Career Experience Programs in Free Semesters and the Changes in Students’ Development
Researcher in Charge: Hui Jung Chu / Research Fellow Summary
This study analyzes changes in the development of middle school freshmen that participated in career experience programs during their free semesters of 2017.
Based on three rounds of surveys, we looked at how the scheme of free semesters and career experience programs affect and make a difference in students’ development. We then used our findings to make policy suggestions that, firstly, development priorities be set differently depending on when students go through their free semesters or school years; secondly, that students be allowed to adapt to their school lives first before creating a career plan and beginning their studies accordingly; and, finally, free semesters and school years be connected to career education semesters and years for a holistic approach.
Ⅰ. Backgrounds and Objectives
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With the full adoption of the free semester system in 2016, the role and significance of career experience programs in secondary schools has grown substantially.◦
Previous studies on the scheme were conducted when it was adopted as a pilot program, but there has not been sufficient research into how the scheme has impacted students after it was implemented in 2016 and career experience programs started in full swing.- Long-term data collection is needed to measure the impact of career experience programs on individual growth and development, but no analysis was conducted on long-term changes during the stages when free semesters were in full swing.
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This study leveraged tools for measuring the impact of career development programs in free semesters to analyze students’ development over a one-year periodin 2017, when the scheme began in full swing.
- Prior to this study, Ju Hwi-jeong et al. published A Study on Work Experience Programs in the Free Semester System (2017), in which they analyzed the impact of career experience programs in the free semester system by comparing students that participated in the scheme and those that did not during the first semester of 2017.
Due to the short time period of the research, however, they were not able to measure its impact substantially, even though more than 80% of schools adopted the system in the second semester.
- As a follow-up to the study conducted by Ju Hwi-jeong et al. (2017), we tracked and observed the trajectory of student development in 2017 to identify the relationship between career experience programs in the free semester system and the development of participating students.
Ⅱ. Key Research Details
1. Research Details□ Methods
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A survey was conducted on the students of schools that ran the free semester system in the first and second semester of 2017. We looked at the state of student participation in career experience programs and the changes caused by them to measure the impact of these programs.- The first round of surveys was performed at the start of the first semester in 2017, before the system was fully adopted, and the second round was conducted at the end of the semester. The third round of surveys took place at the end of the second semester in 2017, which was after the students of schools that adopted the scheme in the second semester had participated in career experience programs.
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Based on our survey results, we analyzed how career development programs in the free semesters of 2017 impacted the students’ development.- A T-test was conducted before and after the semester to identify the difference in students before and after they participated in career experience programs.
- A repeated measure analysis of variance was leveraged to analyze the differences among the first, second, and third round of surveys.
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We looked at how the free semester system and career experience programs affected students’ development.- A latent growth model was used to analyze what impact the scheme and satisfactory career experience programs had on the pattern of score changes.
□ Policy Suggestions
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Through statistical and literature analyses, we created policy suggestions on how to raise the effectiveness of career experience programs.2. Findings
□ Differences Before and After Participating in Career Experience Programs
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For schools that adopted the free semester system in the first semester, we compared the results of the first and second round of surveys. With respect to schools that ran the scheme in the second semester, we compared the outcome of the second and third rounds.- Our analysis of academic factors reveals that self-study hours, the number of hours spent in private tutoring and cram school classes, and satisfaction with academic and career advice rose significantly among students of schools that adopted the scheme in the first semester. For students in schools that ran the system in the second semester, there was a statistically significant increase in their academic skills but a decline in their educational aspirations.
- Our analysis of school life and happiness variables finds that there was a statistically significant rise in cooperation levels among students of schools that adopted the scheme in the first semester. However, no statistically significant difference was identified in satisfaction with school life, academic values, and happiness levels.
- Our analysis of variables that determine how mature students are in their attitudes toward their future career reveals that students of schools that adopted the scheme in the first semester demonstrated a statistically significant increase in maturity in terms of self-understanding, career attitude, career planning, and prudent decision making. With regard to students in schools that ran the scheme in the second semester, there was a statistically significant decline in self-understanding, but no statistically significant difference was found with other variables.
□ A Longitudinal Analysis of Differences
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A repeated measure analysis of variance was leveraged to identify the difference between answers given by the same students in the three rounds of surveys.- We found statistically significant differences among the three rounds of surveys in all variables except for happiness levels and the hours spent in private tutoring and cram school classes.
- For academic skills, cooperation levels, and career planning, there appeared to be some interaction between the time of the survey and the period of the free semester.
This may have contributed to the difference in scores between free semesters.
