Psychological readiness of high school students to professional identity

The current socio-economic situation in the country requires the establishment of a vocational guidance system, contributing to the formation of high school students’ readiness to professional self-determination in accordance with their personal characteristics, abilities, interests and needs of society. The article focuses on the relevance of research in the readiness of high school students to career choices. It presents characteristics of the secondary school age, the “professional identity” concept, stages of its formation and structure, as well as justifies significance of such study. The work describes the organization of the first stage of the research in readiness of high school students to career choices, conducted on the basis of the Research-and-Educational Center of the Institute of Socio-Economic Development of Territories of the Russian Academy of Sciences in January 2015. The study is aimed at identifying the level of pupils’ readiness to professional identity and determining the effectiveness of the new elective course “Career guidance”. To develop this research the Research-and-Educational Center of the Institute of Socio-Economic Development of Territories of the Russian Academy of Sciences plans to carry out the second stage of the research in pupils’ readiness to professional identity to disclose changes of the studied qualities.