Selection of Educational Routes by High School and College Graduates: A Positive Psychology Approach

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Introduction The problem of choosing individual educational routes (IER) by graduates of high schools and colleges invariably remains one of the most pressing problems of modern practical psychology of education. Due to the rapid dynamics of the labor market in the modern world, one of the most important soft skills is an independent and justified choice of a person’s route in education. An outstanding philologist and historian, M.L. Gasparov noted: “The family should make sure that a person meets the requirements of society, as they were 20 years ago, compliance with the requirements of today is brought up by the street, and the school is responsible for the requirements, which will be in 20 years. Now the school is doing its job worst of all” (Gasparov, 2001. P. 35). It is obvious that the school will do its job better if it forms the intrinsic foundations of the graduates for a conscious, responsible and adequate choice of their educational routes. It is no coincidence that in the Federal State Educational Standard of Basic General Education (FSES BGE), the most important personal educational results include “the formation of a responsible attitude towards learning, the readiness and ability of students for self-development and self-education based on motivation for learning and cognition, conscious choice and building further individual educational trajectory based on orientation in the world of professions and professional preferences, taking into account sustainable cognitive interests” (FSES BGE). Choosing IERs by students of high schools and colleges becomes a necessity long before they graduate their educational institutions. The student’s agency as a personal prerequisite for choosing IERs is formed in the course of elementary education (Davydov et al., 1992). Specialized training in the senior classes is of great importance for the subsequent choice of individual educational routes. N.S. Pryazhnikov (2008) notes that it is appropriate to begin developing the prerequisites for choosing IERs at the stage of specialized training. At the same time, many of the previously established practices of developing the prerequisites for choosing IERs no longer meet the realities of our time. One of the reasons for this is that “…not only the role of professional self-determination has changed, but also educational and career trajectories, and, consequently, its periodization” (Antonova, 2016. P. 30). Moreover, for graduates of high schools and colleges, the difficulty lies in the low level of readiness to choose IERs - as research data show, only 23% of them are willing to make a self-determined choice (Leontyev, Sulimina, 2015; Leontyev et al., 2017). The relevance of our research is determined by its focus on solving this problem. In our opinion, there are significant methodological difficulties in researching the prerequisites for the choice of IERs by graduates of high schools. In modern Russian education, there is a developed practice of designing IERs for schoolchildren (Nikodimova, Grebnev, 2013; Tryapitsyna, 1998; Rezapkina, 2013; Chebotarev, 2020). A number of guidance papers include the understanding of an individual educational route formulated by A.P. Tryapitsyna as a purposefully designed variable educational program that provides students with the position of “the subjects in choosing, designing and implementing the educational program when teachers organize pedagogical support for their self-determination” (Tryapitsyna, 1998. P. 22). However, school and college graduates need not design but assistance in developing internal prerequisites for a self-determined choice of IERs, which is much more difficult in practice. This explains, as noted by some authors, the inertia of the approach to psychological and pedagogical support of educational and professional self-determination in the tradition of F. Parsons. The approach created by him correlates individual and personal qualities and the factors for achieving the greatest success in the future profession. According to our assumption, the practice of psychological and pedagogical support for the choice of IERs needs an adequate theoretical and methodological basis that will help teachers and educational psychologists reflect on the existing practices and master those that are really necessary to assist graduates in choosing IERs. The scientific novelty of this work is determined by the substantiation of a holistic theoretical approach to solving theoretical and practical problems related to choosing IERs by graduates of schools and colleges. The aim of the study is to analyze the theoretical foundations of psychological and pedagogical support for graduates of schools and colleges in choosing their IERs. The objectives of this work are the analysis of studies on the choice of IERs by students, the analysis of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study on the choice of IERs and the choice of a theoretical and methodological approach that makes it possible to solve the identified problems. Specifics of the Choice of Educational Routes by Modern High School Students and College Students The situation when high school and college graduates choose their IERs is complicated by the fact that in modern society there is an obvious contradiction between the orientation of graduates and their parental families towards higher education and the absence of the state need “for a large