Vocational education shapes students' personalities

Posted date: 30 Sep 2021

SECONDARY EDUCATION: Do young people become more conscientious when they are educated? Yes, taking vocational education sounds like a startling answer, according to a new study.

Much research has been done on how upper secondary education affects students. However, almost all studies are interested in the effect of educational choices on cognitive skills or academic achievement. Not surprisingly, the results of these studies rarely turn out in favor of vocational education.

This, in turn, is the result of a new study by Jesper Fels Birkelund, postdoc at the Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen. He has investigated how five basic personality traits are affected by starting an upper secondary education in Denmark. Here he notes that conscientiousness (understood as diligence and thoroughness) increases markedly among young people starting vocational education. If you look at young people starting in high school, the development is difficult to spot.

“In many ways, primary school leads to high school. It's the same kind of professionalism you cultivate, just at a higher level in high school. Therefore, it is perhaps not strange that the big breaks in the personality of those students do not happen ", says Jesper Fels Birkelund.

Those who start a vocational education, in turn, have something to catch up on, he points out.

"Many have bad experiences with them from primary school, and in vocational education they have the opportunity to have some success".

Reference Link:https://news.ku.dk/all_news/2021/09/vocational-education-shapes-students-personality/

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