A study on career maturity of Indian adolescents with respect to their educational settings

Abstract

Education is the act of learning things around us. Education is the first and foremost rights of every human being. Education helps a person in nourishing his present and future by ensuring aim of the life. Career education or Vocational education is very important especially in the context of recent changes in education system which aims to bridge the gap between work-oriented education and mature career choices. The present paper assessed and compared the Career Maturity of adolescents from two different educational settings, viz. private and government schools. 100 high school students from private schools and 100 from government schools were randomly selected from Haldwani block of Nainital districts as respondents for the present research. Student studying in class X of government and private schools of Haldwani were selected for the present study making a total of two hundred (200) respondents. A self-designed Performa was prepared to get necessary information and details regarding subjects. It was used to study the socio-demographic characteristics of class X students of the selected schools. Career Maturity of the students was assessed by Career Maturity Inventory Indian adaptation by Dr. N. Gupta (1989). Z-test and Chi-test was employed to measure the statistical differences in career maturity of respondents across the two educational settings. Results revealed that there is a significant difference showed on every component of career maturity between government and private schools. Private school students were significantly better on Attitude, Self-Appraisal, Occupational Information, Goal Selection, Planning and Problem Solving and thus more career mature than government school students. The prominent reason for significant difference in career maturity across different educational setting was observed across gender composition, type of family, number of siblings, and ordinal position factors.