A study on the current status and suggestions of students’ character development education in secondary vocational school

Abstract This study aims to understand the current situation of character development education for students in the direction of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing in secondary vocational schools. A questionnaire was administered to 303 students in such vocational schools in Lanzhou city to collect data on their daily behavior, learning ability, psychological health, and vocational competence. The results indicate that students continue to face some issues in these four aspects. Therefore, educational suggestions have been put forward for schools, parents, and students to implement character development education, to help these vocational students form good behavior habits, maintain a healthy psychological state, and possess excellent professional qualities.


Introduction
Character development education is the process of developing good habits and is the process of transforming social behavior norms into habits and internal consciousness of societal members, and turning the requirements for human survival and development into their behavior and capability qualities (Heqiang, 2022).Character development education for secondary students refers to the educational activities in which students improve their daily behavior, learning ability, psychological health, and vocational competence through school-based home-school coeducation on an existing basis.Secondary vocational students, having been diverted from the route at the end of middle school examinations, are at an age where they are in adolescence and forming their worldviews.Even though they already have a strong sense of self-awareness, they are still psychologically immature and are at a stage in life where they are confused and lack clear goals.They have poor stress tolerance, also have obvious shortcomings in dealing with interpersonal aspects, lack self-prevention and self-protection awareness in life, and are still developing good qualities for hardship and hard work.Besides, they are exposed to careers and society at an earlier age than high school students, the problems that occur are more prevalent and more likely to go unnoticed with Secondary vocational students (Xiaozhen, 2019).Therefore, the character development education of secondary vocational student needs to draw our attention and be given significant importance.

Comparison of character development education for secondary vocational students at home and abroad
In China, there is slightly domestic research on character development education for secondary vocational students.In terms of behavior, most secondary vocational students exhibit poor learning habits and moral qualities during their school years, not only do they have low self-care ability and daily behavior in life, but they also despise labour (Pei, 2021).This indicates that only a small portion of students in secondary vocational schools can achieve self-restraint and management, and most students do not have good behavior habits.The causes may be related to family education methods, school education methods and underlying social values.Therefore, in classes, head teachers should consciously cultivate students' character and correct concepts, and they should cooperate and communicate with other teachers to improve students' behavioral quality and learning efficiency.Schools should focus on campus culture to increase the influence on students' subtle influence, and also carry out thematic educational activities, practical activities, etc. to shape students' correct behavioral habits, and also encourage students to go out of school and participate in social activities and so forth.
Abroad, the research mainly focuses on vocational competence.Researchers believe that vocational competence is an embodiment of students' collective and cooperative concepts in vocational education, and it is formed and strengthened through interactions with classmates, teachers and someone else (Niittylahti et al., 2019).Under collective and cooperative conditions, the formation of vocational competence will have different results.For instance, there are three different paths for students to form a professional identity.One is for students who have a clear correspondence between their profession and major, these students have a vision for their future work and are willing to make efforts and sacrifices; another is for students who tend to work outside of their major, they believe that their future profession will be open, broad and challenging; the last is for students who do not have a clear plan for their profession, they lack contemplation and have not yet formed a cognitive understanding of their professional identity (Ferm et al., 2019).

Comparison of character development education for secondary vocational students in eastern and western regions of China
The differences in research on character development education for secondary vocational students in the eastern and western regions of China mainly reflect the development trends of local vocational education.Under the national emphasis on vocational education and policy promotion, Guangdong Province has established a provincial vocational technical education demonstration base as an important hub and carrier for the coordinated development of vocational education in Guangdong Province.Under the national emphasis on vocational education and policy promotion, Guangdong Province has established provincial vocational and technical education demonstration bases as an important gathering place and carrier for the collaborative development of vocational education in Guangdong Province, thus promoting the high-quality development of vocational education and cultivating more high-level professional and skilled talents for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and Shenzhen Advance Demonstration Zone (Xinhua, 2022).In the west, Gansu Province has realized the sharing and integration of educational resources through vocational education grouping, enhanced the ability of vocational education to serve regional economic and social development, and at the same time actively opened up cooperative schooling to promote the international development of vocational education and effectively improve the quality of talent training (Ying & Shouwei, 2020).

