Socio-cultural Factor Affecting Student’s Choice of Career in the Ae-Funai
CHAPTER ONE
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The objectives of the study are as follows:
- To investigate the socio-cultural factors which influence student’s career choice?
- To discover the role of parents in the choice of career of students.
- To explore the motivating factors that determine students choice of career.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
CONCEPT OF CAREER
Career can be conceptualized more broadly in terms of individual development in learning and work throughout life and this includes voluntary work and other life experiences (Watt, 1996, as cited in Torrington, Hall & Taylor, 2008). Popoola (2004) refers to career as a job or profession for which one undergoes regulated education and training over a period of time and which one intends to follow for the whole of one’s life. It is thus a chosen pursuit, life work and success in one’s profession. A career is now broadly defined as the unfolding sequence of a person’s work experience over time (Arthur, khapover & Wilderom,2005) or in more detail as` the sequence of employment related positions, roles, activities and experiences encountered by a person (Amoid, 2001). According to Dawn (2013) define career is that it is an individual vocation or trade or how he/she makes a living Examples of careers or occupations are engineers, accountants, and veterinarian etc. The following definitions are also very important to an understanding of career as a concept and they might be used interchangeably in the course of this study. Terminologies associated with career choice include; vocation, profession, job, work, occupation, trade, career development, career planning, career guidance, career education, career decision etc. Gettings (2012) defines vocation as an occupation that someone feels strongly about doing, despite monetary gain or other influences, therefore everyone’s vacation should be what they feel compelled to do because it gives a deeper meaning to life as well as added meaning within us, for example, someone may currently have a career in finance while his or her vocations remains teaching and going on various adventure indicating that a person’s true vocation will characterize how he/she operate in general. Catalano (2000) defined a profession as a type of occupation that needs certain criteria that raise it to a level above that of an occupation. It is a vocation requiring intensive education in science or the liberal arts and often specialized training (Costella et al, 1995).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
The researcher used descriptive research survey design in building up this project work the choice of this research design was considered appropriate because of its advantages of identifying attributes of a large population from a group of individuals. The design was suitable for the study as the study sought to socio cultural factors influencing student’s career choice
Sources of data collection
Data were collected from two main sources namely:
Primary source:
These are materials of statistical investigation which were collected by the research for a particular purpose. They can be obtained through a survey, observation questionnaire or as experiment; the researcher has adopted the questionnaire method for this study.
Secondary source:
These are data from textbook Journal handset etc. they arise as byproducts of the same other purposes. Example administration, various other unpublished works and write ups were also used.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION ANALYSIS INTERPRETATION OF DATA
Introduction
Efforts will be made at this stage to present, analyze and interpret the data collected during the field survey. This presentation will be based on the responses from the completed questionnaires. The result of this exercise will be summarized in tabular forms for easy references and analysis. It will also show answers to questions relating to the research questions for this research study. The researcher employed simple percentage in the analysis.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
It is important to ascertain that the objective of this study was on socio-cultural factors influencing student’s career choice. In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of benefits in addressing the challenges of socio-cultural factors influencing student’s career choice
Summary
This study was on socio-cultural factors influencing student’s career choice. Three objectives were raised which included: To investigate the socio-cultural factors which influence student’s career choice, to discover the role of parents in the choice of career of students, to explore the motivating factors that determines student’s choice of career. In line with these objectives, two research hypotheses were formulated and two null hypotheses were posited. The total population for the study is 200 students of AE-FUNAI. The researcher used questionnaires as the instrument for the data collection. Descriptive Survey research design was adopted for this study. A total of 133 respondents made final year, year four student, year three students and year two sstudents were used for the study. The data collected were presented in tables and analyzed using simple percentages and frequencies
Conclusion
Students’ career choice are influenced by numerous factors including parents’ age, parents’ qualification, parents’ type of education and socio-economic status of parents. The most influential factors among others are parents’ qualification and parents’ type of education while parents’ age and socio-economic status of parents were found not to be significant. The study concludes that demographic factors like type and location of school attended and parents’ level of education influenced career decisions among students.
- Recommendation
- Significant career influencers such as friend, parents, members of the community and media personnel need to be equipped with correct career information for them to guide students appropriately.
- Career counselors should provide students with experiences that expand the exploration process and a wide range of career information on all the available careers so that they can explore widely before making their choices. In this case, after initial career decisions have been made, career counsellors can continue to encourage successful career development by identifying sources of psychosocial support available to students.
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