Developmental

Career maturity is central to a developmental approach to understanding career behavior and involves the assessment of an individual’s level of career progress relative to his or her career relevant development tasks. Definitions of career maturity include the individual's ability and readiness to make appropriate career choices. Included in this is awareness of what is required to make a career decision and the degree to which one's choices are both realistic and consistent over time. The main idea about career maturity was developed during the 1950s. However, it has experienced a revival in the 1990s as a useful tool for understanding adolescent career development. Super (1990) indicated that key influences of career maturity, in addition to age and grade, were psychosocial forces. Determining what to do upon completing high school education continues to be a significant task for students. For some, choosing an occupation and finding their first full-time job will be major challenges. For others, choosing and selecting a particular course of study will constitute the major decision-making goals at this stage (Creed & Patton, 2003).
 * __DEVELOPMENTAL – FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS__**

There is a study done using the Comprehensive Career Needs Survey to assess how junior high and senior high school students perceive career concerns and how these concerns may change from grades 7 to 12. The reason for this change is discouragement in career planning due to (1) training and education concerns, (2) security, (3) satisfaction, (4) failing, (5) commitment, (6) wrong occupational choice, and (7) having to decide. Although Super's (1990) stage of exploration refers to common vocational tasks (i.e. crystallizing, specifying, and implementing a vocational preference), the career concerns in this study referred to what adolescents perceived to be personally important and essential to the development of their career (Bardick, Bernes, Code, Gunn, 2006).

Results from yet another study showed that three years after graduating from high school, seniors who had made greater progress developing the critical career awareness, exploration, and planning skills outlined in the integrative/contextual model of career development reported greater success in transitioning into fundamental life roles in young adulthood (Lapan, 2004). These young people were more likely to have found a direction to the work aspects of their lives about which they were optimistic, were acting in proactive ways to become more successful, and felt that this was a more stable path that they wanted to pursue in the future and not change into something else. These adults also were more likely to have achieved higher levels of education and training after leaving high school. Finally, these citizens were very satisfied with their lives and where they were taking themselves in the future (Aoyagi, Kayson, Lapan, 2007)

Tang, Pan, and Newmeyer (2008) found that students’ self-efficacy, or “task- or domain-specific confidence,” was related to the career decision-making process (p. 3). Female students had higher self-efficacy for working with people and ideas, while male students demonstrated higher self-efficacy for data and things. The main finding was that learning experiences significantly impact students’ self-efficacy, which in turn influences career interests and decisions. The implication for school counselors involves creating career development programs that focus on providing learning experiences that will enhance self-efficacy for high school students.

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