Social-emotional skills, career adaptability, and agentic school engagement of first-year High School students

The transition to the first year of high school constitutes a critical moment because it corresponds to the implementation of a career choice, which can impact students’ satisfaction and psychosocial adjustment. The career construction model of adaptation holds potential to explain how students adapt to high school, by suggesting linkages among adaptive readiness, resources, responses, and results. However, research applying the career construction model to school transitions, combining social-emotional, career, and academic variables is still needed. This study explores the roles that social-emotional skills (an indicator of adaptive readiness) and career adaptability (an indicator of adaptability resources) play in explaining first-year high school students’ agentic school engagement (an indicator of adapting responses). Measures of social-emotional skills, career adaptability, and school engagement were completed by 136 students (63.2% girls; M age = 15.68). Results from the hierarchical linear regression analysis suggest that social-emotional skills and career adaptability explain 32% of the variance and significantly contribute to explaining agentic school engagement. These findings seem illustrative of the potential of the career construction model of adaptation to deepen knowledge and understanding about the transition to high school and the implementation of career choices. Aligned with the literature, this study supports the calls for integrative psychological practices that acknowledge social-emotional, career, and academic variables when fostering students’ psychosocial adjustment.
This research was funded by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Gulbenkian Academy for Knowledge, number 240941. This study was institutionally supported by the Association of Psychology (APsi) and the Psychology Research Centre (CIPsi/UM) School of Psychology, University of Minho, the latter funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (UIDB/01662/2020), and the Centre for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (UIDB/00683/2020).