There has been a sustained interest in student perceptions about STEM fields and their choice of careers over the past few decades. Research has shown that there is a decline in students pursuing STEM careers, and this has raised global concern. Despite these issues, no unistructural, broad, parsimonious and unambiguous quantitative instrument…

Career exploration enables children to gain self- and occupational knowledge, and to assign meaning to what is learnt at school. Children's career exploration can be conceived as a foundation for career developmental learning and academic success. In this manuscript, we review articles published over the last five years to address whether these…

Are students ready for jobs when it comes time to graduation? This is a common question, and one that is often addressed in the media (e.g., Collie, 2019). Despite psychology being one of the most popular degree plans for undergraduate students (e.g., Higher Education Research Institute, 2008), many students in undergraduate psychology programs…

A scarcity of workers calls into doubt our capacity to support and care for an aging population. To gain a better understanding of the next generation of potential workers that will serve the aging population, 644 French-speaking students in grades 10 and 11 in the province of New Brunswick (Canada) were surveyed. The goals were to learn more…

Immigrant and refugee youth in Canada -- despite high levels of educational attainment -- tend to experience higher rates of unemployment and are more likely to work in low-skilled, low-wage jobs than their Canadian-born counterparts. COVID-19 has exacerbated these employment disparities. Despite the increasing number of job vacancies, Canada is…

This qualitative phenomenological study describes the experiences of female students in a rural Alberta vocational training centre through semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate five key ways that instructors and institutions can approach instruction to maximize the opportunity for early and sustained student engagement: a sense of…

The aim of the OECD Career Readiness project is to identify patterns of teenage attitudes and activities that are associated with better transitions into employment by analysing multiple national longitudinal datasets. This paper looks for further evidence of the link between teenage activities, experiences and career-related thinking and adult…