Career Exploration and College Students’ Career Adaptability: The Mediating Role of Future Work Self-Salience and Moderating Role of Perceived Teacher Support

Based on the theory of career construction, a moderated mediation model is built in this paper to probe into the relationship between career exploration and career adaptability, discussing the mediating role of future work self-salience and the moderating role of perceived teacher support. With the research sample of 1101 unemployed college students, SPSS and AMOS, a structural equation modeling software is employed for modeling so as to perform the linear regression analysis of three-stage data. The research findings are about four aspects; to start with, students’ career exploration is positively related to career adaptability; besides, future work self-salience plays a partial role in mediating between college students’ career exploration and career adaptability; next, perceived teacher support positively moderates two kinds of positive relationship: one is between career exploration and future work self-salience of college students and the other between their future work self-salience and career adaptability. Lastly, the indirect effect of the future work self-salience between career exploration and career adaptability is moderated by perceived teacher support. As opposed to a lower level of teacher support, this moderated mediating effect is significant only at a higher level of perceived teacher support. This research clarifies the link between career exploration and career adaptability through future work self-salience and practical enlightenment about how to enhance career adaptability via perceived teacher support.