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ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 (2015) 1881 – 1885
WCES 2014
Professional Aspirations In Students With Technical Talent Anghel Onaa* a
Gh. Asachi Technical University, Teacher Education and Training Department, Bd. Dimitrie Mangeron, no 67, Iasi, 700050, Romania
Abstract Even if the subject of career and professional aspirations of gifted persons enjoys the interest of many researchers, the age for investigation at which most stop is just before the onset of higher education. In the research that we perform, we aim to investigate the occupational aspirations of talented people who have gone beyond their teenage years and are on the verge of materializing a choice of the technical professions. In achieving this goal, we assume that the individual objectives as vectors of professional aspirations differ between students with technical talent and students who were not identified with technical talent. A number of 437 students on Technical University of Iasi, Romania, participated in our investigation, among them a number of 66 students were identified as talented in technical domain (we used a grid of analysis obtained by intersecting subjects’ results in the instrument of self-nomination technical talent, with their academic results). Professional aspirations were measured using The Career Aspiration Scale - CAS. Our investigations confirm what the literature claims - a significantly higher level of aspirations to students with technical talent compared to those without identified technical talent. Moreover, students with technical talent have professional aspirations related to: lifelong learning, the desire to continue their studies after completing the current level, participation in various training courses. The highest scores were obtained in items 7, 8 and 9 of CAS and it gives us a first look at the reasons for the professional aspirations of students with technical talent - the tendency to obtain expertise through professional training. © 2015 2014The TheAuthors. Authors.Published Published Elsevier © byby Elsevier Ltd.Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 Keywords: Type your keywords here, separated by semicolons ;
1. Introduction The surveying of some studies interested by the development of the career to the overly gifted persons, have showed that there are two great research directions of the phenomenon: studies directed towards the understanding
* Anghel Ona.Tel.: +00-40-745-646976 E-mail address:
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1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.239
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of the psycho-social particularities involved in the career decisions, focused only on the samples of persons with high level, or comparative aptitudes, on different variables between samples of persons with superior and medium aptitudes (Perrone, 1997; Green, 2002, 2003, 2006); and studies directed towards the description of some educational programs dedicated to make easier the professional development (Taylor, 1995; Pluker, 1996; Perrone, 1997; Bisland, 2001; Brewer, 2004; Green, 2002, 2003, 2006; Cyr, 2004; Mann& all, 2007). Even if it’s well-known the fact that the development of the career is a process constructed during the whole life, in fact, the choosing of a faculty seem to be terminal researched about this subject. Green Meredith, one of the most prolific researches alive in the domain concerning the development of the career for the talented teen-agers, and census taker of over 60 contextual researches, takes notice that the period after finishing the high school still represents an unexplored area (Green, M., 2003). The specific talents (such as technical talent) are also seldom discussed. The research we will realize concerns the professional aspirations of the people having technical talent. Our intention is identifying the differences between professional aspirations of the students with and without technical talent. 2. The concepts of “professional aspiration” and “technical talent” The concept of „aspiration level” (introduced into the literature by the E. Hoppe in 1930) refers to „expectations, goals or claims of a person concerning his future achievement into a given task” (Cosmovici, 1996, p. 214). In combination with the variable „professional career” on may talk about professional aspirations/aspirations concerning the career. In understanding the career aspirations on may differ two approaches: the first one joins the authors who defined and studied the professional aspirations from the perspective of choosing a profession or professional routes; the second joins the authors defining professional aspirations as impulses, inner ambitions, values, personal aims guiding the individual behaviour of each individual towards achieving the desired profession. The studies based on choosing profession operationalized or categorized the professional aspirations based on salary level, but also on the prestige of each profession (Rojewski, 2003; Dazinger, 2007; Patton, Creed, 2007), or on the basis of occupations lists (Helvig, 2003; Patton, Creed, 2007). The studies where the motivational factors have played an important role in understanding the concept of professional aspirations have analyzed: the self-esteem and/or self-efficacy of self (Dazinger,Eden, 2007; Dazinger, Rachman-Moor, Valency, 2008; Patton, Creed, 2007), the maturity concerning the career (Patton, Creed, 2007), the reasons for choosing a career (Preston, 2006), respectively the values that have guided the choice of a career identified through Career anchor theory (Jaèrlstroèm, 2000; Ituma, 2007). In this paper we approach the professional aspirations as being the choices a person makes concerning the professional