Identification and Assessment of the Career and Occupational Guidance and Counseling Services Provided to Hispanic Students in Selected Public High Schools in the State of Illinois

380 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1986.The purpose of this study was to collect base line data related to the type and adequacy of the career and occupational guidance and counseling services provided to Hispanic high school students. An ancillary part of this study was to make judgments about the appropriateness of career development theories and approaches to address the career needs of Hispanic individuals.The 100 subjects interviewed included limited English proficient (LEP) and non-LEP Hispanic students, counselors, directors of counseling programs, career material specialists, and program coordinators in four high schools.The results supported several conclusions: (1) The guidance services are, for the most part, unstructured and superficial in nature. Thus, the role they play in addressing the occupational needs of Hispanics in the study is minimal; (2) Most in-school Hispanics are concentrated in the lowest educational tracks (general education, vocational education, GED). Thus, career guidance in most high schools in the study does not appear to hold concrete value as a tool for personal and educational uplifting of Hispanic youth; (3) Career guidance programs seem to address the most superficial and easily served career and occupational needs (e.g., general career information) of Hispanic youth; (4) The philosophical underpinnings of the career guidance programs do not seem to relate to any particular facet of a specific career development theory. Thus, there seems to be no explicit and systematic use of career development theories in the career programs in the study; (5) Most career development theories neglect the influence of sociocultural and environmental factors and the effects of sociodemographic variables (e.g., sex, race, language, ethnicity, and social class) on the career status of Hispanics and other minority groups. Thus, without further supplementation most career development theories are inappropriate to explain the career development of Hispanics and other minority groups.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD