THE FACTORS OF CAREER SELF-DETERMINATION OF STUDENTS OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Choice of profession is a social phenomenon that every person has to face in life. Numerous studies convince us that not only the well-being of a person depends on the chosen work, but also his attitude to himself and life in general, therefore, the right and timely professional choice is very important. Research about factors of career self-determination of students of higher education institutions in Ukraine shows that self-determination is an important factor in the socialization of young person, and the factors that determine students' career choices become an actual problem of nowadays. The present study involved full-time and part-time students of Institute of Philology and Mass Communications of Open International University of Human Development "Ukraine" in order to examine the factors of career self-determination of students of higher education institutions (N=189). Diagnostic factors of career self-determination of students studying in the third and fourth year were carried out using the author's questionnaire. Processing of obtained data was carried out using the Excel 2010 program; factorial and comparative analysis were applied. Results of the study showed that initial stage of career self-determination falls down on the third and fourth studying year at the university, when an image of future career and career orientations begin to form. At the same time, the content of career self-determination in this period is contradictory and uncertain, therefore, the implementation of pedagogical support of this process among students is effective.

CAREER EDUCATION IN GYMNASIUM: CAREER SPECIALIST POSITION

Career education services is an important occupation policy element, a constituent part of labour market. For the education system, young person’s independence, career management competence development must be urgent. An appropriate personal career management and ability to make decisions must become education priority. Already at school young people have to be taught to consciously and purposefully make a career choice. Career education specialists, providing qualitative professional information, consultation, and career education services, can help them. Having carried out an individual interview, career education specialist opinion was analysed about students’ career education organisation in gymnasiums. The research results showed that various career education services are provided in educational institutions and this has an impact on students’ professional self-determination. However, according to all inquired informant opinion, they are insufficient, because students’ expectations are not completely satisfied. Besides, career education services are provided not systematically, and specialists are not provided the possibility to qualitatively provide services, proper financing is not allocated. Career education specialists think that in order this work is performed systematically and become useful for students, first of all, an attitude to this career position has to change, full time positions established in education institutions, for the work is carried out consistently and systematically.

SYSTEMATIC ATTITUDE TOWARDS STUDENTS’ CAREER EDUCATION

Making a career choice is one of the most important choices a person can make in life. A successful career gives a possibility to be acknowledged in society, to occupy a certain social status. Therefore, a rational, consistent, conforming to abilities and interests career choice means not only professional behaviour development, but also a grounded attitude to other aspects of one’s own life. In nowadays society, rapidly changing the activity world, changes occurring in the labour market, the old professions disappearing and the new ones appearing, it becomes more and more problematic to choose a promising career, corresponding to the society and person’s individual needs. Career choice - is a continual, long-term process, in which career education process occupies an important place. Educational influence of career education upon the youth has significance for the whole life: choosing a profession, making important career decisions, seeking appropriate education, planning professional career, integrating in the labour market, realising their inner potential, going through professional success and fullness. Therefore, one has to look at a career education process as a systematic phenomenon, a complex of devices and activity directions covering the whole school’s educational activity and the whole personality development. A carried out scientific literature and document analysis and the conducted research results allow us to form a systematic attitude towards career education and to distinguish structural parts of career education system.

CAREER EDUCATION IMPLEMENTATION IN GYMNASIUM FROM THE STUDENTS’ POINT OF VIEW

Career planning becomes one of the most important processes in a young man’s life, during which a decision is made, influencing his further life. Further work, satisfaction with life, life style, leisure time, social status depends on the career one chooses to pursue. In this process, professional orientation taking place at school, consultation, information, have an important role to play. School must form conditions for all learning students to get career education, professional information and consultation services. Research aim was to analyse the opinion of final gymnasium class students about career education realisation, the obtained services in the gymnasium. The research object was career education in Lithuanian general education schools (gymnasiums). In the research, a survey strategy was applied, a survey research method in written form (a survey questionnaire). The research was carried out between the months September to December 2018. A total of 200 gymnasium 4th grade students from five biggest municipalities of Marijampolė region participated in the research. Questionnaire data analysis was carried out, the research data grouping, generalisation, comparison, a quantitative and qualitative descriptive statistics analysis was conducted. By this research, students’ opinion about the use of various events planning the career was ascertained. Students perform various tests, consultations, informational events take place. However, a big part of the respondents think that this information is not sufficient for them, they feel a lack of information and support. Students’ expressed expectations are not completely satisfied. Students lack knowledge about study programmes, profession specificity. The biggest part of the students understand the importance of professional career planning for their life quality, however, they lack information on that question. Students have expectations and questions, to which they do not receive answers. Keywords: career education, career choice, career competencies, gymnasium students.

