Abstract
Social Cognitive Career Theory suggests that students' preparedness for the school-to-work transition is a developmental process. Middle school children explore various careers, obtain feedback about their academic progress, and develop career self-efficacy and outcome expectations. These processes advance provisional educational/occupational goals. The literature has suggested articulations between career and academic development and how both vary across demographic characteristics, but longitudinal studies linking these processes are scarce. This study tested articulations between career preparedness and academic achievement during middle school years and employed gender and geographical location as potential moderators affecting the linkage between career and school domains. Participants included 429 children (47.8% girls) from northern (69.5%) and central Portugal (30.5%) followed across four occasions of measurement (MageWave1 = 10.23, SD = 0.50). Data was collected with school records, the Multidimensional Scales of Perceived Self-Efficacy, Career Exploratory Outcome Expectations Scale, Childhood Career Exploration Inventory and Childhood Career Development Scale. Average and orthnormalized linear, quadratic and cubic trends were computed. Pearson correlation coefficients suggested positive and statistically significant associations between career exploratory outcome expectations and academic achievement average trends. Career planning and self-efficacy expectations were negatively associated with academic achievement quadratic trends. Multiple linear regression models suggested that career exploratory outcome expectations and career planning were respectively statistically significant predictors of the average and quadratic trends of academic achievement. Gender moderated the association between the career variables and academic achievement linear trends as well as the relation of career planning and self-efficacy with academic achievement cubic trends. Additionally, the geographical location moderated the association between the average trend of career exploratory outcome expectations and academic achievement as well as tended to moderate the relation between the career variables and academic achievement quadratic trends. Future research could seek to explore the role of context in shaping the trajectories and linkages between career and academic progress with a more representative sample of participants from a broader array of geographical locations. This study advances extant literature by affirming the longitudinal relationship between the school and work domains in youth, which might sustain practices aimed at fostering students' career preparedness and academic achievement.
Highlights
Career development can be conceived as the sequence of life roles performed by an individual over his/her life-course (Super, 1994)
This study aims to further explore the linkages among career and academic development during the childhood period with a specific focus on articulations between career preparedness constructs and academic achievement during middle school years
Portuguese fifth- and sixth-grades are aligned with level 2 of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED)—lower secondary education (OECD, European Union, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2015)
Summary
Career development can be conceived as the sequence of life roles performed by an individual over his/her life-course (Super, 1994). The student role is of major importance in childhood (until the 14 years of age), as it sustains the development of work attitudes and routines as well as the awareness of one’s abilities and preferences (Super, 1994; Araújo and Taveira, 2009). Their academic path promotes children’s development of a sense of industry and identification with teachers who they may perceive as supportive and knowledgeable classroom managers who are concerned with their wellbeing (Erikson, 1963; Di Fabio and Kenny, 2015; Chávez, 2016; Longobardi et al, 2016). Both career and academic literatures have moved from initial perspectives conceiving one’s educational path and quality of teaching as the basis to acquire skills and sustain later occupational attainment (Dunkin and Biddle, 1974; Lombardi et al, 2011) to an integrative perspective assuming the complementarity among career and academic processes throughout the lifespan (Kuijpers and Meijers, 2012)
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