Impact of college students’ perceived teacher support on career exploration: A Self-Determination Theory approach

ABSTRACT

Career exploration has always been the key to career development, but exploring the formation mechanism of career exploration behaviour from teachers’ perspective is still inadequate. A three-stage time-lagged research design is used to obtain a valid sample of 1246 college students from mainland China. Based on self-determination theory, this paper analyzes the causal mechanisms of career exploration from the dual motivation of controlled motivation of teachers’ support and autonomous motivation of future work self-salience of college students to explore the mechanisms and function boundaries of career exploration of college students. The results showed that: (1) Students’ perceived teacher support positively influences career exploration; (2) Future work self-salience positively moderates the mediating effect of learning engagement on the relationship between perceived teacher support and career exploration. This research contributes to how to enhance the positive effects of career exploration are proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Perceived teacher support
• learning engagement
• future work self-salience
• career exploration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chongqing Higher Education Teaching Reform Research Project [153117]; Chongqing Graduate Education and Teaching Reform Research Project [yjg20163002].

Notes on contributors

Lei Lu

Lu Lei is currently a full-time PhD student at Macau University of Science and Technology. His research interest lies in the areas of leadership, educational psychology, and career development.

Xiaoxiao Gao

Xiaoxiao Gao is currently a full-time PhD student at Macau University of Science and Technology. Her research interest lies in the areas of educational psychology, and career development.

Yan Xiao

Yan Xiao is an Associate Professor in the College of Mechanical Engineering at the Chongqing University of Technology. Her recent research includes studies of career development and teacher education.