Career Attitudes of Students in the Process of Transition to Upper Secondary Education

The behavioural dimensions of students' career choices in the process of transition to upper secondary education are of particular pedagogical interest. Studying career attitudes will not only contribute to outlining the status, completeness and effective use of personal pathsbut will also provide efficient means by which the future professional career will be pursued. The conducted original study included 64 seventh-grade students from educational institutions, typical for the Bulgarian education system. The behavioural dimensions of a career choice, i.e. Planning and exploration, were studied using a self-evaluation rating scale. It included a series of questions for the respondent, to self-report on the degree of expression of the relevant aspect of their career choice. The actual expression of career attitudes in seventh-graders is determined by a small number of internal factors (in most cases two) of well-defined nature for each career development component. For the planning part, they are related to specifying the perceptions of career goals and their temporal boundaries. For the exploration part, the factors reflect the nature of the information source, i.e. informal or institutionalized. The study of the behavioural dimensions of career development forms a basis for conclusions on students' readiness to make informed career choices and their needs in this regard. In this way, the place and role of the school as a socializing institution in the process of personal development are outlined.