Career development is a lifelong process affected by individual and
contextual factors. Although research and practice present a greater focus
on adolescence and adulthood, the last 20 years have been marked by
advances regarding the influences, processes, and correlates of career
development in earlier ages. While the career literature typically defines
childhood as up to 14 years old, recent discussions (boosted by other fields
like Developmental Psychology and societal changes) suggest a need to
acknowledge preadolescence. This work aims to review the literature
published in the last five years on career development processes and
interventions in childhood (up to 11 years old) and preadolescence (12-14
years old). In a first step, 41 scientific journals ranked in the first and
second quartiles of the Scimago Journal Rank were selected. In a second
step, articles published in these journals were searched based on
combinations of the keywords: "career" or "vocational" "intervention",
"development", "education", "guidance", "development" with
"childhood", "children", "preadolescence", "preadolescent". From 103
articles screened through titles, abstracts, and results, 10 articles met the
inclusion criteria (40% published in the Journal of Career Development).
There were three non-empirical articles (literature review, meta
ethnographic review, critical essay) and seven empirical articles. The
empirical studies were conducted with samples from various countries and
used quantitative (57%) and qualitative (43%) methods. The content was
organized in three themes: a) contextual factors of children's and
preadolescents' career development; b) impact of experiences lived in
childhood and/or preadolescence in later career development; and c) career
interventions in childhood and/or preadolescence. This review highlights
the importance of continuing research, suggesting longitudinal studies
from childhood through to preadolescence and the empirical examination
of the efficacy of early career interventions. The potential for engaging the
community in the promotion of children and preadolescents' career
development is also considered.