Career Talk Research Articles

Awareness and perception of physiotherapy among senior students of selected secondary schools in a South-Western community of Nigeria

Context: Physiotherapy plays a significant role in health care system. The pursuit of career in physiotherapy depends largely on the information available to the students about the practice of physiotherapy.Aims: To investigate the level of awareness and perception of physiotherapy profession among senior secondary school students.Settings and Design: The cross-sectional study recruited 259 senior class students in selected secondary schools in Owo local government area of Ondo-state, South-western Nigeria.Materials and Methods: A self-administered questionnaire adapted from similar studies was used to obtain information on level of awareness and perception of physiotherapy.Statistical Analysis Used: Data were summarized using mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentiles.Results: 71.0% of participants were aware of physiotherapy profession. 76.8% were aware that physiotherapy can be studied in University while others believed it can be studied in polytechnic (3.9%), college of education (6.6%) and technical schools (5.4%). 45.9% knew about adequate subject combination for gaining admission to study physiotherapy while 54.1% did not know about adequate subject combination. The overall knowledge score of <48.0% among the participants indicated inadequate knowledge about physiotherapy practice, treatment modalities and specialties.Conclusions: Participants in this study demonstrated a high level of awareness about physiotherapy. The knowledge level of the participants about the practice of physiotherapy, treatment modalities and specialties other than orthopedic remains inadequate. Professional body of Physiotherapy should create a detailed career talk in secondary school to increase the level of awareness and knowledge about the practice of physiotherapy, treatment modalities and specialties.

Expect the unexpected: private‐sector careers

Expect the unexpected: private‐sector careers

Motivating Factors for Sustainable Accountant Potentials in Malaysia

Economic Transformation Plan (ETP) emphasizes that the country has a pool of resources to steer towards Malaysia’s aspirations to become a developed and high-income nation. The ETP Roadmap highlights accountancy, an integral function in all businesses as part of the significant ETP driver. However, Malaysia still lacks the required number of qualified accountants by the year 2020. This challenges higher learning institutions to produce suitable accounting graduates. Despite taking an accounting subject in schools, not all these students later opt to enrol accounting in higher learning institutions as many factors influence their career choices. This study aims to explore these motivating factors. A quantitative approach was applied whereby primary data were collected through a questionnaire survey. Respondents were students from seven elite schools in Melaka. The study found eight motivating factors; family members in the accounting profession, public accountant as a career choice, students’ interest in receiving relevant information, choosing private accountants as a career, parents, school counsellor and career talk. However, only four of these factors were significant to students’ decisions to pursue professional accounting courses. In addition, parents’ influence plays a greater role in motivating students to opt for professional accounting courses as compared to an accounting degree.

SU‐F‐E‐08: Medical Physics as a Teaching Tool for High School Science Curriculum

Purpose:Delivering high school science curriculum in a timely manner and in way that is accessible to all students is a challenge for teachers. Although many high schools offer career workshops, these are typically directed at senior students and do not relate directly to details of the curriculum. The objective of this initiative was to create a series of lectures that use medical physics to relate many aspects of the high school science curriculum to tangible clinical applications and to introduce students to alternate pathways into a career in health sciences.Methods:A series of lectures has been developed based on the Ontario High School Science Curriculum. Each lecture uses a career in radiotherapy medical physics as the framework for discussion of topics specific to the high school course being addressed.Results:At present, these lectures have been delivered in five area high schools to students ranging from sophomores to seniors. Survey documents are given to the students before and after the lecture to assess their awareness of careers in health care, applications of physics and their general interest in the subject areas. As expected, students have limited up front awareness of the wide variety of health related career paths. The idea of combining a career lecture with topics specific to the classroom curriculum has been well‐received by teachers and students alike.Conclusion:Career talks for high school students are useful for students contemplating their post‐ secondary career path. Relating career discussion with direct course curriculum makes their studies more relevant and engaging. Students aspiring to a career in health sciences often focus their studies on life sciences due to limited knowledge of potential careers. An early introduction to medical physics presents them with an alternate path through the physical sciences into health care.

