Youth with disabilities experience significant vocational and social hardships. Self-determination, self-efficacy, and critical consciousness are important components of positive post-secondary outcomes for this population. The purpose of this study was to design, implement, and evaluate a motivational interviewing-based group career intervention (MEGI) that focused on increasing self-determination, self-efficacy, and critical consciousness among high school students with high incidence disabilities. A mixed methods research design was used to explore the relationship between the intervention and the main study variables. A total of 135 high school students and nine interventionists participated in this study. The results of a latent change score model indicated a positive and significant change in students' vocational skills self-efficacy, self-determination, and vocational outcome expectations. Thematic results of student focus group indicated that students experienced an increase in self-determination, awareness of systemic effects on their educational and vocational success, and uncertainty about the future. Additionally, thematic results of the interventionist focus group indicated an increase in students' self-understanding.

The primary objective of this study was to explore the relationship between personality and employability using a sample of 100 employees at a meat producing company in South Africa. A secondary objective was to determine if personality could be used to predict employability, and whether individuals from different demographic groups differed regarding their employability. The instruments used were the sixteen personality factor inventory (16PF) and the Van Der Heidje employability measure. The research findings indicated that the personality factors of submissiveness and seriousness correlated to the employability dimensions of anticipation/ optimization and occupational expertise respectively. Openness and corporate sense were also correlated, with anxiety in particular correlating with the overall employability measure. Differences between the race groups and employability were also noted. Particular interventions aimed at improving individual career decision making and employability practices within the organisation concluded the study. / M.A. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

This research investigates what teaching experiences, strategies and factors impact on early career teachers’ (ECTs’) resilience in secondary colleges in the south of the Netherlands. The ECTs are undergraduate trainee teachers who are enrolled as part-time English as a Foreign language students. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve individual ECTs from three different cohorts, twice in the timespan of two years, in order to get access to the reality of everyday school life viewed through the ECTs’ lens. The three different cohorts consisted of four beginning ECTs, four regular ECTs and four long-term ECTs. Data was collected over a two-year period and included recorded interviews with ECTs, line drawings, relational maps, ECTs’ portfolios and the researcher’s memos. The participants recalled their teaching experiences by means of analysing critical incidents that occurred in their classrooms. The data collection, analysis and discussion were organised into twelve cases. A thematic data analysis was used (Guest et al., 2012; Braun & Clarke, 2013), with the help of ATLAS.ti 7 software. The findings show that the ECTs were often expected to take on the full range of teaching tasks in isolation, with little support to cope with all the demands of their new role. The ECTs found that personal factors, such as self-efficacy and a sense of agency, helped develop their resilience, as well as contextual resources provided in schools and by employing bodies. Although the development of resilience was different for every ECT, participants also shared common strategies that contributed to development of resilience, such as emotional regulation, seeking renewal, goal setting and help seeking, when overcoming the setbacks they experienced. By identifying strategies that impact on resilience, this research has strengthened the guidelines on which induction programmes at Teacher Education Colleges can be made. It is suggested that ECTs are mentored around developing resilience strategies, in order to increase their confidence to work and teach in a new school environment. It is argued that the critical incidents approach, designed to support ECTs in building stories about their teaching experiences, could be used as a teaching methodology for trainee teachers at Teaching Education Colleges.

This study explored the ways in which young women perceived themselves in their rural context, now and in the future. Little attention has been paid to rural adolescents, especially in relation to life-career development. The majority of research efforts have ignored the diversity among rural communities. Additionally, little is known about how the unique qualities of a rural community affect female adolescent development and future life choices. An ethnographic-narrative method was chosen because the approach is sensitive to context, the emic perspective, and the construction of narratives embedded in the lived experience of participants. Eight young women, who were long-term residents, were interviewed using an open-ended, unstructured format. Participants expressed their understanding of their world through the completion of community life-space maps, the construction of possible selves, and by creating a photographic display. A four-phase narrative analysis involved four readings (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998): snapshots, life-course graphs, emotional charge, and themes and metathemes. Transcripts were summarized into snapshots of participants' social worlds. Life-course graphs uncovered personal construction of life stories. The emotional charge of participants' narratives revealed their response when talking about their futures. Four views toward the future were evident including apprehension, holding pattern, tentative, and anticipation. Their planning process could be described in four ways, no plans, fuzzy plans, tentative plans and concrete plans. Six metathemes emerged across the narratives: connected and disconnected, feeling supported and feeling unsupported, committed and uncommitted, opening and limiting, tangling with lines of tension, and looking within and looking beyond. Participants expressed a variety of perspectives on their rural experience. Their life-course development was complex, interactive, and affected by the environmental context of the rural community. The paths taken were varied. Their identity development occurred through relationships and varied across social worlds. Notions of the self as bounded and discrete made way for a view of permeable, connected selves through which experience flowed. A holistic, life-course perspective of life-career development widens the focus from the individual to include the social realm. Contexts, values, beliefs, psychosocial factors and other influences and their interrelatedness constitute the system of young rural women's life-career development. / Graduate

