Career adaptability and academic engagement are important processes in higher education. However, the relationship between these processes and their potential role in students’ life satisfaction still needs to be addressed. The present study aims to explore the role of career adaptability and academic engagement on higher education students’ life satisfaction. This study included 201 participants, 156 women (77.6%) and 45 men (22.4%), aged between 18 and 55 years (M = 21.13, SD = 4.51). Students answered a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale, the University Student Engagement Inventory, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Positive and statistically significant correlations between career adaptability and academic engagement, as well as between these variables and life satisfaction, were found. The results of a hierarchical linear regression analysis suggested that career adaptability and academic engagement statistically significantly contribute to explaining variations in life satisfaction. This study may lead to a better understanding of the relationship between academic, emotional, and career processes. It may also stimulate integrative psychological practices in higher education settings.
Children develop career expectations as they increase self‐knowledge and perceive societal affordances and barriers to life roles. Parents are powerful agents in the socialization of children to work, transmitting occupational concepts that influence children's career development. The authors used Gottfredson's (1981) and Holland's (1973) theories to test associations between children's career expectations and parents' jobs in terms of gender, prestige, and interest typology among same‐sex and cross‐sex child‐parent dyads. Data were collected from 185 Portuguese children (51.4% boys, 48.6% girls; Mage = 10.41 years) from 2‐parent families. Children reported their parents' jobs and shared personal career expectations. Correlation and linear regression results indicated that fathers' male‐dominated jobs put boys at risk of gender‐based circumscription of career expectations. An intergenerational cycle of prestige inequalities was also evidenced, although parents seemed to support children's exploration of various interest areas. Future research could explore these relationships across family structures. Practice should foster children's in‐breadth career exploration and engage parents as key partners.
1 January 2022 in Journal of Counseling Psychology
Most research applications of the social cognitive model of career self-management (CSM; Lent & Brown, 2013) to career exploration and decision-making have involved U.S. college students. To extend research on the model, we tested its fit to the data in a sample of 345 unemployed adult workers in Portugal. Participants completed measures of career decision self-efficacy, outcome expectations, social support, conscientiousness, neuroticism, exploration goals, decisional stress, and career choice certainty. The model test yielded good overall fit to the data and accounted for significant variance in goals, stress, and choice certainty. When compared with prior findings, the results suggest that the CSM model may offer explanatory utility relative to the making of initial as well as subsequent career decisions and across national boundaries. Implications of the findings for the social cognitive model as well as for future research and practice are considered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
1 January 2022 in Psicologia Escolar e Educacional
RESUMO A evasão no Ensino Superior constitui preocupação internacional com impacto nas Instituições de Ensino Superior, em geral, e nos percursos de carreira individuais, em específico. Para prevenir esse fenômeno e apoiar tanto instituições como estudantes na sua tomada de decisão, urge identificar fatores de evasão no ensino superior. Apresenta-se revisão de artigos publicados em revistas científicas internacionais entre janeiro 2014 e dezembro 2018, com base no Modelo Longitudinal de Evasão Institucional. A pesquisa foi realizada em quatro bases de dados, com combinações das palavras-chave dropout, departure, academic adjustment, college adjustment, academic integration, social integration e higher education. Foram lidos integralmente 24 artigos que satisfaziam critérios de inclusão. Procedeu-se à descrição dos artigos e o conteúdo foi sistematizado em meta-síntese. Identificaram-se fatores relativos a atributos prévios à entrada no ensino superior; objetivos e compromissos prévios e posteriores a essa entrada; experiências institucionais; integração acadêmica e social. Identificaram-se ainda medidas de sinalização de evasão. Discutem-se implicações para a investigação, para serviços e políticas das Instituições de Ensino Superior.
The transition to the first year of high school constitutes a critical moment because it corresponds to the implementation of a career choice, which can impact students’ satisfaction and psychosocial adjustment. The career construction model of adaptation holds potential to explain how students adapt to high school, by suggesting linkages among adaptive readiness, resources, responses, and results. However, research applying the career construction model to school transitions, combining social-emotional, career, and academic variables is still needed. This study explores the roles that social-emotional skills (an indicator of adaptive readiness) and career adaptability (an indicator of adaptability resources) play in explaining first-year high school students’ agentic school engagement (an indicator of adapting responses). Measures of social-emotional skills, career adaptability, and school engagement were completed by 136 students (63.2% girls; M age = 15.68). Results from the hierarchical linear regression analysis suggest that social-emotional skills and career adaptability explain 32% of the variance and significantly contribute to explaining agentic school engagement. These findings seem illustrative of the potential of the career construction model of adaptation to deepen knowledge and understanding about the transition to high school and the implementation of career choices. Aligned with the literature, this study supports the calls for integrative psychological practices that acknowledge social-emotional, career, and academic variables when fostering students’ psychosocial adjustment.
1 January 2022 in Psicologia Escolar e Educacional
Dropping out of Higher Education is an international concern with an impact on Higher Education Institutions, in general, and on individual career paths, in particular. In order to prevent this phenomenon and support both institutions and students in their decision-making, it is urgent to identify evasion factors in higher education. A review made in published articles in international scientific journals between January 2014 and December 2018 is presented, based on the Longitudinal Institutional Evasion Model. The search was carried out in four databases, with combinations of the keywords dropout, departure, academic adjustment, college adjustment, academic integration, social integration, and higher education. Twenty-four articles that met the inclusion criteria were fully read. The articles were described and the content was systematized in meta-synthesis. Factors related to attributes prior to entering higher education were identified; objectives and commitments prior and subsequent to this entry; institutional experiences; academic and social integration. Evasion signaling measures were also identified. Implications for research, services and policies of Higher Education Institutions are discussed.