Abstract
Abstract The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the potential preventive implications of career development interventions, focusing primarily on how school dropout might be prevented and school performance might be promoted. We first use social cognitive career theory (SCCT) as a template by summarizing SCCT’s models of interest development, choice, performance, and satisfaction and outlining how these models can be used to design preventively oriented career interventions. We then introduce a social cognitive model of vocational hope that integrates SCCT with other relevant literatures (e.g., causes and consequences of school dropout, multicultural psychology). We define vocational hope, present hypotheses about how it might be promoted, and outline the types of short and long-range outcomes that might be associated with changes in vocational hope.