The influence of career counseling on the values and motivation of adolescents
Authors:   Samara Branch of Moscow City Pedagogical University, Volkova Evgeniya S. , Kaptsov Alexander V. ,   Samara Branch of Moscow City Pedagogical University
Published: December 2023

A relevant problem of pedagogical psychology is to provide effective career counseling services that would aid students to make a conscious career decision. Psychological characteristics of optants (high school students who choose a profession) in some sense imbricate with such a personal quality as subjectivity, which is manifested in adolescents’ values and motivation. One of the ways to help students choose a profession can be career guidance courses and trainings aimed at aiding students to make a conscious career decision. The goal of the research is to justify the use of such a training in order to ease the difficulties for adolescents to choose a profession and develop values and increase motivation, and as a consequence, to develop subjectivity. The hypothesis is as follows: career counseling eases the difficulties for adolescents to choose a profession and contributes to the development of values and boosts motivation. Study participants: 9th grade students (N = 54) of the Samara secondary school, who were divided into two groups: experimental and control. The participants of the experimental group (n = 25; M = 14.8; SD = 0.41; 40% of women) had a career counseling session once a week for 15 weeks. The control group (n = 29; M = 14.9; SD = 0.36; 52% of women) studied according to a conventional curriculum. Methods (tools): The diagnosis was performed with a time interval of 19 weeks. A projective technique for assessing the phases of the subjectivity formation in students (E. S. Volkova, A. V. Kaptsov) was used to assess the real, possible and ideal phases of the subjectivity formation and their changes after the training. A questionnaire on the difficulties of making a decision about choosing a profession (CDDQ, I. Gati, M. Kraus and S. Osipov, adapted by E. S. Volkova) was used to determine the problems of the ninth-graders when choosing a profession. Results: The research has demonstrated the positive effect of the training on easing the difficulties to choose a profession, as well as on the development of the motivational component of subjectivity; the training has increased the value of the educational activity expressed by the growth of the indicator of the ideal phase of the “master” stage of subjectivity in the experimental group. In ideal and possible phases of subjectivity formation, the experimental group has demonstrated the phenomenon of self-organization in terms of the formation of attractors, as a result of which the phases of subjectivity formation take place. The main conclusions. Career counseling eases the difficulties for high school students to choose a profession; it promotes the development of values and boosts motivation, and as a result, it helps to form the subjectivity in students; additionally, it promotes the phenomenon of self-organization in an ideal phase of subjectivity formation, which may potentially affect the real phase of subjectivity formation in the future.