Reciprocal Longitudinal Associations Between Career Aspiration And Career Exploration In High School Students

Career development is an important part of the whole career.Employee is also the long-term roles that individuals need to play.The quality of career can always affect the height of life development.For students,career planning is of great significance to their future academic and career development.In various fields,researchers have different views on when career planning should start.With the progress of society and the development of education,people pay more attention to career satisfaction,experience and value in future career path.At present,the reform of college entrance examination system in China is in full swing.The new college entrance examination mode breaks the limitations of Arts and Sciences,and more respects students’ self-awareness.From the beginning of choosing subjects,students are required to understand their own interests,abilities and specialties more careful.They also should take the targeted grasp of relevant schools and selected majors.Regardless of subject selection or voluntary filling,high school students are in the key stage of directly pointing to individual future development and career planning.It has gradually become another important purpose of ordinary high school education to promote students to establish the awareness of career planning,teach students to master the corresponding knowledge and skills,and provide strong support for their learning,future development and lifelong growth.Therefore,it has a long-term theoretical and practical significance to explore the status and problems of high school students’ career development and formulate corresponding countermeasures.Career ambition is the ideal goal of individual in career choice,and career exploration is the main way of individual to complete the career development.As an essential variable in the field of career,they have been widely concerned by researchers.However,the existing research results are all from cross-sectional design,and the question of whether they can influence each other is not clear about the more causal inference between them.Family factors are the core background variables in the framework of individual career development,such as the way of education,parent-child relationship and other static factors such as family structure,social and economic status,which have irreplaceable and unique influence on the career development of individuals,especially those attached to their parents.In addition,the individual-centered research approach was rarely mentioned in the field of occupational psychology.People have not been known whether there are differences in the relationship between important variables and model structure in different groups and individuals.In order to investigate the two-way longitudinal relationship between vocational aspirations and career exploration of high school students and the influence of family social and economic status on the dynamic role,this study adopts a three-year longitudinal cross lag design,and discusses the technology of multi group effect comparison,potential profile and potential transformation analysis.In this study,we use the cluster sampling.The subjects were selected from two county high schools in Shandong Province and Henan Province by class,and the three-year follow-up survey was conducted.The first test was conducted in November2018.A total of 3462 senior one students were measured,including 1769 boys,with an average age of 15.11 years.A questionnaire was sent to the same group in October2019 after an interval of one year.A total of 3466 senior high school students were tested in the second test,including 1729 boys with an average age of 16.11 years.Another year later,the third test was conducted in September 2020.A total of 3327 senior high school students were tested,including 1655 boys with an average age of17.13.The results show that: first of all,there is a two-way relationship between high school students’ career aspirations and career exploration.Career aspirations at the previous time can stably and positively predict career exploration at the later time;career exploration at T2 time can positively predict career aspirations at T3 time.Secondly,family socio-economic status can significantly adjust the interaction between career aspirations and career exploration.When family socio-economic status is low,individual career aspirations at T1 time can positively predict career exploration at T2 time,and career exploration at T2 time can positively predict career aspirations at T3 time;while when family socio-economic status is high,individual career aspirations at the last two times are higher Career ambition and career exploration can positively predict each other.Finally,the results of individual centered analysis show that career ambition can promote the students who lack career exploration to improve their exploration level,which confirms the results of variable centered analysis.Research conclusion: the career aspirations of teenagers can promote their career exploration stably and for a long time,and with the accumulation of time,career exploration behavior can also promote the improvement of career aspirations.In the early stage of senior high school,students with low family socio-economic status are more likely to be driven by career aspirations,so as to carry out career exploration;while in the late stage of senior high school,students with high family socio-economic status will play a more prominent role in career aspirations and career exploration.The above series of research findings can not only provide guidance for high school students’ career development curriculum,but also enlighten families and society to pay more attention to the overall role of family environment.From the family point of view,families with lower social and economic status should care for their children’s psychological growth and support their development as much as possible.From the perspective of schools,more attention should be paid to the setting of career planning related courses,so as to help students improve their self-awareness,establish career aspirations,and further carry out career exploration efficiently and smoothly.From the perspective of students themselves,we should pay attention to thinking about the future orientation,and actively cooperate with the educational interaction from schools and parents.