Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate factors that influence
interest in vocational education subjects. The 20 factors
that were investigated related to the course, ability, difficulty,
relevance or importance of a subject, the quality of teaching,
student effort, career and vocational interests, as well as demographic
factors. The source data used in the study comprised
120 previously obtained student scenarios. Participants (N= 18)
from technical and further education acted as judges. They
read the information in each of the scenarios and were asked to
judge how interested they would be in taking the vocational
education subject described. The multiple correlation of the 20
items in each scenario with ranked interest was 0.84 yet the median
correlation of judgments was only 0.305. Overall, career
interests were rated more importantly than other factors. Results
confirmed the idiosyncrasy of interest perceptions and it
was concluded that individual differences have an impact on
the ways in which people determine their interest for learning.
