Career guidance needs assessment of black secondary school students in the transvaal province of the republic of South Africa
✍ Scribed by Zach M. Chuenyane
- Publisher
- Springer US
- Year
- 1983
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 544 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0165-0653
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This study investigates the career guidance needs of 600 Black secondary school students. It also examines how Black secondary school principals perceive the guidance programs in their schools. The results indicate sixteen categories of career guidance needs which should receive priority in planning guidance services for this population. The students consistently felt their needs were not being met. Not less than 6007o expressed a need for additional help with finding jobs and careers, understanding the guidance program, developing self-understanding, career awareness, exploration and planning, interpersonal relationships, value clarification, selection of courses and acquisition of decision-making skills in sharp contrast to the help they feel they have received.
Career guidance in Black South African schools has not received proper attention for a long time. It has only been in recent years that this phenomenon has attracted the attention of educationists (Cloete and le Roux 1978). Students have always experienced difficulties when making decisions about their careers. Tenuous choices seemed to be a result of the students' lack of sufficient knowledge regarding themselves (i.e. their abilities, attitudes, interests and values) as well as vocational careers, school preparatory subjects and courses leading to those careers, educational and vocational opportunities available to them and financial assistance (Prediger et al., 1973).
Self-understanding is the single basic goal of school guidance programs. Through self-understanding, students can begin to know, appreciate and utilize their aptitudes, interests, values and limitations. It improves analytical and critical thinking, growth and development. Students who understand themselves are characterized by their ability to make more rational educational and vocational plans. McDaniel and Shaftel (1956) maintained that every individual should be helped to study and understand himself as a unique person and to respond to the pressures and stimuli of the time and place in which he lives; Holland (1973) suggested that one needs appropriate and accurate information