Reimagining post-COVID distance education support services with achievement motives and career personality

Abstract

For a successful transition from distance learning to first careers, adolescents’ psychosocial and career decision-making will require analytics-driven support services. However, current distance-education support services in Ghana have yet to adopt psychometric techniques for effective career guidance and innovative pedagogy in the post-COVID period. Hence, the study presented here explored distance-education students’ career typologies and their need for achievement motives, using a cross-sectional survey design. John Holland’s Self-Directed Search (SDS) inventory, with high reliability coefficients, was administered to 523 first-year distance learners. Data were analysed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), t-test, and binary logistic regression with relevant assumptions explored. The results indicate a significant relationship between open and distance learning (ODL) students’ need for achievement motivation and career personality typologies. Enterprising, Social, and Conventional (ESC) personality typology also emerged as the dominant three-letter career code for students. While gender was not found to be important for categorising career personality styles, significant differences were observed between age and students’ job experience. The study concludes that students’ achievement motives have a strong impact on their career personality scores, with ESC codes confirming digitally engineered post-COVID job environments that are demanding innovation, critical thinking, humanity and ethical competencies for students. Given that many adolescents are enrolling in ODL programmes, recommendations are offered for curriculum development, guidance and counselling interventions and distance-education administration to adopt psychometrics analysis for psychosocial and career personality-targeted education support services.