Career education that works: an economic analysis using the British Cohort Study

There is significant policy interest in the issue of young people’s fractured transitions into the labour market. Many scholars and policy-makers believe that changes in the education system and labour market over recent decades have created a complex world for young people; and that this can partly be addressed by enhanced career education while individuals are at school. However, the literature lacks in-depth quantitative analysis making use of longitudinal data. This paper draws on the British Cohort Study 1970 to investigate the link between career talks by external speakers and employment outcomes, and finds some evidence that young people who participated in more career talks at age 14–16 enjoyed a wage premium 10 years later at age 26. The correlation is statistically significant on average across all students who receive talks at age 14–15; but remains the case for 15–16 year olds only if they also described the talks as very helpful.

Career counseling meets motivational interviewing: A sequential analysis of dynamic counselor–client interactions

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a client-centered communication style with the aim to resolve client ambivalence within a change-related counseling. Its potential benefit for career counseling has been discussed by several scholars but no empirical research has investigated MI in this context so far. The current study used process measures from MI to investigate dynamic interactions within a career counseling intervention. Overall, we analyzed two videotaped sessions of 14 unique counselor–client dyads. Verbal behavior of counselors and clients were coded with two observational coding schemes from MI (one for counselors and one for clients, respectively). Behavior profiles of counselors were compared with benchmarks of good MI. Furthermore, client verbal ambivalence was compared between sessions. Finally, we conducted lag sequential analyses to analyze temporal dynamics between counselor behavior and immediate client verbal responses across N=6883 behavioral events. Our results showed, first, behavior profiles of career counselors did significantly differ from recommended counseling benchmarks of good MI practice. Second, as assumed on the basis of past studies, client ambivalence decreased across sessions. Third, MI consistent counselor behaviors showed a positive sequential association with client positive career talk, whereas MI inconsistent counselor behaviors showed the reverse pattern. Our results suggest that counseling behaviors recommended from MI are facilitating career interventions. We discuss how trainings in MI could amend career counseling interventions and provide ethical implications when integrating MI into career counseling programs.

Causes of blindness and career choice among pupils in a blind school; South Western Nigeria

The causes of Blindness vary from place to place with about 80% of it been avoidable. Furthermore Blind people face a lot of challenges in career choice thus limiting their economic potential and full integration into the society. This study aims at identifying the causes of blindness and career choice among pupils in a school for the blind in South -Western Nigeria. This is a descriptive study of causes of blindness and career choice among 38 pupils residing in a school for the blind at Ikere -Ekiti, South Western Nigeria. Thirty eight pupils comprising of 25 males (65.8%) and 13 females (34.2%) with age range from 6-39 years were seen for the study, The commonest cause of blindness was cataract with 14 cases (36.84%) while congenital glaucoma and infection had an equal proportion of 5 cases each (13.16%). Avoidable causes constituted the greatest proportion of the causes 27 (71.05%) while unavoidable causes accounted for 11 (28.9%). The law career was the most desired profession by the pupils 11 (33.3%) followed by Teaching 9 (27.3%), other desired profession includes engineering, journalism and farming. The greatest proportion of causes of blindness identified in this study is avoidable. There is the need to create public awareness on some of the notable causes particularly cataract and motivate the community to utilize available eye care services Furthermore there is need for career talk in schools for the blind to enable them choose career where their potential can be fully maximized.

Introducing Students to Cancer Prevention Careers through Programmed Summer Research Experiences

Training programs in cancer prevention research play an important role in addressing impending shortages in the cancer prevention workforce. Published reports on the effectiveness of these programs, however, often focus on a program's success in recruiting and retaining a demographically diverse trainee population or on academic successes of the trainees, in general. Little has been reported about programs' success in stimulating long-term interest in cancer prevention per se, whether in research or in other choATsen applications. We set out to examine the success of our National Cancer Institute (NCI) R25E American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)-funded summer research experiences program for undergraduates at fostering awareness of and career interest in cancer prevention. Fourteen summer research undergraduates participated in a 12-week structured training program which featured a variety of experiences designed to create awareness of and interest in cancer prevention and cancer prevention research as career tracks. Experiences included career talks by faculty, informational interviewing of role model faculty, career exploration workshops, and structured interactions with graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty. Students were surveyed about the effectiveness of the program via SurveyMonkey 8 months after completing the program. This article reports on the results of the survey and analyzes the relative effectiveness of the various types of programming strategies used. Implications for use in training program development are discussed.

