مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

A core axiom of educational systems is that school prepares youth for their future life, which includes preparation for their career. School represents the main “job” adolescents have, and it is a long-term protective environment for personal and vocational development. Hence, education can be viewed as a form of social capital (Coleman, 1988), as it guides the acquisition and improvement of strategies to approach authority figures (e.g., teachers) and learning tasks, gradually crafting adolescents’ life pursuits, learning patterns, and identities. As youth spend increasingly longer time in the educational system, their career goals become closely intertwined with their educational goals (Heckhausen & Tomasik, 2002; Negru, 2012; Negru, Pop, & Opre, 2013). One of the main educational goals is academic achievement. Academic achievement is a multidimensional construct (Stipek & Weisz, 1981), most often operationalized through the grades adolescents receive in school, more specifically their Grand Point Average or GPA (Poropat, 2009). Academic achievement has a strong influence on the occupational paths students take as they make the transition to adulthood (Schnabel, Alfeld, Eccles, Köller, & Baumert, 2002; Strenze, 2007) and it directly impacts their motivation and global learning strategies (Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012). Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume that adolescents’ readiness and resources in approaching career issues (i.e., their career adaptability, Savickas, 2013) are also linked to their level of academic achievement. To date, more longitudinal proof for these relations is needed, in order to provide an in-depth understanding of how career adaptability is associated with academic achievement across time. To approach this shortcoming, we investigated the cross-lagged associations between academic achievement and career adaptability in a three-wave longitudinal study, including the moderating role of adolescents’ gender, type of schooling, and age.