ENHANCING INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE FOR STRONG VOCATIONAL IDENTITY

Abstract

The youth of today are encouraged to obtain higher education for the purpose of a successful career life. They are motivated to choose a professional degree that will yield them financial success and dignity. But in doing so, one major aspect is ignored: the interest and strengths/weaknesses of the individual. It is very important for a person to have self-concept. Self-concept can be defined as a person’s assessment of themselves, and this includes knowledge about their own interests, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, and passions etc. This study illustrates the relationship between self-knowledge and career confusion of an adolescent student in a Pakistani context. The Multiple Intelligences profile of a student is measured using MIDAS survey which is a paid, online software used to measure eight domains of Intelligences as proposed by Gardner. One of these intelligences that is of relevance to this study is Intrapersonal Intelligence, which is related to a person’s self-knowledge. The Vocational Identity is measured using MVS scale, which assesses an individual’s degree of career confusion. This research was carried out on grades 9-12 and the age bracket was 14 – 20-year-olds. The educational institutes that the students belonged to includes a government high school, upper middle-class private school, and an elite private university. This is a correlational research study that analyzes the association between two variables. The analysis was done using Pearson’s correlation with the significance set at 0.05 in SPSS 21. The results were further supported by regression analysis in a scatterplot. The findings revealed that students with low Intrapersonal Intelligence were found to have high level of career confusion. Moreover, individuals with a greater Personal Knowledge had more career clarity. Future recommendations of this research include expanding the scope of this study by having mindful interventions based on the MIDAS or any other Multiple Intelligence profile of a student that can help them to develop greater self-knowledge and thus better career clarity. The relationship between these two variables can also be assessed in other geographical locations of the Asian community for reliability.