Introduction

Adolescence represents a critical developmental phase characterized by heightened vulnerability to depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms, such as persistent sadness, emptiness, or irritability, can compromise adolescents' psychological, social, and academic functioning and are associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes, including risky behaviors, emotional difficulties, substance use, and self-injurious behavior and suicidal ideation. In parallel, adolescents face increasing pressure to make consequential academic and career-related decisions. According to Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) choice model, career development is shaped by the interplay between personal variables and contextual influences. A central cognitive-personal mechanism is career decision-making self-efficacy, the belief in one's capability to manage career choices, which develops through learning experiences and environmental conditions. Among key contextual influences, career-related parental behaviors are particularly salient in adolescence and have been conceptualized as support, interference, and lack of engagement. While supportive behaviors may strengthen adaptive resources, interfering or disengaged parenting may undermine adolescents’ autonomy, increase school-related distress, and heighten vulnerability to depressive symptoms. Building on this framework, the present study focuses on how perceived career-related parental behaviors relate to adolescents' career decision self-efficacy and depressive symptoms, and whether career adaptability and school anxiety operate as intervening mechanisms. This study examined associations between perceived career-related parental behaviors (support, interference, lack of engagement) with career decision self-efficacy and depressive symptoms, testing a multiple mediation model in which career adaptability and school anxiety were specified as mediators. We hypothesized that career-related parental behaviors would be associated with career decision self-efficacy and depressive symptoms, and that career adaptability and school anxiety relate to this.

Methods

Participants were 310 Italian high school students (53.2% female; Mage=17.46, SD=1.16) recruited through convenience sampling in a cross-sectional design. Data were collected via an anonymous online survey, with informed consent and in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and Italian privacy regulations. Students completed validated self-report measures: the Parental Career-related Behavior Questionnaire (PCB), the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS), the Test Anxiety Inventory (PAF), the Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale-Short Form (CDSES-SF), and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D).

Results

Correlational patterns indicated that parental support was positively associated with career adaptability and career decision self-efficacy and negatively associated with depressive symptoms, whereas parental interference and lack of engagement were positively associated with depressive symptoms and negatively associated with adaptability and self-efficacy. The hypothesized path model showed good fit (χ²(2) = 8.07, CFI = 0.990, SRMR = 0.034) and accounted for substantial variance in career decision self-efficacy (R² = 0.553) and depressive symptoms (R² = 0.468). In the model, parental support was linked to higher career decision self-efficacy and lower depressive symptoms, whereas parental interference and parental lack of engagement were linked to higher depressive symptoms and lower career decision self-efficacy. Career adaptability emerged as a key mechanism connecting supportive and interfering parenting to both outcomes, while school anxiety contributed primarily to depressive symptoms, consistent with evidence that school-related anxiety is an important correlate of internalizing difficulties in adolescence. Overall, findings align with SCCT’s emphasis on contextual supports and barriers shaping adaptive resources and adjustment.

Educational Significance of the research

These findings underscore the educational relevance of involving families in career guidance processes and promoting autonomy-supportive parenting. School-based interventions and counseling may benefit from strengthening adolescents’ career adaptability and addressing school anxiety to support career decision self-efficacy and reduce vulnerability to depressive symptoms during a high-stakes developmental period.

1. Introduction

Universities are increasingly expected to foster not only academic achievement but also students’ capacity for self-regulation, professional orientation, and responsible participation in society. While mentoring initiatives are widespread in higher education, they frequently operate as fragmented support mechanisms, primarily addressing academic performance or retention indicators. Such approaches risk underestimating the developmental complexity of students’ educational trajectories.

Contemporary research in student development theory, self-determination theory, and relational pedagogy suggests that learning is embedded in broader cognitive, emotional, and identity-forming processes. Students enter higher education with heterogeneous learning profiles, sociocultural backgrounds, and vocational aspirations. Consequently, mentoring cannot be reduced to advisory functions; rather, it may be conceptualised as a structured developmental partnership that facilitates meaning-making, reflective agency, and long-term engagement.

This study addresses the following research question:

How can university mentoring be theoretically grounded and empirically structured as a framework for integral student development that integrates academic, vocational, and socio-emotional dimensions?

The objective is to develop a transferable mentoring framework capable of supporting diverse student trajectories within inclusive higher education environments.

2. Methods

This research employs a qualitative case study design situated within a structured university mentoring programme. Data were collected through:

Semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students participating in long-term mentoring

Interviews with faculty mentors

Institutional document analysis of mentoring guidelines and pedagogical frameworks

Participants represented multiple academic disciplines and stages of study, enabling cross-contextual comparison. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, guided by theoretical constructs from developmental psychology and higher education research.

The analytical lens focused on three domains: self-regulated learning, identity and vocational development, and socio-emotional integration within the university context.

3. Results and Discussion

The findings indicate that mentoring contributes to student development in ways that extend beyond academic advising. Three interrelated dimensions emerged:

1. Development of Reflective Self-Regulation

Students reported enhanced capacity to set meaningful goals, monitor progress, and adapt learning strategies. Mentoring conversations functioned as structured reflective spaces that promoted metacognitive awareness and academic agency.

2. Vocational Clarification and Identity Formation

Participants described mentoring as a dialogical environment in which academic pathways were connected to broader professional and life projects. Rather than prescribing career trajectories, mentoring supported exploratory discernment and coherent decision-making.

