Social Cognitive Career Theory
Contents
Main
Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT, Lent & Brown, 2006[1]) relies on Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy or the belief an individual has in their capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to attain certain goals. Self-efficacy is composed of personal exposure to success and failure, modelling others behavior, verbal encouragement or discouragement and stress and other emotional responses. Importantly self-efficacy refers mainly to individuals’ assessments of whether they can carry out the necessary actions to produce the outcomes they seek, rather than an assessment of whether the outcomes themselves are a likely consequence of those actions.
The SCCT perspective has translated most frequently to studies of academic or research career decision-making. There are indications that scientists’ decisions about applying for positions at prestigious institutions or moving into careers in industry may be implicitly related to perceived self-efficacy of doing so. In particular, scholarship on gendered outcomes of STEM has included significant discussions of women scientists’ lower expectations about what they can achieve.
Empirical Application
Berweger (2008)[2] has developed a context specific application of SCCT to the transition from PhD to Post-Doc and tested it on a sample of doctoral students in the Humanities in Switzerland. In her longitudinal study with two time points (during the doctorate and shortly after completion), she finds a strong impact of embeddedness in the scientific community on the intention to continue an academic career in addition to self-efficacy and interests in scientific work. After the actual transition, those people with greater embeddedness in the scientific community have a higher chance of working in research positions. All other effects (of self-efficacy and attitudes) only have indirect effects moderated through the intention to pursue an academic career.
Contributions to measurement concepts
Individual Goals
Individual Goals have a motivational quality, meaning the desire to achieve a specific outcome.
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is the belief an individual has in their capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to attain certain goals.
Sources
- ↑ Lent, R. W. & Brown, S. D. (2006). Integrating person and situation perspectives on work satisfaction: A social-cognitive view. Journal of Vocational Behavior 69(2), 236–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2006.02.006
- ↑ Berweger, S. (2008). Doktorat? ja - akademische Karriere? vielleicht…: Sozial-kognitive Aspekte und Kontext der akademischen Laufbahnentwicklung aus einer geschlechtervergleichenden Perspektive. Univ., Diss. Zürich. Retrieved from https://edudoc.ch/record/38781/files/zu10048.pdf
