Abstract
<p><strong>Background:</strong> The shift in recent years towards the lifespan concept of career development, which views career behaviour as occurring in stages beginning in childhood and continuing throughout life, has meant that it has become increasingly important to assist learners in fulfilling their career goals. There is, however, a scarcity of research on the career aspirations of primary school learners, especially those from low socio-economic backgrounds.</p><p><strong>Aim:</strong> This article describes research conducted on the career aspirations of Grade 7 learners at a community school.</p><p><strong>Setting:</strong> The study is set within an interpretivist paradigm and utilises a generic qualitative research design.</p><p><strong>Methods:</strong> The study involved a purposefully selected group of Grade 7 learners from a local community school. As part of the study, each learner completed a collage and sociogram, and took part in a group interview.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> Themes that emerged from the data analysis were: career aspirations that seek to fulfil hopes and dreams, the role of the family in shaping career aspirations and counting the ‘cost’ of career aspirations.</p><p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> The results of the study indicated that there is a need to explore learners’ career aspirations from an early age in order to expose them to various career choices in the constantly changing world of work.</p>
Highlights
The South African context is one of the most complex and economically unequal in the world, with a quarter of the population unemployed and 20% – 30% of the population living in extreme poverty (Statistics South Africa 2015)
With the development of democracy in South Africa, education has been mandated through government acts and policies, for example the South African Schools Act No 84 (SASA 1996) and the White Paper 6 (2001), key vehicles for the implementation of social justice
Many Western theories of career development have been criticised for being irrelevant within a South African context – because they do not account for multicultural, sociopolitical and economic factors that pervade South African life (Watson, McMahon & Longe 2011) – we suggest that a combination of the abovementioned theories can be relevant to a South African context in that they give sufficient focus to broader environmental and societal issues, as well as to socioeconomic status (Watson et al 2011), and provide a ‘melting pot’ (Figure 1) of perspectives and a much-needed theoretical intersection for exploring the career aspirations of adolescents in South Africa
Summary
The shift in recent years towards the lifespan concept of career development, which views career behaviour as occurring in stages beginning in childhood and continuing throughout life, has meant that it has become increasingly important to assist learners in fulfilling their career goals. There is, a scarcity of research on the career aspirations of primary school learners, especially those from low socio-economic backgrounds. Aim: This article describes research conducted on the career aspirations of Grade 7 learners at a community school. Setting: The study is set within an interpretivist paradigm and utilises a generic qualitative research design
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