| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣海洋大學 === 商船學系所 === 101 === The competitive work environment around the world has caused many industries in Taiwan to face a variety of challenges regarding development in recent years, one such industry is shipping. Because of the influences of a rapidly changing society, higher living standards, low birth rates and other factors, working as a maritime crew member, which has generally been perceived as a high-paying job, has lost its appeal to graduates in the navigation and marine engineering fields in Taiwan. The shipping industry is facing difficulties because of the extreme lack of talent in navigation and marine engineering and a knowledge gap is growing between new crew members and experienced ones. Furthermore, graduates are losing their interest in seafaring, which has only made this situation worse. Consequently, the most important issue for the development of the shipping industry is to nourish professionals in the navigation and marine engineering fields to increase their seafaring intentions.
Based on relevant issues from research of the literature, this study founds its theoretical basis on the career choice model of social cognitive career theory and combines research topics to propose a hypothetical model. The author primarily collects research data from questionnaires, which are supplemented by qualitative interviews. The main focus of this research is to apply structural equation modeling to explore the mechanism of influences of preferences of navigation and marine engineering students in maritime vocational high school between seafaring intentions and advancing to university studies in navigation and marine engineering, as well as in-depth comparisons of these two preferences.
The research results show that (1) the preference of navigation students towards “seafaring intentions” is significantly and directly impacted by both “self-efficacy” and “social context”, while the preference of marine engineering students towards “seafaring intentions” is significantly and directly impacted by “self-efficacy“, “career interests“ and “social context“. (2) The preference of navigation students to “advance to university studies in navigation and marine engineering“ is significantly and directly impacted only by “self-efficacy“, while the preference of marine engineering students towards “advancing to university studies in navigation and marine engineering” is significantly and directly impacted by both “self-efficacy“ and “career interests“.
The research results suggest that maritime vocational schools should hire full-time teachers with real-life field experience in order to provide constructive opinions about the career of a maritime crew member to their students. Furthermore, teachers should not only help students acquire professional skills, but also actively and effectively build their confidence in becoming a maritime crew member, thus gradually helping them to steer their dreams towards sailing and encourage them to join the shipping industry. Maritime vocational schools can help students identify their future educational goals and encourage early career planning by promoting their interests in seafaring. In this way, such schools can fulfill the goals of helping students apply what they have learned in school and reducing the waste of the country’s educational recourses.
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