Jobs for the Future (JFF) and BigFuture want all students to have the sense of agency and purpose that comes with feeling hopeful, motivated, excited, confident. An essential step in achieving this is to ensure that high school students and their families receive a timely and abundant flow of information, resources, and advising in order to…

Career development is a lifelong process that begins in childhood and has been linked to student success in other aspects of their development in childhood and adulthood (Blackhurst, Auger, & Wahl, 2003). This article presents a fifth-grade technology-based career development curriculum that engages students in a 10-week long exploration of…

Counselling for work and relationship is proposed as another way of thinking about vocational psychology and vocational guidance. It can contribute to the search for a new paradigm for these fields. Central to this way of thinking are two shifts. A shift from a discourse about career to a discourse about work, and a shift to expand the focus of…

Mentoring girls is a challenge. Girls will come to mentors with hard questions and great hope. Sometimes mentors will be able to help make their lives better; other times they will feel that they have not done very much. This guide serves as a road map for mentors. This guide focuses on a very important step in young women's journey toward…

College art students are an overlooked minority population whose culture, career motivations, and mental health risks have not been studied, and there has been little to no specialized outreach to this population. This article describes the stereotypes associated with fine art students and the data available that confirms or refutes those…

A frequent applied method in career assessment to elicit clients' self-concepts is asking them to predict their interest assessment results. Accuracy in estimating one's interest type is commonly taken as a sign of more self-awareness and career choice readiness. The study evaluated the empirical relation of accuracy of self-estimation to career…

Biology is the science of life and of how living things work. Our students choose to major in biology in college because of a fascination with understanding how living things function, but often they have difficulty in identifying a career that uses their foundation in biology despite the variety of biology-based careers available. The purpose of…

Over the past decade, practitioners and scholars have struggled to explain women's career choices. The current language, including "opting out," "on and off ramping," and "mommy track," is not only inadequate but assumes a deviation from an accepted norm. We challenge the relevance of the paradigm against which women are being judged, namely, the…

Most people want to learn, grow and achieve their career dreams. Linking individuals' career aspirations to organizational goals can be challenging, yet it is the foundation for personal and organizational success. This chapter discusses how to use learning objectives to link career learning or development to organizational strategy. Using a…

Little attention has been paid to the life-career development of rural adolescents. The aim of this project is to explore the hopes, beliefs, and fears of eight young women and aspects of their rural environment that act to constrain or enhance their options. Participants constructed life-space maps, possible selves, and photographic displays…

Initiation and outcome of a program designed to promote trade work among women is outlined and analyzed in light of occupational aspiration. Results indicate that the program increased the frequencies of women entering nontraditional trades. However, an employment slump curtailed its impact, highlighting the relevance of occupational compromise…

The teen years are an excellent time to start thinking about a potential career and to investigate all of the different opportunities available. Motivating adolescents to become actively engaged in their own career development is not always easy, but this book makes it fun. Written for parents, school counselors, and counselors in private practice…

Early adolescents make early career decisions in the form of curriculum choices for high school, and these choices can influence future postsecondary education and career paths. This exploratory study examined relationships between school and demographic variables and 522 eighth graders' choices of high school academic tracks. Analysis of variance…

A "taxonomic key"--a manual that provides a systematic approach to academic decision-making for college students--is presented. The key is used to help students who enroll in the Academic Exploration Program at Bardley University to decide on a college major and a career. The key can assist the student and adviser by: helping clarify the student's…

Ways in which educators can help students develop the skills and strategies needed for the workplace are outlined in this Resource and User's Guide. It begins with a series of lesson plans that address career choices, the career planning process, education planning, career decision making, career trends, and job seeking skills. The guide then…