Towards the development of career exploration program for secondary school in Malaysia: Needs assessment

This article discussed a proposal for developing a career guidance and counseling program: Career Exploration Program (CEP) for Malaysian Secondary Schools (high school). The needs of career intervention or program have been discussed. The Planning of CEP in this research employed the Five-Stages Planning Model for Career Guidance and Counseling by Herr, Cramer, and Niles (1996). For the purpose of developing program rationale and program philosophy, needs assessment was also conducted. In order to get the required information for the needs assessment, the researcher conducted a few methods of data collection for needs assessment such as conducting interview sessions with the school's counselors and secondary school students as well as conducting a survey by using the Crites Career Maturity Inventory (1995). The findings from the needs assessment, as well as the the input from the needs assessment for the researcher in designing the CEP were also discussed.