The Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo
Abstract
Recent national statistics show that about 10% of new high school graduates don\u27t have any jobs or college education after high school; they are called MUGYOSHA in Japanese. Especially in urban areas, students from lower ranked general high schools tend to be those MUGYOSHA. Many of those students don\u27t commit themselves to any activities to seek for jobs or college education after graduation. Why are they inactive in exploring their future careers? How do they perceive their own "aptitude and ability"? How is their career consciousness structured? What experiences they have in and out of school influence their career perspectives? Based on questionnaire survey of 1098 high school students in 11 general high schools in the Tokyo Metropolitan area, we pursue those questions. We obtain the following findings. 1. Students career consciousness is structured with 6 elements, and the main three elements are present-orientation, understanding own aptitude, and commitment to meritocratic values. 2. School\u27s career guidance activities have little impact on those elements of career consciousness, although students outside school life have much influence on them. 3. Students\u27family background influences formation of career consciousness, and final careers, by restricting students\u27chances to enter colleges. 4. After controlling such other variables as gender, grades, economic family background, and high school rank, those three main elements of career consciousness have independent effects on students\u27chance to be MUGYOSHA. According to those findings, we discuss that with limited resources to socialize students into jobs, lower ranked general high schools face difficulties to help students find their own future career, under strong values of self-decision and self-responsibility of new-liberal education reforms
