EFFECTIVENESS OF CAREER GUIDANCE DELIVERY IN THE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS OF TECHIMAN NORTH DISTRICT

CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTIONBackground to the Study Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions people make in life. Many people usually make this decision during the adolescent period because this is the time they choose their secondary and tertiary educational programmes to conform to their future careers. The process … See more

CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTIONBackground to the Study Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions people make in life. Many people usually make this decision during the adolescent period because this is the time they choose their secondary and tertiary educational programmes to conform to their future careers. The process of career choice is a universal phenomenon because career serves as a major avenue through which people offer services to humanity as well as get financial rewards to sustain themselves and their families. Careers also, go a long way to boost the economy of nations.Scholars have defined career in many ways. According to Oladede (2007) as cited in a career is a chosen pursuit, life work and one’s profession. It is also the sequence of major positions occupied by a person throughout his or her lifetime. Arnold (1990) has indicated that a career is the sequence of employment-related positions, roles, activities and experiences encountered by a person. The various definitions of career point to the fact that it is a “process” ─ it is a long process rather than a simple incident. In other words, career interest and choices do not appear all of a sudden during a particular period in life but as a result of developmental process.A career choice is a process of growth itself which represents other development phases. It needs enough maturity because its effect on adulthood is important if the person's future is bright (Kochhlar, 2006). There are several factors that lead to an individual's career choice. These factors include family status, parents' socioeconomic status, social effects, mental and physical ability.Career advice involves a set of mechanisms aimed at making informed decisions and transitions in relation to their educational, professional and personal growth (Watts & Kidd, 2000). The purpose of guidance and counselling is to allow learners in learning institutions to make effective use of their potential educational benefits (Ibrahim et al., 2014; Eyo, Joshua & Esuong, 2010). It also builds confidence and optimistic attitudes, fulfills and instills a passion for lifelong learning (Ajufo, 2013). Countries need people who can use their skills best and take career choices that allow them to be driven and efficient (Hiebert, 2009).Countries like Nigeria and Ghana began to provide guidance and advice in Africa in the 1960's with the goal of guiding students and young people in their career decisions. They concentrated at any time on providing the interested parties with knowledge about the labor marke--t, educational opportunities as well as work options and their accessibility. They also assumed that people can get professional assistance in identifying areas for their goals, interests, personal competencies, qualifications and skills and to connect them with training and job options available (Idowu, 2004; Essuman, 1999).In recent times there are technological advancements, an increase in the current Ghanaian population, and rapid changes in labour market with its new trends and demands and modern society has become sophisticated. Therefore, the career decisions that the youth of today have to make are far different from those in the 1960’s and 1970’s made (Roberts, 2006).Career decision-making creates direction and focus for one’s vocational behaviour. It is more or less providing a constitution for the conduct of one’s life. The work opportunities available at any point in one’s career depend heavily on the outcome of previous decisions concerning what occupation to pursue, what training to obtain, which job offer to accept, and what work assignments to seek. Therefore, understanding how these decisions are made is essential for resolving problems and effectively managing one’s career (Beach, 2014).According to Ford and Alao (2009), career decision-making difficulties can be categorized into three sources: (1) the individual making the decision, (2) the environment in which the decision is being made, and (3) the quality and nature of interaction between individuals and the environment. Several other factors also contribute to career decision-making difficulties. Some of these factors include lack of job awareness, poor career informational networks, low-technology, occupational stereotyping and career-channeling. These factors are some of the difficulties preventing the attainment of adequate job-awareness for youth in developing societies, as well as the underclass youth in modern societies of the western world (Ford & Alao, 2009). Again, lack of self-awareness is a potential source of career decision-making difficulty. Self-awareness is the process and state of knowing all essential components of one’s personality make-up. It involves knowledge of one’s interests, values, aptitude, health status, emotions, temperament and enduring personality dispositions. Poor knowledge about self leads to job dissatisfaction, low job morale, absenteeism and high job turn off rates when individuals find themselves in the wrong career (Ford & Alao, 2009).According to Saka and Gati (2007), career indecision is also a major form of career decision-making difficulty. They defined career indecision to be the difficulties that individuals face while making career-related decisions. In an attempt to find remedy to career decision-making difficulties, Holland (1997) expounded in his theory on how an individual can fit in the right career. He believed that there are six basic personality types namely: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. Each individual fits into any one of the given six basic personality types. The more the individual resembles a personality type the more that person exhibits the traits of that personality type. He also explains that the six personality types are synonymous with six types of work environments which are realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. According to Holland’s theory, an individual performs best when he finds himself in a work environment that is same as his personality type. For instance, if a person who has a social personality type finds himself in a social