How High School Students' Employment Intentions Blend Evaluations of School and Workplace Behaviors

Not all high school students successfully transition from school to the workplace. Poor attendance, compliance with rules and policies, and task participation contribute to such transitional failures. Attendance, rule compliance, and task participation are needed for success in school and at work, yet little is known about whether students form school and career intentions by isolating or integrating their attitudes, knowledge, and goals toward these behaviors. The Career and Technical Education Program at a comprehensive high school completed parallel surveys about students’ school and career behavioral attitudes, knowledge, and goals. Three statistical models, as well as an integrated model, determined whether students held distinct intentions to engage in school and employability behaviors. After verifying that both school and career intentions included attitudes, knowledge, and goals about attendance, rule-following, and task performance, an integrative model was tested to depict employment intentions as the combination of school and career intentions. Comparing the explanatory power of the three models showed that the integrated model explained more variance than was possible by isolating school and career intentions. These findings suggest that educational programs could improve students’ transition from school to the workplace by offering direct instruction on why behaviors that are common in school and the workplace should converge into strong employment intentions.