Vocational Choice Research Articles

The Informal Sector as a Catalyst for Employment Generation in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract Unemployment remains high in Nigeria due to disintegration between the formal and informal sectors, among other factors. While the unemployed largely focus on the formal sector in search of jobs, there is inadequate interest in the informal sector. Yet, this sector provides livelihoods for the majority of the population. This paper examines the informal sector as a catalyst for generating employment in Lagos State, Nigeria, using the Social Capital Theory and a descriptive survey research design. Data were collected from 480 apprentices, 40 masters, 20 journeymen, and 120 members of various communities through a structured questionnaire, Key Informant Interviews and Focus Group Discussions, respectively. The findings showed that 64.8 percent of the respondents reported parental sponsorship of vocations in the informal sector, 14.2 percent of the respondents were self-sponsored, and the remainders (18.5 percent and 2.5 percent) were reportedly sponsored by their relatives and masters. Awareness of opportunities for self employment in the informal sector was demonstrated by 71 percent of the respondents. However, 66.3 percent of the respondents thought that schooling could be better than vocations in the informal sector. Mothers’ occupation significantly associated with individuals’ choice of vocation in the informal sector (χ2= 33.71; P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the proposed plans for self employment among the respondents in furniture and tailoring workshops (χ2= 1.44; P > 0.05). Planning for self employment was significantly influenced by several factors including gender, age, mothers’ occupation, career plan, and satisfaction within the informal sector (t = 19.247, P < 0.01). The informal sector is vital for survival of youth in Lagos State, Nigeria. This sector should be supported for poverty eradication and entrepreneurial development.

‚Brückenangebote‘ in der Schweiz: Versorgung in Warteschleifen oder Chance zur Resilienzförderung?

“Interim solutions” are an often neglected area of educational research and policy. In Switzerland, a significant number of adolescents is not able to find an adequate solution after finishing school (such as an apprenticeship or further education). In an exploratory study, we analyzed the characteristics of the four types of “interim solutions” in Switzerland. The exploration was conducted with case studies based on document analysis and expert interviews in five different institutions in three Swiss cantons. In total, the results of six case studies will be reported here. The cross-case analysis allows two conclusions: a) Despite various attempts to standardize interim solutions in Switzerland, the four types of interim solutions are characterized by high diversity and complexity both within one type of interim solution as well as when comparing different Swiss cantons. b) A high degree of heterogeneity regarding the participants of different interim solutions can be identified. On one extreme, there are those adolescents who could easily do well in an apprenticeship but do participate in specific measures due to a lack of adequate opportunities on the regional VET market. Apart from this group, there are many adolescents who lack different competencies. With regard to the development of subject-oriented competencies and the support of the adolescents’ vocational choice, the interim solutions already offer comprehensive measures. However, with regard to the development of so-called resilience factors, there seems to be potential for further didactical interventions in the interim solutions.

Preparing Academics? Doctoral Students’ Vocational Choices

Preparing Academics? Doctoral Students’ Vocational Choices

Berufswahl und geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede beim Zugang zu betrieblicher Berufsausbildung

This paper starts from the well known fact that in the German dual system of vocational education and training not only females are less represented than males but also - for those who want to enter the system - transition rates for females into the dual system are lower than for males. Firstly main findings of the literature about gender-specific differences in vocational and occupational choice are described and focused on the transition from school to the dual system. A main fact is that females only seldom take mechanical and technical vocations and not only individual but also company-based reasons could be relevant. For specific hypotheses it is analyzed in the paper how far lower transition rates for females can be explained by different vocational choices between males and females. Statistical modeling shows at first that lower transition rates for females are in fact a result of gender-specific vocational choice. Also - for those females who actually apply for technical vocations - there is evidence for a discrimination of females against males by companies. To better the chances for females in the dual system therefore not only young women have to augment their interest in technical vocations but companies and society also have to overcome still existing prejudices concerning women in mechanical and technical occupations.

Bendrojo ugdymo mokyklų ir profesinio mokymo įstaigų vaidmuo mokinių profesiniam apsisprendimui: situacija ir pagrindinės problemos