number of workers with higher education, which is associated with the socio-economic characteristics of the post-industrial society” (Andreyeva, 2018. P. 85). At the same time, the choice of IERs by school students is rapidly changing due to the fact that an increasing number of school graduates are choosing to enter vocational schools (Konstantinovsky, 2019; Konstantinovsky, Popova, 2016, 2020; Nikitin, 2020). The development of the prerequisites for graduates to choose IERs is inseparable from the psychological and pedagogical support for vocational self-determination and guidance work. Meanwhile, vocational guidance work in high schools is characterized by routine and low level of motivation of those who conduct it (Antonova, 2016; Rezapkina, 2013). The monitoring data on the quality of vocational guidance work in general educational institutions of the Republic of Mordovia, which revealed low motivation of educational workers conducting vocational guidance in schools of the republic, are quite characteristic (Antonova, 2016). Data from other studies show that “...only 27% of schools and organizations of additional education approach this area of activity not formally, using only diagnostic and educational forms of work with children and parents, but on an individually oriented basis, taking into account the resources and capabilities of each student and building an individual educational route of vocational determination” (Kiseleva et al., 2017. P. 125). There are many reasons for this situation. Firstly, the idea of individualization of education and free self-determination of students has not yet received sustainable development in modern Russian education, since “...even at the senior level, traditional education in a linear format ‘reigns’ in schools” (Golovey et al., 2015. P. 48). The low efficiency of work on promoting the choice of IERs is due to a misunderstanding of the fact that in modern conditions the priority is to develop a self-determined and independent personality, while “at the early stages of vocational guidance in domestic psychological research, emphasis was placed on the linear development of an individual’s career in a certain once chosen profession” (Khaimovskaya, Bocharova, 2016. P. 107). Secondly, students of general education schools do not have a culture of choosing educational routes (Leontyev et al., 2015), and the problem of choice arises “...due to the lack of a system for teaching skills in designing their life and professional path in modern market conditions” (Redina, 2019. P. 47). Numerous studies focused on the problem of graduates’ choosing IERs add up to an ambiguous picture. Sociological studies show that there is a restructuring of youth employment, due to which, where they were previously mainly employed, their number has sharply decreased (Konstantinovsky, Popova, 2020), and this could not but affect the choice of IERS by graduates of high schools and colleges. The factors influencing this choice also change. On the one hand, in modern culture, which is prefigurative according to M. Mead, parents lose their role in developing the prerequisites for their children to choose IERs (Andreyeva, 2018). Other studies show that parents play an important role in developing the prerequisites for this choice by enabling their children to continue their education and preventing them from interrupting it (Bochaver et al., 2018). For school and college graduates, modern media serve as reference sources of information on which their choice of IERs is based. The picture of choosing IERs by college graduates is even more controversial. Many studies show that graduates of basic school often choose college education as an easier way to enter universities (Aleksandrov et al., 2015), while the choice of such an education was most influenced by the interest in the profession (45.8%), the desire to receive an education (33.9%), the opinion of parents (26%) and the influence of the media (21.9%). The least influential were the desire to study ‘for the team’, educational exhibitions, additional classes, and the opinion of teachers and friends” (Golovey et al., 2015. P. 143). According to the same authors, the choice of IERs was rated as serious by 30.6% of the study participants, at the average level by 54.3%, and as not serious by only 15.1%. Sociological research data also show that the choice of IERs by college graduates seems the most self-determined, since most of all “...those who graduate from vocational schools (74.1%) are confident in the correctness of their choice of profession, students of vocational schools are less confident (65.5%), and university students are the least confident (57.8%)” (Konstantinovsky, Popova, 2016. P. 545). At the same time, Ya. Kuzminov (2017) notes that the problems of colleges that affect the graduates’ choice of IERs are the low prestige of performing work, the academic failure of those who enter there, the lack of earning opportunities in the process of studying technology and the backwardness of colleges from the real sector in terms of technical equipment. Obviously, it is necessary to conduct research on the choice of IERs in two groups of college graduates (those who chose them as an easy way to enter a university and those who entered there because of low academic success) as well as to develop programs of psychological and pedagogical support for students based on the data obtained. Several studies of the motives guided by which school and college graduates who entered universities chose their IERs indicate a number of problems in