such Self-Efficacy also turned out to take a mediating role for continuing certain behavior, So, it is expected to have direct and indirect effects on competencies of career development.
Research topics of this study are as follows.
Research Topic 1. What is the structural relationship among career decision making self-efficacy, outcome expectation, commitment to vocational exploration, and learning orientation?
Research Topic 2. Is there direct/indirect effect among the career decision making self-efficacy, outcome expectation, commitment to vocational exploration, and learning orientation?
To verify research topics, this study analyzed data collected for 239 2nd grade students at A girls' specialized vocational high school for Marketing located at Seoul. As for the analytic methods, structural equation model was used, and descriptive statistics, correlation, reliability and validity analyses were conducted using SPSS, also measurement and structural models were verified using AMOS.
Research findings are as follows.
Firstly, for students at specialized vocational high schools, it revealed that there are adequate structural relations among career decision-making self-efficacy, outcome expectation, commitment to vocational exploration, and learning orientation.
Secondly, for students at specialized vocational high schools, it showed that career decision-making self-efficacy has a significant direct effect on outcome expectation and commitment to vocational exploration and learning orientation. It means that improvement of self-efficacy related to positive hope for controlling their own career is necessarily required for successful career development, and belief in themselves has an effect on triggering commitment to career. On the other hand, career decision-making self-efficacy had no direct effect on learning orientation
Thirdly, for students at specialized vocational high schools, outcome expectation had a significant direct effect on commitment to vocational exploration and learning orientation. Such a result suggests that a potential for successful career individuals recognize make them be immersed in the career decision follow development process and learning.
In the mean time, as a result of verifying a mediated effect among variables, it showed that outcome expectation, has a mediated effect on the relationship among career decision-making self-efficacy and commitment to vocational exploration, career decision-making self-efficacy and learning orientation.
learning orientation. It means, for students at specialized vocational high schools requiring more emotional control, increase of commitment to vocational exploration by career activities for removing anxiety and feeling joy as a strategic factor may be effective for enhancing competencies of career development. Also, even in a case of lower career decision-making self-efficacy and outcome expectation for students at specialized vocational high schools many efforts shall be made to help them with positive career development through reinforcement of commitment to vocational exploration.
This study has limitations and suggestions as follows.
Firstly, this study was limited to 239 2nd grade students at A girls' specialized vocational high school for marketing located at Seoul. Accordingly, research findings have difficulty in generalizing to every student at specialized vocational high schools. So, through identifying difference in results by gender and a specialization line and comparing with students at general high schools, follow-up study is required to expand understanding on each group's academic environments and career problems.
Secondly, in this research, every variable was measured at the same time period. Since, career decision may be changed as time passes, a possibility that related variables may change shall be considered. Hence, it is necessary to verify effectiveness through designing and applying systemic career guidance programs with a view to increasing a level of commitment to vocational exploration for students at specialized vocational high schools. Furthermore, based on full understanding on specific backgrounds of specialized vocational high schools, this study suggests necessity of follow-up studies to examine multiple variables influencing on their students' learning orientation.