Career maturity among Taiwan vocational industrial high school students in the machinery course

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships and differences in career maturity of vocational industrial high school students in Taiwan. The results of this study provide basic information useful to vocational industrial high school curriculum designers, administrators, counselors, and teachers. This information will help educators better understand students' characteristics, factors affecting students' career development and help students implement their career developmental tasks throughout the high school years.;The characteristics of vocational industrial high school students which were used as independent variables were: sex, age, student's educational goal, parental educational expectation, student's occupational goal, parental occupational expectation, certainty of career plans, satisfaction with school program, work experience, involvement in career-related activities, curriculum, student's academic achievement, student's practice achievement, student's I.Q., and social economic status. The six dependent variables were: Career Planning, Career Exploration, Decision Making, World of Work Information, and Knowledge of Preferred Occupational Group; and Career Orientation Total score.;Although there was a trend that student's career maturity incrementally increased by grade level, the significant differences only existed between 12th grade and 10th grade students on each of the dependent variables except for the Decision Making subscale. No gender differences existed in career maturity. There were no significant differences on the subscales of Career Planning, Career Exploration or Career Orientation Total. There were significant differences among students in vocational industrial curriculums for the subscales of Decision Making and World of Work Information. Student's educational goal was the only consistent predictor which was significant for all of the six dependent variables. Parental educational expectation, student's occupational goal, parental occupational expectation, student's academic achievement, student's practice achievement and social economic status was not found in any of the six dependent variables. Students who had high certainty in their career plans and were highly involved in career-related activities tended to score higher on the Career Planning and Career Exploration subscales. Students enrolled in the cluster-teaching curriculum with high educational goals and high I.Q. scores tended to score higher on the Career Exploration, Decision Making and World of Work Information subscales. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).