Values-Oriented Career Education

Career education originated in the western developed countries,which has experienced the transition from the professional guidance to career counseling,and finally to the career education.It is considered as a three-dimensional concept covering covered a person’s whole lifetime with multifaceted issues crossed.To some extent,it is also an integrated ideal concept of education,which includes not only a person’s applying for schools,choosing his career and future development,but also how to make him or her develop positive and healthy values,life goals and faith as well as to enable the individual to obtain the ability of self-planning and independent development from childhood to adulthood.It has been a history of nearly a century since career education was introduced into China as vocation guidance,which is the original form in the early 20th century.Considering domestic research and practice situation,career education of our country develops relatively slow,and university students are viewed as the major group of people who need this education.In recent years,with a new round of college entrance examination reform,the emphasis put on senior high school students’ comprehensive ability has been on the rise.Under this circumstance,various senior high schools started the exploration and practice of career education.At present,the exploration of high school career education in the academia is still in its infancy stage,the research of which mainly involves the concept of career education,the developing mode,and the analysis of present situation,etc.Many high school career education research is based on the interests,abilities and talents as the guidance,focused more on academic and employment guidance,but ignored the value orientation and social needs in the process of students’ career development.The latter is just what needs to be clarified and paid more attention to by researchers,and it is also the research topic of present study.In this research,the so-called values-orientated career education of senior highs mainly refers to the idea that career education of senior highs aims to help students to figure out the relationships among individual,family and society in order to enable them to find the best breakthrough point in in their own dreams,expectations from families,and the needs of society so that they can improve their career continuous development.Values-orientated career education is not only the care for students lives and serves as an important way of promoting the healthy growth of them,but also a response to the requirements of "Khalid ents",and is the future trend in the development of education cause in our country.Moreover,it is the persistence of the essence of education and it is a necessary requirement for the return to the essence of education.The present research explores the current situation of the career education in Shanghai Qibao High School(QB)through the methods of case study and investigation,trying to discover the hidden logic and value factors of career education behind the curriculum,teaching and activities.The study has found that although generally speaking the QB high school students have certain cognition of their interests and own abilities and start to give thoughts to their own future and the development of the country,problems still exist that some students are not clear about the values for the future development,and there is a separation from present study and future development,and some students9 values are oriented by functionalism and individualism.These problems make them trapped in a bewilderment of career development.This confusion and dilemma is resulted from the influence of the new international trend of ideological liberalism as well as the increasing awareness of social utility orientation,and is also due to the lack of attention in the school education,the limits of education content,the shortage of independent curriculum,and its professional teachers,and parents’ utilitarian thoughts and their habit of doing everything for their children.Admittedly,these factors are external causes,senior high school students’ career lost come more from its internal cause,namely its utilitarian tendency and the lack of self-knowledge.Therefore,in order to make high school students get rid of the confusion in the career development,joined efforts from the school,which plays a major role,the family and the community are required.On one hand,schools should infiltrate the values of guidance to students through a variety of ways such as subject teaching,career education courses and social practice to help them find each direction of career development.On the other hand,schools should take the responsibility to guide students’ families and make full use of parents’ advantages and strategies in career education,and should strengthen the cooperation with colleges and universities,enterprises,community institutions,etc.,to help students step out of school into the society and in practice deepen their understandings and expectations of themselves,career,dreams and future.In addition,senior high school students should give full play to the subjective initiative,consciously knowing themselves,the society,band their career,and thus can combine their value choice and the career planning process with their goals,family expectations and social needs.For senior high school students,they are standing on the first crossing of their life,and standing in front of the first gate of the social personnel shunt.In this case,career education is imperative.How to stick to and perfect the value-oriented career education is an important theme remaining to be further investigated by the researchers extensively.For instance,the role of values in the mechanism of career education,the comparative studies of values-oriented career education both at home and abroad,and the mode and implementation of the values-oriented career education.In conclusion,a hundred-year policy is based on education.Education workers must avoid slacking off,and should not forget their original purpose.They are supposed to care for the values of life and walk towards the source of life.Only by this means can they be worthy of being called educators.