The career development of black and white South African university students

Abstract

Abstract. This study investigates the possible influence of gender and culture on the career maturity and study and work role salience of South African students. Responses to the Life Role Inventory and Career Development Questionnaire of 260 first-year university students (137 white, 123 black) were analyzed. Culture was found to have a significant effect on both career maturity and study and work role salience while gender had no significant effect. Results are related to previous findings from international and South African literature. Implications for counselling are discussed.Super holds that the maturing of an individual's career attitudes and knowledge can only occur within a life space where work has importance. Nevill and Super (1983) point out that successful counselling of students on a tertiary level is dependent on'knowledge of both students' readiness to make a career choice (i.e. their career maturity) as well as how important work is to such students. Thus readiness for career decision making is dependent on the importance work holds for an individual, that is there needs to be a motivation for a career and for study towards such a career. Without this motivation, the attitudes and information necessary to cope with the developmental task of career decision making becomes irrelevant to the individual (Super, 1983).Examining the importance of the student and worker roles as well as the level of career maturity of university students has relevance not only for developed countries but for a developing country such as South Africa. The high failure rate amongst white and particularly black university students may be due, in part, to low salience of the study and work roles and/or low career maturity. In addition, black students face the added disadvantage of an inferior level of education and a lack of counselling facilities. Counselling students for future careers appears inexact at best and irrelevant at worst when the sa'l]ence of fhe study and work roles and the developmental readiness of a student to deal with career decision making remains an unknown within the counselling process.

Adaptação e validação do Inventário de Saliência (Salience Inventory) para adultos brasileiros

“…Previous studies have shown that the SI is reliable and valid (Duarte, 1995;Farmer, 1983;Luzzo, 1994;Munson, 1992;Nevill & Super, 1986b;Perrone et al, 2006;Watson et al, 1995). To be considered a useful measure for the Brazilian population, the Brazilian version of the SI should also display adequate reliability and validity and the present study provides evidence of this.…”

“…Perrone et al (2006) used the Commitment subscales for the Work, and Home and Family roles when studying the work-family interface and life satisfaction with 154 college students, married and employed full-time, fi nding good internal consistency indices (Cronbach's alpha) of 0.89 and 0.95 respectively. Other studies, such as Luzzo (1994), Munson (1992), and Watson, Stead and De Jager (1995) presented similar levels of internal consistency.…”

The Effect of a Career Development Course on the Dysfunctional Career Thoughts of Racially and Ethnically Diverse College Freshmen

“…For example, Creed and Patton (2003) found gender to be a significant correlate with career develop-ment knowledge, work commitment, indecision, and school commitment. Other studies have shown gender differences for career maturity, with some showing women being more mature (Fouad, 1988;Luzzo, 1995;Rojewski, Wicklein, & Schell, 1995) and other studies failing to show any differences for gender (Kelly & Colangelo, 1990;Watson, Stead, & De Jager, 1995). An additional purpose of the current study was to focus specifically on freshmen outcomes.…”

A noção transcultural de maturidade vocacional na Teoria de Donald Super

“…Versões adaptadas e normatizadas deste inventário foram utilizadas com sucesso em outros países, notadamente no Canadá (Dupont & Marceau, 1982), na Espanha (Moreno, 1987), na Áustria (Seifert & Eder, 1985), na África do Sul (Watson, Stead & Jager, 1995), na Suíça (Descombes, Frischknecht, Dupont & Huter, 1977), em Portugal (Ferreira & Caeiro, 1981), na Austrália (Punch & Sheridan, 1985) e na Inglaterra (Ward, 1982). Entretanto, os resultados obtidos nestes estudos, os quais foram favoráveis, não parecem ter tido continência no caso do Brasil (Fernandes & Scheeffer, 1986;Scheeffer & Fernandes, 1984) e nos Países Baixos (Helbing, 1984) onde os resultados não puderam permitir conclusões positivas quanto a sua utilização na população adolescente.…”