Providing information and resources to support career exploration is key to the mission of career and technical education (CTE) in Utah. Utah CTE has responded in a variety of ways to meet the career exploration needs of students of all ages. This article discusses how the career and technical education in Utah delivers opportunities for career…

The current study hypothesized that undergraduates enrolled in a career explorations course would report significant gains in career decision-making self-efficacy and vocational identity during a semester. A repeated measures MANOVA was used to assess 88 students' precourse and postcourse self-efficacy for five tasks related to career decision…

In the 2007 edition of "Diplomas Count", "Education Week" reported that nationally more than one-third of the students lost from the high school pipeline fail to make the transition from the ninth to the 10th grade. This explains why, for more than two decades, schools and districts across the country have struggled to develop freshman transition…

School engagement is a multifaceted psychosocial process that functions as a key mediator of academic achievement, motivation, and school dropout. This study investigated the effects of vocational exploration and racial identity on behavioral (attendance, attention, time spent on class work) and psychological (identification with school) factors…

Isakson presents several Web sites to increase students' awareness of career possibilities and the education choices required to reach them. Among other things, Occupational Information Network (O*NET) Online, which can be viewed at http://online.onetcenter.org/, offers a straightforward interface that lets the user search the database by using…

Course completion and student satisfaction is likely to be influenced by how realistic the expectations of students are when they enroll. This report explores the idea that students' expectations would be more realistic if students have well developed career management competencies. Recent research argues that lack of information is not the…

Conducted two-part study to examine reasons underlying finding that experimentally provided vocational constructs are used in less complex, less differentiated ways than are subjects' personally elicited construct dimensions. Findings support significant differences between use of elicited and provided constructs and helped to isolate personal…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the "darker side" of what it means to engage in an international academic career. Extending beyond well-documented themes relating to the difficulties of cross-cultural adjustment and unfulfilled expectations/opportunities for promotion, this paper seeks to introduce "transience and risk" as…

Notes that policy process is open to influence of scientific knowledge and that it is value-laden and can also be moved by emotional arguments. Examines this paradox and presents information on how family scientists can meet both demands. Explores field of public policy as new career option for family scientists. (Author/NB)

This study investigated high school students' process of choosing a study in higher education, using a longitudinal design. A sample of 535 adolescents participated at the beginning, middle, and end of Grade 12. Latent curve modeling revealed evidence for a mean developmental increase in the career decisional tasks of orientation, exploration,…

This article draws on the first two years of a longitudinal study of young people's pathway and career-related experiences and perspectives. It argues for a richer conceptualisation of young people's transition to study, training and employment than what simple school-to-labour market models allow. We present four clusters of young people's…

Project FUTURE is one component of a multifaceted approach in the Northwest Texas region to target Hispanic and African-American youth, encouraging them to go through school with a desire to complete education programs leading to professional credentialing in teaching. Project FUTURE inspires students to believe that they can attend Texas Tech…

Person matching promotes career exploration and choice by linking persons to persons in occupations based on inventory profile score similarity. We examined the efficacy of the procedure for career specialty choice. Medical students (N=196 women, 224 men) responded to the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) in their first year of…

Attempted to identify role of career exploration in the career decision making process using college student (N=103) subjects. Found internal search instrumentality beliefs to be associated with the planning phase of career decision making, and environmental exploration was predictive of vocational commitment. (Author/ABL)

Examines the incremental validity of the General Confidence Themes of the Skills Confidence Inventory as measures of vocational self-efficacy in identifying tenured and satisfied membership in 21 occupational groups. Results replicate earlier findings that self-efficacy and interest form similar structures. Results also demonstrate the explanatory…