Parental level of education and career decision-making among Grade 12 learners in South Africa

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between parental level of education and career decision-making among Grade 12 learners in South Africa. The study was guided by Super’s life span theory. The ex-post facto research was used to determine if there is a relationship between learner’s career decision-making and parental level of education. The sample comprised 204 Grade 12 learners from six township secondary schools in Ekurhuleni East district, Gauteng, South Africa. The Career Decision Scale (CDS) was used to collect data. The responses were indicated on a 5-point Likert scale that measured learners’ career decisionmaking and parental level of education. Reliability of the CDS was ascertained using Cronbach’s alpha and a co-efficient value of .842 was reported. In addition, construct validity was ensured by Kaiser- Meyer-Oklin measure (KMO Index) and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity. The inferential statistics with the support of the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey HSD as post hoc tests were used to analyse data. The finding of the study shows that there is a significant relationship between parental level of education and learners’ career decision-making. The career decision-making mean score for the learners whose parental education is university level was significantly higher than the learners whose parents had secondary education (M. Diff.=.19, p=.02) and primary education (M. Diff.=.64, p<.01).Equally, a significant difference in the level of career decision-making was established between learners whose parents had college education and primary education, and between learners whose parents had secondary education and primary education. The study recommends that school principals should develop career talk programmes to facilitate learners’ career opportunities to better understand their career options, to encourage and support learners towards accomplishing career success.