Autonomy in students attending last year of high schools: A study about guidance activities performed

Abstract

The ending of high school raises, in students of last year, questions about what to do once they finished school. The wide variety of possible paths to choose, places youth at a crossroads that inevitably involves making decisions about the future. Vocational guidance can accompany young people and help them to identify what path to start and to consider the reasons for their choice. In this sense, guidance is currently conceived as a process that contributes to build a life project, setting goals, planning and developing strategies for it. One of the objectives of Psychology of Orientation, at present, is favor the construction of life, educational and job projects, being one of the objectives, the group approach (Aisenson, 2007). Year after year, the Direccion Técnica Programa Orientación al Estudiante (DOE) – Subsecretaria de Coordinación Académica, Secretaría de Asuntos Académicos, Universidad de Buenos Aires - develops orientation groups destined to students of the last year of high school, that come from public or private educational establishments in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the outskirts of the city and other places all over Argentina, who approach the DOE in a personal and spontaneous manner demanding vocational guidance. Our objectives are describe sociodemographic profile of young people consultants of vocational guidance group developed in DOE, present activities of vocational guidance done before their participation in the groups from the perspective of adolescent autonomy and analyse group device appraisal in the setting up of study and work project.