Reflexively fumbling towards a sustainable career choice in the Humanties

[摘要] English: The purpose of this study was to design a strategy for assisting Humanities students to reflect on choices they have made in order to move towards sustainable careers. Humanities students are believed to have difficulties in finding employment after their graduation. Figures in the Humanities and Social Sciences have been concerned by a lack of appreciation and recognition of this problem by policymakers and administrators in the Educational sector. The focus of this study is therefore on academic practitioners in education institutions who help students make decisions on career choice, particularly socio-economic, political and other contextual factors. This study was further informed by Pryor and Bright's (2011) 'Chaos Theory of Careers' (CTC) that enables individuals to capitalise on change and chance in designing a career that enacts personal meaning and social construction. The discussion also espouses the Critical Emancipatory Research (CER) as the theoretical framework that informs this study. The grounding principles of CER were communicated by the Participatory Action Research (PAR), as adopted in this study for data generation. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to analyse data. In this study I argue that life is uncertain as everything is subject to change, revealing limitation and thus vulnerability. It investigates approaches available to meet the challenges and possibilities of uncertainty in sustainable career choice, aimed at helping students to reflexively make sustainable career choice. The value of this research was to enlighten the plight of Humanities students in choosing their careers in Higher Education.

[发布机构] University of the Free State