Parental factors influencing career aspirations among secondary school students in Moshi Rural District

This study was designed to explore parental factors influencing career aspirations among secondary school students’ in Moshi Rural District. Specifically, the study anticipated to identify secondary school student views on career aspirations, explore parental factors influencing students’ career aspirations. The study employed an exploratory mixed methods approach and cross-sectional survey design. A total of 144 respondents participated in the study of whom 96 were students, 24 parents and 24 secondary school teachers. Stratified sampling technique was used to select six secondary schools; simple random sampling technique was employed to select secondary school students, whereas the selection of parents and secondary school teachers was based on purposive sampling technique. Data were collected through questionnaires, focus group discussions and interviews. Furthermore, qualitative data were analyzed by using thematic analysis, whereas quantitative data were computed using SPSS version 20.0. the findings revealed that students specialized more averagely in arts rather science, commercial and a combination of both science and arts rather science, commercial and a combination of both science and arts. Reasons such as availability of teaching and learning materials, subject performance, pressure from the parents and influence from the significant others were mentioned by the students are banking and medicine. Arguably, teaching was the only career aspired by a limited number of students. Furthermore, despite the fact that students’ career aspirations were influenced by their parents’ socialization, occupation, socio-economic status, level of education, it was revealed that parents were the ones who encouraged their children to study careers that parents wanted. Nevertheless, there was association between parents’ values and students’ career aspirations. Parents’ socio-economic status pressure from parents, high parental expectations, little knowledge on careers and students’ perceptions and beliefs towards careers were mentioned by the students as great challenges that impeded them from aspiring the careers they wish. The study concludes that, parents occupation enable students to fulfill their social amenities timely. That is, parents who had no jobs influence negatively their children in thinking and excelling their future careers of their interests and little knowledge on career information made parents to influence their children focus on parents’ choices of interests. Lastly, the study has suggested the need for conducting a qualitative study on both “A” level with regard to parental factors influencing students’ career aspirations to explore their reasons.