Comparison of character development education for secondary vocational students in different majors in China
The vocational competence of tour guide majors needs to be cultivated in accordance with the development of tourism, economic improvement, and higher expectations from people, and also to enhance their belief in maintaining the tourism industry, improving service attitude and awareness (Mei, 2018).In the development of vocational competence for hotel management majors, students should not only have hotel-related professional skills, such as food and beverage service, room service, business etiquette to enhance their skills professional literacy, but also accumulate first aid knowledge, general knowledge of literature and other professional literacy knowledge to improve the level of interpersonal communication and cultural quality (Han, 2020).With the development of the society, the requirements for the vocational competence of secondary students will be more targeted and specialized, so most of the differences in the character development education of secondary students of different majors are related to the formation of vocational competence.In general, the current problems of secondary students in different regions and specialties are different, and the research on the developmental education of secondary students is still relatively in its infancy, which is in urgent need of more empirical research under different professional directions.

Methods and participants
The direction of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing, i.e. agriculture in the broad sense, including landscape technology, herbal medicine cultivation, livestock and livestock production technology and other specialties.These majors mainly cultivate talents related to mechanical equipment and processing technology, with a strong operational practicality.With the advancement of technology, the requirements for talent training continue to increase, while there is less relevant literature available to provide a comprehensive picture of the current status of their parenting education.Therefore, in order to understand the current status of character development education for students in the direction of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing in secondary vocational schools, this paper conducted a survey using questionnaires.The preliminary exploration of the current situation and the analysis suggestions of the results can enrich the theory of character development education for students in the direction of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing in secondary vocational schools.The real issues in the questionnaire and the corresponding countermeasures provided also have certain practical reference significance for secondary vocational schools.
The total number of questionnaire items is 45, divided into four dimensions: daily behavior, learning ability, psychological health, and vocational competence.By randomly selecting secondary vocational students in the direction of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishing in Lanzhou city, the survey was conducted on their current status of character development education in these four aspects.
In the end, 303 questionnaires were issued, and 303 effective questionnaires were collected back, with an effectiveness rate of 100%.The majors involved are landscape technology, pet care and management, floral production and floral art, herbal medicine cultivation, horticultural technology, forest resource conservation and management and livestock production technology, please see Figure 1 for the specific information of the sample.All scale questions in the questionnaire were set to four degrees: never (0%), occasionally (30%), often (60%), always (90% and above).The questionnaire was analysed through SPSS, and the Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.848.The validity was verified using the KMO and Bartlett's test, with a KMO value of 0.8, please refer to the appendix for the details.

Insufficient training of behavioral habits
The survey results show (Figure 2) that compared with other phenomena, swearing and lying are more common in the lives of secondary vocational students, indicating that they have not yet developed the habit of civilized interaction and awareness of honesty; a small number of students also have bad habits and behavior such as smoking and fighting.The reasons might be the following two points:

Pursuit of individuality, lack of maturity
Secondary vocational students are mentally active and have a strong individuality.They are at a sensitive and impulsive age stage.Although they have a certain thinking ability, due to their lack of knowledge and experience, their ability to distinguish right from wrong is not fully formed.They may mistake bad behavior for the pursuit of novelty, to show their "cool" attitude and unique "personality".

External influences, lack of guidance
Secondary vocational students are influenced by the media, television, and other students around them.Curiosity leads to imitation behavior.When such behavioral deviations occur, parents and schools do not promptly discover or provide correct guidance, which results in bad behavior turning into bad habits.
In addition, we conducted a survey on students' use of mobile phones.The results show that 22.77% of students spend 5 hours or more on their mobile phones every day, and 41.58% of students believe that due to the Internet or mobile phone usage, their communication and interaction time with parents, teachers, and classmates has decreased.This shows that secondary vocational students have not yet formed good self-control abilities, cannot arrange their leisure time reasonably, and may risk Internet dependence in the long run.

