Career choice of senior pupils in the context of the social situation of development.

Abstract

The goal of this work is to justify the urgency of career choice at the present stage of societal development and also to show that in terms of social and cultural modernization of education based on the implementation of the major methodological approaches in the human science there raises the possibility of establishing an effective system of psychological support of career choice.

Analyzing the main content of the systematic, activity-based, dynamic, anthropocentric, and acmeological approaches in the context of the problem, the author defines their capabilities within the research of career choice. The need to integrate methodological approaches for the development of a unified scientific theory of career choice is emphasized. The result of this integration was the view of the author that the basic principles of modern theoretical approaches to anthropology are extremely focused on the concept of the “social situation of development” by L.S. Vygotsky.

The paper shows that the optimization of the social situation of development is the main vector of psychological support for of senior students in career choice. To identify specific directions of career choice the ideas of Russian psychologists of the social situationof development are analyzed and presented in the paper. The author as a main component of the content structure of the social situation of development highlights the psychological readiness for career choice, i.e. cognitive, behavioural, motivational, personal preparedness. Reference is made to the positive author’s experience of psychological preparedness for professional career choice of children in a particular social situation of development, e.g. orphans, adolescents with deviant behaviour, children who show giftedness.