engleski

Vocational maturity and its correlates in a sample of young adolescents

In Croatia primary school students have to make their first serious career decisions at the age of 14, when they have to choose their subsequent secondary school program. Although at that age students are still very young and not fully mature, the decision they have to make could easily direct their life-long career paths. Therefore we wanted to explore whether young adolescents are mature enough to make such serious career decisions and to examine which behaviors could serve as warnings of potential career immaturity. As a measure of vocational maturity the Test of Occupational Knowledge (Babarovic & Šverko, 2006) was applied on a sample of 1266 primary school students aged 11-14 years. The Test of Occupational Knowledge measures cognitive component of vocational maturity and reflects six aspects of occupational knowledge: main job duties, typical working conditions, required education, preferred characteristics of employees, fields of work, and principles for choosing occupations. According to our results, vocational maturity in our sample is quite low, as at the age of 14 the majority of students know the exact answers to approximately just half of the questions in test. Girls achieve higher scores than boys, and the vocational maturity increases with the age of respondents. School achievement and educational aspirations are moderately related to occupational knowledge, as well as level of parents’ occupation. Therefore we suggest the application of Test of Occupational Knowledge as a probing tool for identification of vocationally immature pupils that lack information about world of work and that cannot make mature career decisions. Also, particular attention should be focused on pupils with low school achievement and low educational aspirations. The developmental school programs for uplifting the vocational maturity are beneficial for all pupils at the age of 11-13 years, while congruence-based vocational counseling should be offered to insufficiently informed pupils at the age of 14 (last grade of primary school). Particular examples of possible career interventions are also mentioned.

vocational maturity; test of occupational knowledge

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