The transition from education to the labour market is a constant theme for sociological investigation, but the study of occupational choice itself has occupied a peripheral place in the theory and research literature for the past two decades. Of particular concern here, neither extant theories of occupational choice nor the contemporary youth studies literature offer satisfactory accounts of the patterns of girls' aspirations and the social processes in which these are embedded. It is argued here that occupational choice processes are a critical switch in the social reproduction of gender relations. Specifically situated subjects construct a transitions biography from a range of legitimated and concretely available alternatives. The possibilities are specified through the terms of gender discourse which, in describing the confluence of circumstances and understandings, represents the social space in which girls are positioned and position themselves across time. A model of the modalities of gender relations is developed and explored through a study of primarily working class girls aged 11-14 and 14-16 between 1983-1986 who were attending three inner London comprehensives. The data were collected by cross-sectional survey (N = 169) and interview (N=61) and by longitudinal interview (N=37). These girls see occupational structure in highly gendered and partial terms, corresponding to the specific social worlds they inhabit. Over time, perspectives and aspirations focus increasingly on female-typed jobs. Within this, their expectations reflect what is judged realistically available. Such processes of gendered closure are modified by educational achievement and by schooling milieu in relation with family and cultural context. Subject specialisation fixes the course of these processes, since options are generally chosen with current aspiration/ expectation in mind. In sum, gendered transitions across the secondary schooling years are shaped not only institutionally but also socially and culturally by girls' personal attempts to resolve the contradictory puzzle of production/reproduction relations under modern patri3 archy and in the light of the resources at their disposal. Most trajectories inevitably prefigure accommodative arrangements and do not threaten social reproduction processes, but this does not imply non-critical and automatic consent. The potential for critical consciousness is fostered by various cross-pressures in the specific configurations of girls' lives, but the partial insights they open up are held in check both ideologically and through social-educational selection/ allocation.

Thesis (MTech(Education))--Cape Technikon, Cape Town,1998 / This study investigates the industry component of cooperative education programmes in Clothing as offered by the Clothing Department at the Cape Technikon relevant to the Western Cape. The character and nature of co-operative education came under general scrutiny. The structure of any cooperative educational program consists of two components; the academic and the industry component. Within this structure, a few attendance patterns are used to employ students in industry. This employment of students bridges the gap between the academic component and practice. The co-ordinator of co-operative education is responsible for the supervision over and application of specific tasks to ensure the successful completion of the industry component. The professional tasks include the identification and recruiting of workstations, the placement of students, the orientation of both the employer and student, the monitoring of the students' progress, as well as the evaluation of the students' work. The important role of the advisory committee cannot be underestimated in order to ensure successful completion of the co-operative educational programs. It should be properly constituted with specific functions with regards to the industry component. A qualitative study was undertaken to describe the course of the current industry experience in Clothing at the Cape Technikon. Discussion forums, personal interviews and a literature study serve as the foundation of this investigation.

