Career Development in Later Adolescence, Essay Example

A great number of personal, familial, socioeconomic, and cultural factors inform career choice (Newman & Newman, 2012, pp. 405-407). For one thing, attitudes about education in the family can, and typically do, have powerful influences on a young person’s work in school. In general, children of parents who have more education are more likely to perform better in school, which in turn, of course, is usually correlated with them obtaining a higher level of education than their peers who come from homes with parents who are less well-educated (pp. 406-407). This, of course, does tend to perpetuate socioeconomic, class differences, with the result being that children of poorer, working-class families are more likely to follow in their parents’ footsteps than they are to compete successfully with their peers from more affluent, upper-middle to upper-class families (pp. 406-407).

Career planning programs certainly can help adolescents, if they are designed to encourage them to think about what they really want to do, and what that will realistically take. I think I’ve always known what I wanted to do, both because of my caring orientation and my family’s encouragement of education. I’m from an essentially middle-class family, so education was highly valued. Both of my parents are well-read, and they encouraged me to emulate them in this regard. If I were to design a career planning program for adolescents, I would design it on the basis of helping them to identify 1) what they are good at now, 2) what they really want to do, and 3) how to get there. I would bring in outside experts when possible, as well as materials from a wide variety of fields, in order to help students understand the realities of being, say, a doctor, or an English teacher, etc. These resources would help students make informed decisions about what they want to do for a living. The outcomes indicative of success would be high rates of student satisfaction, and—ideally—a better commitment to academics, particularly on the part of struggling students, in order to attain their career goals.

References

Newman, B. M., & Newman, P. R. (2012). Development through life: A psychosocial approach (11^th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.