The
days of the mammoth corporation are coming
to an end. People are going to have to create
their own lives, their own careers and their
own successes. Some people may go kicking
and screaming into the new world, but there
is only one message there: you’re now
in business for yourself.
--
Robert Shaen, former controller of Ameritech,
currently publisher of children’s books
Three
Reasons:
A
changing world and workplace:
The world and workplace have changed and require
new skills, and, above all, the ability to be
a self-aware, self-motivated problem solver
and “life-long” learner.
New
and rediscovered knowledge about how students
learn: Recent research on
the brain and learning have confirmed what many
educators have always known – that students
learn best when they are fully engaged, with
mind, heart, hands and all the senses, and when
they see meaning and purpose to their effort.
It
works! There is mounting evidence
that integrated, authentic teaching and learning,
especially within smaller learning communities,
is making a significant impact on students.
A
changing world and workplace
In
the JFF Publication Connected
Learning Communities: A Toolkit for Reinventing
High School,
Adria Steinberg writes, “Working in isolation,
a school, at best, tends to focus on what and
how much students know. But, in today’s
world, with global, competitive markets, uncertain
work prospects, and “make-overs” of
corporations, academic knowledge is only one part
of the equation. The emphasis needs to expand
beyond what students know to include both what
they can do—or how well they can apply what
they know to a particular problem or issue—and,
most important, to what they will do with their
knowledge and skills when they are in the world,
dealing with the complexities of life. In other
words, the question is not just, “Have the
test scores gone up?”, but, “Have
students internalized the habits of mind and intelligent
behaviors to approach the novel, messy, ambiguous
situations and problems of the real world?”
In
California, the
Department of Education has acknowledged
the need for education to respond to the changes
in the world and the global economy. Its most
recent policy document, Aiming
High – High Schools for the 21st Century,
begins by setting the context for standards-based
reform: the “hourglass” economy.
The document states, “To be economically
self-sufficient, students need access to the
top of the hourglass—jobs with good pay
and the greatest growth rate—but those
occupations require significant postsecondary
education or training. To remain economically
viable in a global economy, the state must meet
the labor market requirements and produce employees
who think and function at high levels.”
But
there is more. We do not want to produce only
“employees”. We want to graduate young
adults who are creative, self-initiating entrepreneurs
of their own lives. “Our organizational
world is no longer a pattern of jobs, the way
that a honeycomb is a pattern of these little
hexagonal pockets of honey”, writes noted
organizational consultant William Bridges in JobShift:
How to Prosper in a Workplace Without Jobs.
“Today’s organization is rapidly being
transformed from a structure built out of jobs
to a field of ‘work needing to be done’”.
In this larger context, it is the individual’s
responsibility to manage his or her own career
and on-going expansion of knowledge and skills
to “do the work that needs to be done”
– whether that is building a skyscraper,
writing a poem, or caring for a child. It is the
educator’s responsibility to ensure that
the student graduates with the vision, knowledge,
skills, and confidence to face—and embrace—that
challenge.
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Response
To New And Rediscovered Knowledge About How
Students Learn
You
cannot be a good MI [Multiple Intelligences]
teacher if you don't want to know each child
and try to gear how you teach and how you
evaluate to that particular child. The bottom
line is a deep interest in children and how
their minds are different from one another,
and in helping them use their minds well.
--
Howard Gardner
Harvard School of Education
The
following was adapted from Preparation for
College and Careers: A Resource Guide for Organizing
Learning Around Career Themes, by Peter
Crabtree and Svetlana Darche, for Region IV
through funding from the California School-to-Career
Interagency Partners.
In
parallel with the transformations in the workplace
described above, over the last decade educators,
psychologists and physiologists have been conducting
research on the brain and on how people learn
best. Both research and practice are confirming
what most educators have known for decades: that
students learn best when they are engaged as whole
human beings, with all their senses and their
emotions, when the learning is “contextualized”
in projects that have meaning and allow students
to feel valued for making real contributions,
when the students are "empowered" to
follow their interests, find purpose, and take
responsibility for their learning, and when the
environment is personalized and supportive.
