Most useful activities

The previous section looked at students’ perceived connections with favoured careers. This section looks at connectors or perceived influences in the form of most useful activities for thinking about careers and pathways from school (i.e., exploration of possibilities, information gathering and processing, decision making). We again provided students with a list of statements about different activities and events. The statements were based on existing research findings on the influences on young people’s career decision making, including informal guidance, formal school-based careers education and non careers learning, and learning opportunities outside of the school (Boyd, Chalmers, & Kumekawa, 2001; Career Services, 2003; Hipkins, 2005).

Most useful activities for students thinking about career

The following figure shows student responses to the statements. Only a very small proportion of students thought any of the activities were not useful or not useful at all (average non usefulness response of around 10 percent). Instead, the majority of student responses highlight two things. Firstly most of the activities were useful, but not very useful. Secondly a sizeable proportion of the students had not actually taken part in most of the listed activities; around a third of the students reported not doing more than two-thirds of the activities.

The few activities that were considered very useful by more than a few students were “talking with friends” (18 percent), “talking with teachers or careers advisors at school about my options” (18 percent), “what I learnt in a classroom-based school subject” (19 percent), and—the standout—“talking with family about my options” (28 percent).

Figure 6: Student perceptions of useful support for career decision making

Family influence

Students’ perception that their family is key to their thinking about careers is not surprising. Although there is little in-depth New Zealand research into family and careers, we already know that family is an important influence through a number of New Zealand studies that have collected data which compares the different sources of young people’s guidance or decision making influences and shows that family consistently ranks at the top of the list, far ahead of school careers advisors, in the eyes of young people (Boyd et al., 2001; Career Services, 2003; Dupois, Inkson, & Mclaren, 2005; Hipkins et al., 2006; McLaren, 2003). New Zealand research has also shown how family support can be contingent and differently enabling or constraining for young people (Vaughan et al., 2006) but also that many parents feel inadequate to the task of supporting the career decision making process (Career Services, 2007a).

International studies of the career decision making context also confirm the enormous influence of family on young people’s career decision making (Bryce, Anderson, Frigo, & Mckenzie, 2007). Some suggest enhancing the influence of family by including and supporting the family in relation to the young person’s decision making (Berríos-Allison, 2005; Perkins & Peterson, 2005). Several studies that have measured relationships between family support and career decision making (Nota, Ferrari, Solberg, & Soresi, 2007) and family encouragement and discouragement of certain occupational interests (Berríos-Allison, 2005), have a view to the possibilities of interventions that might effect greater career self-efficacy for the individual student or young person.

Our data give a more nuanced view of family influence (usefulness) which may be helpful in determining support interventions. As with previous associations, the students who scored highly for behaviours valued in school (as well as elsewhere), such as motivation and enjoyment of reading, who had highly qualified mothers, and a lower measure of social difficulties and risky behaviour, were more likely to find their families helpful to them in their careers thinking. However, the differences between lowest and highest quartiles and categories are not huge; even students scoring in the lowest quartiles and categories found their families to be useful support.

Table 28: Talking with family is a useful career support

	Lowest quartile or category	Highest quartile or category
	% who found it useful or very useful
Mother’s qualifications	84 (none)	96 (university)
Focused and responsible	72	93
Enjoyment of reading	72	92
Social difficulties (reversed)	78	91
Motivation at 14	77	90
Risky behaviour (reversed)	68	88

Perhaps what is especially interesting is what students might be indicating about the kind of usefulness they see in family relationships. In the previous section on career connections (Section 7), many students did not connect their career interests and a “family business or job that someone in my family has”. Yet read against this section’s data on the family, there might seem to be an inconsistency: on the one hand family is not seen as connected to favoured careers but on the other hand family is an important influence and resource on careers thinking. These two positions can actually be understood in terms of the opportunity and responsibility paradox facing students today.

Generally speaking, families no longer necessarily set the parameters of students’ career choices in an overt sense, by insisting young people follow in the occupational footsteps of others before them in the family or stay away from certain occupational (and life) choices that are not highly valued or are thought to bring shame upon the family in some way (e.g., males from conservative families becoming nurses). Modern careers thinking and workforce development places the emphasis on choice and on individual (rather than family or community) choice.

