Abstract
This study detected and analyzed changes that took place in students’ attitudes toward their future education and occupation after completion of the 3-year orientation to work–life through Grades 7 to 9 in different regions in Finland. The changes in the correlations of attitudes were seen as both precursors and consequences of the students’ engagement in the work–life orientation (WLO) program. The changes were postulated not to correlate with the respondents’ region and parents’ education. The empirically measured changes in students’ attitudes served as indicators of the efficacy of WLO. Efficacy referred to the power of WLO to produce effects in the form of changes in attitudes toward educational and occupational choices. Consequently, tentative hypotheses were formed to be tested through empirical observations (measurement points) of WLO. WLO was expected to positively affect student motivation and to guide idiographic decision-making concerning personal goals. Using an alpha level of .05, an independent samples test was conducted to evaluate whether independence, flexibility, and self-direction differed significantly in the measurement groups. For the WLO effect sizes (ES) estimation and for the comparison of the groups, Cohen’s ds were calculated. WLO had a small to medium effect on independence and flexibility, and a near zero effect on self-direction. No notable regional differences in the variance of the students’ attitudes were detected although the social environments differed considerably with regard to industrial structure. The statistically significant proportional differences between the parents’ educational levels did not correlate with the efficacy of WLO.
Highlights
The Finnish basic education system incorporates a specific program called the work–life orientation program (WLO), which aims to provide students with data and information on their possibilities for further education and occupation
The research question asked whether the implementation of WLO had different effects in different school environments in Finland and whether the differences between the education of the parents correlated with the efficacy of WLO
Results in this study suggest that WLO program experiences have efficacy, moderate in statistical terms, in changing students’ attitude domains of independence and flexibility toward future education and occupation
Summary
The Finnish basic education system incorporates a specific program called the work–life orientation program (WLO), which aims to provide students with data and information on their possibilities for further education and occupation. WLO follows the principle of penetrability in which it forms an integrated learning task through all nine grades of basic education. It coincides with career choice advice in guidance counseling in schools and is integrated into school work in the schools and involves the participants, and the community, families, and peers. Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the components in WLO. Levels of educational achievements of parents form one category of structural components of the family and they are linked with other structural variables of the family (Sewell & Shah, 1968). Past studies have indicated that the level of SES can be a result of various other factors than a primary cause (Jeynes, 2007) and factors mediating and moderating SES have been understudied (Roubinov & Boyce, 2017)
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