Edukologijos doktorantė VšĮ Kauno paslaugų verslo darbuotojų profesinio rengimo centrasKaraliaus Mindaugo pr. 11, LT-44287 Kaunas. Tel. (8 37)22 17 23El. paštas: www.kaupa.ltProfesorė socialinių mokslų daktarėVytauto Didžiojo universiteto Socialinių mokslų fakulteto Edukologijos katedra K. Donelaičio g. 52-401/402, LT-44244 Kaunas. Tel. (8 37) 327 827 http://edukologija.vdu.ltStraipsnyje pabrėžiama, kad reikia naujo požiūrio į profesinį apsisprendimą, kaip vieną iš esminių žmogaus ugdymo karjerai tikslų. Šio požiūrio esmė – dėmesio sutelkimas į objektyviuosius ir subjektyviuosius veiksnius, lemiančius žmogaus profesinį apsisprendimą. Šiomis konceptualiomis nuostatomis grindžiant profesinio apsisprendimo sampratą, svarbus uždavinys tenka žmogaus ugdymo institucijoms – sukurti tokią ugdymo karjerai sistemą, kuri sudarytų prielaidas jaunam žmogui pirmiausia pažinti save kaip asmenybę. Tačiau tyrimo rezultatai parodė, kad bendrojo ugdymo mokyklose, palyginti su profesinio mokymo įstaigomis, daugiau dėmesio skiriama profesinio apsisprendimo problematikai. Profesinio informavimo taškų vaidmuo mokyklose dar nėra reikšmingas, nes mažai dėmesio skiriama individualiam darbui su mokiniais, jų profesiniam kryptingumui nustatyti, tolesnei karjerai projektuoti. Mokyklose dirbančių psichologų, socialinių darbuotojų ir profesijos konsultantų veikla ugdymo karjerai procese yra nepakankama.

Predictors for career indecision in adolescence

The counseling of adolescents in order to make a vocational choice is a key step along the path of career development. According to an consistent body of research, this study was designed in order to explore the contribution of career decision self-efficacy, locus of control, academic self-esteem, personality traits and parental support to the prediction of career indecision among adolescents. The career locus of control, academic self-esteem and neuroticism were significant predictors of career indecision. The main results were discussed in the context of their relevance for the counseling of adolescents in career choice and development.

Relationships among client–therapist personality congruence, working alliance, and therapeutic outcome.

Despite the importance of the working alliance in therapeutic outcome, little is known about the factors associated with its formation. We advance that personality similarity between client and therapist is one such factor pertinent to the working alliance. In this study, personality similarity in 32 client-therapist dyads was examined for its relations to the bond, task, and goal elements of the working alliance (Bordin, 1979, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice, 16, 252-260) and therapeutic outcome. Personality similarity was conceptualized using Holland's (1997, Making vocational choices [3rd ed.]) congruence construct. Therapists completed the Self-Directed Search pretreatment and clients completed the Working Alliance Inventory-Short Revised and Self-Directed Search after the third session. Results indicated that (a) client-therapist personality congruence was associated with the bond, (b) bond was associated with task and goal, and (c) task and goal were associated with therapeutic outcome. Congruence was not associated with task, goal, or therapeutic outcome. Holland's theory provides a framework for adapting to clients of varying personality types. By understanding how client-therapist personalities relate to each other in therapy, client-therapist bonds may be more efficiently realized.

The Job Market for Teachers in Italy

The AlmaLaurea database (http://www.almalaurea.it) offers broad documentation on the characteristics of university graduates who chose a teaching career one year, three years and five years after their degree, forming a representative sample of Italian school teachers. This article offers both a descriptive analysis of the data on the characteristics of the groups examined and some deeper study to bring out the ways in which the features of university‐trained teachers differ from those of other university graduates. The underlying behaviour hypothesis is that educational and vocational choices depend not only on individuals’ social and cultural background but are also shaped by economic and socio‐cultural motivations. The intent of the in‐depth study is to determine the distinctive traits of the various groups of teachers, deliberately selected for uniformity with respect to their educational careers and their chances of employment.

Las asignaturas de ciencias en las pruebas de acceso a la universidad: perspectiva de género

Tradicionalmente la elección de las opciones de ciencias en la etapa del bachillerato y luego la carrera universitaria ha estado marcada por estereotipos de género. En este trabajo se analizaron los resultados desde el enfoque de género de los resultados de las pruebas de acceso a la universidad de los bachilleratos de ciencias, en Almería, durante el período 2005-2010. Se trata de una muestra de 17.797 alumnos, repartidos en 8.531 chicos y 9.326 chicas. Las variables analizadas son: ratio de presentados, porcentaje de aprobados, calificaciones medias, decisión vocacional y distribución de las calificaciones según asignaturas. Los datos procesados analíticamente, permiten establecer comparaciones cualitativas entre ambos grupos, mostrándose las diferencias y contrastando resultados con la tendencia nacional. Se observa que, el porcentaje de aprobados y en las calificaciones medias, son favorables a los varones, aunque muy cerca de sus compañeras. Del estudio comparativo entre asignaturas se evidencian algunas descoordinaciones entre la formulación de la prueba de acceso a la universidad y la preparación para la misma desde el bachillerato. Gracias a este tipo de estudios es posible actuar en la mejora de programas educativos, tanto en igualdad de género como sobre las asignaturas que se alejan de la media del conjunto.

