The impact of a career-related character education program on the maturity of high school students’ career attitudes

Objectives This study aims to determine the effects of a career-linked character education program on high school students' career attitude maturity. Methods A pre-post survey using the Barom Character Scale and the Career Attitude Maturity Scale was conducted on 199 first-year students at a high school in Seoul, who participated in a career-linked character education program from September to December 2022 Results The results showed that the overall scores of the character scale in the cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains improved significantly after the program participation. To examine the impact of character education on career attitude maturity, correlation and regression analyses were conducted among the sub-factors. The results showed that confidence, readiness, and independence were positively correlated with the cognitive, justice, and behavioral domains of career attitude maturity. In particular, among the sub-scales of the personality scale, the cognitive domain was found to have a more significant effect on career certainty, readiness, and independence than the other domains have. The explanatory power of the personality factors was highest for the independence, followed by readiness and certainty. Conclusions This study revealed that character education, which focuses on helping individuals find answers to what kind of life they want and how they can contribute to the society, influences the improvement of career attitude maturity, the ability to prepare for their future for themselves. Based on these findings, it is suggested that career education premised on character education should be strengthened.