Career and education planning among young black women: Implications for FCS educators

Abstract

This qualitative study investigated how young Black women experience career and education planning (CEP). Eight women from West Texas completed a career exploration and decision-making learning experiences scale and participated in semi-structured interviews. Findings from the data provided a contextualized understanding of CEP, indicating that career exploration and decision-making learning experiences, work-based learning, and social agents positively influence CEP. These findings provide an awareness of CEP experiences that can inform how family and consumer sciences educators and practitioners support CEP in a way that helps individuals from marginalized communities circumvent career-related disadvantages encountered during the transition from adolescence into adulthood. © 2025 American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Keywords

Author Keywords

work-based learning Social cognitive career theory career planning adaptive career behaviors social agents

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, United States

Funding & Acknowledgements

Citigroup

Funding text 1: Regarding ethical considerations, we have no conflicts of interest to report, institutional review board approval was obtained before participant recruitment, and all participants provided their informed consent. Research procedures. including participant consent and confidentiality. were approved by the Texas Tech University Institutional Review Board. Furthermore, all members of the research team completed social behavior research training provided through CITI. We declare that we have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. This research was partially funded through research and dissertation awards granted by Texas Tech University's Graduate School.; Funding text 2: Regarding ethical considerations, we have no conflicts of interest to report, institutional review board approval was obtained before participant recruitment, and all participants provided their informed consent. Research procedures. including participant consent and confidentiality. were approved by the Texas Tech University Institutional Review Board. Furthermore, all members of the research team completed social behavior research training provided through CITI. We declare that we have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. This research was partially funded through research and dissertation awards granted by Texas Tech University's Graduate School. This study was conceptualized and conducted by Twyla Hough with support from an undergraduate research assistant, Angelica Santana, who assisted with verifying transcription accuracy. Hough collected the data and performed analysis as part of her dissertation. Karen Alexander, Christy Rogers, and Cynthia Miller contributed to the study of conceptualization, methodology refinement, securing research funding through Texas Tech University's Graduate School, and manuscript revisions.

Texas Tech University, TTU

Funding text 1: Regarding ethical considerations, we have no conflicts of interest to report, institutional review board approval was obtained before participant recruitment, and all participants provided their informed consent. Research procedures. including participant consent and confidentiality. were approved by the Texas Tech University Institutional Review Board. Furthermore, all members of the research team completed social behavior research training provided through CITI. We declare that we have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. This research was partially funded through research and dissertation awards granted by Texas Tech University's Graduate School.; Funding text 2: Regarding ethical considerations, we have no conflicts of interest to report, institutional review board approval was obtained before participant recruitment, and all participants provided their informed consent. Research procedures. including participant consent and confidentiality. were approved by the Texas Tech University Institutional Review Board. Furthermore, all members of the research team completed social behavior research training provided through CITI. We declare that we have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. This research was partially funded through research and dissertation awards granted by Texas Tech University's Graduate School. This study was conceptualized and conducted by Twyla Hough with support from an undergraduate research assistant, Angelica Santana, who assisted with verifying transcription accuracy. Hough collected the data and performed analysis as part of her dissertation. Karen Alexander, Christy Rogers, and Cynthia Miller contributed to the study of conceptualization, methodology refinement, securing research funding through Texas Tech University's Graduate School, and manuscript revisions.

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Career and education planning among young black women: Implications for FCS educators

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