Vocational interests in Indian country : an examination of rural public education and culture

Author

Debra Pizzuto

Graduation Date

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Program

Other

Program

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, Psychology, 2009

Committee Chair Name

Lumei Hui

Committee Chair Affiliation

HSU Faculty or Staff

Keywords

Humboldt State University -- Theses -- Psychology, Vocational interests of Native American high school students

Abstract

The purpose for this research was to examine Native students, their interests, and their career choice. Many Native American Students attend Euro-American public schools that may not fully accommodate their needs in preparing these students for dominate culture career choices. In order to test this assumption, this study examined how differences in Native American students and Euro-American teachers respond to The Holland Self Directed Search (1994). According to Social Cognitive Career theory (SCCT), which was extended from Bandura's (1986) Social Cognitive Theory; human behavior reacts reciprocally with human adaptation and changes rooted in social systems. This includes vocational educational education resulting interests, and choice. Holland's measure adapted for this study supports SCCT in its theoretical assumptions and proposes that individual choice of vocation is an expression of personality and self concepts which are rooted in culture through the socialization process for both the family and the school. Native American students bring a unique albeit different cultural socialization to the public school system. Predictions that Native students would demonstrate greater interest in culturally relevant Self Interests and Career Choices that would differ from their teacher's projections of them were supported. The Native American students and their teacher's endorsed significantly different types of interests among the six types: Realistic, investigative, Artistic, Social, and Enterprising. Only the Conventional type was found to be an interest by the students and by the teachers for the students. Furthermore, the prediction that high iv school female and male native American student's selection of Self Interests would differ significantly from Holland's norms was found to be true ( p .001) using a one sample t –test for all six types. Finally, the correlations between the Native American students Self Interests and their #1 career choice were significant for Realistic,(r = .570, p .001), and Artistic (r = .420, p = .010). It was concluded that a larger sample of Native Students and Euro-teachers is sorely needed to further examine the relationship between cultural interests and career choices in the dominate society.

https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/concern/theses/g732dc261

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