Impact of formal career guidance and counselling during high school at UniZulu
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Date
2017
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University of Zululand
Abstract
Career guidance and counselling services are an important and essential starting point in career development. In the South African context, career guidance services are often under-utilised by high school learners, as a result, a large proportion of matriculants leave school with uncertainty about what careers they want to pursue. Much focus has been placed on improving matriculation results but it is almost counterproductive when career guidance is given minimal attention. The college and career-readiness agenda seems to be given very little attention and this weakness results in a number of challenges which negatively affect society, as the normative expectation in today's society is for a person to complete high school and acquire skills which will contribute to the improvement and rebound of the economy and for people to give back to the communities in which they live and thrive. There are presently limited trained personnel in South Africa to provide career guidance services and the Department of Higher Education and Learning has observed this problem and is currently reviewing the competency framework of career guidance services. The general aim of this study was to investigate the role and impact of formal career guidance and counselling, and the absence thereof, during high school. The study sought to unveil whether recipients of formal career guidance and counselling during high school had more career insight than non-recipients. Further, the study looked into the roles played by career guidance material and informal sources utilised by learners during high school before making career choices and also assessed the level of satisfaction which the participants experience in their current careers. The study was conducted at the University of Zululand main campus in KwaDlangezwa in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The target population was 50 academic staff from all four faculties at the University of Zululand. However, due to circumstances beyond the researcher’s control, only 34 questionnaires could be used at the time of the data collection. Stratified random sampling was employed in the study. The data was collected using a self-developed questionnaire by the researcher and data was analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 10.0 computer programme. Descriptive statistics (frequency tables, percentages, cross tabulations, graphs and charts) were used in data analysis. The study revealed that the majority of the participants left school without career guidance. As a result, they stumbled in finding suitable careers post matric. It was also observed that learners from all school types faced a similar problem regarding the lack of career guidance services, career material and other sources of information regarding careers. The limitation of this study was that the sample was not a large sample due to time and budget constraints and the results were only from the study area.
Description
A mini dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology at the University Of Zululand, 2017
Keywords
career guidance --counselling --South Africa