VALUES AND CAREER CHOICE

Abstract

Taking into consideration group culture as the default reference framework for all individual options including educational ones, professional values ​​can be defined as group values, more specifically values ​​related to the specific culture of a social group. We intend to re-evaluate the relevance of Merton’s group theory in investigating the empirical correlation between students’ professional values ​​and the particular study program they chose. Groups of students, formed by choosing and following a particular study program, can legitimately be treated as professional socializing groups. During the whole period of university socialization students start to learn, in their own study groups, about their future professional role, assimilating characteristic values, adopting attitudes and acquiring knowledge and skills specific to the profession they chose to prepare for. That is why the notion of social compliance appears to be particularly fertile. It directly refers to the conformation of the individuals with the current rules and expectations of their groups of belonging, primary as well as secondary ones, with both of them consisting of sufficiently distinct subcultures to be taken into account. Structural Functionalism confers a very much needed sociological coherence to group theory. As a motivational aspect ​​of career orientation, the regulatory influence of the reference groups brings to the forefront educational socialization as a group process, helping us address the issue of variation in values ​​according to elected study programs.

Keywords

• group theory
• reference groups
• professional values
• social compliance
• career orientation