A study of the career pathways of Canadian young adults during the decade after secondary school graduation : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Social Work and Social Policy at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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Date
2011
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Massey University
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Abstract
This study examined the career pathways taken by 47 young adults in Canada after
they graduated from secondary school. Based on a grounded theory analysis, this thesis
explored the way young adults made career decisions and how their resources (individual,
family, social and environmental) and the messages that they heard from significant others
influenced their career pathways.
The majority of the young people in this study either did not know what they
wanted to do when they graduated from secondary school or subsequently changed their
minds. Most engaged in a process of identity exploration through experimentation with
tertiary programmes and different types of work as they tried to ascertain what constituted
satisfying work. As participants experimented with different career pathways, they obtained
a better sense of who they were and what types of work they found satisfying. Findings
indicated that participants engaged in a process of finding a career-related place, an activity
that superficially involved selecting a career pathway but more substantively meant a
search for identity and life purpose. Finding a career-related place was achieved through
the interchangeable use of five strategies: navigating, exploring, drifting, settling, and
committing. These strategies emerged as a host of internal and external factors impinged on
a young person’s simultaneous search for a career and the identity that could potentially
come with it.
This contingent nature of finding a career-related place stood in sharp contrast to
the discourse of what is referred to in this thesis as the “career myth”. This discourse
related to the belief that young people should follow a linear, predictable route from
secondary school to tertiary training, and then on to a permanent, full-time job. Based on
these findings, an argument is made that developmental and chaos-oriented approaches to
career development should be moved into the foreground when professionals assist young
people in the immediate years after secondary school graduation. Accordingly, the trait and
factor ethos, which continues to dominate the career counselling field, should be
deemphasised. Six career design principles are identified that provide guidelines for how
young people can engage in the process of finding a career-related place in a way that is
proactive while at the same time accepting that career pathways and the identities that
follow may be uncertain.
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Keywords
Young adults, Employment, Career development, School-to-work transition, Attitudes, Canada