Daily behavioral correlation analysis
Table 1 was obtained by counting the correlation of bad behaviors in daily behavior.From the table below, it can be seen that all four behaviors, swearing and lying, smoking and fighting, show significant positive correlation, indicating that all of these bad behaviors interact with each other, in which the positive correlation between swearing and lying behaviors is even higher, at 0.610, so that if the students have a habit of swearing, the probability is high that they also have the behavior of lying.

Lack of motivation for learning ability
The survey results on learning ability show (Figure 3) that the learning levels of secondary vocational students are uneven.More than 40% of students have not set learning goals or cannot reasonably arrange study time, reflecting their unclear learning objectives and lack of ability to arrange study time.In the survey, only 37.95% of students believed that they could well combine theoretical knowledge with practice, and most students could not flexibly apply theoretical knowledge in practice; more than half of the students would not summarize the practice process after practical lessons, lacked the consciousness of review, could not verify theoretical knowledge from practice, and could not guide practice with theoretical knowledge; some students would not take professional practice classes offered by the school seriously, and their learning attitude was not correct.The reasons for these problems might include the following two points:

Learned helplessness, lack of confidence
Secondary vocational students have been too much negated in their past learning experiences, and they have not made correct attributions, and they have developed learned helplessness  towards obstacles in learning.Moreover, the agricultural, forestry, fishing, and animal husbandry courses are both theoretical and practical, posing certain difficulties to secondary vocational students.Students lack confidence in themselves, develop a fear of knowledge, begin to resist learning, do not listen to lectures seriously, and are even less willing to interact with teachers.

Insufficient guidance, low expectations
In addition to theoretical learning, secondary vocational students majoring in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and animal husbandry also need practical operations.The less-than-ideal combination of theory and practice suggests that teachers' classroom teaching has not achieved the expected results and has not further deepened the knowledge learned in the classroom.Furthermore, the completeness of school hardware facilities and the reasonableness of course settings may need to be adjusted.The fact that only half of the students can set learning goals and reasonably arrange study time indicates that teachers' guidance on students' learning abilities in daily learning is not in place.In addition, teachers do not hold higher expectations and requirements for students, and parents may have already accepted the learning status quo of secondary vocational students, just wanting them to graduate smoothly.

Learning ability correlation analysis
By counting the correlations between the various aspects of learning ability, Table 2 was obtained.
It can be seen that setting learning goals, arranging study time, the ability to link theory to practice and summarizing knowledge all show significant positive correlation, and all have an impact on students' learning ability.Among them, the positive correlation between setting learning goals and arranging study time, the ability to link theory with practice and summarizing knowledge is higher, respectively 0.680 and 0.637, indicating that students who can set learning goals are more able to reasonably arrange their own study time, and those who often summarize their knowledge are able to better combine theory with practice.

Sensitive inside, eager to communicate
From the survey results on psychological health (Figure 4), about 21.45% of students suffer from persistent depression, nearly half of the students express that they can't feel the care given by their family and friends, some students think that they have no friends, and a small number of students even actively want others to pay attention to them.All of this indicates that secondary vocational students are very sensitive psychologically, coupled with the current social prejudice and misunderstanding of middle school students, it has caused greater pressure on their psychology (Chaoxiang et al., 2023).On the surface, they are reluctant to communicate with others and do not seek help when encountering difficulties, but in fact, they are eager for attention and recognition.

