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What do we know about effective career education?

Dale Bailey & Ivan Hodgetts

Session outline

1. Context for our work

2. Our approach

3. The challenge for career education in New Zealand (NZ)

4. A career education framework

5. What we found

6. Implications for career education in schools.

Synthesis report

• Part of the strategic realignment of Career Services

• Learnings from two projects:

• Designing Careers (2005-06)

• Creating Pathways and Building Lives (CPaBL) (2007-08)

• External evaluation from Education Review Office

• Scan of relevant literature.

Setting the scene

Context

• Need for improvement

• Value for money in public expenditure

• Impact of the recession

• Need to provide effective outcomes for young people.

Environment

• Diverse practice

• Career education disconnected from key shifts in education

• Need to argue for a distinctive approach

• Development initiatives revealed variable and individualised practice across the country.

Big education ideas

• Evidence based practice

• Student voice

• Personalising learning.

The challenge ahead of us

New Zealand

• By 16 years, 20% students have been lost to education

• 4,500 leave primary school and don’t enrol in secondary school

• 80% young people who enter Youth Court, left or were absent from school

• 17,000 - 25,000 young NZers (15-19 years) not in employment, education or training

• How effective are our current efforts?

Qualification completion for bachelor students by year and mode of study

• Doing well and where you can get promoted within the same workplace

• Having a qualification that you can keep building on in the same area

• One workplace approach

• Some students also recognise the emergent trends in career ideas, eg. work-in-life balance and adaptability of skills for different work environments.

Student perception of career

Careers advice

• School career guidance tended to be ad hoc and focused on information about jobs

• For over 80% of the respondents, families were the most useful source of careers information

• Half the students did not take part in career guidance activities organised through school

• Forty-one percent said that they had never spoken to a teacher or careers advisor about future options

http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/ece/2567/35117/35118

What does this mean?

“… many people don’t know how to manage

their careers, because no one has

ever assisted them to.”

- MCEETYA, 2009: 8,

Australia Blueprint for Career Development

A shift to career management

It ‘is not about making the right occupational

choice. It’s about equipping people with the

competencies (skills knowledge and attitudes)

to make the myriad of choices with which adults

are confronted continuously, in all aspects of their

adult lives, lifelong’.

- Jarvis, 2003: 4

Career education should foster the ability to

‘self manage a career’.

What we propose

Implications… beyond the container of school

Starting to participate in adult world

The ‘life and world’ of a teenager

Age 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

1st period of independence

Schooling

Successful navigators

Rationale for career education

Students who are better informed

about SELF

Make more informed choices

Become more engaged in their

learning

Are more motivated and

productive; achieving more

highly

Contribute positively to our

economy and society

The career education matrix

• Integrating career education across the curriculum• Developing teacher and school staff capability • Applying career education knowledge in teaching and learning.

2. Working with teachers & school staff

• Understanding the purpose and role of career education in schools• How to effectively plan for, implement, review and evaluate career

education in your school• Engaging with parents, whānau and the wider community.

3. Working with school leaders & the community

• Developing students‘ career management skills• Understanding and addressing differing student needs.

1. Working with students

Career & education research

Effective practice benchmarks

Beyond information and job picking…

Decision Guidance Career Development Guidance

Linear, single destination orientation – help people to make an informed decision

Dynamic, change, growth orientation – help people to learn to live well as citizens

What do you want to be when you grow up?Separation of paid work from rest of life

Who might you become? What kind of life do you want? Paid work and life roles connected

Choose a careerMaking a living

Create a careerMaking a life

A revised approach to career education

Building career development

capability

Identifying Self

Forming SelfLocating Self

Where am I? community, age, class,

culture, whānau, geography

Who do I want to become?

hopes, aspirations, plans, learning needs, identity

Who am I?traits, interests, predispositions,

abilities

Bringing connectivity to an integrative approach

The new

career education at the heart of teaching and learning, within a key competency driven curriculum

pedagogyassessment

curriculum

effective career

education

Students with career

development capability

Information Provision

Access to information

is not sufficient

Teacher practice aligned

A coherent experience is

requiredSchools

can’t do it alone

Learning community School wide

systems

Articulate learners require

responsive teaching practice

Students as articulate

and engaged learners

A whole-school approach

Careers is the dialogue between learner and teacher

• Knowing what is of relevance to students

• Exploring future careers as a way of directing learning to positive outcomes

• Students become more articulate about what they want from their learning

• Students can better describe their skills, attributes and ideas about themselves.

What has been found?

• Clear recognition that career education is important to human capability building

• Career education requires more than the imparting of information

• Shift to developing the underlying competencies needed to self-manage a career

• Career education needs to be an ‘integral’ part of education not a separate add-on activity.

Where to from here?

• Report available - hard copy and online

• Invite dialogue about the ideas

• We are using it to reshape our services to schools

• Feedback & feed-forward to careereducation@careers.govt.nz