Highlights from
School-Based Career Development:
A Synthesis of the Literature
Katherine L. Hughes
& Melinda Mechur Karp
Institute on Education and the Economy
Teachers College, Columbia University
www.tc.columbia.edu/iee
Research Questions
• 1998 Perkins Amendments support “career guidance
and academic counseling”
• Current emphasis on evidence-based education
• What types of career guidance and academic counseling
interventions exist, and what does the research say
about their value?
Background
• Guidance and counseling professions date from
turn of 20th century; had vocational focus
• Later expansion of counseling role to encompass
the social and personal
• School-based counselors now see their role
primarily as helping students with their academic
achievement
• Ideally, guidance now viewed as a school-level
program, not an individual-level service
Methodology of the Study
• Review of over 50 studies published from
1983 forward
• Focus on studies that report program
outputs or outcomes
• Most studies included comparison groups,
or were pre-/post- design, or a combination
Findings – Divided literature into
five categories:
•
•
•
•
•
Meta-Analyses
Comprehensive Guidance Programs
Career Courses
Counseling Interventions
Computer-Assisted Career Guidance
Meta-Analyses
•
•
•
•
Two meta-analyses found that career guidance
interventions have a positive, though moderate,
effect
Interventions positively influenced subjects’ career
decision-making, understanding of careers and
career-related adjustment
Guidance activities directed at junior high school
students had the largest effects
Individual-level counseling most effective
More focused interventions were most effective
Comprehensive Guidance
Programs
• Students in schools with more fullyimplemented comprehensive guidance
programs reported better grades, being betterprepared for their futures, having more college
and career information, feeling safer in school,
having better relationships with their teachers,
believing their education was more relevant,
and being more satisfied with the quality of
their education
• Can’t assume causality
Career Courses
• Several studies showed positive results for students
• Career exploration courses, the Real Game, and career
decision-making courses positively affected students’
knowledge of work and occupations, career
orientation, career planning, and career decisionmaking skills
• A study of a middle-school career course found a
positive impact on students’ math and science grades;
students were also more likely to enroll in higher-level
math and science courses in high school
Counseling Interventions
• Five studies found positive effects of academic
advising/planning: the amount of time students
spent with counselors or teachers in planning their
high school program was related to higher math
motivation, higher test scores, and advanced math
and science course-taking
Computer-Assisted Career
Guidance
• Studies linked the use of CHOICES and
DISCOVER to greater career decisionmaking commitment, gains in career
maturity, and increases in levels of career
decidedness
Limitations
• Most studies rely on self-report
• Many studies rely on pre-/post- psychological
inventories
• Many interventions are low-dosage and effects are
possibly short-term
• Interventions and research focus on changes in
students’ knowledge and attitudes; don’t follow up
to determine behavioral change
Recommendations
• Invest in career guidance and
academic counseling in middle schools
• Explore relationships between
guidance interventions and positive
student behaviors