SETAC Europe 19th annual meeting, Gothenburg, Sweden: Next step towards fulfilling students’ needs

The SETAC Europe Student Advisory Council (SAC) represents student members (master, diploma or Ph.D.) throughout every level of SETAC since 2006 and provides additional advice, recommendations, and new initiatives to the SETAC Europe Council. During this year’s SETAC Europe annual meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, the SAC organized three student-oriented activities. During lunchtime on Monday, students had the chance to get in contact with senior scientists from all over Europe in a relaxed ambience. The approximately 50 participants enjoyed talking to experienced people from various fields and had the opportunity to continue developing their own network—not only with established scientists but also with other student members of SETAC. During the Career Talk session on Tuesday, Theo Brock (Alterra, Netherlands), Eamonn Farrelly (Syngenta, UK), Jorg Rombke (ECT, Germany), and Joke van Wensem (Soil Protection Technical Committee, Netherlands) gave an insight into their work on a day-to-day basis and how they developed their careers. They also provided useful information about what skills are crucial for their job and the career progression opportunities as well as chances and challenges that might be encountered within these fields. During the regular SAC meeting, the student members were informed about the past and ongoing activities of their council. A short movie about the first Young Environmental Scientist Meeting (YES-Meeting) 2009 in Landau, Germany, gave insight in this special students-only congress organized by the SAC under the umbrella of SETAC Europe (for further information, including the movie, see http://yes.sac-online.eu; Bundschuh et al. 2009). Afterwards, five new council members were elected for a period of 2 years: Nika Galic, Claudia Mieiro, Stephanie Sdepanian, Dominic Kaiser, and Andre Dabrunz. After being chair of the SAC for 3 years, Mirco Bundschuh handed his job over to Markus Brinkmann from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, who joined the SAC during the SETAC Europe 18th annual meeting in Warsaw. He developed the official webpage (http://www.sac-online.eu) and was involved in the organization of the YES-Meeting by chairing a session. A number of students showed their interest in contributing to the work of the council as M. Brinkmann (*) : T.-B. Seiler Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Ecosystem Analysis, RTWH Aachen University, Worringerweg 1, 52074 Aachen, Germany e-mail: markus.brinkmann@bio5.rwth-aachen.de

Undergraduate students' choice of special education programme as a career

This study examined the undergraduate students' choice of special education programme as a career. A descriptive survey research method was adopted for the study. A total number of 100 undergraduate students from the special education department were randomly selected across the levels (100 to 400 levels). One research question was raised and two hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance, and the following were established: Majority of the respondents chose special education as a career education as a career willingly, also most of them chose special education as a career because of their interest for people with disabilities. A few of them however were constrained to choose special education because they could not meet up with the cut off of their initial course of interest. The t-test comparison analysis of male and female undergraduate students' choice of special education showed that the choice of special education as a career is not gender sensitive; and The t-test comparison analysis of undergraduate students with private and public school background showed no significant difference. In view of the above findings, recommendations were made that more awareness programmes should be mounted to enlighten the society about special education. Career talk given in secondary school to students should also be extended to include special education programmeInternational Journal of emotiaonl psychology and sport ethics Vol. 8 2006: pp. 81-88