John Beebe in conversation with Beverley Zabriskie

John Beebe speaks with Beverley Zabriskie about the central motifs of his life and depth psychological experience, and how these informed his choice of vocation as psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, educator and author. Dr. Beebe narrates how he moved beyond the fate assigned the son of a needy mother and abandoning father. He illustrates how the role his family expected him to fill constellated archetypal motifs--the magical or divine curative child, the whiz kid--from which he had then to disidentify for the sake of becoming an individual with a personal voice and capacity to express his own true values. He tells of his differentiation and search for completion through the perspective of Jung's psychological types theory. He also reflects on the evolution of Jungian analytic theory and practice generally, his editorship of the JAP and the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, his confrontation with analytic homophobia, and the emerging quality of professional and personal relationships in relation to ethics and to love. He assesses Jung's courage and integrity as displayed through the release of Jung's Red Book, and his own quest for an organic and psychological moral stance expressed in his benchmark book, Integrity in Depth.

Big Questions Facing Vocational Psychology: A Cognitive Information Processing Perspective

This article draws upon the authors’ experience in developing cognitive information processing theory in order to examine three important questions facing vocational psychology and assessment: (a) Where should new knowledge for vocational psychology come from? (b) How do career theories and research find their way into practice? and (c) What is the nature of career development and vocational choice in a global economy? Topics include the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge in this field, the extensive information provided by established career theories and applications, the ongoing need to inform practice through theory and research, the transformation and dissemination of knowledge from the laboratory to the field, and the common themes among education and work issues in a global economy.

Someone Else Can Use This Time More Than Me: Working with College Students with Impaired Siblings

This article discusses and illustrates with case examples the impact on the college experience for students who have impaired—medically or mentally ill, substance abusing, developmentally disabled—siblings. Although these students often show resilience and a well-developed sense of compassion, they may also struggle with developmental tasks of the college years. Compulsive altruism and conflicts about needing or receiving special attention influence normal developmental dilemmas of leaving home, forming new relationships, and vocational choice in characteristic ways. These challenges are elucidated and illustrated in this article with case examples. Implications for conducting psychotherapy, including transference and countertransference complications, are discussed. Understanding the difficulties of students with seriously impaired siblings may also alert clinicians to more subtle sibling issues in the broader student population.

Vocational Choice and Attitudes toward Welfare Policy

Vocational Choice and Attitudes toward Welfare Policy

The Impact of Gender on Interest in Science Topics and the Choice of Scientific and Technical Vocations

Many countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) note a shortage of highly qualified scientific‐technical personnel, whereas demand for such employees is growing. Therefore, how to motivate (female) high performers in science or mathematics to pursue scientific careers is of special interest. The sample for this study is taken from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006. It comprises 7,819 high performers either in sciences or mathematics from representative countries of four different education systems which generally performed well or around the OECD average in PISA 2006: Switzerland, Finland, Australia, and Korea. The results give evidence that gender specificity and gender inequity in science education are a cross‐national problem. Interests in specific science disciplines only partly support vocational choices in scientific‐technical fields. Instead, gender and gender stereotypes play a significant role. Enhancing the utility of a scientific vocational choice is expected to soften the gender impact.

Problems of career choice and personality traits

Many young people are faced a certain amount of indecision related to making career choice. This study investigates how the personality traits are related to career indecision and what psychological factors impede the career choice. Data were collected twice, 4 months apart, to study the possible changes in decision status. For the autumn term, 200 participants were 10th-grade and 182 12th-grade students from two gymnasiums (in Jonava and Vilnius). For the spring term, 70 percent of participants were 12th-grade students and 84 percent 10th-grade students who filled in the questionnaires in the autumn term. The career indecision was assessed by the Career Decision Scale (Osipow et al., 1976), the personality traits by the Big Five Adjective Test (Gintilienė and Standikė, 2009; Zdanevičiūtė, 2003), and a 28-item scale was devised for assessing indecisiveness. The vocational choice questionnaire was constructed for assessing some psychological factors of vocational choice. The results of this study demonstrated no differences in career indecision according to grade level. The means of indecision significantly decreased over time only for 10th-grade students from Vilnius. Upon analyzing the difficulties in career decision-making, the conclusion was that the lack of information about the occupation, the self and about the ways of deciding was an obstacle. During the career decision making process, students with a serious level of indecision paid more attention to the external factors such as financial resources. Students with a low level of career indecision paid more attention to the internal factors such as a hobby. Within this sample, career indecision was positively and significantly related to such personality trait as indecisiveness (girls, r = 0.513, boys, r = 0.451; p < 0.01). Career indecision was found to be negatively related to emotional stability and extraversion for schoolgirls (respectively r = –0.253, r = –0.224; p < 0.01). Participants with a low level of indecision were found to be more decisive and emotionally stable as compared with the participants with a middle and a high levels of indecision, more extraverted and intellectual being the schoolgirls’ sample.