Authentic
Learning allows for learning with all the senses
and "intelligences."
“Attention has always been a central concern
for educators”, writes Robert Sylwester
in A Celebration of Neurons, An Educator’s
Guide to the Human Brain. “Our brain’s
ability to focus and maintain its attention
on objects and events is critical to learning
and memory, and attention is a basic element
in classroom motivation and management.”
In
American schools, we do a good job of allowing
children to use all their senses in the early
grades, but in the higher grades, students have
less opportunity to do so. Yet Margaret Ellibee
and Susan Middlesteadt, educational consultants
assert in “Developing an Understanding on
How We Learn”, that research is showing
that “the more senses you use, the more
likely you will remember the subject matter.”
(See In Focus box for more information and
links on senses, intuition and learning styles.)
In
the 1980s three “learning styles”
were identified: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.
In the recent decade, Howard Gardner developed
his theory of multiple intelligences, which
postulates seven types of intelligence, including
linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical,
bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal.
In an interview for Educational Leadership,
the journal of the Association for Supervision
and Curriculum Development (ASCD) published
in September, 1997, Gardner answered a question
on how educators can implement the theory of
multiple intelligences as follows:
Although
there is no single Multiple Intelligences
(MI) route, it's very important that a teacher
take individual differences among kids very
seriously. You cannot be a good MI teacher
if you don't want to know each child and try
to gear how you teach and how you evaluate
to that particular child. The bottom line
is a deep interest in children and how their
minds are different from one another, and
in helping them use their minds well.
The
theory of multiple intelligences, in and
of itself, is not going to solve anything
in our society, but linking the multiple
intelligences with a curriculum focused
on understanding is an extremely powerful
intellectual undertaking.
When
I talk about understanding, I mean that students
can take ideas they learn in school, or anywhere
for that matter, and apply those appropriately
in new situations. We know people truly understand
something when they can represent the knowledge
in more than one way. We have to put understanding
up front in school. Once we have that goal,
multiple intelligences can be a terrific handmaiden
because understandings involve a mix of mental
representations, entailing different intelligences.
Click here
for the complete interview with Howard Gardner.
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of Page
In
1995, Daniel Goleman published “Emotional
Intelligence”, highlighting the importance
of emotion in embedding experience in memory.
Elaborating on this idea, Robert Sylwester says,
“emotion-laden activities such as simulations,
role playing, and cooperative projects can provide
the important contextual memory prompts that
a student may need to recall the information
during a closely related event in the world
outside school. Doing worksheets in school prepares
a student emotionally to do worksheets in life.”
Schools
have historically concentrated on boosting students'
cognitive abilities, but developing students'
emotional smarts is also vital—above and
beyond (not instead of) academic and technical
competence. Daniel Daniel Goleman argues that
“both types of intelligence are important,
but they're important in different ways. IQ
contributes, at best, about 20 percent to the
factors that determine life success. That leaves
80 percent to everything else. There are many
ways in which your destiny in life depends on
having the skills that make up emotional intelligence.”
(See In Focus box for citation, more information
and links.)
So,
as we know, the world beyond school is not about
“doing worksheets”; it is about solving
real problems. Unfortunately, until very recently,
traditional instruction has been narrow in its
focus; it has focused primarily on students’
auditory and visual abilities, and on linguistic
and logical-mathematical intelligences; further,
it has dispensed this instruction in classrooms
that provide limited sensory stimulation or opportunity
to exercise musical, spatial or bodily-kinesthetic
intelligence.
J.D.
Hoye, former Director of the National School-to-Work
Office in Washington D.C., in an address to
the Novato Business Education Roundtable in
Marin County, noted that in the early grades
we do a good job of “teaching to the whole
child”, and not coincidentally, math and
science achievement in these early years are
positively comparable with that of students
in other industrialized countries. In the high
school years, most project-based learning in
the United States is replaced with rote learning;
achievement in math and science also falls off
dramatically. (Address on February 11, 1999,
based on TIMSS, the Third International Math
and Science Study).
