Evaluation of a Career Development Skills Intervention With Adolescents Living in an Inner City

Researchers have suggested that adolescents who live in an inner city face multiple career development barriers related to their entry into the occupational world (National Research Council, 1993), with greater challenges and fewer resources than adolescents from other segments of society (Luzzo & McWhirter, 2001; McWhirter, 1997). Youth who live in an inner city often have lower levels of educational attainment (e.g., high school graduation rates of approximately 50% in some cities), less work experience, and a greater risk of facing underemployment after leaving high school (Kasarda & Ting, 1996). Moreover, unemployment is growing in the inner cities, with widening wage and opportunity gaps between innercity residents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and suburban residents from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Bynner & Parsons, 2002; Kasarda & Ting, 1996). Indeed, moderate wage employment opportunities are seldom available to inner-city residents, who are typically segregated in location due in large part to their economic, racial, and ethnic minority statuses (Teitz, 1998). These realities highlight the critical need for effective career development services for young people who live in inner cities as they are confronted with quickly changing career options that have been affected by economic globalization and technological, industrial, and organizational reforms (Teitz, 1998). Researchers have suggested that using a model that does not address the unique contexts that have an effect on career development, such as race, culture, or socioeconomic barriers, may not adequately prepare diverse adolescents to successfully confront career challenges (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2006; Savickas, 2000). "The assumed equality of vocational opportunity and freedom of career choice for most people are among the assumptions that characterize traditional career theory, research, and practice" (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2006, p. 188). Thus, a career counseling model that focuses solely on more traditional career counseling activities, such as exploration, person-environment fit, and goal setting, may not be sufficient to assist young people living in inner cities to prepare for their vocational lives. However, a newer model, the Integrative Contextual Model of Career Development (ICM; Lapan, 2004), proposes a strategy to help young people overcome their career barriers and to thrive economically in a quickly changing economy. ICM, which was drawn from different theoretical perspectives, describes how adolescents are more likely to develop proactive approaches to their present situations and possible career futures by learning and using specific career development skills. The skills described in ICM are (a) self- and career-exploration skills (Flum & Blustein, 2000); (b) person-environment fit skill s (i. e., understanding how one's own interests, skills, values, and abilities relate to various occupations in the world of work; Parsons, 1909); (c) goal-setting skills; (d) social, prosocial (i.e., acting without thought to one's own personal benefit), and work readiness skills (i.e., a wide range of skills consisting of an orientation toward work that results in a positive demonstrable work ethic; Bloch, 1996); (e) self-regulated learning skills (i.e., a set of learning strategies consisting of forethought, performance/volitional control, and self-reflection, designed to maximize one's educational and vocational opportunities; Lapan, Kardash, & Turner, 2002; Zimmerman, 2000); and (f) the consistent utilization of social support with regard to overcoming both societal barriers (e.g., race inequalities) and individual career barriers. Each of these skills is related integratively, so that together they exert multivariate effects upon a variety of vocational outcomes. According to ICM, it is the development of these integrated skills (rather than the development of only a few) that provides the individual with a basis for more actively engaging both the present and future and for approaching the occupational world in ways that are directed and purposeful, alive with possibilities, and intrinsically interesting and engaging (Lapan, 2004). …