Career/Education Plans and Student Engagement in Secondary School

Author(s):

Jay Plasman(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Poster

Session Information

ERG SES D 03, Interactive Poster Session

Poster Session

Time:

2017-08-21

13:30-15:00

Room:

W2.06

Chair:

Sabine Krause

Contribution

Across the international education landscape, promoting student engagement with school is a key topic and an important aspect for all schools to consider. Students who are engaged in school are directly involved with what is being taught and focus on a true understanding of the material, as opposed to simply working to get work done (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). Through this focus on mastery, engagement is thereby connected strongly with multiple school measures including: achievement, attendance, teenage pregnancy, and drop out (Ekstrom, Goertz, Pollack, & Rock, 1986; Manlove, 1998; Marks, 2000). Engaged students, in addition to exhibiting strong achievement in school, also exhibit numerous characteristics that are encouraged in students: high attendance rates, pride in work, concentration on school tasks, and enthusiasm in the classroom (Newmann, Wehlage, & Lambon, 1992).

Currently, numerous curricula focusing on career and education planning have been created to help facilitate this planning process and help students realize the role high school education plays in preparing them for transition to post-secondary life. Such plans help students to identify coursework that falls in an appropriate range for their skills and abilities. Finally, career/education plans encourage students to make a strong connection between high school relevance and later life goals, thereby encouraging engagement with the school. With this connection between planning and engagement in mind, I ask the following questions:

What are the characteristics of students who do and do not complete a career/education plan?
What are the characteristics of schools that do and do not require career/education plans?
Does completion of a career/education plan help increase engagement with school?
Is there any benefit to engagement associated with attending a school requiring a plan?

The potential benefits of creating a career/education plan stem from Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), which evolved from Bandura’s (1986) general social cognitive theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). There are three main components that play key roles in the foundation of SCCT: self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, and personal goals. Completing a career/education plan in high school requires students to address each of these three components.

Each of these three aspects is closely related to the others, as well as an individual’s interests and actions (Lent et al., 1994). Self-efficacy is directly associated with occupational and academic interests, and also acts to influence personal goals. Self-efficacy also influences performance in academic and occupational pursuits. Outcome expectations influence personal goals, and act to influence performance indirectly through these goals. Finally, goals are shaped by personal interests.

Previous literature lends support to the SCCT framework. Based on surveys of 414 secondary students in Australia, Rogers, Creed, & Glendon (2008) highlighted the ability for career/education plans to promote career exploration and development through encouragement of openness to experiences and organizational skills. They went on to point out that completing a career/education planning curriculum in high school was strongly associated with self-efficacy and goals. Additionally, in one of the only large-scale studies on career planning, Witko, Bernes, Magnusson, & Bardick (2005) examined responses of over 2900 secondary students in Southern Alberta, Canada regarding career planning. They found that more than three quarters of the students themselves identified these plans as being an important aspect of preparing for the next step in their lives through the formation of appropriate outcome expectations.

Method

To address these questions, I utilize the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:2009) – a large-scale national dataset with student-level observations that are linked to high school transcript data collected by the U.S. Department of Education. The dataset includes key information on early and late high school engagement, whether students completed a career/education plan, and individual demographic, school performance, and attitude information. There are two key explanatory variables in the analysis – student career/education plan completion and school career/education plan requirement. The key outcome is student engagement at the end of high school after controlling for engagement early in the high school career. Control variables include socio-demographic data, academic history and attitudes, and school level data. I employ two main models of analysis to answer the research questions – OLS regression, and two-level propensity score matching. The OLS model is represented as follows: y_ist=β_0+ β_1 〖plan〗_is(t-1) +β_2 〖schlreq〗_s(t-1) +β_3 〖plan*schlreq〗_is(t-1) +〖β_4 X〗_(is(t-1))+ β_5 J_(s(t-1))+ε_is In this equation, yist represents a continuous variable indicating student i’s engagement at school s in survey wave t (i.e., the first follow-up). The term planis(t-1) is a binary indicator for whether or not student i had a career/education plan in survey wave t-1 (i.e., the baseline survey). The term schlreqs(t-1) indicates whether or not school s required students to complete a career/education plan at survey wave t-1. The term plan*schlreqis(t-1) represents the interaction between student and school plans, and helps provide additional insight into how schools may shape engagement. X_(i(t-1)) represents the control variables at the student level measured in the baseline survey wave. Js(t-1) represents the control variables at the school level as measured at the baseline survey. Finally, the error term ε_is is estimated with standard errors adjusted for high school clustering. In order to account more fully for observed selection bias between students who did and did not choose to complete a career/education plan, I reanalyzed the data using a two-level propensity score matching (PSM) technique. It was necessary to perform this analysis at two different levels because there are two selection factors that come into play regarding career/education plans: first, school plan requirement; and second, a student’s decision to complete a plan. A test of variance components was performed to determine whether a hierarchical linear model analysis should be performed, but the intraclass correlation was minimal, indicating HLM was not necessary.

