The effect of economic conditions in working life on the career choice processes of high school students: The Afyonkarahisar case

Working life, which constitutes a large part of human life, is a set of processes on a large scale that can be associated with many topics, concepts, events and phenomena that can be addressed and discussed within the scope of sociology. Individuals can be involved in working life through their jobs or professions. At this point, individuals' choice of profession is a matter of care as it will also determine how they will live their lives. In today's conditions, the most common way to get a job and a profession is education. Education, one of the most important purposes of which is to provide information about life and professions and to provide experiences in order to use this information, is divided into two as formal and non-formal. Education in schools within the scope of formal education progresses gradually. Students who pass to high schools, which is one of these stages, will choose university departments and therefore the professions in which they will be involved in working life, so their perceptions about working life and professions begin to take shape. In the current formal education system implemented in Turkey, the field that students will choose at the end of the 10th grade and the professions they will choose in line with the university exam they will take in the 12th grade are evaluated by taking into account their working conditions and economic difficulties. From this perspective, students' perspectives on problems in working life, economy and education are important in terms of having an idea about how effective these factors are in choosing a profession and offering solutions to the problems. This thesis, which has been put forward within the framework of the stated understanding, is based on a field research conducted with qualitative methods in two project schools located in the center of Afyonkarahisar. In the context of the study designed with a phenomenological research design, in-depth interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview form with 24 participants who were selected using the purposeful sampling technique. The field findings were then analyzed using the thematic content analysis technique. As a result of the thesis study, it was evaluated that the economic conditions in working life in Turkey are largely effective in shaping the career choices of students, that they tend to or are directed towards high-income professions, that they accept stereotyped career perceptions, and that they make career choices by considering the problems of working life and especially the economic factor, even though they want to focus on their interests and talents.