The Future Orientation, Academic Achievement And Externalizing Problem Behavior Of Secondary Vocational Students

In recent years, due to various reasons, for example, the guidance of nationalpolicy, gradual recognition by the society and the grim situation of college students’employment, the number of vocational students has increased every year. However,compared to the ordinary middle and high school students, vocational students aremore prevalent and severe in psychology disorders or behavioral problems. Futureorientation is the individual vision about the future, including how people conceivetheir own future and what their own goals and expectations or concerns are. Futureorientation plays an important power guiding role in the individual’s current cognitiveactivity and impels the current behavior of the individual to point to and service forthe future goals (Nurmi,1991). Studies showed that the future orientation of theindividual related to kinds of positive development results and had a protective effecton negative development results. Nurmi’s studies (1991) have found, adolescent riskbehaviors, such as crime, drug abuse were connected with how they perceived thefuture. It was also found that the higher level of the future orientation was, the bettergrades students had (Brown&Jones,2004; Honora,2002). In the practice ofeducation and teaching, it can also be found that good grades students have lessproblem behavior. In China, teachers and parents always focus on the academicperformance of students. While the vocational students usually have negative attitudetowards study. Some of these students have bad study habits and their grades aregenerally poor. At the same time, there are many externalizing problems among them.Being late or absent for class and gang fights are common and serious.Therefore, this research intended to find the basic characteristics of the futureorientation of secondary vocational school students, and the relationship among thesecharacteristics, academic achievement and externalizing problem behaviors. Theinvestigation had practical significance to promote the positive development ofvocational students and improve the quality of vocational education.This study used the method of cross-sectional study design.484enrollment andemployment occupation selection class students from2secondary school of the Bin Zhou city were employed to complete the questionnaires. Using the Chinese versionof Future Orientation Questionnaire (Zhang, et. al..2006)and Youth Self ReportQuestionnaire to collect the students’ future orientation and relevant data ofexternalizing problems and taking the scores of a recent large-scale test as academicachievement to examine the future orientation of secondary vocational school students,academic achievement and the characteristics of externalizing problem behaviors andtheir relationship. The main conclusions of the study were as follows:1. Girls were better than boys in academic achievement. The boys had more seriousexternalizing problem behaviors than girls. Girls were higher than boys in explorationor thinking of the future orientation and commitment and personal value ofeducational planning, and future occupation planning positive expectations.2. Academic achievement had negative correlation with externalizing problems.The exploration or thinking of the future orientation and investment and personalvalue of educational planning, inputs and positive expectations future occupationplanning had negative correlation with externalizing problem behaviors. In addition tothe exploration or thinking of the future occupation planning, the other dimensions ofthe future orientation had correlation with their academic achievement.3. The exploration or thinking of the future orientation and investment and personalvalue of educational planning, inputs and positive expectations of future occupationplanning all could play a mediating role available between academic achievement anddelinquent behavior, and the forms of the role were more consistent. Students withgood grades would have more thoughts or feelings on the future education andoccupation, and then made them demonstrate less delinquent behavior. Among them,the exploration or thinking of educational planning is completely intermediary effect.When we only considered this dimension, academic achievement had no direct effecton the problem behaviors, completely effect through the inputs to educationalplanning.