TEM career aspirations of fifteen-year-olds

Anastasia Doroganova, Research associate TUM

The dissertation project investigates STEM career aspirations of fifteen-year-olds and consists of two studies.

The first study examines realistic and unrealistic STEM career aspirations of young people. It analyzes to what extent the career aspirations of fifteen-year-olds reflect their academic aspirations. The Social Cognitive Career Theory (after Robert W. Lent et al.) and the Career Development Theory (after Donald E. Super) are the theoretical foundation for this study. These theories are used to derive the characteristics of young people that influence their career aspirations, such as interest in science and scientific literacy. These characteristics are analyzed in relation to the discrepancy or correspondence between career and academic aspirations. A latent profile analysis is used to identify groups of young people describing, on the one hand, whether their career aspirations are realistic or unrealistic and, on the other hand, what characteristics they have. The data source for this study is the national PISA 2015 dataset from Germany.

The second study examines the role of career counseling in the development of realistic career aspirations in an international comparison. Germany and Canada are selected as examples, since both countries have different approaches to the implementation of career counselling in the school system. These different approaches will be analyzed in the context of realistic or unrealistic career aspirations of young people. To answer this research question, the dataset from PISA 2018 will be used.

Docotral supervisory: Prof. Dr. Kristian Reiss, Prof. Dr. Anja Schiepe-Tiska