Authentic,
contextual and project-based instructional strategies,
including connections with real-world problems
and workplaces, allow students to use their
whole bodies and minds to learn. Schools using
these strategies have shown increases in many
measures of achievement.
Authentic
learning occurs in the context of meaningful,
real-world situations that allow students to
feel valued. In order for constructive
habits of mind to develop, students must be
engaged. John Dewey understood this tenet when
he began developing an alternative school organized
around occupational focuses. For Dewey, education
focused through occupations offered students
the opportunity to engage their intellect in
real world problems and in the challenges of
the larger community.
The
ideas contained in Dewey's approach resonate
with contemporary efforts to engage students.
Claudia Geocaris, for example, identifies four
key elements of engagement: rigor, thought,
self-expression, and authenticity. Of the importance
of the last element, she argues that students
"need to see the links between the material
they're studying and the real world, and to
make connections with their own experiences."
The school-to-career movement summarizes these
elements as the two Rs, "rigor and relevancy."
Contextual,
or “connected learning” programs readily
allow for linkages with the community and with
employers who can offer students real problems
to solve, which then provide motivation and a
sense of purpose to the learning. It also provides
students with the knowledge that they are making
a valued contribution to the world – that
they are valued as individuals and that they “belong.”
According to psychologist Rudolph Dreikurs, “children
want desperately to belong. If all goes well and
the child maintains his courage, he presents few
problems. He does what the situation requires
and gets a sense of belonging through his usefulness
and participation. But if he has become discouraged,
his sense of belonging is restricted. His interest
turns from participation in the group to a desperate
attempt at self-realization through others. All
his attention is turned toward this end, be it
through pleasant or disturbing behavior, for one
way or another, he has to find a place.”
(Rudolph Dreikurs, Children, the Challenge
pg. 58)
Career-related
education can offer students this opportunity
to feel useful, to find “their place.”
It therefore motivates them to channel their
energies toward constructive purposes, rather
than toward destructive ends.
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of Page
Authentic
learning empowers students to follow their own
interests, find purpose, and take responsibility
for their own learning. A key
ingredient in “authentic learning”
is offering students the opportunity to explore
their interests. In adolescence, interests begin
to provide hints as to possible career directions.
In most high schools, students have access to
some kinds of career assessment materials and
computer-based exploratory tools and labor market
information. By creating career-related learning
opportunities, we allow students to actively
test whether the results of their assessments
are valid. Through career-oriented curriculum
students can delve into their chosen area of
interest in greater depth than would otherwise
be possible. Then, through community-and work-based
learning opportunities, such as job shadows
and internships, they can see first-hand whether
their career interests stand the test of “real
world” validation.
The
focus on careers is particularly powerful when
students are encouraged to explore careers in
terms of their purpose or “calling”.
Rachael Kessler, Director of the PassageWays Institute
in Boulder, Colorado, says: “When such programs
[career exploration or senior passage courses]
foster authentic self-discovery and a renewed
faith in the future, students become ‘purposeful’
– determined to accomplish their goals.
In recent years researchers studying the protective
factors that foster resilience in youth at risk
have found that a sense of purpose and future
is crucial. Some researchers are beginning to
see positive results from career planning being
brought down to middle school years for students
at high risk of criminal behavior. If they can
be helped to discover their gifts and how these
gifts can and will be utilized through work in
the future, they begin to feel a sense of purpose
that can protect them from criminal behavior even
at this young age.” (“The Soul of
Education”, published by ASCD in 2000, excerpted
from “Seven Gateways to the Soul of Students:
Practical Applications for the Classroom”)
Authentic
learning is also active and stresses team projects
and problem solving. In programs with this focus
students have to take responsibility to manage
their own time, manage the interpersonal dynamics
of the team, and divide up the responsibilities
for completing the project. In addition, and
perhaps more important, as active learners,
they are often responsible for seeking out and
creating knowledge in response to a problem
posed or an “essential question”,
rather than being passive recipients of knowledge
provided by a teacher. Having control, therefore,
of both the process and the content of what
they will learn provides students with the desire
to achieve.
