Career guidance and counselling: the nature and types of career-related teacher social support in Hong Kong secondary schools

ABSTRACT We explored Chinese adolescents’ perceptions of the types of career-related teacher support they had experienced and found helpful. Four focus group discussions were conducted with 30 15–18-year-old high school students in Hong Kong, China. Students perceived the most helpful forms of teacher support for career planning to be those that related to emotional connectedness, information resourcefulness, accessibility, and encouragement of student autonomy. The group discussions also indicated that any support from teachers that helped with stress relief was a very important type of teacher support under the exam-driven teaching culture in Hong Kong. Implications of these findings include enhancing the quality of teacher support in secondary schools.