work environment, the person is most likely to perform well in that environment.Although range of courses form the choices students have after leaving school (Naude, 2014), career guidance is designed to help students to know themselves and to help specialist children with social choices in a dynamic and changing world (Gbenga & Toyin, 2014; Mabula, 2012; Mahlangu, 2011; Eyo et al., 2010; Maluwa-Banda, 1998). They search for alternatives that they have not previously considered and are engaged in the necessary decisions about their future careers their skill in various careers and opportunities (Ajufo, 2013:31; Hiebert, 2009:8). In Ghana technical advice helped young people make the right decisions in various fields (Omoni, 2013). In Malawi, career advice was implemented in the hope of reducing their areas of personal dispute through counselling (Maluwa-Banda, 1998:287). Chireshe (2012b:9) states that schools have begun career leadership classes in countries like Botswana, Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe. However, few students are able to figure out which combination of courses prepares them best for success after graduation (Naude, 2014:510). The main aspect is that lifelong learning presents a particular challenge and that advice is seen as an important instrument to promote personal growth and career creation in relation to the need to continually participate in learning and training. In essence, because of a desire to make a more productive contribution to the global economy, national lifelong learning strategies must be developed that have consequences for the movement of people between education and work (Sultana,2003). He further confirmed that education is sensitive to students' differentiated learning needs and allows students to select trajectories that nevertheless keep them interested in learning while bringing them closer to the workplace. The acknowledgement of achievement by alternative appraisal methods that identify knowledge and expertise freely and transparently and the emergence of opportunities for adult learning in and beyond the context of work is supported by a wide range of interventions, including more versatile yet consistent pathways, to improve the them. It is clearly recognized that, as ways are more diversified but are interconnected and as the openings to further and training are growing, groups and individuals are increasingly assisted by knowledge that is transparent and readily available. It was by evaluating the efficacy of professional guidance in selected senior high in the Techiman Municipality of Bono in Ghana that this important position for career management made it more convincing to carry out this analysis.1.2 Statement of the problemIn today's educational climate, ideally, all high school students would graduate with a developed and certain confidence in their future career. The students in this ideal world would move from high school to college or career while demonstrating career mature attitudes and behaviors through their independence and realistic choices associated with accurate self-appraisal and step into the real world after high school leading a life driven by purpose. Due to existing educational and guide trends, however, a few students graduate in their profession or college with feelings of confusion and loss of trust. It is difficult for most students of Ghana's Junior High School to make a practical combination to allow them to keep abreast of the kind of career programme. Such circumstances arise as they are about to complete secondary school to ascend the career steps to reach the workplace. Two crucial choices that students make at the moment (Johnson et Chapman, 1979) are the option of which pathway to follow and the curriculum that corresponds to the desired career. Select programs such as general arts, science, visual art, home economics, technical and vocal and business-related courses are available (Ackummey et al 2001). These courses prepare students for the adoption, as they form the basis for their final success in polytechnics, universities and other universities of studies in evolving jobs and technical skills. These students, however, may have only a limited understanding of potential educational needs and advantages and must therefore be sufficiently advised and directed to take reasonable decisions.In the late adolescence and early adulthood career choice has become important according to Super (1990). During this time, high-school students reach a time where they are finding professional knowledge and are aware of their professional interests. As Taveira et al. (1998) have noted, the career decision-making phase in a teenager's life can be especially stressful.As a response to this tension, teenagers can try to put their career burden on others and can even postpone or avoid making a choice that may potentially be less than ideal (Gati & Saka, 2001). The affective distress associated with career choices in young people may be adaptive, as indicated by Larson and Majors (1998), as it enhances their desire for support to lower opportunities for uninformed decisions.In general, several factors impact the choice of programs by high school graduates. Most high school students make choices of programs and careers with the influence of their friends and take their individual preferences, strengths and weaknesses into account. Others will be motivated to follow their parents' courses and careers, and most significantly, parents will be able to choose services for their wards but will do little to decrease the level of success of their wards. A critical review of this situation involves a thorough examination of these phenomena in order to assess how students evaluate their career and its effect on the selection of university programs. It is obvious that generally, the outcomes that career guidance tries to achieve are not easily measurable especially in national context where there are no designated institutions to conduct research in this area. There is limited data on career guidance and the few programs available are undifferentiated portraying ‘one size fit all’’ approach not responsive to the need of students (Sultana, 2003). Career guidance programmes should possess unique peculiarity tied to the needs and aspirations of those intended for if they are to achieve any set objectives. This apparent insufficient data especially in the study area has made it much compelling to conduct this study to fill the knowledge gap by assessing the effectiveness of career guidance delivery in the senior high schools of Techiman North District.

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