Notes from the Field

Notes from the Field Vic Ecklund Jr. (bio) The authors do an excellent job of developing their education–public partnership models in this article. Differentiating between the purely analytical efforts of the monitoring network model, the curriculum-based focus of the experiential model, the community-needs approach of the service learning model, and the depth of educational resources for broad-spectrum research available through the university research institutes is of particular importance to field practitioners. As a result, I have learned that we at Colorado Springs Utilities have been involved with several of these programs and networks over the past few years. It also made me recognize that there are other opportunities we could develop or enhance to our common benefit. In the 100-plus-year water-supply history of our organization, we have developed the habit of partnering with other governmental agencies (e.g., federal, state, local, and other utilities) in a wide range of efforts, activities, and projects. In the early years, the primary focus was aimed at water resource development and watershed protection (primarily through closure). Although those programs continue, there has been additional focus in recent years on the broader concepts of watershed natural resource management. Again, other governmental agency partners have been central to planning and management activities. In a recent planning process to develop a common vision for management and protection of the vast resources on Pikes Peak, acknowledging the reliance of several local communities upon the water resources there, sixteen agencies were involved. There were also ninety citizens of various backgrounds and interests who took part in the nearly three-year process. The educational community was represented as part of this volunteer citizen body, rather than as members of the core agency planning team. Two graduate students independently took part and successfully developed their own thesis or dissertation around the overall effort (loosely an experiential project-based program). There are other examples of independent, experiential programs that Springs Utilities has facilitated (usually by granting access to otherwise closed watershed lands), but not taken an active part in. Recently there has been a more concerted effort to partner with educational institutions in addressing watershed management issues, as detailed by the authors. [End Page 338] Currently, Springs Utilities is underwriting a long-term research program through the Catamount Center for Geography in the Southern Rockies to study the ecological effects of accelerated forest management/wildfire mitigation activities (mastication) on utilities-owned watershed lands on Pikes Peak. The center's affiliation with local institutions of higher learning is already proving valuable to this research effort, which clearly falls within the definition of the service learning program model. Springs Utilities' staff worked closely with the center's staff to agree on the list of key indicators to be studied as measures of both positive and negative impacts of the management/mitigation work. In the area of public education and outreach, Springs Utilities has worked in recent years on several levels: K–12 classroom programs are usually centered on water sources and delivery or water conservation, but also include career talks at the high school level; college classroom programs on a variety of resource topics; and customer education through demonstration gardens, media spots, and organized facility and watershed tours. This involves networking with many different educational groups through dedicated and supporting utilities' staff. This article is useful to practitioners like me because it defines program models and network opportunities as perceived by the educational community. Perhaps the authors could develop a summary in the form of a pamphlet, localized with an insert for educational institution contacts, to be distributed to area watershed managers for initiating dialogue. Vic Ecklund Jr. Water Resources Department, Colorado Springs Utilities Vic Ecklund Vic Ecklund, Jr., CF, Chief Forester and Natural Resources Planner, has been with Colorado Springs Utilities for nearly 35 years working in the watershed management planning arena. During that time, he has been a part of various water project planning and permitting teams including the Homestake Project and the proposed Jimmy Camp Creek Reservoir near Colorado Springs. Also, he has coordinated the development and implementation of a forest management plan for Colorado Springs watershed lands on Pikes Peak, assisted in the...

Focus on HE students: Teaching the scientists of tomorrow

If you have ever spent hours carefully preparing a sumptuous feast only to have it eaten in minutes, you'll have a fair idea of how I feel this morning. After months of meticulous preparation, the 2003 Life Science Careers Conferences were devoured in a flash by three large hungry audiences of undergraduates and postgraduates. The conferences were chewed over in King's College London before moving up to UMIST and finally diffusing across the Welsh border into Cardiff. The students were given a menu of various career talks, and feedback suggests that the 2003 event was a resounding success.

Dilemmatic Constructions of Career in the Career Counseling Interview

Thirty career counseling interviews were recorded and inductively analyzed using a discourse analytic method. Findings indicate that clients in this setting present various dilemmatic themes of career in their talk. Three types of dilemmas were pervasive: uncertainty versus certainty, interests versus practical, and focus versus options. The findings suggest that career theorists and practitioners might find it useful to address the dilemmatic processes evident in “career talk.”

Career talk

Career talk

Study-service as a significant factor in career development

The purpose of this paper is to describe the role of the Botswana study-service scheme (Tirelo Setshaba) in the career development of its participants. Study-service is defined as community service used to educate those who participate in contrast to other service programmes where the main objective is to provide manpower e.g. by providing service to the community. First, the existing career development situation in Botswana for senior secondary school students is reviewed and findings from some recent research in this field in the country are presented. Second, the nature of the one year experience gained by Tirelo Setshaba participants is described including the uniqueness of Tirelo Setshaba as compared to other similar schemes in that service takes place before post-secondary education, but with other policies being similar to those developed for university students. Third, the paper presents a rationale for career development assistance for Tirelo Setshaba participants and describes career development material prepared for them. The nature of the scheme, with two or a maximum of four participants assigned to a village, has made it necessary to design a career service for clients who are so widely scattered that the often-used career talks, conventions or one-to-one counselling are impractical. Finally, the paper argues for a proper evaluation of Tirelo Setshaba's impact on career development as the conclusions drawn in the paper are based on limited observations.

A Lecture Package for School Pupils to Promote Electrical Engineering

Career talks form an important part of many school curricula. This article describes a lecture package of particular interest to school-chlidren. It has been successfully used for illustrating the career opportunities in electrical engineering and is based on slides and simple pieces of electrical apparatus which the pupils are able to handle.