22 June 2006
Career development, not guidance, emerging issue for young people
Career management and development, rather than traditional career guidance, are emerging as important factors in
supporting young people to think about, and progress, their professional and personal futures.
These findings are contained in Young people producing careers and identities, the first report from NZCER’s Pathways
and prospects research that investigates career-related experiences and perspectives of young people after they have
left school.
“Guidance has tended to come from models of skill-matching and vocational aptitudes, whereas career development
addresses the roles of the learner and worker throughout life. Young people are changing how they make decisions about
their careers and working life, and they do experience indecision or ‘changes of heart’, even after making apparently
secure, or appropriate, career choices,” says NZCER Senior Researcher Dr Karen Vaughan, the project leader.
“During the research we found young people’s stories of transition highlighted that:
- careers decision making is not a single decision at a single point in time; - different levels of commitment to any
pathway option may not be the same as commitment to a specific career; and - similar career orientations may be based on
quite different, but equally valid, reasoning.
“Policy makers, and school and tertiary staff need to understand that tracking young people and their activities at
face-value is not enough to understand the meaning that young people make of those activities, and the roles that
different pathways play in their lives. Young people are challenging some commonly held assumptions about what their
motivations and goals are, or should be.”
Dr Vaughan says the idea of life-long learning means workplaces will increasingly be seen as opportunities for people
to develop careers rather than just ‘do a job’.
“A ‘career’ has a very different meaning than in the past, as it is now rare for people to have a ‘job for life’. Young
people are now focused on a career as a process rather than a set structure, and are thinking in terms of developing and
managing ‘self’ as well as skills. The research shows that we need to reframe careers support away from advice that is
tied to existing and fixed skills and aptitudes, and towards skills for developing and managing careers – like the
Internet 20 years ago, the emergence of some of these careers may still be years away.”
“The changes in the ways young people are now looking at their skills, careers and futures have significant
implications for groups who support them - teachers, parents, and policy makers. In order to be better aligned with
young people’s actual priorities and needs, these groups need to shift their thinking away from a simple
‘transition-to-labour market’ model to something that takes account of identity production and ‘careers as processes’.
The research is following 114 young people who left school during, or at the end of, 2003 and had initially chosen one
of six broad areas of further study including modern apprenticeships, the army, and a range of tertiary education
programmes. The young people were individually interviewed in early 2004, and again in 2005, and asked to describe and
reflect on choices and choice-making processes, work/life balance, and their hopes and fears for the future.
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About the project
Young people producing careers and identities is the first major report from the four-year longitudinal Pathways and
Prospects research which investigates pathways and career-related experiences and perspectives of young people after
they have left school.
It investigates how young people make decisions about their careers and working life, including any part that indecision
or “changes of heart” might play. It also raises issues about the framework used in thinking about how to support young
people in transition.
The research focuses on three main questions:
- how do young people describe what they are doing and what it means in their lives? - how do they see themselves in
relation to their career and personal pathways? - what can we learn, and how can we advance, both policies and
practices?
The first two rounds of fieldwork comprised interviews with the young people in early 2004 (shortly after leaving
school), and again approximately a year later. The next round of fieldwork is to be carried out later in 2006 and in
late 2007, with the next report due in 2007. The research was carried out by the New Zealand Council for Educational
Research as part of its Purchase Agreement with the Ministry of Education.
About NZCER
The New Zealand Council for Educational Research is an independent, educational research organisation which provides
educators, students, parents, policy makers, and the public with innovative and independent research, analysis, and
advice.
Established in 1934 through grants from the Carnegie Corporation, it became a statutory body in 1945 and now operates
under the NZCER Act 1972 (and amendments). It is not formally attached to any government department, university, or
other educational organisation.
For more information, please visit our website: www.nzcer.org.nz.
ENDS