A Study on the Career Decision Level and Its Decision-Related Motivation of High School Students in Korea: The Role of Personal Characteristics, Family Backgrounds and School

Abstract

고등학교에서 올바른 직업교육과 진로지도가 이루어지는 것은 개인의 미래 진로를 올바로 결정하는 일을 도울 뿐 아니라 사회적으로도 인적자원을 효율적으로 배분한다는 측면에서 매우 중요하다. 본 연구에서는 고등학교 학생의 진로결정에 영향을 미치는 개인, 가정, 학교변인이 무엇인지를 파악하고 그 중에서 특히 진로결정수준과 동기와의 관계를 분석함으로써 우리나라 고등학생의 진로결정과정의 특성을 설명하고자 하였다. 연구 결과, 인문계 학교에서는 학생의 성적, 내적동기, 자아관과 같은 개인변인과 부모와 자녀의 대화시간, 부모와 같이 진로결정에 관한 정보 찾기처럼 가정변인이 진로결정에 영향을 미치는 주요한 변인으로 나타났으며, 실업계에서는 내적동기와 더불어 교직경력이나 교사의 성별, 연령, 진로 관련 강연경험과 같은 학교변인이 주요한 변인으로 나타났다. 진로결정과 결정 동기간의 관계를 분석하는 것은 진로결정의 결과뿐 아니라 결정과정의 특성을 이해하는 주요한 기준이 된다. 본 논문은 이밖에 연구결과가 갖는 다양한 직업 교육적 시사점에 관해서도 논의하고 있다.Education regarding jobs and future career in high school is very important because not only it helps high school students choose a right career, but also it allocates human resources efficiently. In particular, identifying the determinants of future career decisions can be important subjects in that it enables us to predict the direction and persistence of career decisions. In this study we examine the role of personal characteristics, family backgrounds and school system in determining future career decisions of high school students in Korea. We also examine how internal and external motives affect career decisions of high school students. Our sample to be examined includes 4,000 high school students and their teachers and families in KEEP. We create an index of the level of career decision using information about whether a student decided his/her future career, how much information a student obtained before making a career decision, how confident a student is about the career decision, etc. The index is then regressed on students' personal characteristics, family backgrounds and school variable using an ordered probit model. The results obtained in this study are as follows. First, personal characteristics such as internal motives, academic performance, self identification and family background variables such as conversation with parents and career information search are found to influence the level of career decision of regular high school students. Second, concerning vocational high school students, teacher gender, lectures about future career as well as internal motives are found to be very important in explaining the level of career decision. In particular, for vocational high school students, internal motives turn out to be important only when students decide to advance to universities, while external motives are found to be important when they decide to get a job. It is important to study how career decisions are made since it allows us to understand the processes of career decision making. One of the obtained results is that vocational high school students show different motives between deciding to go to a university and to get a job. This implies that fostering internal motives of students and employment promotion activities in vocational high schools may be conflicting each other. This study, in addition, provides various implications coming from the obtained results on Korean vocational education