□ The Impact of Free Semesters and Career Experience Programs on the Pattern of Changes in Students
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A latent growth model was used to determine whether the free semester system and satisfactory career experience programs affect the pattern of changes in scores.- Our verification of model suitability finds that the linear change model performs better than the no-change model for all the variables except for career aspirations, self-understanding, and career attitude. With respect to most variables, changes occurred over time in a statistically significant manner.
- For all variables, the baseline values demonstrated a statistically significant variance, which means that there were differences in baseline values among individual students. Apart from self-study hours, differences in the change rate existed among individual students.
- By leveraging a latent growth model for covariates to identify the path variables for semesters in which the scheme was adopted and satisfaction levels with career experience programs, we found that the baseline hours spent in private tutoring and cram school classes differed between free semesters and that the change rate for academic skills also showed some differences.
- Depending on the participation in satisfactory career experience programs, differences were found in the change rate of academic skills and the baseline of self- study hours. Such participation also affected the change pattern (the baseline and the change rate) in terms of satisfaction levels with academic and career advice, cooperation levels, satisfaction with school life, academic values, happiness levels, the
search for information, career planning, and prudent decision making.
Ⅲ. Policy Suggestions
□ Development priorities should be set differently depending on when students go through free semesters or school years.
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In planning a free semester or school year system, the development stages of middle school students should be taken into account to set different goals for each grade and semester in order to produce better educational results.- There were differences in the area, speed, and substance of student development depending on whether the free semester system was adopted in the first or second semester. In particular, the time of running the scheme was found to make statistically significant differences in academic skills, cooperation levels, and career planning.
- Given that the purpose of education is the holistic development of students, both the school system and society should work together to create a long-term plan by grade and semester to help participants in accordance with the different stages of their physical, psychological, and social development.
□ Students should be allowed to adapt to their school lives first, prior to creating a career plan and beginning their studies accordingly.
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A sequential approach is needed so that students can start out by raising their overall happiness levels, including their satisfaction with their school lives, then create a realistic future career plan, and then implement it in connection with their studies.- The growth in cooperation levels was higher in schools that adopted the free semester system in the first semester, whereas growth in academic skills was found to be greater in schools that ran the system in the second semester. When the system was adopted in the first semester, which is, for many students, a time of transition and adaptation to middle school life, classes that require a lot of cooperation, which include discussions and collective problem-solving, appear to have had a positive impact on students’ development.
- When adopted in the second semester, the free semester system seems to have positively affected career planning and academic skills. Thus, the first semester of the first grade should first focus on cooperation-based preparatory activities before
gradually moving on to career planning and academic motivation, followed by self- study capabilities.
□ Free semesters and school years should be leveraged to motivate students to study on their own initiative.
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Since students that participated in free semesters increased their hours of self-study, follow-up action is needed to ensure that they maintain this positive habit even after their free semesters are over.- Hours of self-study increased throughout the first school year of middle school. In schools that adopted the free semester scheme in the second semester, there were no statistically significant changes in the number of hours spent in private tutoring and cram school classes. In schools that ran the scheme in the first semester, the hours spent in private tutoring and cram schools increased right after the start of the system but declined in the second semester, when hours of self-study rose.
- Hours spent in private tutoring and cram school classes seem to rise temporarily after the start of a free semester, but hours of self-study appear to increase after some time. In the first semester, students might have grown in career-related aspects, and this could have contributed to the shorter hours spent in private tutoring and cram school classes and the greater hours of self-study.
□ Career experience programs should be satisfactory to students to help them change and grow.
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It is important to raise the quality of such programs and improve student satisfaction.- Satisfaction levels with career experience programs had a statistically significant impact on sub-categories of career-related maturity, such as the search for information, career planning, and prudent decision making.
- The quality of career experience programs should be raised by breaking a class into small groups to ensure greater interaction between students and instructors and the greater involvement of students. In addition, a greater choice of programs needs to be offered to meet their individual needs.
□ A combination of the free semester system and career education semesters/years is necessary for a holistic approach.
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Students’ development should continue after the end of free semesters and school years by complementing this scheme with career education semesters and years in order to help them throughout their years of secondary education.- For students of schools that adopted the free semester system in the first semester, education aspirations, satisfaction with school life, commitment to academic values, and career aspirations decreased in the second semester of the first grade. For students of schools that ran the scheme in the second semester, the degree of such a downward trend is smaller. This could mean that heightened aspirations from experiencing a free semester were subdued throughout the first year of middle school as students learned more about themselves.
- Career plans need to be more realistic so that students can build on them in their next school years. More work needs to be done to ensure that the free semester system is complemented by career education semesters and years.
- Relevant policies should be improved and fine-tuned as well.