this regard (see, for example, Krushelnitskaya et al., 2019). In general, two clusters of motives were identified, namely: (1) “Self-realization - autonomy” and (2) “Socialization - well-being”. But the motive of professionalism is not associated with the first cluster and “...is extremely weakly associated with the cluster of socialization” (Krushelnitskaya et al., 2019. P. 51), however, it is associated with the motive of material well-being by a highly significant negative correlation. It will be reasonable to assume that professionalism and material well-being are opposites in motivating the choice of IOM: this point requires additional research. A different motivation for choosing IERs is typical of students with disabilities. Their choice is most motivated by their interest in the profession (rated at 62.2), while “the motive associated with the income brought by the profession has a rating of 21.1, the motives related to career prospects and ease of acquiring a profession are rated at 18.9,and the motive of the popularity and prestige of the profession is rated at 17.8” (Kantor et al., 2018. P. 42), whereas family traditions as the motives for choosing IERs “…turn out to be outsiders with a rating of 11.1 and 4.4, respectively” (Kantor et al., 2018. P. 43). At the same time, the main role in the information support for the choice is played by the student’s reference environment (most of all on the part of the parental family, somewhat less on the part of friends and teachers); social networks and electronic media are much less important. Thus, students with disabilities are characterized by reliance on their families to obtain credible information but not to support their self-determined choice. These data are quite consistent with the results of studies conducted by L.A. Aleksandrova and D.A. Leontyev, according to which the personal resources of students with disabilities are characterized by “...significant negative relationships with coping strategies such as the search for instrumental and emotional social support” (Aleksandrova, Leontyev, 2016). In general, the data of numerous studies, which constitute a complex and sometimes contradictory picture, need to be comprehended on an adequate theoretical and methodological basis, which is also necessary for planning further research and developing programs of psychological and pedagogical support for the students’ choice of IERs. Basic Approaches to the Problem of Students’ Choosing IERs Several approaches can be distinguished in studies on the students’ choice of IERs. The sociological approach is presented by the research of D.L. Konstantinovsky and some other authors (Aleksandrov et al., 2015; Yashina et al., 2018; Kantor et al., 2018; Krushelnitskaya et al., 2019). Studies within the framework of the sociological approach are important as data sources, but for the design of psychological and pedagogical support for students to choose IERs, an adequate theoretical and methodological basis is needed. However, an analysis of the practices of such support shows that they often lack such a basis. Numerous original developments on designing IERs, created in educational organizations, present an approach that can be called a design approach. The design object covers IERs not only for high school students but also for college students. An analysis of these works shows that they are based on the assumption that vocational guidance in the existing forms creates conditions for the independent choice of IERs by school graduates thanks to the available psychological and pedagogical means. Such works often do not have a clear theoretical basis, or it is mentioned in the most general form and rather declaratively. This also applies to developments in the field of “educational transfer” (Chekaleva et al., 2018). There are many publications where the students’ choice of IERs is interpreted on the basis of everyday concepts (Badaev, 2019; Chebotarev, 2020). Non-linear didactics can be used as a methodological basis in order to design IERs for children and adolescents continuing their education in school. However, it is not entirely acceptable to assist graduates in choosing their IERs. M.A. Kunash, in her study, analyzed the traditional conditions for the development of the prerequisites for choosing IERs by students and rightly identified their restrictions, namely: (1) these restrictions imply the motivation to choose and the student’s readiness to make a choice; (2) they are aimed at developing individual characteristics that contribute to the choice of IERs but not the whole system; (3) least of all they are focused on the development of cognitive competence as a basic characteristic; and (4) in relation to learning “...are additional, despite the fact that, psychologically, the structures of self-awareness are in the indissoluble unity of the three sides: cognitive, emotional and regulatory ones, the integral indicator of which is the self-image” (Kunash, 2011. P. 111). Moreover, according to M.A. Kunash, the traditional educational process is individualized declaratively. These restrictions, in fact, are implicit conditions for the choice of IERs by high school and college graduates. This situation is fully explained by the words of V.P. Zinchenko: “We have forgotten that a school or university must first of all give students a start in life, and only then help them become soldiers, workers, scientists, patriots, etc.” (quoted in: Rezapkina, 2013. P. 3). In this situation, information resources that guide students in the world of professions and the