Self-Understanding, Confidence, and Career Decision-Making In Traditional-Age College Students
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Thornton, Marrisa
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Abstract
This study examined undeclared undergraduate students’ understanding of themselves, how that understanding affected their confidence in career decision-making, and whether a career education course had any impact on those factors in the career decision-making process. Individual student experiences and the theoretical foundation in social constructionist theory, social cognitive career theory, and Super and Gottfredson’s career theories provided findings that illustrated a relationship between self-understanding and confidence in undergraduate students’ career decision-making. Those findings were closely related to the presence of career education, personal and societal influences, and the timing in which a student has received enough experience to make an accurate career decision. The subjective experiences provided by the students resulted in the expansion of the first phase of the career development model. This expansion illustrated the way in which innate and external factors influence students’ success within the first phase of the career development process and led to the proposal of potential expansions within other phases in the career development model.
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Career decision-making, Self-understanding, Career confidence, Career education course