Desenvolvimento vocacional e rendimento académico na infância: estudo exploratório do efeito das zonas geográficas

Career development consists of a dimensional, changeable and contextual process starting in childhood. Among the childhood career development dimensions, career exploration, self-concept, locus of control, planning and academic achievement can be highlighted and have been shown to impact career processes during childhood and later periods of the lifespan. Despite the changeable and contextual nature of childhood career development, studies addressing its variability for geographical areas and over time are still scarce. This exploratory study examined the effect of geographical areas in children’s career development dimensions, during the second cycle of study. This study was conducted with 429 children of both genders (Mage=10.23, SD=.50) from northern and central Portugal, who were followed across four occurrences of measurement. Childhood career development dimensions were assessed with the Questionnaire of Identifcation, the Childhood Career Exploration Inventory, the Childhood Career Development Scale and the Multidimensional Scales of Perceived Self-Effcacy. Results from the two-way mixed MANOVA suggested that
children from northern Portugal present signifcantly higher career exploration, selfconcept, internal locus of control, planning and self-effcacy levels than children from central Portugal, during the occurrences of measurement. Still, children from central Portugal presented signifcantly higher academic achievement than peers from northern Portugal over time. The geographical area and time interaction effect indicated that, despite such differences, the patterns of change of children’s career development dimensions vary for northern and central Portugal. Further studies might cover the articulation among career and academic processes as well as recruit larger samples to deepen the scientifc knowledge of the temporal dynamics and geographical variability of Portuguese children’s career development. Such knowledge would be useful to enrich the results from this study and to sustain career practices since the childhood period of the lifespan, in Portugal.