possibilities of choosing educational trajectories do not correspond to the needs of modern graduates of high schools. For example, information resources for those who choose the profession of a teacher imply “(1) the prevalence of informational mechanisms of career guidance, (2) an excessive emphasis on labor market instability (although this problem is insignificant for the teaching profession), (3) the orientation of high school students towards education in general, but not on the professional values of this community; and (4) an attempt to apply a foreign model based on the search for a suitable sphere of work for the optant’s interests and value orientations, instead of the traditional domestic idea that abilities and values are developed in activity” (Krylova, 2015. P. 196). An analysis of vocational guidance work as an aid to graduates when they choose IERs shows that it does not sufficiently take into account the modern cultural and historical conditions in which repeated educational and professional self-determination is becoming the norm (Nikodimova, Grebnev, 2013). In the context of the “digital divide” between students and teachers (Koroleva, 2015), the competence of teachers in using information resources to assist graduates in choosing IERs turns out to be insufficient. In these conditions, it is necessary to revise both the practical and theoretical foundations of work intended to enable graduates to choose IERs. As a theoretical basis, it is possible to use the subject-centered approach created by S.L. Rubinstein, K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, A.V. Brushlinsky and currently being developed by V.V. Znakov, E.A. Sergienko and others. A positive aspect of such developments is their focus on the students’ motivation to make a choice in the form of an educational request. According to the continual-genetic principle (Sergienko, 2011), a high school student or a college student at a level appropriate for their age are subjects (like any person at every stage of ontogenesis). However, their social situation of development is characterized by the fact that they are still being developed in learning by other people (teachers, mentors), and the need for self-development has not yet arisen before them in full. To study the grounds for them to choose IERs, self-determination diagnostic techniques are needed, which are developed in the context of positive psychology. Positive psychology itself is mentioned among the theoretical foundations of the practice of educational self-determination, but its content is often reduced to the need to form a positive image of the future or, as D.A. Leontyev justly remarked, to positive emotions. At the heart of this misunderstanding is either insufficient knowledge of positive psychology or the preconceived negative attitude that occurs in the professional environment towards it as “alien” to the domestic cultural and historical background. However, in relation to the problem of our research, its most important is in the possibilities of researching the self-determination to choose individual educational routes. Representatives of the Russian school of positive psychology (D.A. Leontyev, T.O. Gordeeva, E.N. Osin, E.I. Rasskazova and others) successfully synthesize its principles with the provisions of cultural-historical theory and the activity approach. The analysis of research carried out in the mainstream of positive psychology shows that it is precisely this discipline that can become not only a theoretical and methodological background for working with students to develop the prerequisites for choosing IERs but also the basis of psychological support for the educational self-determination of high school and college students. Modern Positive Psychology in Studies on the Choice of Educational Routes In the last decade, positive educational psychology has gained acceptance in the West, based on the notion that skills that increase resilience, positive emotions, engagement and meaningfulness can be transferred to school students in learning (Hoy,Tarter, 2011; Seligman et al., 2009). It is appropriate to correlate self-identification, including in education, with personal self-determination (Lvova, 2014). One of the origins of the positive psychology of education was A. Bandura’s ideas about self-efficacy, according to which people’s belief in their effectiveness affects their goals and aspirations, how well people and organizations motivate themselves, as well as their resilience in the face of difficulties and adversity (Bandura, 2006). Persistence in achieving educational goals is viewed by M. Seligman as the result of positive education (Seligman et al., 2009). Self-efficacy and persistence, which is often interpreted as assertiveness, are important prerequisites for the implementation of IERs chosen by school and college graduates. Positive psychology opens up great prospects for researching the prerequisites for a self-determined choice of individual educational routes. Studies of the engagement of school students in learning has become an important area of positive educational psychology. This engagement is an important prerequisite for the development of internal conditions for the choice of IERs by students. The study of the involvement of school students in learning is most often based on M. Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’. Russian researchers study the phenomenon of involvement primarily on the higher education students’ sample (Litvinova, Kiseleva, 2016). Other researchers emphasize that involvement is a condition for the development of prerequisites for students’ self-determined choice of IERs (Vodyakha S., Vodyakha Yu., 2015). However, it is obvious that studies on the involvement of students in schools and colleges in educational activities are scarce. Positive psychology also opens up opportunities for studying vocational self-detrmination of students. Studies conducted by D.A. Leontyev, E.Yu. Ovchinnikova, E.I. Rasskazova and A.Kh. Fam (2015) have convincingly shown that a positive psychology approach to future choice research opens up significant opportunities for practice. These scientists scrupulously researched the role of personal potential when high school students choose their individual educational routes. It was also shown that the “LifeLine” program, interpreted in the mainstream of positive psychology, can become an effective tool for developing the ability to construct possible options for the future (Leontyev et al., 2015). It seems promising to apply the outlined approach to the development of the capacity of high school and college students for self-determination in education and, above all, for the self-determined choice of IERs. The introduction of the principles of positive psychology into the system of continuing vocational education and the practical implementation of these principles in the program to support the continuous personal self-development are presented in the works of A.S. Ognev and his followers (Ognev, Gonchar, 2013; Ognev, Likhacheva, 2014). Under his leadership, the Course on Life Navigation was developed, aimed at developing an internal basis for students to choose IERs and continue their subsequent vocational education. One of the theoretical foundations of the course is the provisions of the PERMA concept proposed by M. Seligman. It is necessary to create similar educational programs or courses for school students based on the principles of positive psychology. In the practice of general education, such courses would not only help in choosing IERs but would also contribute to the achievement of other meta-subject and personal educational results. Research into the autonomous motivation of learning is becoming an important area of positive educational psychology. Thus, T.O. Gordeeva in her works shows the role of autonomous motivation and the conditions for its promotion in developmental learning (Gordeeva et al., 2017, 2019). Previously, positive characteristics of the internal position of younger adolescents who study in conditions of developmental education were shown (Lubovsky, Stashina, 2017). The ratio between the types of motivation and the peculiarities of the internal position seem to be important factors in the development of students’ self-determined choice of IERs. Another area of theoretical research that opens up significant opportunities for practice is the synthesis of the provisions of positive and cultural-historical psychology. Thus, D.A. Leontyev and co-authors showed the substantive closeness of the views of L.S. Vygotsky to positive psychology (Leontyev et al., 2017). The similarity of the theory of personality created by L.I. Bozhovich and some provisions of positive psychology was also highlighted (Lubovsky, 2018). This can be exemplified by the works of S.A. and Yu.E. Vodyakha (2015), who showed that the state of the flow when students are solving a problem is achievable if the solution is in their zone of proximal development. An example of a synthesis of positive and cultural-historical psychology can also be the work of V.K. Zaretsky (Zaretsky, Kholmogorova, 2017). V.K. Zaretsky convincingly shows that a “step in development” when students overcome learning difficulties also becomes a step in the development of self-determination, a transition to the dominance of internal motivation for learning activity and overcoming the students’ unfavorable ideas about their self-efficacy. The synthesis of the provisions of cultural-historical theory and positive psychology opens up prospects for studying the students’ choice of individual educational routes and the implementation of powerful theoretical potential in practice. Choosing Educational Routes from the Standpoint of Positive Psychology: Research Prospects Positive psychology abroad has long become one of the leading and most promising areas in the study of educational routes and the factors influencing them (Chirkov, 2009; Heffner, Antaramian, 2016; Lawson, Masyn, 2015; Ryan, Deci, 2020; Seligman, 2009, 2011; Wang et al., 2015). Domestic representatives of positive psychology synthesize its principles with the system of cultural-historical theory and activity approaches. At the intersection of the cultural-historical theory, activity approach and positive psychology, several theoretical problems should be worked out. These include the correlation between the ideas of a student as a subject of educational activity (Davydov et al., 1992) and the provisions of self-determination theory by E. Deci and R. Ryan. It is also necessary to correlate its provisions with the idea of a human being as a subject of self-development. Based on this theoretical synthesis, prospects for the study of internal grounds for choosing educational routes are opening up. D.A. Leontyev investigated the personal development trajectories (PDT) of modern girls and boys (Leontyev, Sulimina, 2015; Leontyev et al., 2017). Significant differences were found in the ratio of PDTs among students in schools, universities and vocational schools (Leontyev et al., 2017). It seems necessary to study how students with