CAREER SPECIALIST ACTIVITY IMPORTANCE IN THE CONSTANTLY CHANGING ACTIVITY WORLD CONTEXT

In European Union rational and purposeful human recourse use and their high professional preparation is regarded as a priority target of education and labour market policy. Professional guidance, career education and career planning services are important for education system and labour market and their close interrelationship. Career management as a lifelong lasting process in our contemporary society becomes very urgent due to many reasons. First, labour market demand change is becoming more rapid. People more often have to change the type of activity and organisation. Second, at this moment labour market needs new quality workers, not only able to acquire a certain level professional education, but also to adequately react to organisational, regional, national, global, social and economic environment dynamics, able to establish and implement strategies how to choose, master, coordinate work and other social roles with personal life values and ambitions. New requirements appear for human activity, a new career conception. Therefore, it is necessary to systematically provide career services to people, seeking to help them plan career and be successful professionals. Professional consultation service importance reflects in various European Commission and Lithuanian documents. In many documents it is emphasised that professional consultation services is the most important teaching and occupation policy element. Professional consultation has to play a crucial role encouraging learning availability, mobility, to raise learners’ motivation, to increase occupation and to decrease unemployment.

STUDENTS’ CAREER EDUCATION IN GENERAL EDUCATION SCHOOLS: PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION, PROBLEMS AND IMPROVEMENT POSSIBILITIES

School has to guarantee the effective development of career competencies, which are necessary to consciously and successfully create and manage your career and, respecting student’s inclinations, values and abilities, to help him cognise himself, the activity world, and to choose future career. It is important to make conditions for all students to develop their career competencies, to support them in the process of cognising, creating and realising themselves. Career education is a common team work, the success of which is possible if most of the school employees contribute to career competence development, various school activities, oriented to students’ personality maturity help students as well to acquire and develop the competencies necessary for successful career. In the research, it was referred to an attitude that career education is a systematic and purposeful process, by which it is helped the student to make a career choice and to acquire career competencies. The research object was - career education in general education schools. The research aim was – to ascertain teachers’ attitude to career education in general education schools. In the research, a survey strategy was applied. Descriptive statistics procedure was applied for calculation of frequencies and comparing of averages. It was a pilot research. The research took place in Klaipėda city municipality general education schools in 2017. In the research, the teachers from 100 general education schools took part. The survey was carried out online. Using “Google forms” device, the questionnaire was presented to school teachers. The research results revealed that education process was very intensive, there was a lack of time for carrying out career education activities, lack of consistency, financing, not in all schools career education programme was prepared, there was lack of efficiency, there were not enough career education programmes, methodological devices, there was lack of all school community involvement in career education organisation and social partner help for career education activity implementation outside the school. Research results showed that carrying out career education activities was problematic. Keywords: career education, career choice, career competencies, general education school.

DEMOGRAPHIC PREDICTORS IN SATISFACTION WITH ACADEMIC MAJOR AND NEGATIVE CAREER THOUGHTS RELATION: IMPLICATION FOR CAREER INTERVENTIONS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

To successfully progress in achieving the objective of vocational and technical education, it is necessary to determine the students’ satisfaction levels with the programmes as it relates to their career decision efficacy. This research, therefore, determined the demographic predictors in the relation between academic major satisfaction and negative career thoughts. The research was guided with four hypothesized research questions. Cross-sectional design that embedded a correlational survey was employed. The participants were 622 vocational education undergraduates selected from a public state-owned university in South-west Nigeria. The students’ demographic variables (e.g. gender, academic level of study, age, and subject areas of specialization), academic major satisfaction scale, and negative career outlook sub-scale were the main constituents of the questionnaire that was used for data collection. Data analyses were performed using mean, standard deviation, bivariate correlation, and regression analyses. Results depicted that the students’ satisfaction with their academic major significantly predicted their negative career thoughts. It was also found that gender, academic level and subject areas of specializations were the demographic variables that predicted satisfaction with one’s academic major, as well as negative career thoughts. Intervention studies were therefore recommended for career behaviour modification among vocational education undergraduates. Keywords: academic major satisfaction, career thought, demographic variables, vocational education students.

LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED SOCIAL BENEFITS RECEIVERS EXPERIENCE TAKING PART IN EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

Long-term unemployed social benefits receivers are entitled to many educational activities to help them with reemployment in Latvia. Long-term unemployed social benefits receivers attend different educational activities but remain unemployed. It is important to understand why it happens and what kind of additional support long-term unemployed social benefits receivers need. Current research took place in Riga Social Service, long-term unemployed social benefits receivers were interviewed in order to collect data about their experience in adult education and their opinions about the process. The informants were asked to reflect on their future perspective in the aspect of job searching, taking into consideration their freshly obtained education. Interview transcripts were decoded and categorized in 5 distinct categories. Results show that only educational activities can’t solve unemployment problem and employability skills training program should be created. Key words: adult education, career counselling, long-term unemployed, vocational education.

CAREER MANAGEMENT SKILLS OF STUDENTS IN GENERAL AND VOCATIONAL UPPER-SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN GREECE: CAREER ADAPTABILITY AND SELF-EFFICACY IN CAREER PLANNING

Contemporary career guidance and counselling approaches with particular interest to subjects which concern the development of career management skills since these skills are considered important means for the active exploration of the vocational course and the development of a career. The development of skills related to career adaptability and self-efficacy in the planning of a career could help students who are finishing Upper-secondary School (Lykeio) to approach creatively their career aims, and to deal effectively with the transitions or unexpected events by applying appropriate actions. The present study employed the survey research strategy in order to examine the level of the career adaptability and self-efficacy in the planning of a career with male and female students (N = 240) of Upper-secondary Schools (General Lykeia - GEL) and Vocational Upper-secondary Schools (Vocational Lykeia - EPAL) in Greece. Specifically, it examined the level of skills which students declare that they possess regarding the type of school, their gender and the educational level of the parents. The finding that the levels of career adaptability differentiated not only as regards the gender of the students but also the studies of the father and the mother has presented particular interest while the students who study at the General Lykeia were found to have higher scores in the areas: “career interest” and “curiosity” in the Career Adapt-abilities Scale (CAAS) compared with students who study at the Vocational Lykeia (EPAL). Finally, the motif of the scores in the B’ Class of Lykeio showed that the students of EPAL excelled in all the skills apart from the factor “career interest” while correspondingly in the C’ class of Lykeio students of the General Lykeio (GEL) excelled in all skill categories. Keywords: upper-secondary school students, self-efficacy, career adaptability, career management, Perceived Self-Efficacy in Career Planning, Career Adapt-Abilities Scale.

PROFESSIONAL SOCIALIZATION AS SUCCESSFUL CAREER PRESUMPTION

Work is regarded as the most important and even the most essential human activity, however, the type of working activity, changes, unemployment influence person’s and society life. Most of the people define their status and importance in society according to their profession, therefore self-consciousness, self-perception and self-respect are dependent upon it. The occupied status gives social value and society recognition. Most of social contacts take place in work environment. In our culture the society encourages each of its member to work, who is considered at least a little independent and we are used to regard the ability to work and reconcilement with such a situation as important conditions of psychic health. The choice of profession, its acquisition, work itself determine people’s life. Work occupies quite a big or even the main part of personality’s life time. For many people work is the axis of life – both in everyday life and seeking for big goals. One can regard work as “boredom, torture, an inevitable evil” however it would be difficult to deny, that this is a fundamental part of our life. We spend plenty of time working and it is obvious, that working models form many aspects of our existence – beginning with friends and finishing with leisure time. Human lifestyle directly depends on the chosen profession, and physical, psychic health – very often on, how a person feels at work. While working people set in order and control their world, physical and social environment in which they live, create various material and spiritual values satisfying their demands. Therefore, basically one can claim, that professional activity and professional achievements define not only self-realisation field, but also human income, status in society, social prestige (value), form conditions for social mobility (social status change possibilities), allow feeling an important member of society. It is obvious, that every person, having chosen a profession, dreams about future perspectives and a successfully formed career.