"Walking with Dreams": The Categories of Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy and Its Influence on Learning Engagement of Senior High School Students.

Career decision-making self-efficacy is a key factor influencing high school students' ability to make informed choices. It is closely associated with their professional interests, learning engagement, and academic performance. This study aims to explore the latent categories of career decision-making self-efficacy among Chinese high school students and analyze the differences in learning engagement across students with different types of career decision-making self-efficacy. A convenience sampling method was employed to recruit 510 Chinese high school students as participants. A questionnaire survey was conducted using the Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy Scale and the Learning Engagement Scale. The validity of the questionnaire was analyzed using Amos 23.0, descriptive statistics and correlation analyses were performed with SPSS 26.0, and a latent profile model was constructed using Mplus 8.0. The results indicate that there are four latent categories of career decision-making self-efficacy among high school students. In terms of learning engagement levels, the categories are ranked from highest to lowest as follows: high career decision-making self-efficacy type, lack of external exploration type, lack of internal exploration type, and low career decision-making self-efficacy type. Students with high and low career decision-making self-efficacy demonstrated significantly higher levels of learning engagement compared to those categorized as lacking external or internal exploration. Therefore, the design of career education curricula for high school students should focus on enhancing career decision-making self-efficacy to stimulate their intrinsic motivation for learning. Differences among various student types should be acknowledged, allowing for tailored and individualized instruction. Additionally, efforts should be made to strengthen integrated career guidance that links academics, career interests, and future professions, guiding all stakeholders to shift away from entrenched practices of "exam-oriented education" and utilitarian perspectives.