career in terms of the reasons that led to it (Dazinger , Eden, 2007; Dazinger, RachmanMoor, Valency, 2008; Patton , Creed, 2007; Preston, 2006). The study of the factors involved in making decisions about career by the young with high skills potential have showed the uniqueness of this phenomenon, as specific only to this group of people. Perrone, 1996 lists the factors that differentiate the individuals with above average skills: multipotentialitaty, high expectations about career, tendence to acquire more information about careers, tendency towards perfectionism. We have identified in the literature only one study dedicated to the research of the professional aspirations (Pluker, Cobb & Quaglia,1996). The results of this study demonstrate that the aspirational level and the one concerning the motivation for academic success is, in the case of the gifted students (students in Mathematics and Science by School Magnet) higher than that of their average skilled peers. Technical talent is the expression of the superior endowment (giftedness) in different areas of the technical, seen as excellence demonstrated by outstanding results for this area (above average academic results, excellent results in professional competitions, their recognition in the student circles as leaders on technical issues, participation in scientific presentations with their own products which are relevant to technical, publications in journals, patents, etc.), or excellence potential demonstrated by the results of various forms of assessment (standardized tests or teacher and colleagues nomination, based on evaluation scales or nomination/auto-nomination guides, interviews , observations, portfolios, etc.). This definition is a synthesis of studies such as of Dai, (2009); Creţu, (2009); Masari; (2006) Gagné, (2005);Heller, Perleth, (2005); Renzulli, (2005); Sternberg, (2005); Del, (2004); Feldhusen, (2005); Tannenbaum, (2000), etc.
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3. Methodology 3.1. Purpose of study In our study we aim to investigate the occupational aspirations of students with technical talented. We have followed the assumption that objectives regarding professional career differs between students with identified technical talent and students who was not identified with technical talent. 3.2. Participants The study was conducted on a sample of 437 students of „Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University from Iaşi, Romania. We have identified the students with technical talent by pursuing two dimensions, namely: outstanding performance for this area (with the indicators: above average results by semester exams, excellent results in national or international student contests, study motilities, inventions patented or patent pending, publications in professional journals), respectively potential for excellence (demonstrated by the results from various forms of assessment; here the Inventory of technical talent identification – auto nomination guide, Anghel , 2013). In order to select students with identified technical talent, we have combined the results obtained by using the auto nomination instrument for technical talent with their academic results. Following this operation, a number of 66 subjects were students with identified technical talent; the other 371 subjects were students without identified technical talent. 3.3. Instruments Auto-nomination inventory for identifying the talent in the technical field – IATT (Anghel, O, 2013), consists of 19 items that describe behaviours of the student with talent in the technical domains. The validation analysis of the instrument through factorial analysis proved the existence of three factors: theoretical expertise, passion, creativity. The total variance of 52.224, in which the first factor contributes with 37.374%, the second with 8.494% and the third with 6.356%, indicate a good factorial validity of the built instrument. In order to check the fidelity of the scale there was chosen the method of the internal consistency analysis by calculating the index of the alpha coefficient. The alpha crombach index being 0.904, it has been proved that we have a very good internal consistency and therefore a scale with a high fidelity. We also calculated the alpha crombach index for each of the three dimensions: the size of the alpha crombach index for Passion is 0.8588, for the size of the Technical Expertise is 0.8585, and for Creativity that is 0.7181. The Career Aspiration Scale - CAS (O'Brien, Gray, Tourajdi & Eigenbrode, 1996) is a 10 items tool that investigates the personal goals concerning the professional life and the plans that a person has on his professional life. The autors of the instrument reported the internal consistency coefficient between .75 and .77 (O'Brien, 1996; Booth, 2005). The instrument comes from Hensley, L., The Influence of Gender Role and Gender Stereotyping on the Career Choice and Career Commitment of Adolescents, http://www4.samford.edu/schools/artsci/scs/hensley.html 4. Findings Data collected were processed statistically using SPSS11. We have used the “Independent Samples T Test”, in order to check how differ the total score of O’Brien scale between students with identified technical talent and students without identified technical talent. The analysis confirms a significantly higher level of aspirations (t(433)=3,89, p = 0.000) by the students with identified technical talent (M= 29,81, SD= 3,88), by comparing them with those without identified technical talent (M=27,46, SD=4,63). Continuing the analysis, we find interesting to know which is the rank of items in career aspirations scale reasons causing the highest aspirations of technical talented students. We conducted an analysis of frequency, by summing the responses for each of the 10 items (Table 1).
