Drawing the Future: Exploring the career aspirations of New Zealand children
- Emma Anderson
Executive Summary
This report presents findings from Drawing the Future, a research project that explores children’s career aspirations and the influences that shape them.
Available literature and findings from Drawing the Future internationally show that children and young people’s career aspirations form at a young age and can be predictive of study and employment-related choices they make as they grow up. Often, aspirations reflect a relatively small number of careers, with over half of children in different studies aspiring to one of ten or fewer specific occupations. This pattern reflects the exposure of children to a limited range of careers, often through the occupations of people they know, and visibility in different types of media. Aspirations can differ for different groups. For example, studies have found that even at young ages, girls and boys are both more likely to aspire to careers traditionally dominated by their gender (such as nursing and engineering respectively). Understandably, children’s aspirations do not tend to map on to predicted areas of future labour market demand, suggesting an opportunity for awareness-raising activities to shape the future workforce.
Much of the existing literature is limited to international work and studies of older children and teenagers. Little is specifically known about the career aspirations of young children, and New Zealand children. Drawing the Future was undertaken in New Zealand to address this knowledge gap, and inform future initiatives for broadening children’s aspirations. Children aged 7 to 13 in every primary and intermediate school in New Zealand were invited to draw ‘what they wanted to be when they grow up’ and answer some supplementary questions. Over 7,700 responses were received, resulting in a large sample broadly representative of the New Zealand population in this age range.
Like results from Drawing the Future in other countries, New Zealand children’s aspirations include a broad range of occupations (over 100) but tend to cluster around a few most popular roles. The most popular aspiration for both girls and boys was to become a sportsperson. Other popular aspirations included vet, teacher or lecturer, and police officer. Certain occupations (such as trade workers and firefighters or defence force workers) were more popular amongst boys than girls, and others (such as teacher or lecturer, and occupations in the health, community and social services sector) were more popular amongst girls than boys. Results for other subgroups including ethnic groups, school deciles, and children from rural/non-rural schools are also presented.
Just over a third of New Zealand children knew someone in the role they aspired to, and this person was most commonly a family member. Children who did not know anyone in the role they aspired to were most likely to know about the role through media or seeing someone in person in that role. Consistent with international findings, less than 1% knew about their chosen role through an in-school volunteer from the world of work.
Children cited enjoyment as a primary reason for why they wanted to do their chosen role, with helping others and financial motivations also given.
To conclude the report, commentaries on the work from experts in the field provide a discussion of the potential implications of the findings.