Expected Outcomes

Across all analyses – OLS and propensity score matching – a consistent pattern emerged regarding the relationship between career/education plans and engagement at the end of high school. The key result was that the completion of an individual career/education plan, regardless of whether or not the individual attended a school requiring a plan, was associated with higher end of high school engagement. However, the school requirement of a plan did not play a role in increasing engagement. Additionally, student engagement did not exhibit an added boost (or decrease) from completing a plan while attending a school requiring a plan. The results imply that the completion of a plan does help to engage students in school, and should therefore be encouraged to complete plans identifying their goals and how to reach them. Having an ultimate vision of where students want education to lead them can help improve overall engagement, which in turn connects to increases in achievement, attendance, graduation, and postsecondary enrollment. However, the school requirement for students to complete these plans does not appear to be an effective means of increasing engagement. Finally, education plans serve as a roadmap outlining students' paths toward achieving their goals. These plans can be of great utility to teachers and school counselors as they work to connect high school course content directly with students' lives. This connection can help increase the overall relevance students see in their high school work. For these plans to be successful in engaging students, they should be viewed as tools for learning as opposed to simply another requirement students need to complete to pass a course.

References

Bardick, A. D., Bernes, K. B., Magnusson, K. C., & Witko, K. D. (2004). Junior high career planning: What students want. Canadian Journal of Counselling, 38(2), 104–117. Ekstrom, R. B., Goertz, M. E., Pollack, J. M., & Rock, D. A. (1986). Who drops out of school and why? Findings from a national study. Teachers College Record, 87(3), 356–373. Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 59–109. Hong, G., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2006). Evaluating kindergarten retention policy: A case study of causal inference for multilevel observational data. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 101(475), 901–910. Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., & Hackett, G. (1994). Toward a unifying social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45, 79–122. Manlove, J. (1998). The influence of high school dropout an school disengagement on the risk of school-aged pregnancy. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 8(2), 187–220. Marks, H. M. (2000). Student engagement in instructional activity: Patterns in the elementary, middle, and high school years. American Educational Research Journal, 37(1), 153–184. McCormick, M. P., O’Connor, E. E., Cappella, E., & McClowry, S. G. (2013). Teacher-child relationships and academic achievement: A multilevel propensity score model approach. Journal of School Psychology, 51(5), 611–624. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2013.05.001 Newmann, F. M., Wehlage, G. G., & Lambon, S. D. (1992). The significance and sources of student engagement. In F. M. Newmann (Ed.), Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools (pp. 11–39). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Rogers, M. E., Creed, P. A., & Glendon, A. I. (2008). The role of personality in adolescent career planning and exploration: A social cognitive perspective. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73, 132–142. Stuart, E. A., & Rubin, D. B. (2008). Matching with multiple control groups with adjustment for group differences. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 33(3), 279–306. http://doi.org/10.3102/1076998607306078

Author Information

Jay Plasman (presenting / submitting)

University of California Santa Barbara, United States of America

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