The Impact of Family Background on the Occupational Aspirations of Secondary School Students (a Case Study of Umuahia Lga Abia State)
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
- To assess the relationship between family financial situation and student’s occupational aspirations.
- To investigate the relationship between parents’ education level and student’s occupational aspirations.
- To examine the relationship between family size and student’s occupational aspirations.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
THEORIES OF CAREER
The following section reviews the key psychological theories that was applied by the researcher during the course of this research, these arrays of theories were quite apt in explaining the constructs under study; they include,
- Parsons theory
- Donald Super theory
- Holland’s Theory of Career Personalities in Work Environment
- Self-concept Theory of Career Development
- Gottfredson’s Theory of Circumscription and Compromise
- Social Cognitive Career Theory
- Indigenization of Career Theories
Parsons’ theory
Frank Parson developed the idea of matching careers to talents, skills and personality. Frank Parson is regarded as the founder of the vocational guidance movement. He developed the talent-matching approach, which was later developed into Trait and Factor Theory of Occupational Choice. At the center of Parsons’ theory is the concept of matching.
Parson states that occupational decision making occurs when people have achieved:
- An accurate understanding of their individual traits (aptitudes, interests, personal abilities)
- A knowledge of jobs and the labor market
- Rational and objective judgment about the relationship between their individual traits, and labor
This three-part theory still governs most current practice.
The traits and factor theory operates under the premise that it is possible to mesasure both individual talents and the attributes required in particular jobs. It also assumes that people may be matched to occupation that’s a good fit. Parson suggests that when individuals are in jobs best suited to their abilities they perform best and their productivity is at maximum.
‘Choosing a Career’,Parsons maintains that personal counsel is fundamental to the career search. In particular, he notes seven stages for a career counselor to work through with clients:
- Personal data: create a statement of key facts about the person, remembering to include every fact that has bearing on the vocational
- Self-analysis: a self-examination is done in private and under the instruction of the counselor. Every tendency and interest that might impact on the choice of a work should be
- The clients own choice and decision: this may show itself in the first two stages. The counselor must bear in mind that the choice of career should be made by the client, with the counselor acting as
- Counselor’s analysis: the counselor tests the client’s decision to see if it is in line with the “main quest”.
- Outlook on the career field: the counselor should be familiar with industrial knowledge such as lists and classifications of industries and career, in addition to location of training and apprenticeships.
- Induction and advice: a broad-minded attitude coupled with logical and clear reasoning are critical at this
- General helpfulness: the counselor helps the client to fit into the chosen work, and to reflect on the
Much of Parsons’ work still guide’s career counseling today, through it is not without criticism. Matching assumes a degree of stability within the labor market. However, the reality is that the market’s volatility means individual must be prepared to change and to their circumstances.
Donald Super theory
Donald Super proposed that people are much more fluid than static nature assumed by Trait-And Factor theorist (Super, 1957). He posited that, the (Matching Model) assumes that the adolescents or adults who are assessed are all sufficiently mature vocationally to have mature stable traits (Super,1983, p. 557). However various career counselors have noted that many students are unable to voice their true skills or sometimes even understand them from a lack of vocational maturity. Although still valid for career exploration purposes, matching assessments like Holland’s should only be a small step in the counseling process to Super (1983). Donald Super went on to develop the concept of the Life-Career Rainbow (Super, 1980) as a visual picture of how a person plays multiple roles throughout his or her lifespan.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
The study mainly consists of qualitative research work. The primary objective of the qualitative research was to represent data collected through the study of a small number of in–depth cases (O’Leary 2010). It was also used for working with a few people who hold answer to the research question rather than working with many people.
This study adopted the descriptive research design of survey type. This type of design allows the researcher to use a sub set of a population as sample (Nworgu, 2006). It also, allows the use of questionnaire for collection of data from respondents (Fwang‟le, 2015) and attempts to describe all aspects of respondents‟ perception and/or opinion (Nwanna, 1990). The choice of the above research design was therefore considered appropriate in this study because the data was collected from a sample representative of the population who are secondary school students in Umuahia Local Government Area in Abia State
Population of the Study
The target population for this study consists of students in secondary schools in Umuahia Local Government Area of Abia State and their parents
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS, PRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION
Demographic information
This section presents the demographic characteristics of the respondents. The characteristics discussed in this section are; gender and the category of school attended by the students.
CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
This research work is aimed at examining the influence of parental background on occupational aspirations of students in schools in Umauhia local government in Abia. In looking at the influence of the independent variable, it was expected that there would be a significant relationship between parental background and occupational aspiration of students. But instead, a very weak relationship exists between them, which implies that parental background in Umauhia local government Area in Abia does not necessary influence the occupational aspiration of their children. In recent study, both parents and peers contributed to student’s occupational aspiration.
CONCLUSION
The main conclusion of this research may be summarized as follows:
- The parental background of students in Umauhia local government Abia have no little or no influence on the occupational aspiration of such students
- Authoritarian parenting style is the most popular (among the types which the study was able to identify) as being adopted by
- The type of parenting is not an adequate predictor of measures in occupational aspiration. Other factors such as peers, school etc, may be considered when issues of occupational aspiration in students is on the
- Gender is not an important predictor of occupational aspiration. It failed to predict a difference in occupational aspiration of students on parental background.
- parental background does not really matter at children as much as it may be from prenatal period, infancy, and childhood stages of
RECOMMENDATIONS
Parenting is not a matter of employing a sure fire set of recipes or formulas. Parents differ and children differ. For many years, psychologists and psychiatrists stressed the parent’s role in shaping children personalities and behaviors. Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are made:
- Professional school counsellors should provide collaborative support and training to parents on career guidance. This is because their education, skills, and position within the school community, are in a unique position to assess the needs of adolescents, and the skills and stressors of their
- School counsellors can assist parents in learning how to provide emotional support by helping them understand the emotions that adolescents experience when faced with difficult educational and vocational challenges, by helping parents talk to their adolescents about what fun their future job could
- School counsellors should assist parents in providing career-related modelling for their adolescents by showing them how to talk to their adolescents about their own occupations as well as about other occupations that are available in the world of
- Parents should imbibe the development of basic work attitudes as promptness, respect, dedication, expression of positive regard to constituted authority, and responsibility. This is necessary considering the fact that their attitude to work will have significant effect on children ‘occupational aspiration.
- School counsellors in alliance with parents should provide opportunities that would nurture interests in vocational subject matter, and create environments that would nurture the discovery of aptitudes for vocational
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