Career Exploration and Career Adaptation in Middle School Students: The Moderating Effect of Perceived Parental Expectations

Authors

  • Tianlin liu

    Teachers College of Beijing Union University, Beijing 100011, China
  • Junqing Yue

    Education Research and Training Center of Pinggu District, Beijing 101200, China
  • ZeRen Liang

    Beijing First Experimental Primary School, Beijing 100052, China
  • Shixiang Liu

    Teachers College of Beijing Union University, Beijing 100011, China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/jpr.v6i3.6839
Received: 5 June 2024 | Accepted: 20 July 2024 | Published Online: 30 July 2024

Abstract

Good career adaptability is the bridge for students to enter the society successfully. In recent years, the employment situation is more and more severe, and the employment pressure continues to move to the middle school group, and the career adaptability of middle school students and its influencing factors have gradually become an important issue in career development. Therefore, this study focuses on the group of middle school students and discusses the influence of personal factors and family factors on their career adaptability.In order to explore the relationship between middle school students' career exploration and career adaptation, and the role of parents' expectation perception in it.In this study, Career Resilience Scale, Career Exploration Scale and Parents' Expectations perceived by Middle school students were adopted.A questionnaire survey was conducted among 340 non-graduating students from three middle schools in Beijing. SPSS 21.0, AMOS plug-in and Process plug-in were used to analyze the data. The results show that there are significant differences in perceived parental expectations by gender and school level. There is a significant positive correlation between perceived parental expectation and career exploration and career adaptation, and a significant negative correlation between career exploration and career adaptation. There is a significant correlation between the dimensions of middle school students' career exploration, perceived parents' expectations, career adaptability and their total scores, and perceived parents' expectations play a moderating role between middle school students' career exploration and career adaptability.

Keywords:

Career exploration; Career adaptability; Perceiving parental expectations; Middle school student

References

[1] Jordaan, J.P., 1963. Exploratory behavior: The formation of self and occupational concepts. Career Development: Self-concept Theory. 1(1), 42–78.

[2] Blustein, D.L., 1997. A context-rich perspective of career exploration across the life roles. The Career Development Quarterly. 45(3), 260–274.

[3] Flum, H., Blustein, D.L., 2000. Reinvigorating the study of vocational exploration: A framework for research. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 56(3), 380–404.

[4] Savickas, M.L., 1997. Career adaptability: An integrative construct for life-span, life-space theory. The Career Development Quarterly. 45(3).

[5] Creed, P.A., Muller, J., Patton, W., 2003. Leaving high school: The influence and consequences for psychological well-being and career-related confidence. Journal of Adolescence. 26(3), 295–311.

[6] Savickas, M.L., 2005. The theory and practice of career construction. Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work. In Brown, S.D., Lent, R.W. (Eds.), Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, pp. 42–70.

[7] Yu, H., 2017. The relationship between middle school students' academic achievement, teachers' expectation/parents' expectation and academic self-concept [Dissertation]. Shandong Normal University.

[8] Wei, Y., Xu, F., 2019. The relationship between academic adjustment, teachers'/parents' expectation perception and school alienation of left-behind junior school students. Chinese Journal of Health Psychology. 27(10), 1559–1564.

[9] Hirschi, A., Herrmann, A., Keller, A.C., 2015. Career adaptivity, adaptability, and adapting: A conceptual and empirical investigation. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 87, 1–10.

[10] Klehe, U.C., Zikic, J., van Vianen, A.E.M., De Pater, I.E., 2011. Career adaptability, turnover and loyalty during organizational downsizing. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 79, 217–229.

[11] Leung, S.A., Hou, Z.J., Gati, I., Li, X.X., 2011. Effects of parental expectations and cultural-values orientation on career decision-making difficulties of Chinese university students. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 78(1), 11–20.

[12] Liu, J., Mcmahon, M., Watson, M., 2015. Parental influence on child career development in China’s mainland: A qualitative study. The Career Development Quarterly. 63(1), 74–87.

[13] Chen, Y., Ling, Y., Xia, H., Hu, Y.C., 2019. The influence of parental autonomy support on high school students' career resilience: The mediating role of academic self-efficacy. Industry and Technology Forum. 20(22), 79–80.

[14] Yang, Q., Zhang, J., Ni, L., Wang, S., Li, Z., Ye, B., 2021. The influence of parents' emotional warmth on college students' career adaptability: The chain mediating role of proactive personality and core self-evaluation. Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology. 29(06), 1290–1293.

[15] Xu, C., 2008. Study on self-efficacy of career decision making and its relationship with anxiety and career exploration [Dissertation]. Central China Normal University.

[16] Savickas, M.L., Porfeli, E.J., 2012. Career adapt-abilities scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 80(3), 661–673.

[17] Jin, L., 2014. A study on the influence of parents' expectations on junior middle school students' self-concept [Dissertation]. Inner Mongolia Normal University.

Downloads

How to Cite

liu, T., Yue, J., Liang, Z., & Liu, S. (2024). Career Exploration and Career Adaptation in Middle School Students: The Moderating Effect of Perceived Parental Expectations. Journal of Psychological Research, 6(3), 33–39. https://doi.org/10.30564/jpr.v6i3.6839

Issue

Vol. 6 , Iss. 3 (July 2024)

Article Type

Article

License

Copyright © 2024 Tianlin liu, Junqing Yue, ZeRen Liang, Shixiang Liu

Creative Commons License

This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.

Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC