Chapter 9: Preparing Adolescents to Make Career Decisions: A Social Cognitive Perspective

Deciding on a career direction can be a challenging task for even the most prepared adolescent in contemporary society. For those less well off economically and less accomplished academically, this task may seem overwhelming. Some may feel as if they have no choice at all. The modern world offers individuals a range of occupational possibilities that is vastly larger than what was available a century ago. On top of this, a large majority of occupations available in the world today (especially the fastest growing ones in the service and technology industries) require skills that were unheard of a century ago and levels of education (e.g., college) that the ancestors of today’s adolescents rarely attained (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002; U.S. Department of Labor, 2002). Indeed, in today’s world educational attainment seems to be critical for making the idea of a career imaginable to many adolescents (Arbona, 2005).