However, families do undoubtedly encourage and discourage young people in other ways, through their values, knowledge, and networks. The key part of this, though, is that students may be seeing family, not simply as an information resource or guiding force in the strict sense, but as a place to (openly or otherwise) help make sense of various and ever-increasing or changing opportunities for the individual student’s life. Even with a renewed emphasis on school-based careers education, the burgeoning of options (school subjects, assessment options, tertiary institutions, new careers, workplace learning) may make the support of families (and other relationships) more important, not less so. It is therefore not so surprising that the most useful activities cited by students tended to be relationship-based or actively involve students in thinking about their lives or having experiences that help to construct a real sense of options: in addition to “talking with my family”, student responses highlighted in particular the usefulness of “talking with my friends”, “what I learnt in a classroom-based school subject”, “working part-time”, and “talking with teachers or careers advisors”.

There might also be a sense in which students are prey to what Furlong and Cartmel (1997) refer to as the “epistemological fallacy” of the dominant individualistic career decision making narrative. This is where structural constraints (such as socio economic status, gender, or family networks) are not recognised as such by the individuals concerned or society. That students recognise their family as the most important influence but do not cite their family as connected with their careers thinking could be part of not recognising the structured-ness of our choices, within a society that celebrates how unfettered our options are (supposed to be). The data in this report have certainly shown up patterns consistent with structural constraints and freedoms through the statistical associations with social variables such as family income and mother’s qualifications, and school characteristics such as subject cluster and decile. These patterns are summarised in Section 9.

Useful types of activities

The following table again shows students’ responses to the statements about useful activities for career thinking, but this time grouped according to the chief aspect of the activity: relationship-based, information gathering, active planning, or experiential.

Table 29: Useful activities

	Statements	Useful       %	Not useful       %	Have not done it       %
Relationship-based	Talking with my family about my options	83	4	12
	Talking with my friends	80	7	10
	Talking with teachers or careers advisors at school about my options	50	7	41
Information gathering	Looking through printed brochures and course books from tertiary institutions, employers, and other schemes	57	9	32
	Surfing or searching the Internet for information and ideas	51	12	35
	Advertising on television or radio, in magazines or newspapers	48	23	27
	Careers expos	43	11	45
	Visits to universities, polytechnics, PTEs	43	9	45
Active planning	Putting together a CV	42	13	43
	Practising job interviews or applying for jobs	30	8	58
	Career/life planning projects at school	21	8	58
	Self-help careers activities	19	16	62
Experiential	What I learnt in a classroom-based school subject	79	11	8
	Working part-time	56	12	29
	What I learnt in a school subject that involved some workplace learning	47	7	43

When viewed this way, it is clear that where students have had exposure to, or taken part in, specific career planning activities, they have generally found them useful. However, there are some interesting trends in relation to the kinds of activities students have experienced. For example, nearly half of the students were unable to evaluate (as useful or not) because of non participation: talking with teachers or careers advisors, visiting tertiary settings and careers expos, and carrying out careers/life planning projects. Students’ non participation in such activities is disturbing given that the sample comprised senior secondary students (158 Year 11 students and 260 Year 12 students in 2005⁶) at the minimum school leaving age of 16 and that schools are mandated through National Administration Guideline 1.6 to provide appropriate career education and guidance for all students in Year 7 and above, with a particular emphasis on specific career guidance for students at risk of leaving school unprepared for the transition to the workplace or further education/training (Ministry of Education, 2007a).

Students’ reported non participation can be understood as a reflection of the characteristics of our sample (i.e., an over-representation of more privileged students) as well as the findings from a recent survey of careers education in New Zealand schools (Vaughan & Gardiner, 2007). The careers education survey used similar statements to our “useful supports for career decision making” question. The survey findings show that school careers staff generally consider these same useful support activities to be “vital/very important” and that they are “scheduled annually or more often” by most careers staff.

Yet the careers staff responding to that survey reported that most or all Years 11 and 12 students participate in these activities just 22–38 percent of the time (Year 11) and 36–52 percent of the time (Year 12). Participation rates rise significantly when target groups are in keeping with the National Administration Guideline 1.6 emphasis on careers education for at-risk young people. Careers activities therefore tend to be targeted at groups of students who are less likely to be in our Competent Children, Competent Learners sample (i.e., Mäori and Pacific students, early school leavers⁷ and truant students).

This type of selective provision makes careers education activities more about intervention than something for all students that is integral to being in, and preparing to leave, secondary school. It is consistent with National Administration Guidelines 1.6 but seems inconsistent with the Ministry of Education’s school support publication Career Education and Guidance in New Zealand Schools (2003, p. 7) which spells out the aims of career education and guidance in terms of students developing self-awareness about opportunities and for making decisions (Vaughan & Gardiner, 2007). It looks even more inconsistent with career development trends which emphasise careers guidance for everyone and in a lifelong sense, not just at the point of leaving school (Vaughan, 2007).

