This article presents a social cognitive framework for understanding three intricately linked aspects of career development: (a) the formation and elaboration of career-relevant interests, (b) selection of academic and career choice options, and (c) performance and persistence in educational and occupational pursuits. The framework, derived primarily from Bandura′s (1986) general social cognitive theory, emphasizes the means by which individuals exercise personal agency in the career development process, as well as extra-personal factors that enhance or constrain agency. In particular, we

Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) consists of five interrelated models. Its original models focus on the determinants of educational and occupational interest, choice, and performance (including persistence) (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994). A fourth model is aimed at satisfaction and other aspects of well-being in academic and career-related settings (Lent & Brown, 2006a, 2008), and the fifth model highlights processes whereby people manage common developmental tasks and uncommon challenges across the career lifespan (Lent & Brown, 2013). Each of the models seeks to integrate relevant

Based on a three-year-long ethnography of the hobby of model rocketry, I present a practice-centered theory of interest relationships—that is, the pattern of long-term, self-motivated engagement in open-ended practices that has been theorized under the concept of individual interests. In contrast to extant theories of individual interests, in which persistent engagement is pegged to a topic-specific relationship (e.g., a model rocketeer has an interest in the topic of rocketry, broadly conceived), I propose that persistence in a practice of interest is best understood in terms of what I call

Career prospects for trainees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are growing, but today’s opportunities are not always like the traditional science careers of the past. Individuals move in and out of roles and positions in which they consult, start businesses, and hold jobs across disciplines and sectors. People take many paths through school and weave careers around an assortment of circumstances, such as rearing families, serving in the military or volunteer corps, fulfilling caregiving responsibilities, or reengaging with formal education. These experiences bring

Many citizen science (CS) programs aim to grow and sustain a pool of enthusiastic participants who consistently contribute their efforts to a specific scientific endeavor. Consequently, much research has explored CS participants’ motivations and their relationship to participant recruitment and retention. However, much of this research has focused on actively participating citizen scientists. If researchers want to elucidate the relationship between participant factors (such as demographics and motivations) and participant retention, it is necessary to develop a more comprehensive picture of

Educators have a critical stake in supporting the development of interest—as the presence of interest benefits sustained engagement and learning. Neuroscientific research has shown that interest is distinct from, but overlapping with, self-related information processing, the personally relevant connections that a learner makes to content (e.g., mathematics). We propose that consideration of self-related information processing is critical for encouraging interest development in at least two ways. First, support for learners to make self-related connections to content may provide a basis for the