Students’ work experience in relation to their career engagement and metacognitive awareness

Abstract

Higher education students in Finland and all over the world are often engaged in a paid job alongside their studies. The purpose of the present study is to explore how humanities students’ work experience is related to their career engagement and metacognitive awareness. More precisely, the aim is to investigate how the nature and amount of work are associated with career engagement and metacognitive awareness. A total of 302 master’s students filled out the questionnaire. The data were analysed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, Pearson correlations, independent samples t-test and One-Way ANOVA. The results showed that working students had higher scores on networking than non-working students. In addition, the study revealed that the amount of work and work related to the study field were positively related to career engagement (career planning and networking). Regarding metacognitive awareness, the amount of work matters. Full-time working students had higher scores on both dimensions of metacognitive awareness, namely knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. In addition, work related to one's own study field was connected with the perceived relevance of work. The present study indicates that students’ working can enhance students’ career engagement and their metacognitive awareness.