The Career Aspirations and Expectations of School Students: From Individual to Global Effects

The purpose of this article is to summarise and consolidate the current state of knowledge about the aspirations and expectations of school students regarding education and occupational attainments. The article will build on, and update, Saha’s previous overview from more than ten years ago (1997). This review not only includes the socialization and stratification literature in sociology, but also the career choice literature in developmental psychology and vocational counselling. Research has documented that adolescent career plans serve to motivate students, and help many of them to eventually attain their goals. We begin by defining the important concepts which are involved in this growing body of research. Next, we briefly review the early literature which establishes the link between aspirations, expectations and actual attainments, and the factors which were commonly thought to explain them. Until recently, this research focused exclusively on individual level explanations. However the availability of new analytic techniques, in particular hierarchical linear modelling, and larger data sets such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), has made possible a new generation of research which has documented the extent to which factors at both school and society levels also have an impact on young people’s ambitions. We discuss and summarise these new perspectives in terms of the universalising or globalising of success values, and focus especially on specific subgroups in a cross-cultural context. Finally we reassess the importance of this topic for understanding the higher level dimensions of aspirations and expectations, and also the implications for career counselling in schools and the career choices of young people. The article concludes by identifying areas for future research.