An evaluation of vocational interest among rural adolescents

In modern technological age one of the objectives of education is to enable an individual to choose an occupation for which he/she is most suitable. Education should lay emphasis on vocational efficiency and later seems to be productive in contributing the social life of the society. The change of vocational choice is very frequent during the period of adolescence. Youth makes career choice and multiplicities of factors influence their vocational interest. So, it is important to understand their vocational interest and assist them accordingly in vocational planning at this stage. To fulfill this objective an attempt was made to find out the vocational interest among academically backward school going rural children of Udaipuir district in Rajasthan so that suitable interventions can be given as per their interest. The sample from three villages of Udaipur district viz. Lakhawali, Bhilwara, and Dangio Ka Guda were selected from three classes i.e. 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th consisted of 150 adolescents. Vocational Interest Record (VIR) developed by Kulshrestha, S.P. (1987) was used to find out the vocational interests of the academically backward children. The scale measures vocational interests of the respondents in ten areas viz. literary, scientific, executive, commercial, constructive, artistic, agriculture, persuasive, social and household. Results revealed that majority of the respondents showed average interest in scientifiic category followed by agriculture, constructive and persuasive. Timely steps should be taken to expose them for various vocations particularly in agriculture for it's sustainability as INDIA is mainly an agriculture country.