International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
situation for profession choice in a way of future social status and career abilities, also they exclude the situation
of secondary employment and development of the “parallel” career trajectories.
Third, a free education on any level guaranteed it affordability without dependence on family resources; also,
it limited the abilities for professional trajectory change. An education and its quality was not concerned as a
resource to raise chances in career development.
Fourth, an effect of this complex of conditions depends on particular individual behavior. Within this model
rigid professional career strategies dominated, with a tendency to plan professional trajectory in the way of
chosen profession and gained vocational training. As for professional education, it regarded as gained ‘once and
for always’.
Transformation processes at the turn of the centuries driven to the new ‘non-linear’ professional career
model. In this model, we cannot distinguish any successive steps, but a complex interference of educational,
professional and career trajectories.
One of the main factors that driven to such model shift on the institutional-structural level was an abrupt
transition from the system of the obligatory job placement to the regulation of the employment by the labor
market.
A cancellation of the obligatory job placement in 1990th and shaping of the labor market, from one side,
widen individuals’ possibilities in developing their professional careers: either they find themselves freed to
choose after, or during the vocational training between organizations providing different working conditions,
also they gained an opportunity to retire from the primary profession choice.
On the other side, the professional choice in labor market conditions put them in the situation of uncertainty,
instability of future employment. These changes recorded in the results of sociological researches on university
graduates: since 1990th, we can see a decrease in a share of graduates, which employed according to the
specialty gained in a university.
According to our data, among the young professionals, gained their specialty and entered the labor market
from 1997 to 2001 the share of employed according to their specialty a little larger than 60% graduates. An
abrupt transition from the system of the obligatory job placement to the uncertainty of the labor market driven to
the drift of professional training and career realization stages. It is almost impossible to build up a clear chain of
stages – periods of the professional training and the career realization can rotate and interfere.
The processes of income differentiation, a raise of new professional groups, an old professional groups’
status change driven to the change of the professions prestige characteristics as the most valuable regulation for
future profession choice. The hierarchy of professions prestige gain unstable and inconsistent characteristic.
Individuals fall into marginal situation of professional self-determination: a profession has been chosen and has
been received according to old, soviet hierarchy of professional prestige (an engineer, a doctor, a teacher), but
professional career must develop according to new, constantly changing hierarchy (a manager, a financier, a
lawyer). This process connected to loss of social professional status of many professional groups in Russia, and
as a consequence to loss of professional identity. (Popova, 2013)
These institutional and structural changes connected to social transformations on the individual level – the
rise of new professional career strategies types in 1990th – 2000th.
Methods and Procedures
The analysis of professional career strategies in a modern Russian society based on the results of nonformalized
interview with graduates of Yekaterinburg universities graduates with a work experience from 1 to 5
years after been graduating from 2002 to 2010 years.
Results
According to interview results, we build a typology of professional career strategies. Base of this typology
formed by several urgent factors, differs university graduates by: the attachment to specialty chosen, the
orientation to a profession development, the level of individual independence in developing professional career.
We got 4 types of professional strategies: 1) ‘potential professionals’; 2) ‘mobile careerists’; 3) ‘constantly
occupied ’; 4) ‘undetermined’ or ‘deprofessionalized’
‘Potential professionals’ very committed to their profession, work or business. Their profession is comparable
with the aim in life. First of all, ’potential professionals’ have a sufficiently early choice of professional
development field: “as I remember myself I dreamed to become a driver, maybe it's partly influenced to my
choice of the future profession” (electrical engineer). Choosing the career after graduation, they already have a
solid value-orienting foundation. On their choice of career was influenced by parents, relatives, friends, elders,
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