A test of Gottfredson’s theory using a ten-year longitudinal study

Abstract

Occupational aspirations of a longitudinal sample of students were examined over a ten-year time period, from second to twelfth grade. Hypotheses from Gottfredson’s theory of career development (1981, 1996) and from social learn-ing theory (Lent, Brown & Hackett, 1994) were examined. The social value of children’s occupational aspirations increased into the early high school years and started to fall by their senior year in high school when internal, unique personal factors were more evident in occupational aspirations as Gottfredson would predict. Through eighth grade, about 40 percent of boys and up to 20 percent of girls held occupational aspirations that could be classified as fan-tasy. Social learning theory suggests that children would relinquish fantasy occupational aspirations with age because of self-awareness and knowledge of the world of work. This change was evident as a significant shift toward more realistic occupational aspirations occurred during the late high school years. KEY WORDS: career development; occupational aspirations; longitudinal career re-search. The occupational aspirations of children have been of interest for many years and a number of studies have investigated them. Most of the studies have examined the aspirations for cross-sectional samples of children in the early and middle grades (Hageman & Gladding