Killers and Socialisers Revisited

Context: The transition from compulsory education to vocational training or secondary school marks a critical phase in adolescents' educational pathways. In Switzerland, career guidance is systematically integrated into lower secondary education to facilitate a smooth transition. This involves encouraging self-reflection and, in most programmes, raising awareness of gender norms that can influence career choices. Despite these efforts, adolescents still tend to select gender-typical careers, and there is limited understanding of the gendered differences in skills needed to approach career planning as a coping mechanism. The gaming world offers unique opportunities to fill this research gap. Approach: This study is grounded in the life design framework and its concept of career adaptability, connected to McGonigal’s challenge mindset approach and Bartle’s taxonomy of game types. It is part of the longitudinal www.digibe.ch project, which explores how engaging in online reflection tasks can support career planning. A specific task examines the relationship between gaming experiences and career planning. The research adopts a quantitative approach, applying chi-square tests to identify significant differences in gaming behaviours between male and female adolescents. Based on these findings, subgroups were formed, and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to assess the effects of gaming behaviours on coping skills relevant to career planning. Findings: Results show that male adolescents, especially those aligning with Bartle’s Killer game type, prefer competitive gaming but demonstrate limited collaboration skills in career planning. Female adolescents, more often associated with the Socialiser game type, prefer cooperative strategies in gaming and career planning. While male adolescents may benefit from enhancing their teamwork and collaboration skills, female adolescents might need support in areas such as assertiveness and self-advocacy. These findings suggest that integrating game-based interventions into vocational orientation programmes could help develop a balanced set of critical skills, including teamwork, collaboration, network-building, and self-assertion. Conclusions: Given the widespread popularity of video games among adolescents, this approach holds significant potential for improving gender-sensitive career guidance. By addressing skill gaps and encouraging adaptability, this research offers innovative insights into leveraging gaming to prepare young people for the challenges of career planning in an evolving labour market.