ABSTRACT

CAREER PREFERENCES OF GRADE 10 STUDENTS: BASES FOR A CAREER

GUIDANCE ADVOCACY PROGRAM
TOLARBA, MARIFE N.

Keywords: Career Preferences, Career Guidance Advocacy Program

Choosing a right career path is a huge part of a young man or woman’s life. The

career path students choose will affect how they live the rest of their life. A lot of

students go through college without knowing what career path they want. Career

decision making is very important in choosing the strands for Senior High School

program. This should be developed and guided by appropriate career guidance

advocacy program in order to achieve the goal that fits to their interest and skills.

The study aimed to determine the career preferences of Grade 10 students at

Ligao National High School as basis for the development of career guidance advocacy

program. Specially, it sought answers to the following sub-problems: (1) What are the

career preferences of the Grade 10 students in Senior High School along first career

preference, second career preference; and third career preference?; (2) What are the

course preference of the Grade 10 students in college?; (3) Are their career preferences

congruent with the choice of courses in college?; (4) What are the factors that influence

the students’ career preferences?; and What career guidance advocacy program for

students and career advocates can be developed?

The study used the quantitative research method procedures to gather results to

answer the problems. This research method was suitable in this study since the use of
quantitative method allowed the researcher to measure and describe the studied

phenomena through numerical-descriptive analysis.

Findings

The following salient findings were derived in the study.

1. The students most preferred are the HUMSS courses which are social works,

psychology, sociology, peace studies, and political science. The result also shows that

the preferred college courses and senior high school strands are parallel from one

another. However, there still a significant number of students who were undecided for

their first, second and third choices in senior high school which are 3.19%, 6.47%, and

9.66% respectively.

2. Most of Grade 10 students wanted to go to college after they graduated in high

school with percentage of 92.31%. It is very interesting to note that female students are

more eager to go to college rather than the male students with the percentage of

95.89% and 88.36% respectively. However, there is 7.13% of the students who were

undecided if they will go to college and 0.56% or about 6 students who will not pursuit

college degree because they want to work. There are 88.27% of the Grade 10 students

had already plan of what college course they want to take. Female students are more

college ready since 92.49% of them had already a plan while 83.63% for male students.

However, there were 8.07% students who do not have plan for their college course and

3.66% who were

undecided. The 3.66% students who were undecided are coming from male students.
 3. It was found out that 856 or 80.30% of the students match their choice of

senior high school strand to their preferred college course. However, 210 or 19.70% of

the students has mismatch to their choice of senior high school strand to their preferred

college degree.

4. The factors that greatly influenced the students’ decision are their

personal preference and motivation and economic factor with 3.81 and 3.61

respectively. The result is almost the same with male and female students with

descriptive rating of HIGHLY TRUE for personal and economic factors as the basis for

choosing their career path. The least influential on students’ career preference is the

social factor which includes parents, peers and teachers with weighted mean of 2.66

and interpreted as Moderately True. The students nowadays are already independent in

terms of decision making. Even if they have some misconceptions on the congruency of

their career preferences, still they want to decide on their own and don’t want to depend

their decision on the people that surrounds them.

5. The developed career guidance advocacy program is entitled HAKBANG

CGAW TRAIL. This is composed of eight (8) steps or mga hakbang (in Filipino term)

which is actually the fundamentals of career planning and a behavioral manifestation of

the theme: follow the guide (the facilitators), tag a career (the choosing process), like

the future (feeling of approval). It will last for

at least 1 hour to 1t most 1 ½ hours, depending on the number and level of involvement

of the participants. It will be participated by all Grade 10 students, by class and as

scheduled. Career advocates during the specific time must assist the students during

the trail.

Conclusions

The following conclusions were drawn based on the findings

1. The most preferred senior high school career preference is the Humanities

and Social Science (HUMSS).

2. The most preferred college career preference was the Humanities and

Social Science (HUMSS) related courses such as social works, psychology, sociology,

education, language, criminology, peace studies, and political science.

3. Most of the students match their choice of senior high school strand to

their preferred college course. However, there is still large number of students has

mismatch of choice of senior high school strand to their preferred college degree.

4. The factors that greatly influenced the students’ decision are personal

preference and economic factor.

5. The developed career guidance advocacy program is entitled HAKBANG

CGAW TRAIL.