Abstract

This study aims to explore how professors at community colleges are experiencing career guidance for their students, uncovering key components related to causes, phenomena, contexts, coping strategies, etc., and deriving a paradigm model to structurally. To achieve this objective, focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 23 community college professors, and the results were analyzed using the grounded theory method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The analysis yielded 17 categories and 31 subcategories. The central phenomenon in the career guidance of community college professors was categorized into two groups: the distress experience in career guidance and attitude changes toward interactions with students..Three categories of causal conditions contributing to the occurrence of the central phenomenon were identified: professors’ lack of expertise in career guidance, students’ scope and needs for career guidance, and students’ low interest and expectations. Additionally, four contextual conditions corresponding to special situations or circumstances that contributed to the central phenomenon were identified: increasing demand for career guidance, excessive burden and time constraints for career guidance, lack of communication about career guidance at the institutional level, and limitations within the career guidance support system. Furthermore, the study uncovered patterns of action-interaction, mediating conditions, and outcomes. This study is expected to contribute to a better understanding of the actual experiences of college professors in the career guidance process, and to stimulate consideration of the types of support required for effective career guidance for college professors in the future.