3. Socio-Emotional Anchoring and Institutional Belonging

Mentoring relationships fostered psychological safety, particularly during transitional academic phases. Students experiencing uncertainty or academic difficulty reported increased confidence and institutional attachment.

These results support a multifactorial understanding of student success that integrates cognitive development, identity construction, and relational support. Importantly, the mentoring framework demonstrated flexibility in addressing heterogeneous developmental needs without imposing uniform outcomes. The data suggest that mentoring is most effective when grounded in sustained dialogue and reflective engagement rather than episodic intervention.

4. Educational Significance

This study contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship on higher education by reconceptualising mentoring as an integrative developmental framework rather than a remedial or performance-oriented mechanism.

The proposed model advances four key contributions:

It operationalises integral student development within institutional mentoring structures.

It accommodates diversity in student backgrounds and learning trajectories without fragmenting support services.

It strengthens the alignment between academic learning and vocational orientation.

It offers a transferable framework adaptable to varied higher education contexts.

In a rapidly evolving educational landscape marked by increasing complexity and heterogeneity, universities require mentoring models that support sustained personal and academic growth. By positioning mentoring as a structured developmental process embedded within institutional culture, this research provides a theoretically grounded and practically applicable approach to fostering inclusive and future-oriented higher education environments.

Introduction

In recent years, the concept of the extended school has gained relevance in international educational research and policy as a response to social inequalities, territorial marginality, and the need to reposition schools as active hubs within local learning ecosystems (OECD, 2020; UNESCO, 2021). Extended schools transcend physical boundaries, reconfigure educational spaces and times, and build structured alliances with families, communities, and local organizations to support inclusive and future-oriented learning trajectories. Within this policy landscape, school vision has been identified as a central lever for educational transformation. Vision is increasingly understood as a collective and intentional projection of a desirable educational future (Poli, 2024) integrating values, pedagogical aims, and organizational choices (Fullan, 2016; Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009). Recent research highlights vision-making as a generative and epistemic device for professional learning and transformative leadership, particularly when co-constructed through participatory processes (Mangione et al., 2025). Despite this emphasis, a critical gap remains. While schools are encouraged to articulate visions of extended schooling, limited attention has been paid to how these visions can be made explicit, analytically comparable, and operationally usable for organizational decision-making. Design Thinking (DT), grounded in participatory design and human-centered innovation, has been shown to foster professional creativity, collective sense-making, and distributed leadership in complex educational environments (Brown, 2008; Cross, 2023; Mangione et al., 2025). Against this background, the study addresses the following research question: In what ways do Design Thinking processes and tools make different visions of extended schooling visible and comparable?

Method

The study adopts a qualitative, exploratory multiple-case study design (Yin, 2018), embedded within research–practice partnership between a national educational research institute and a local municipality. The empirical context involves six schools, from early childhood to lower secondary level, engaged in a structured DT pathway aimed at co-designing visions of extended schooling.

The methodological framework integrates DT with grounded qualitative and visual analysis, drawing on research that conceptualizes DT as a generative methodology for educational innovation and vision-building. The DT process unfolded across three phases: (1) visual check-ins to elicit initial representations, values, and emotional orientations toward extended schooling; (2) personas and journey maps to articulate the needs and experiences of key stakeholders (students, teachers, families, community actors); and (3) impact maps translating shared visions into organizational scenarios and strategic priorities related to spaces, time arrangements, partnerships, and curriculum. Data sources include visual artefacts, written reflections, and transcribed group discussions. Analysis combined inductive coding of visual–narrative units with cross-case comparison Mortari & Ghirotto, 2019; Zhang, 2023)

Results and Discussion

The findings show that DT processes played a decisive role in making collective visions of extended schooling visible and comparable across the six schools. Creativity emerged as a collective and scaffolded process. Visual check-ins externalized initial imaginaries related to openness, collaboration, and wellbeing; personas and journey maps supported a shift from abstract ideas to situated understandings of stakeholders’ needs; impact maps functioned as synthesis artefacts translating visions into comparable strategic configurations. Six visions of extended schooling were identified: (1) the extended school as a space of wellbeing and care; (2) as an outdoor and ecological learning ecosystem; (3) as a community and cultural hub; (4) as a socio-emotional learning community; (5) as a laboratory for experiential and problem-based learning; and (6) as a space for time reconfiguration and work–life balance. Across these visions, DT tools enable comparison without standardization, revealing families of extended school forms rather than isolated cases.

Educational Significance of the research

This study contributes to research on the futures of schooling by offering a methodological framework for mapping and governing new forms of extended schooling. The findings show that Design Thinking enables schools to engage with educational futures as plural and situated, rather than predefined scenarios, aligning with research on vision as a generative device for future-oriented leadership (Fullan, 2007; Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009; Mangione et al., 2025).

For school leadership, DT supports distributed and reflective practices through shared artefacts that orient decision-making on spaces, time, alliances, and curriculum. Creativity emerges as a collective capacity intentionally cultivated to support transformation. Particularl DT-based mapping supports sustainable, place-based innovation and strengthens school–community ecosystems . At policy level, the approach enables comparability without standardization, supporting informed governance of educational innovation and future-oriented school development.