CAREER EDUCATION: ATTITUDES OF NEW JERSEY SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS AND STUDENTS

The purpose of this study was to determine and compare the attitudes toward career education of New Jersey secondary school principals and students who did and did not participate in the state-funded Governor\u27s Career Development Project (GCDP) as measured by the Career Education Questionnaire: Parts I and II, Principal\u27s Form and Student\u27s Form. This study also sought to determine the relationships between the four career education attitude dimensions and selected variables. The specific questions which this study attempted to answer were: (1) What were the distributions of the scores of the participants with respect to career education attitudes and descriptive characteristics? (2) Were there significant differences between the mean responses of the participants with respect to career education attitudes and descriptive characteristics? (3) Were there significant interrelationships among the scores of the participants with respect to attitudes toward career education dimensions? (4) Were there significant relationships between the scores of the participants with respect to attitudes toward career education and selected descriptive characteristics? The subjects of the study consisted of 19 (66%) GCDP principals, 29 (100%) non-GCDP principals, 171 (59%) GCDP students, and 258 (89%) non-GCDP students. A total of 638 questionnaires were mailed and 477 (75%) were returned with completed useable responses. The major findings of this study were the following: (1) The GCDP principals\u27 mean scores were toward the positive end of the scoring continuum, for all career education attitude dimensions indicating that the GCDP principals had a more positive attitude toward career education than the non-GCDP principals; (2) Participation in the GCDP created more positive attitudes toward career education indicating that the GCDP achieved its goals; (3) Both the GCDP and non-GCDP principals strongly agreed with one of the basic principles of career education which was that career education was important for students from kindergarten through grade 12; (4) The GCDP and non-GCDP students had similar attitudes to the four career education attitude dimensions, which indicated that the GCDP did not have an effect on the students