Phases and Patterns of Occupational Socialization of the Mental Retarded Children

The occupational socialization of the mental retarded children who are seriously handicapped intellectually has great importance for their lives as well as that of the normal children. From this standpoint, we carried out comparative research between the mental retarded children (students of senior high schools for the handicapped and pupils of special classes in junior high schools) and the normal children (pupils of an elementary school) to clarify fundamental problems of the occupational socialization of them. The schedule for the interview contains questionnaires on their occupational knowledge, occupational interest, occupational choice, and the formation of occupational self. Out of our findings, the followings are especially important. The characteristic phase of occupational socialization, an interrelated system of three role variables: role expectation, role conception, and role behavior, of the mental retarded children is an inconsistency among some of the three variables. Two extreme phases are outstanding, those are over-commitment to other persons and self-centered attitude and behavior. The characteristic pattern of the occupational socialization, a changing process of the phases, of them is a mutual and repetitive appearance of those extreme phases. Firstly, when they lack their own knowledge and the frame of reference for attitude and behavior, the mental retarded children cannot make their own role conception, and they take attitude and behavior which closely meet the role exception of the socialization agents because of their deep dependence on the agents. However, once they acquire knowledge and decision criteria to make attitude and behavior, now those acquired are directly connected with their role behavior regardless to the role exceptation of the socialization agents or norm. Then, if such attitude and behavior come to result in maladjustment to environment, those shift to the dependent type as before again, and the pattern is repeated. This takes place mainly because adjustment between role expectation by environment and the own role conception of the children does not go on smoothly. Thus, it would be said that the fundamental issue of occupational socialization of the mental retarded childten exists in the process of role negotiation