Ignoring needs, delayed intervention
Parents and schools easily neglect the mental health problems of secondary vocational students.Most parents believe that as long as they provide students with sufficient material life, they do not care about their emotional changes, interpersonal communication, and do not communicate with them, which will miss many of their psychological fluctuations and moments when they need help.
Although schools conduct psychological tests on students and have dedicated psychology teachers, they are often used when students have already had problems, rather than in regular psychological knowledge popularization or psychology courses.Although the problems that the above-mentioned secondary vocational students encounter belong to the normal psychological characteristics of this age group, if they do not have effective ways to deal with emotions, they will develop problems such as introversion, rebelliousness, and depression over time.Therefore, the psychological status of secondary vocational student needs to be taken seriously by parents and schools.

Psychological health correlation analysis
Table 3 was obtained by counting the correlations between the various aspects of psychological health.From the table, it can be seen that persistent low mood, not feeling cared for, lack of friends and trying to get attention all show significant positive correlations, all of which affect students' mental health.Among them, the positive correlation between lack of friends and persistent depressed and wanting to attract attention is higher, with 0.512 and 0.509, respectively, which indicates that the lack of friendship in school affects students' daily life emotionally, and also changes students' outward appearance, and they begin to want to attract others' attention.

Occupational literacy awareness is weak
The results of occupational literacy show (Figure 5) that in terms of career planning, 71.61% of students report that the frequency of career planning courses related to their major offered by the school is too low, and more than two-thirds of the students do not understand the positions in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery very well.In terms of practical training, most students have undergone professional skill practice organized by the school, but from the effect, still, 66.66% of the students do not understand or do not know well the commonly used instruments in the major, and half of the students hardly take the initiative to carry out skill training.This reflects that students still lack awareness of self-professional literacy training on the basis of insufficient practical ability.The reasons for the above problems may be as follows.

Indifferent attitude, vague planning
The learning ability and self-management ability of secondary vocational students need to be strengthened.They have a bland attitude towards learning, lack motivation, cannot absorb knowledge well in class, and are unwilling to review after class, so their mastery of professional knowledge is somewhat lacking.And from the results, students will not take the initiative to carry out skill training, they don't know much about professional positions, their future career planning is vague, and they have no awareness of cultivating their own professional literacy.

Structural mismatch, resource scarcity
The structure of the school curriculum is not reasonable, and the frequency of offering career planning courses and professional practice is low, which also leads to students' lack of deep understanding of professional positions, vague prospects of professional direction, and less experience in skill training.Although most students have taken professional practice courses, the survey results show that they have not achieved ideal teaching results.In addition, the lack of resources and depth in school-enterprise cooperation, students' practical skills level remains on the book, lacking real opportunities to contact production practice.
In addition, the article also surveyed the future planning of secondary vocational students.63.36% of the students are willing to work in related jobs in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery in the future, indicating that these positions still have great attraction to students; moreover, 88.78% of the secondary vocational students have made the choice to continue their studies after graduation.This is not only a result of policy orientation, but also a result of secondary students beginning to pay attention to self-development, which well reflects the main task of secondary vocational education schools to train talents for higher vocational education.

Relevance analysis of vocational competence
By statistically correlating the various aspects of vocational competence, Table 4 was obtained.
From the table below, it can be seen that there are significant positive correlations between the career planning classes in schools., vocational training in schools, training by oneself, students' awareness of job positions and willingness to work related to specialties later, all of which play an important role in students' vocational literacy.Among them, the positive correlation between the school offering career-related courses and the school organizing skills training, school training and self-training is higher, 0.602 and 0.555 respectively, which indicates that the schools offering career planning courses are also more inclined to organize skills training related to their majors, and that the school organizing skills training will also help the students to carry out skills training by themselves to improve their vocational ability.

Enhance daily management and correct behavioral norms
The quality of students is an integral part of school quality and the most evident demonstration of the school's educational outcomes.Schools need to focus on cultivating students' behavioral habits, which can be achieved by hosting educational lectures to correct erroneous student perceptions and rectify behavioral deviations.Schools can organize knowledge contests to enhance students' awareness of good habits, or they can call on students to participate in volunteer activities to enrich their spiritual world.

