Becoming Adult: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of Work (review)

Becoming Adult poses intriguing questions for those entrusted with the socialization of youth. How can youth be adequately prepared for work when the characters of their future occupations unknown? Given rapid technological, occupational, and organizational change, coupled with the lengthening transition to adulthood, the key task for the adolescent is no longer to find a good match between personal interests, skills, and values, and the tasks and "affordances" of existing jobs. Instead, young people must be poised to navigate unpredictable and precarious career trajectories. Can, and should, secondary schools do anything in the way of vocational preparation when most young people's thoughts are on college, and their occupational futures seem far away? How can educators cultivate a quality of mind in their pupils characterized by flexibility, the motivation to learn and relearn as the occasion requires, and the capacity to find challenge and enjoyment in wrestling with difficult problems? Are extant schools, curricula, and teaching practices up to this task? What can parents do to enhance the likelihood that the next generation will be well equipped for adulthood?

Csikszentmihalyi and Schneider address these questions by drawing on the first wave (1992-93) of a multimethod study of 4,819 adolescents (grades 6, 8, 10, 12) in 12 diverse locations across the country (urban, suburban, and rural), their parents, and their schools (20 middle schools and 13 high schools), using surveys, face-to-face interviews, observations, and (for a "focal" sample) the Experiential Sampling Method. With the ESM, subjects are beeped at random intervals to assess their levels of engagement, self-concepts, and emotions as they move across family, school, and work domains, interacting with different people, and participating in various activities. In general, the teenagers held exceedingly high educational and occupational aspirations; but most were doing little to explore their vocational interests or to obtain skills that would be useful for related jobs. But those who more often experienced positive psychological states, as indicated by the ESM, had more optimistic and highly motivated stances toward their futures.

In some respects, their findings extend and elaborate earlier conclusions. For example, it is well known that good parenting, at least from the perspective of adolescent achievement and adjustment, involves close relationships and high expectations. The contribution of the ESM is to demonstrate the moment-by-moment subjective advantages of children whose parents provide support while at the same time challenging the adolescent; such teens experience more positive affective states and more often felt that their activities were relevant to their futures. Teens lacking in both parental support and challenge exhibited the more negative qualities of subjective experience.

Intriguing new findings are not always given the attention they deserve. For example, whereas disadvantaged teens spent more time in disengaged states (neither like work nor like play), they also appear to be more optimistic about the future and experience more positive psychological states while in school.

When youth experience "flow," a subjective state involving high challenge and high use of skills, they report greater concentration and higher self-esteem and evaluate what they are doing as important to their future goals. Flow is more often experienced at school, while doing homework, in jobs, and in sports, games, and hobbies but less likely when socializing, in leisure activities, and especially when watching television. The more "flow" teens experienced, the more likely they were to value preparation for future work and to hold other positive attitudes about work and their futures. The authors voice concern about the fact that less than 10 percent of teen's time is characterized by energized, important, and happy experiences — when they consider their activity like work and play.

Consistently, the authors recommend that teachers make more explicit the relation of educational activities to youth's future goals and to place greater emphasis on classroom experiences that invite...