Sociology
Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson
Work and Educational Orientations During Adolescence and the Transition to Adulthood

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In an era where adolescents’ ambitions for higher education and professional occupations have skyrocketed, it is important to understand the familial and economic factors that foster work and educational orientations and their role in the choices young people make regarding higher education and career. Perhaps even more so, it is important to understand how youth manage their ambitions and adapt as they navigate these choices with varying degrees of success, and to understand the resources they need to actually turn ambition into reality.

Dr. Johnson’s research tackles the dynamic nature of adolescents’ ambitions and achievement-related orientations—what difference they make in young people’s accomplishments and how they change in response to opportunities and obstacles.

With respect to work orientations, for example, Dr. Johnson’s research shows how young people come to prioritize various features of work, such as prestige, pay, creative opportunities, helping others, or directing one’s own work. These criteria guide them in selecting occupations and jobs. Typically, adolescents place great importance on too many work features and become more realistic as they confront obstacles and experience different jobs in early adulthood. Then they narrow down which work features matter most to them. However, Dr. Johnson’s research demonstrates that with disadvantaged groups, this growing realism reflects inequities and they undergo more dramatic changes in what work features they value. With fewer opportunities to obtain desirable work features, many young adults from disadvantaged groups must accept less than they had hoped for.

In addition to her research on work orientations, Dr. Johnson studies other behavioral and social psychological changes that accompany the transition to adulthood, including the formation of adult identities, the orientations rural youth have toward their home communities, and participation in volunteer work.

Contact Information
Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Sociology

Washington State University
PO Box 644020
Pullman, WA 99164-4020

Telephone: 509-335-8773
E-mail: monicakj@wsu.edu