Career Development Interventions and Academic Self-Efficacy and Motivation: A Pilot Study.

The impact of career development interventions on career and technical education (CTE) students' academic self-efficacy and motivation was explored in a pilot study that elicited responses from 293 students at 20 high schools across the United States. The study included a literature review, survey of high school seniors that examined 44 specifically defined career interventions and 4 career development taxa, and student opinion survey that measured self-efficacy and motivation. To clarify the relationship between career development intervention participation and academic achievement, the taxon-level participation scores were regressed against academic self-efficacy and academic motivation, which are both key psychological mediators of academic achievement. Despite the precise definition of the independent variables, minimal linkage was found between the career development intervention taxa and self-efficacy and motivation. The one exception was that the advising intervention taxon predicted 4% of the variance in mathematics motivation. It was recommended that the focus of research efforts be shifted from large macro-level studies of multiple student outcomes to evidence-based research approaches used in the medical sciences. (Twelve tables are included. The bibliography lists 215 references. The following items are appended: the taxon membership; a glossary; sample research introduction and informed consent letters; the project team roster; the senior survey; the standard score algorithms; and correlation matrices from the four regression analyses.) (MN)