"I've Never Been Exposed to the Steps It Takes": The Social Aspects of Future Orientation

• In Event: 41.084 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 41.084-8 - Negotiating Relationships

Abstract

This paper expands research on youths’ future orientation to explore how social connections between adults and youth play an integral role in shaping youths’ degree of confidence to pursue, for instance, a college, a field of study, or a future career. While individual differences of future orientation including goal setting, motivation, planning (Nurmi, 1991; Seginer, 2009; Chen & Vazsonyi, 2014) are heavily studied, less so are the various social connections that youth form with adults and the impact of those connections in terms of youths’ sense of the relational resources and social and navigational capital (Nasir, 2012; Yosso, 2005, 2006) they have to draw on. This paper connects future orientation frameworks to recent research on interest-driven youth development.

Author

• Erica Jeanne Van Steenis, University of Colorado - Boulder