Life satisfaction among students, a positive global cognitive appraisal of their lives, boosts mental and physical health and scholastic achievement. It is thus important to understand its determinants. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) stresses outcome expectations – the career-goals students set – and goal efficacy – students’ self-perception about their goal-related competences. SCCT only sketchily addresses the sources of goal efficacy and outcome expectations as ‘environmental resources’. We suggest that sociological frameworks might enlighten the role of significant others as environmental resources. Specifically, teachers, parents, and peers are important sources for goal efficacy and outcome expectations. This study set three goals. First, we investigate whether SCCT is valid in Flanders, a rigidly tracked educational system. Tracks cater to different futures, with academic tracks preparing for higher education and vocational tracks preparing for entry into the labor market. It is possible that goal efficacy and expectations are more consequential for life satisfaction in a comprehensive than in a tracked system. The second goal is to explore the role of significant others as environmental resources. We highlight the peer and teacher expectation culture – respectively, the shared expectations students and teachers have about students’ futures – and we distinguish between parental support – positive parental involvement – and parental pressure – parents pushing children towards academic or vocational goals. The third research goal is to test this elaborated SCCT longitudinally, by differentiating between the short-term and long-term effects of significant others, on goal efficacy, expectations and ultimately life satisfaction. Multilevel analyses on the ISCY dataset, gathered from 2013-2014 onwards from 2,346 students in 30 secondary schools in Ghent, showed that significant others’ career-related thoughts are associated with life satisfaction. In the short term, teachers with higher expectations boost students’ goal efficacy and life satisfaction. Higher parental support, but lower parental pressure relates to higher life satisfaction. In the long term, parental support and goal self-efficacy increase students’ life satisfaction. Moreover, students who expect to continue studying had a larger increase in life satisfaction than those who were still undecided, and this is due to undecided students having lower goal efficacy. Moreover, parental academic pressure reduces life satisfaction, but only for undecided students. We conclude that it is fruitful to add students’ significant others as environmental resources to SCCT. Policy-wise, we advise to support all students, but particularly undecided students, so the socioemotional side implications of career choice in this life phase are softened.

Lent, R. W. (2005). A Social Cognitive View of Career Development and Counseling. In Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (pp. 101–127). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.