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Anghel Ona / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 (2015) 1881 – 1885 Table no. 1: Preference of the students with technical talent for each of the items from O’Brian professional aspirations scale
Sum
I1
I2
I3
I4
I5
I6
I7
I8
I9
I10
212,00
200,00
180,00
186,00
193,00
224,00
279,00
234,00
237,00
230,00
The highest scores were obtained in items 7, 8 and 9 („Once I finish the basic level of education needed for a particular job, I see no need to continue in school”; „I plan on developing as an expert in my career field”; „I think I would like to pursue graduate training in my occupational area of interest”). These data indicate that students with technical talent have professional aspirations and personal goals determined by personal motives and purposes related to lifelong learning, desire to continue their studies after completing the current level, participation in various training courses, which ensure their professional expertise. All of these are key elements in strengthening talent. 5. Discussion and conclusions Our results confirm the literature data, focused on the researches interested in giftedness and asserting the high aspirations of the gifted and talented individuals (Green, 2002, 2003, 2000; Pluker, 1996): the reasons and personal goals as determinant elements of the professional aspirations by the students with technical talent differ significantly and positively from those of the students without identified technical talent. In our attempt to verify if the aspirations level of the gifted is higher, we compared the scores of O'Brien aspirations scale. The students with technical talent have obtained significantly higher scores. Our study provides a first insight into the reasons involving professional aspirations of the students with talent in the technical domains, namely the tendency to obtain experience in their professional field through a continuing education. The main limit of our study is the relatively small number of participants and their affiliation to a single university. From a total 437 subjects, we identified 66 as students with talent in the technical field. The percentage ratio corresponds to the literature; in our study 15.1 % of the subjects were identified as talented. A larger number of subjects with technical talent would have allowed us to identify more pronounced differences. Expanding the study by increasing the number of participants is one of our lines for the future research. We wish that, for the future, different aspects involved into the development of the students’ career, to be investigated, together with the organization of strategies for supporting the performance. For taking the decisions concerning the educational offer according to the principles of managing the quality, each educational institution should find out the needs, the reasons and the expectations of the beneficiaries. Finding out the professional expectances of the talented could be the starting point in founding coherent educational politics for supporting this special class of students. Acknowledgements This paper is part of my doctoral thesis named Educational Policies and Strategies to Support and Promote the Talent in Technical Domains. I wish to express my gratitude to my scientific coordinator, Ph D Creţu Carmen Mihaela, for mastery with which she guided me in my research. References Anghel O., (2013). Identification of students with talent in the technical domains, Studia Universitatis Babes Bolyai Psychologia-Pedagogia, VIII(1), 83-92. Bisland, A. (2004). Mentoring an Educational Alternative for Gifted Students, Gifted Child Today, 24 (4), 22 – 25, 64. Brewer, R. (2004). CTE in High Schools: The Formula for Success, Tech Directions, ProQuest Education Journals, 64(5), 15-18. Cosmovici, A. (1996). General psychology, Polirom house of publishing Creţu, C. (2009). Global Success and Giftedness. In Balchin, T., Hyner, B., Matthews, J., D. (Eds.), Gifted Education International Handbook, (pp.169-176) Routledge International Companion, London,. Cyr., S. (2004). Can Distance Learning Meet the Needs of Gifted Elementary Math Students?, Gifted Child Today, 27(2), 42 – 51. Dai, Y., D. (2009). Essential Tensions Surrounding the concept of Giftedness. In Shavinina, L., V. (Eds.) International Handbook on Giftedness, (pp. 39 – 80), Springer Science + Business Media B.V. Danziger, N., Yoram, E. (2007). Gender-Related Differences in the Occupational Aspirations and Career-Style Preferences of Accounting
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