different PDTs choose educational routes for themselves. It also seems promising to conduct a historical and future-oriented study of the development of education, taking into account the cultural and historical dynamics of PDTs and the corresponding changes in the grounds for the high school students’ choice of IERs. T.O. Gordeeva and co-authors rightly argue that “...the identification of types of external motivation by the parameter of autonomy is useful for describing the characteristic types of regulation of learning activity and understanding their mechanisms” (Gordeeva et al., 2019. P. 33). A prospect in this direction is the study of types of motives on the basis of the choice of IERs and the connection of the prevailing type of motivation with the meaningful characteristics of the choice. The use of positive psychology in studies on higher education will make it possible to understand new research data on educational outcomes, for example, the relationship between awareness and openness as factors of the Big Five and student academic achievements (Berisha et al., 2018; Novikova, Vorobyeva, 2017). One of the problems that the synthesis of the provisions of positive psychology and the activity approach can solve is the connection between the student engagement and the choice of educational routes. Thus, E.Yu. Litvinova and N.V. Kiseleva note that “the structure of college student engagement is characterized by the greatest number of both positive and negative connections between components, which are diffuse and chaotic... affected by external influences and moods” (Litvinova, Kiseleva, 2016. P. 12). Studies of the engagement and other characteristics of educational activities of college students would make it possible to predict the further educational route more accurately and to build a program of psychoprophylaxis of difficulties in educational activity and possible failures. The theoretical synthesis of positive psychology, cultural-historical theory and activity approach makes it possible to explore the emotional and meaning context of the students’ choice of IERs. The relationship between psychological well-being and experiences in educational activity was shown (Leontyev, Suchkov, 2015). It seems promising to study the school students’ well-being in educational activities and choice of their educational routes. The studies of D.A. Leontyev and D.D. Suchkov show the relationship between setting and achieving goals with psychological well-being. It also seems promising to create psychoprophylactic programs in analogy with goal-setting trainings. At the same time, an important aspect of goal-setting is the self-consistency of goals (Sheldon et al., 2017); therefore, it is also promising to study IERs in the aspect of self-consistency of choice. Thus, numerous examples of modern research in the field of educational psychology show that the synthesis of the provisions of cultural-historical theory and positive psychology opens up prospects for studying the students’ choice of IERs and creating practices of psychological and pedagogical support that will help solve many problems that have accumulated in this area of practical educational psychology. Conclusion Thus, our analysis of studies on the choice of individual educational routes made by graduates of high schools and colleges shows that in this area of educational psychology there are a number of intractable problems associated, on the one hand, with stereotypes of psychological and pedagogical support for educational and professional self-determination and, on the other hand, with a gap between theoretical justification and practice. At the same time, the very practice of supporting the students’ choice of IERs and professional self-determination does not always have the necessary theoretical justification. The use of positive psychology in this area solves many problems, especially since the representatives of the Russian school of positive psychology successfully synthesize its provisions with the principles of cultural-historical theory and the activity approach. Thanks to the solution of theoretical problems (the ratio of the subject-centered approach, the cultural-historical approach to personality development (L.S. Vygotsky, L.I. Bozhovich), ideas about the student as a subject of educational activity and positive psychology), there appear prospects of updating the practice of psychological and pedagogical support for students in forecasting and choosing their educational routes, assisting them in making an authentic choice, psychoprophylaxis of difficulties in educational activities (including learned helplessness). For example, programs for self-development and psychoprophylaxis of learning difficulties, based on the principles of the of self-determination theory and, at the same time, on ideas about a person’s intrinsic position (L.I. Bozhovich), can become an effective means to support not only the choice of an individual educational route but also the positive personal development in general. If such programs were implemented, overcoming learning difficulties would be inseparable from the reflection of changes in the system of students’ motives for learning activities and self-determination.

About the authors

Dmitry V. Lubovsky

Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education

Email: lubovsky@yandex.ru
Ph.D. in Psychology, Associate Professor, is leading researcher at Laboratory of Scientific Foundations of Practical Child Psychology 9 Mokhovaya St, bldg 4, Moscow, 119019, Russian Federation

References