Social-Emotional Skills, Career Adaptability, and Agentic School Engagement of First-Year High School Students

Abstract

The transition to the first year of high school constitutes a critical moment because it corresponds to the implementation of a career choice, which can impact students’ satisfaction and psychosocial adjustment. The career construction model of adaptation holds potential to explain how students adapt to high school, by suggesting linkages among adaptive readiness, resources, responses, and results. However, research applying the career construction model to school transitions, combining social-emotional, career, and academic variables is still needed. This study explores the roles that social-emotional skills (an indicator of adaptive readiness) and career adaptability (an indicator of adaptability resources) play in explaining first-year high school students’ agentic school engagement (an indicator of adapting responses). Measures of social-emotional skills, career adaptability, and school engagement were completed by 136 students (63.2% girls; M age = 15.68). Results from the hierarchical linear regression analysis suggest that social-emotional skills and career adaptability explain 32% of the variance and significantly contribute to explaining agentic school engagement. These findings seem illustrative of the potential of the career construction model of adaptation to deepen knowledge and understanding about the transition to high school and the implementation of career choices. Aligned with the literature, this study supports the calls for integrative psychological practices that acknowledge social-emotional, career, and academic variables when fostering students’ psychosocial adjustment.

Desarrollo de habilidades socioemocionales en educación media superior: un reporte de caso

“…Un estudio de Trigueros et al (2020) reveló una conexión positiva entre la inteligencia emocional y las habilidades sociales, destacando que los estudiantes con una mayor inteligencia emocional son menos propensos al acoso escolar. Esta estrecha relación entre la competencia emocional y las relaciones interpersonales saludables se refuerza en el estudio de Oliveira et al (2023), que demuestra que las habilidades sociales y emocionales, junto con la capacidad de adaptación profesional, influyen en el compromiso activo de los estudiantes. Este estudio sugiere que estas habilidades no solo son cruciales para el bienestar individual, sino que también juegan un papel en el compromiso educativo.…”

Daily stress, and mental health of professional degree graduate students in Chinese traditional medicine universities: the mediating role of learning career adaptation

“…Zhou believed that work adaptability is an important predictor of occupational mental health, and the higher the level of work adaptability, the better the mental health of individuals, and the better the career success [ 39 ]. It has been suggested that career adaptation of adolescents can play a protective role in reducing career decision-making difficulties, and mental health problems [ 40 ].…”