A expatriação pode ser entendida pela prática de convidar um funcionário a assumir um cargo pela empresa em um país estrangeiro por um período de um ou dois anos. Essa prática, ás vezes, tem sido estudada somente pela missão em si, enquanto que é um processo amplo e único composto por três etapas: a preparação, a expatriação em si e a repatriação, momento este pouco abordado nos estudos. A repatriação compreende a etapa em que o expatriado volta para o país de origem, tendo que se readaptar ao ambiente de trabalho e social. Dentro da perspectiva profissional, um dos problemas que dificulta a adaptação do expatriado é a questão da carreira, pois, na expatriação, geralmente, os funcionários exercem atividades mais amplas. Assim, quando retornam ao país de origem, muitos voltam a exercer as mesmas atividades de antes da expatriação. Dessa maneira, este estudo tem o propósito de analisar as mudanças ocorridas com a expatriação para os funcionários que tiveram/estão tendo uma experiência profissional internacional e sua relação com as expectativas de carreira geradas com a repatriação. Para atender esse objetivo, foi realizado um estudo de caso na empresa Alpha, na qual foram realizadas 21 entrevistas: dois representantes da área dos Recursos Humanos (RH) e 19 expatriados. Como principais resultados, destacam-se: a empresa, apesar de ter um programa de expatriação há 12 anos, ainda precisa de políticas e práticas mais estruturadas, muito em função de que a internacionalização tomou uma dimensão maior do que a organização estava preparada para suportar, o que tem refletido na área de RH. Assim, as dificuldades em relação à adaptação cultural, família, língua estrangeira sobressaem-se e o expatriado não percebe como a sua carreira está se desenvolvendo nesse momento. Entretanto, a expatriação permite possibilidades para os profissionais e para a empresa, mas também tem muitos desafios a serem superados. Como possibilidades foram destacadas: maior competência para a tomada de decisão, ampliação do network interno, conhecimento de outras culturas, maior aprendizado, desafio profissional, entre outros. E como desafios têm-se: conciliar as expectativas da empresa com a do funcionário, reconhecimento do processo de expatriação, atuação do RH, planejamento da carreira, melhor preparação e acompanhamento da família, treinamento e adaptação do expatriado, práticas e políticas ampliadas e atenção ao perfil dos expatriados. Como principal achado tem-se que os repatriados passam a dar mais valor a sua carreira interna do que a organizacional, pois quando retornam a empresa não apresenta um planejamento para aproveitar esse funcionário em posições que demandem mais responsabilidades, como as na missão. Dessa forma, a carreira fica comprometida no momento em que a organização não reconhece o aprendizado do repatriado e esse busca outras oportunidades no mercado de trabalho. Os que buscam espaço dentro da organização acabam se “tornando um problema” para a empresa. / The expatriation can be understood as the practice of inviting an employee to take a job within his company in a foreign country for a period of one or two years. This practice has been studied only as the mission itself, when it is a broad and unique process involving three stages: preparation, expatriation and a stage that is rarely addressed in studies: the repatriation. The repatriation encompasses the step where the expatriate returns to his country, which requires him the readjustment to social and working place. From a professional perspective, one of the difficult problems in the expatriate adaptation is the issue of career, because in expatriation, generally, the employees are responsible for broader activities. Thus, when they return to their origin country, many of them are responsible for the same activities that they were before expatriation. Thus, this study aims to analyze the changes from expatriation allowance regarding employees who have had/ are having an international professional experience and their relation to career expectations generated from the repatriation. To achieve this objective, a case study has been done in Alpha Company, in which 21 people have been interviewed: two persons who represent the Human Resources (HR) and 19 expatriates. The main results concluded: the company, despite having a 12 year expatriation program, still lacks more structured policies and practices, mostly because that internationalization has taken as a major dimension than the organization was prepared to hold, which has been reflected in the HR area. Thus, the difficulties related to cultural adaptation, family, foreign language end up having a bigger dimension and the expatriate can not perceive how his career is being developed at that time. However, the expatriation provides many opportunities for the professionals and for the company, and also there are many challenges that need to be overcome. The possibilities that were mentioned: more competence for decision making, expansion of the internal network, knowledge of other cultures, higher learning, professional challenge, among others. And as challenges, they indicated: to reconcile the company's expectations with the employee's, more valorization of the expatriation process, greater activity of HR, career planning, better family preparation and monitoring, training and adaptation of expatriate, policies and practices expanded and greater attention to the profile of expatriates. The main result showed that the repatriates are giving much more value to their internal career than to the organizational, because when they return, the company does not have a structure to allocate them in positions that require more responsibilities, as it was required in their mission. Thus, the expatriate’s career becomes jeopardized since the organization does not recognize his learning, and this disregard influences him to seek for others opportunities in the marketplace. And those who seek for a space within the organization, end up "becoming a problem" for the company.

No description available.

abstract: As newcomers to schools in the last thirty years, second career teachers, were studied to better understand this group of teachers within schools. Second career teachers bring professional knowledge that did not originate in the field of teaching to their teaching career such as relationship building and collaboration. The professional perspectives of second career teachers were assessed and analyzed in relation with current professional expectations in schools utilizing an analytical framework built from Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive sociology. Second career teachers and their supervisors were interviewed and their responses were reviewed in relation to the districts' defined professional habitus and the professional cultural capital developed by second career teachers. The results from this study indicate that Second career teachers did have professional perspectives that aligned with the current professional expectations valued within the schools they worked. In addition, their presence in schools revealed alternative viewpoints that were highly valued and sought by others. This study goes beyond Bourdieu's theoretical definitions of capitals to explore specific relationships between embodied and institutionalized capitals that were valued in school settings. The knowledge gained from this study provided insight into the professional habitus defined by teachers within a school district and the relationship of second career teachers to this habitus. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Administration and Supervision 2014

Nessa dissertação, procura-se avaliar se o retorno esperado do ensino superior é determinante para a escolha profissional e explicar como os salários, as habilidades e as características sócio-econômicas dos alunos da Universidade de São Paulo (USP), em conjunto, se associam à escolha da carreira. Para atingir esses objetivos, são utilizados dados da Fundação Universitária para o Vestibular (Fuvest) de 1995 e de 1996 e do Censo 2000. As carreiras são divididas em seis áreas de atuação – educação, ciências humanas, negócios, saúde, engenharia e matemática/ciências – e são estimados dois modelos de escolha discreta: logit multinomial e logit condicional. Na estimação do logit multinomial são utilizadas apenas variáveis relativas às características dos indivíduos e no logit condicional inclui-se o salário médio de cada área de atuação. Os resultados indicam que o retorno esperado não tem efeito sobre a escolha profissional. / This research evaluate if higher education expected return is determinant for the professional choice and how the interaction between wage, abilities and socio-economic characteristics of Universidade de São Paulo’s students, all together, are associated to the career choice. Data used is from Fundação Universitária para o Vestibular (Fuvest) 1995 and 1996’s questionnaires and from Censo 2000. The careers are grouped in six concentration areas – education, human sciences, management, health, engineer, math/sciences – and two discrete choice models are estimated: multinomial logit and conditional logit. Multinomial logit contains only variables specific to individuals and the average wage of each concentration area is included in conditional logit estimation. The results show that expected return doesn’t have effect over the professional choice.