• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.675-690
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• 2006

This study investigated students' views in relation to a career in science as a first step towards developing science career education programs and materials. The instrument was developed through preliminary surveys. The questionnaire was sent to, administered and returned by 3608 students including 1036 primary, 1137 middle, and 1435 high school students, who were selected through stratified cluster sampling from all over the country. The results were analyzed using statistical package program. The students' image view of science, preference for science and science learning, perception of science achievement, career hope for oneself, degree of hope in getting science-related job, perception about science-related career, important factors of science career choice, and their hope for science/non-science career and the reason for their choice in the past and present were investigated. The results show that "science as an experimentation activity" was the most frequent image view of science. The preference for science and science learning was more positive than the perception of science achievement. The percentage of total students who want to have science career was 21%, and this percentage of middle school students was especially low. The most frequent answers for advantages of science career were 'useful for national development', 'possible to get new knowledge', and those for disadvantages were 'dangerous', and 'too much to study'. The most frequent reason for students' choice of a science career was 'interest in science and science learning'. Judging from these results, the basic direction for science career education should be in raising the students' preference for and interest in science learning. The positive awareness for a career in science and vision for a science job in the future should be given through a science career education and science career education proper to the students' developmental stage and characteristics is more important.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.19-37
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• 2008

The youth unemployment issue has not shown any improvement in years. The purpose of this study was to observe how employment issues affecting university students influence their life aims, self-efficacy, view of reality, view of the future, and life satisfaction. 239 students from three universities located in Seoul and Gyeonggi province were assessed through the instrument FLL and questions about employment issues, their life aims, life satisfaction and also their employment perspective. A total of 34 items of the FLL were divided through factor analysis into six higher life aims, self-love, family love and interpersonal aims, personal-financial aims, social-public aims, moral aims and political and ideological aims. Using Cluster analysis, three group profiles were found depending on the employment perspective such as a better view of reality, better self-efficacy, and better life satisfaction. A t-test was conducted in order to compare the two groups classified according to favorable or unfavorable employment perspectives. No significant differences existed between the groups in the perception of youth unemployment or in social-demographic factors, such as gender, age, and academic year. However, in life aims, the unfavorable group showed significantly higher interest in the domains of family love and interpersonal aims, personal -financial aims, and social-public aims than the favorable perspective group. Conversely, this group showed a significantly greater negative view of reality in most life domains, as it evaluated that its aims are more poorly achieved than the comparable group. Also, the unfavorable perspective group showed a lesser degree of self-efficacy in most life domains and the same in the category of life satisfaction, i.e., lesser satisfaction in all life domains except for family love, and moral aims. However, no significant difference existed between the groups in the view of the future. The results were discussed in relation to other social-cognitive factors for life satisfaction found in preceding studies.