Exploring the motives of company-backed and self-initiated expatriates

Few studies have investigated the range of issues considered important to the decision to move abroad for expatriates, particularly comparing the company-backed and self-initiated expatriate experiences. This study contributes to an important gap in current research about the drivers of both company-backed and self-initiated expatriation. It reveals details about the diverse motivations to undertake an expatriation and the similarities and differences between these two groups. Through a web-based study, the structure of the motivational components considered influential to the decision to move abroad was explored and quantitatively assessed. Principal component analysis (PCA) suggested an eight-factor model. Scales developed from the model highlighted significant differences between the motivations of the self-initiated and company-backed across three key areas. Location and host reputation motives were significantly more important to the self-initiated suggesting that the desire to move to a particular country and characteristics of that country were primary drivers. Company-backed individuals placed significantly more emphasis on specific career motives including job, skills and career impact. Discussion focuses on the motivational gestalt of the two groups providing a better understanding of the underlying attitudes and actual vocational choices of self-initiated and company-backed individuals. The paper poses a theoretical distinction between the self-initiated and company-backed expatriate, exploring the implications for career and international management theory. Practical implications are rehearsed, exposing areas for further research.

Tutoría y orientación educativa: la otra cara del acompañamiento en la educación a distancia

Resultado de dos investigaciones, una concluida sobre concepciones de libertad en jóvenes universitarios de primer semestre (Betancur et al., 2007) y otra en curso sobre innovaciones curriculares (Garavito, Madrigal & Urrego, 2009), además de un estudio que revisa una propuesta de diseño instruccional para la virtualidad (Garavito et al., 2009), surge la presente reflexión sobre el papel del docente tutor como acompañante que va más allá de la relación académica y le requiere en términos de apoyo, a veces consejero, dinamizador y frecuentemente articulador de la opción profesional con los proyectos de vida de los estudiantes, impactando la elección vocacional y la existencia misma de los tutorados.

A study of industrial design students' employment preparation and choices in Taiwan

This study surveys industrial design (ID) students' employment preparation in Taiwan, including career awareness, competency required, working attitudes and values and vocational choices. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were adopted and data were collected in three stages: literature review, in-depth interviews and questionnaire survey. The findings show that approximately 37 per cent of 904 participants decide not to enter the ID profession after graduation. ID students' career awareness is fairly good in terms of knowledge, values, preferences and self-concepts, but approximately one-fourth of the surveyed items received low mean ratings. The students' awareness of some of the job tasks and competencies required of industrial designers does not match the reality, and their perception of the lifestyle tends to be unrealistically negative, which is an observation not previously reported in the literature. The above, perhaps unrealistically negative, perception might be related to the high proportion of students rejecting an industrial design career after graduation. The authors discuss these results in the contexts of the national and international design employment markets. The findings could help design educators to understand what information needs to be provided to ID students, and help plan career guidance programmes.

Marketing Nursing as a Profession: Integrated Marketing Strategies to Address the Nursing Shortage

The nursing shortage in the United States is at a crisis level characterized by critical shortages of highly trained nurses and of nursing faculty. Key issues in addressing these shortages include awareness and image-building, along with enhanced outreach programs. Although these issues are related to marketing theory, most studies in this area are based on a vocational choice model. This study was grounded in marketing theory and the results offer a new perspective for addressing the nursing shortage. In-depth interviews conducted with 31 first-year nursing students indicated that there were two distinct segments among nursing students: traditionals and instrumentals. Traditionals were attracted to nursing as a helping profession while instrumentals were interested in career-related rewards such as variety, mobility, and compensation. These findings were discussed in terms of building awareness and marketing programs for nursing students that are integrated across schools of nursing, private foundations and public agencies.

From the Band Room to the General Music Classroom: Why Instrumentalists Choose to Teach General Music

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the reasons given by music educators who were trained as instrumentalists for choosing to teach elementary general music rather than instrumental (band) music in the schools. Analysis of participant responses to an emailed questionnaire resulted in the following four emergent themes: (a) a clear preference for working with young children; (b) a concern that the demands of a band teaching position would not allow for the sort of work/life balance they wished to have in their own lives; (c) a strong aversion to the "culture of competition" they perceived to be prevalent in the band world; and (d) a concern regarding the perceived limitations of instrumental music teaching and learning as it exists in the schools. The paper continues with a discussion of the goodness of fit between specific personality types and teacher candidates’ vocational choices, and the relationship of competitive types (i.e., hypercompetitiveness and personal development competitiveness) to teachers’ perceived feelings of success, achievement and career satisfaction. Implications for music teacher education, including increased emphasis on socialization strategies and reconceptualization of the enterprise of instrumental music as practiced in the schools, are also included.