Structuring Opportunity: The Role of School Context in Shaping High School Students' Occupational Aspirations

This study explores the occupational aspirations of high school students planning to attend college by drawing on a multilayered model of college enrollment, social cognitive career theory, and multiple descriptive case studies of 15 high schools. Students' occupational aspirations and their understanding of the education required to achieve these aspirations appear to be connected to the resource level of schools in this study. The nature of career programming provided also varied by school resource level, illustrating how multiple layers of context shape the development of students' career interests as well as their decision making with respect to educational and career choices. In a nation where those in occupations that require at least a bachelor's degree earn the most (Baum & Ma, 2007) and in which students with fewer resources are underrepresented within 4-year postsecondary institutions (Baum & Ma, 2007; U.S. Department of Education, 2009), promoting occupational aspirations is an important step toward expanding opportunity. Simply increasing occupational aspirations is insufficient, however, because research shows that students have unequal access to resources such as college counseling (Perna et al., 2008) and college preparatory curricula (Adelman, 2006; Akerhielm, Berger, Hooker, & Wise, 1998; Johnson, 2008; Paul, 2005), placing some students at a disadvantage regarding college enrollment and persistence. This disadvantage subsequently manifests itself in unequal access to preparation for the types of careers to which many students aspire ( Reynolds, Stewart, MacDonald, & Sischo, 2006; Schneider ck Stevenson, 1999). Occupational aspirations are therefore inextricably tied to both information about applying to and financing college and academic preparation. Although prior research sheds light on the predictors of occupational aspirations and the relationship between educational aspirations and college enrollment, available research is limited in several respects. First, with a few exceptions, the research is primarily quantitative in nature and does not contain thick description about the quality of student experiences. Second, research examines the effects of parental involvement (Behnke, Piercy, & Diversi, 2004; Wahl & Blackhurst, 2000) and career counseling interventions (Brown & Lent, 2006; Gray, 2000), with little attention to the ways that other contextual influences, such as schools, shape students' occupational aspirations. This study addresses the aforementioned limitations by using a multilayered model of college enrollment (Perna, 2006) and social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994, 2000) to explore the occupational aspirations of high school students planning to attend college. Specifically, through case studies of 15 high schools, this study describes how occupational aspirations of high school students are shaped by the high school context. Conceptual Model of Occupational Aspirations The conceptual model for this study (see Figure 1 ) draws on a multilayered model of college enrollment (Perna, 2006) and SCCT (Lent et al., 1994, 2000). Perna's (2006) model assumes that students' college-related decisions are shaped by multiple layers of context. The model identifies four such layers, represented in Figure 1 as large, solid-lined boxes: students and their families (Layer 1 ); kindergarten through 12th-grade schools (Layer 2); higher education institutions (Layer 3); and the broader federal and state policy context (Layer 4). The inclusion of these layers of context highlights how structures or resources may facilitate or impede college enrollment and, in particular, how aspects of context may restrict access for underrepresented groups (Perna, 2006). The model suggests that occupational aspirations shape students' decisions to enroll in college but that occupational aspirations are shaped directly and indirectly by context, including characteristics of a student's school. …