Establish supervisory groups to improve learning efficiency
Strengthen school management and supervision measures for teaching activities to improve teaching outcomes.Schools should pay attention to students' learning status and set designated teachers to record each class's learning situation during teaching activities.Praise and encourage outstanding students and classes, timely remind students with slight deviations, actively communicate, enhance the overall learning atmosphere of the school, and cultivate students' good learning abilities.Teachers should also guide students on learning methods during teaching activities, improve students' learning abilities, hold high expectations for students, encourage them more, and create a relaxed, harmonious, and positive classroom teaching atmosphere.

Strengthen intervention guidance, pay attention to student psychology
Schools can let students understand their psychological state, know the causes of their emotions, and master emotion adjustment methods through offering psychology courses, organizing mental health activities, and conducting mental health lectures.Teachers should also frequently communicate with students, identify their psychological problems and provide guidance.In more serious cases, timely intervention by professionals is required to ensure the students' mental and physical health.

Optimize curriculum structure, build professional qualities
With the development of information technology and the agriculture, forestry and fishery industries, the degree of agricultural mechanization and wisdom is increasing, which also puts forward newer and higher requirements for the professionalism and competence of practitioners (Shili et al., 2022).Schools should actively carry out internships, observations, and popular science activities related to relevant professions, allowing students to have a comprehensive understanding of related positions, clarify their employment direction, and plan their careers.Because agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery specialties will involve knowledge of machinery equipment or processing technology, and new technical methods cannot be timely presented in textbooks, deepening school-enterprise cooperation is very necessary.Schools should often lead students to visit enterprise factories to expand their horizons, learn new methods, and new technologies.At the same time, it's essential to build a more realistic and complete teaching practice platform for students, allowing them to gain hands-on experience, deepen theoretical knowledge, lay a solid foundation for competent work abilities, and enhance professional qualities.

Lead by example, create a harmonious family environment
Actions speak louder than words.The family is the earliest place for formative education, and family education has a lifelong impact on children.In life, parents should lead by example, combine severity with kindness, timely correct children's behavioral deviations, help them form correct cognition, and cultivate good behavioral habits.Parents need to create a warm, harmonious, and safe family atmosphere.Besides giving children material care, they should also provide spiritual care, observe and pay attention to changes in children's emotions and behavior, and provide the right guidance.

Grow actively, establish self-cultivation awareness
Vocational school students already have a certain level of thinking ability.In the process of growth, they should not only actively understand themselves but also consciously cultivate themselves.When there are fluctuations in their psychology, they should handle it with the correct method or seek help from teachers and parents; they should set short-term goals in learning, make long-term plans, and enhance learning efficiency.When students start to see improvements in themselves, confidence will follow.

Figure
Figure 1.Sample information.(a) percentage of respondents by gender.(b) percentage of respondents by grade level.(c) respondents' learning styles.(d) professional backgrounds, percentage and specific number of respondents.

Figure
Figure 2. The daily behavior of secondary vocational students.(a) frequency of swearing by students.(b) frequency of lying by students.(c) frequency of smoking among students.(d) frequency of fights among students.(e) number of hours per day that students use mobile phones for entertainment.(f) frequency of interaction with others.

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Figure 3.The learning ability of secondary vocational students.(a) frequency of students setting learning goals.(b) frequency of student scheduling of study time.(c) students' ability to combine theory and practice.(d) frequency of students summarizing knowledge.

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Figure 4.The psychological state of secondary vocational students.(a) frequency of persistent depressed.(b) frequency of feeling care and love.(c) frequency of students feeling a lack of friendship.(d) frequency of students trying to get attention.

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Figure 5.The occupation literacy of secondary vocational students.(a) frequency of career planning classes in schools.(b) students' awareness of job positions.(c) frequency of vocational training in schools.(d) frequency of selfstudy vocational training.(e) options for students after graduation.(f) students' willingness to engage in work related to specialties.