Social and scholar integration and students satisfaction: the mediating role of career adaptability

Abstract

In the educational research, most of studies considered the quality of stu-dents life, focusing on several variables (Soresi et al., 2012; Tomyn and Cum-mins, 2011). Despite of it, there isn't evidence about the adaptability tofuture career as a mediator between integration at school and students satis-faction. This paper contributes to literature in two ways: rst it explores therole of career adaptability as a mediator, and this represents an innovativetopic because the concept and the operationalization of the career adapt-ability are recently developed, secondly, it can enhance the knowledge abouteducational research on career adaptability. This knowledge can be usedby teachers and practitioners to improve promotion and prevention focus asuseful strategies in scholar retention. The aim of the study is to explore themediating role of Career adaptability on the relationship between scholar andsocial integration and students satisfaction, which is considered a positiveoutcome related to learning achievement, scholar performance and educa-tional progress. Participants were 407 students from public high schools inthe South of Italy. Findings evidenced that Career Adaptability mediatedthe relationship between the social integration but not scholar integration,and students overall satisfaction. Implications for educational practice andlimitations of the study are discussed.