In "How High School Students Envision Their STEM Career Pathways", Lin Zhang and Michael Barnett attempt to shed light on the problem of underrepresented students (e.g., Aboriginals, Hispanics, African Americans, urban, females) in STEM higher education and related careers by exploring, in general terms, five high school students' career…

The authors analyze the various factors that highly recognized economists cite as reasons for pursuing a career in economics. They obtained data for 62 of the 67 Nobel Laureates in economics and included another 22 prominent economists who have made significant contributions in economic research. The authors' basic quest was to discover how these…

In this paper, we utilise the British "National Child Development Study" to explore the determinants of career expectations formed at the age of 16. We analyse the influence of careers advice and resources at school on career expectations as well as the influence of education. In addition, we explore the accuracy of occupational expectations as…

Reporting on 12 case studies of student teachers, this paper examines how experiences during teacher education affect graduates' decision on job entrance. Interpretative data-analysis reveals that powerful sources of the shift in motivation to enter teaching concern interactions in which the person of the teacher is at stake. These mainly involve…

This paper explores the career-related decision making of seniors enrolled in undergraduate engineering programs at two nationally recognized institutions. This strand of the Academic Pathways Study (APS) research revealed that many engineering students were undecided about their career plans, even late into their senior years and that many were…

The purpose of this study was to examine the source, nature, and degree of influence of role models and mentors on female graduate students' choice of science as a career. Also examined was the existence of gender or area-of-study (engineering, biological science, physical sciences) differences. Results of a factor analysis of the Influence of…

The disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have experienced problems in producing adequate numbers of graduates to meet workforce needs in these fields. Although entrance into the STEM fields has grown, this growth is not keeping pace with the overall needs of the labor market. Better understanding of the important…

This paper conceptually links hypothesized scales of the Motivation Questionnaire (SHL (1992). "Motivation questionnaire: Manual and users' guide". Thames Ditton: SHL) to the underlying dimensions of the protean (values-driven and self-directedness) and boundaryless career (physical and psychological mobility) attitudes. Results of…

A history of declining enrollments in university Management Information Systems (MIS) and computer science (CS) departments in the U.S. considerably impacts both college departments and business organizations that hire graduates. In order to reverse the enrollment trend, an understanding of the important similarities and differences that shape a…

Multiple studies explore the issue of the absence of teachers of color in the profession at large. Few studies, however, address the issue from the angle of the teacher candidate of color. With so many competing professions, why do they ultimately make the decision to join the profession? What are the contexts that influence and support that…

This paper explores educational decision-making within a life course perspective. It draws on interviews carried out with 34 people, ages 30-81, as part of a longitudinal study into educational experiences of part-time mature students in continuing education at a London university. It considers to what extent their decisions about study are…

Ethnic minority students traditionally pursue degrees and careers in the food and agricultural sciences at rates lower than their non-minority counterparts. To help improve upon this situation, the Food and Agricultural Sciences Institute (FASI) was created to expose academically talented high school students to opportunities within the food and…

This paper reports on an exploratory investigation of the perceptions of information and communication technology (ICT) as a field of study and work in German secondary schools. A total of 160 students from five secondary schools in Lower Saxony participated in the study in February 2007, and four teachers of the students were interviewed. The…

This article reports on an investigation into the retention of secondary religious education teachers trained at one institution over a ten-year period. The initial hypothesis was that many of these teachers would no longer be teaching, or would no longer be teaching religious education. However, the authors found that a high percentage of…

The findings reported here are part of a larger study that examined how faculty view the linkages between themselves and their institutional work environments; how they create a sense of personal space and belonging within their academic units and the larger university; and how their self-perceptions of organizational fit affect their professional…