Given the demographic slant toward students from more affluent and advantaged backgrounds in our sample, the career interests or aspirations of most of our students were unlikely to have been mediated by school careers guidance. Instead their career interests are more likely to have been mediated by school experiences and family background and support—which is what their responses show. On the other hand the less well represented students in our sample were statistically more likely to experience some aspects of school as a useful mediation for careers thinking. The majority of Mäori/Pasifika students (70 percent), but less than half of the Päkehä/NZ European/Asian students (47 percent), reported that “talking with teachers or careers advisors at school about their options” was useful/very useful to them in thinking about what to do when they leave school.

Students for whom formal school-based careers activities were to be a useful mediation showed patterns of associations very similar to the patterns seen elsewhere in this report, particularly those in Section 7 on career connections. The more closely students were associated with variables related to school success, the more likely they were to find their school learning useful for thinking about post-school pathways and careers.

Table 30: Learning about careers in a classroom-based school subject

	Lowest quartile or category	Highest quartile or category
	% who found it useful or very useful
Total no. of Level 1 NCEA credits	60	95
Focused and responsible	64	92
Social skills	65	89
Enjoyment of reading	56	86
Attendance	59	85
Risky behaviour (reversed)	62	76

Students who found vocational school programmes or paid part-time work useful were more likely to be in the lowest quartile for some school success variables. Motivation at 14 did not fit this pattern; students in the highest quartile were more likely to find school–workplace programmes useful. There is some evidence that schools select more highly motivated students for these programmes, the most common of which is Gateway or STAR-funded courses. Reasons for this include the Gateway student eligibility criteria of being “work ready” (Tertiary Education Commission, 2008), and giving the limited programme places to students who teachers believe will get the most out of the programme and not damage the school’s relationship with the employer by “wasting” the employer’s time or creating extra pastoral pressure for the employer (Tertiary Education Commission, 2003; Vaughan & Kenneally, 2003).

Table 31: Learning in school–workplace programme or school “work experience”

	Lowest quartile or category	Highest quartile or category
	% who found it useful or very useful
Mother’s qualifications	61 (none)	35 (university)
Cognitive competency	59	31
Total no. of Level 1 NCEA credits	53	25
Motivation at 14	42	52

 

Table 32: Learning about careers from paid work (part-time)

	Lowest quartile or category	Highest quartile or category
	% who found it useful or very useful
Cognitive competency	78	44
Risky behaviour (reversed)	71	42
Focused and responsible	67	40

A similar pattern emerges in relation to some school-based careers education activities. As the next table shows, these are most typically associated with students who will not be attending a tertiary institution and/or intend to move from school to full-time work. This points again to the provision of careers support being targeted at particular students rather than across-the-board for all students.

Table 33: Learning about careers through careers-specific activities

	Activity	Lowest quartile or category	Highest quartile or category
		% who found this useful or very useful
Mother’s qualifications	Putting together a CV	53	27
Cognitive competency	Putting together a CV	59	35
	Career/life planning projects at school	33	14
	Practising for job interviews or applying for jobs	51	20
Total no. of Level 1 NCEA credits	Practising for job interviews or applying for jobs	48	20

 

It is important to note that while the activities of “putting together a CV” and “practising for job interviews or applying for jobs” usually occur through school careers programmes, it is possible that students might do this with friends or family instead (or as well). However, the greater likelihood is that these do occur through school; recent research indicates that school-based careers advisors regard these activities as vital or important, if not necessarily working with students on them very frequently but often on an as-needed basis (Vaughan & Gardiner, 2007).

Overall, our data point to wide variation between what students find useful and what they have actually done or been exposed to, as well as the prime usefulness of using relationships–between student and family, student and friends, and student and school subjects—to help with thinking about careers. Our data cannot necessarily point to the way in which various activities are useful and it is worth remembering that different students will find different activities more or less useful, and find them more or less useful at different points in time, or in relation to different events. For example, students can find some learning experiences useful as confirmation of their existing interests or aspirations. But they may equally find them useful as a disconfirmation, particularly if the interest or experience was an exploratory one (Vaughan & Kenneally, 2003). However, overall, careers education activities are a deliberate intervention targeted at particular students and may well make assumptions about what sort of student it is that needs help, as well as what sort of help is needed (Vaughan & Gardiner, 2007).

Footnotes

6. There were no year-level data for two students.
7. The 27 students who had already left school are not included in this analysis. A section on those students is included in the companion report On the Edge of Adulthood (Wylie et al., in press).