Individual and Familial Factors Influencing the Educational and Career Plans of Chinese Immigrant Youths

Abstract

The authors explore how individual and familial factors predict educational and career aspirations, plans, and vocational outcome expectations of urban, Chinese immigrant youths. Participants were 265 Chinese immigrant high school students in New York City. The results indicated that higher self-reported English language fluency and career-related support from parents positively predicted career and educational aspirations and plans to go to college, lower English language fluency predicted plans to work immediately after high school, and perception of educational barriers predicted negative career expectations. Implications for future research and counseling in the career development of Asian immigrant youths are addressed.

For a Better Life: The Aspirations of Chinese Immigrants in Parenting

“…There are examples in which parents make extreme demands for academic excellence possibly because they perceive their children as capable and the parents know that they have time, strategies, and resources to support the children. Given the vast variability in children and parents, there are naturally some Chinese immigrant parents who only expect their children to have a living condition better than what the parents currently have (Ma & Yeh, 2010).…”

“Esto es lo que me gusta y lo que voy a estudiar”: Un estudio cualitativo sobre la toma de decisiones académicas en bachillerato

“…En este sentido, una posible explicación a esta influencia es que los amigos son modelos de rol muy accesibles porque se comparten similares intereses y valores. Además, pueden ser mejores fuentes de información académica que los progenitores y juegan un papel importante proporcionando apoyo emocional y reforzando sentimientos de confianza y seguridad (Ali, McWhirter y Chronister, 2005;Dietrich y Kracke, 2009;Kenny et al, 2003;Ma y Yeh, 2010;McWhirter, Torres, Salgado y Valdez, 2007;Schultheiss et al, 2001). Igualmente, en la investigación de Otto (2000) el 80% de los adolescentes indican que hablan seriamente con sus amigos sobre sus planes académicos y el 57% lo hacen respecto a la formación académica necesaria para acceder a la ocupación deseada.…”

“…A diferencia de otros estudios (Ali, McWhirter y Chronister, 2005;Dietrich y Kracke, 2009;Kenny et al, 2003;Ma y Yeh, 2010;McWhirter et al, 2007;Otto, 2000;Schultheiss et al, 2001) los estudiantes afirman sentirse apoyados por sus amigos y amigas en sus decisiones pero indican que no han influido en una decisión que, se vuelve a insistir, es adoptada de forma individual. No obstante, los discursos de los progenitores manifiestan más dudas respecto a la posible influencia del grupo de iguales en la toma de decisiones vocacional.…”

Career Development of Asian American Female Visual Artists

“…Researchers suggest that counselors need to integrate discussion of familial influences when working with Asian American students on career and academic exploration (Ma & Yeh, 2010). However, there are still areas of limited knowledge on how the family is influential in the career choice process -especially for those individuals who pursue Artistic careers.…”