Authentic
learning that occurs in the context of small learning
communities fosters personalized learning and
caring relationships among students and between
students and adults. Of all the
factors that seem to enhance learning, educators
are finding that a personalized learning environment
is one of the most important. Daniel Goleman in
his work on emotional intelligence has found that
learning which triggers the emotions is the most
powerful and the most likely to be retained. Rob
Riordan, from the Big Picture Company/New Century
Schools Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who
works with schools all over the country, has found
that students’ two greatest concerns are
“I don’t see the relevance”
and “Nobody knows me”. (Rob Riordan
communication during seminar on “Design
Principles For The New Century School”,
held at the Alameda County Office of Education,
February 18, 1999.) School-to-Career initiatives,
in creating smaller learning communities, foster
these closer relationships between students and
teachers.
Further,
by offering opportunities for students to engage
in work-based learning, students find mentors
in the outer world who can mirror them as individuals
with unique interests and needs, and can offer
the kinds of support and guidance that neither
parents nor teachers can provide. In “Higher
Education and Rites of Passage in America”,
Miriam Dror and Flynn Johnson write, “the
hunger for meaningful mentor relationships was
evident universally in the sharings of our students.”
They continue that it is not for the parents
to fill this role for the adolescent. “The
young adult is in a process of differentiation
so deep that, of necessity, he or she must look
beyond the scope of the family and what it has
to offer.” (Pg 411, Crossroads.)
In The Soul’s Code, In Search of Character
and Calling, psychologist James Hillman
defines the mentor as the one who “sees”
the young person. He writes, “Seeing is
believing – believing in what you see
– and this instantly confers belief to
whoever, whatever receives your sight. The gift
of sight surpasses the gifts of insight. For
such sight blesses; it does tranformative work.”
(Pg. 122) 
Finally,
teamwork allows for the development of interpersonal
skills and caring relationships among students
that go beyond students’ shared social interests.
In other words, students learn to respect one
another as colleagues, not only as friends. This
offers students the opportunity to appreciate
the variety of skills their classmates may have,
which may not always be appreciated in a purely
social context.
In
conclusion, as Robert Sylwester says, “Edelman’s
model of our brain as a rich, layered, messy,
unplanned jungle ecosystem is especially intriguing,
because is suggests that a junglelike brain
might thrive in a junglelike classroom that
includes many sensory, cultural, and problem
layers that are closely related to the real-world
environment in which we live—the environment
that best stimulates the neural networks that
are genetically tuned to it.” (Pg 23)
It
works! What the research shows.
The
best insurance for the future is preparing generations
of skillful, enthusiastic, and purposeful young
men and women.
--
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly and Barbara Scheider
becoming ADULT, a longitudinal study
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1995-98:
Early Nation-Wide Data. Studies
conducted from 1995-1998 in various school-to-career
partnerships, including Boston, Philadelphia
and New York, found that students in school-to-career
programs had:
- harder classes
- higher interest in school
- better attendance
- fewer drop-outs
- higher graduation rates
- better preparation in problem solving, creativity
and teamwork
- higher employment rates
- higher earning
See
National Conference of State Legislators, School-to-Work
– High Yields for Students, Schools, Parents,
Educators, Employers, Legislators, Businesses,
Communities, Job Market: A Guide for State Legislators
posted with permission  .
2000:
Targeted Scientific Study of Academies.
In 2000, the Manpower
Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC)
conducted a rigorous large-scale, multi-site random
assignment research study to evaluate the effect
of career academies on student outcomes. The following
is an excerpt from the Executive Summary of the
report Career
Academies: Impacts on Students’ Engagement
and Performance in High School.
Academy
applicants were assigned to these groups at
random, so there were no systematic differences
in the characteristics or school experiences
of the applicants initially. Thus, subsequent
differences in outcomes for the two groups reflect
increases or decreases caused by the Career
Academies. Key findings included the following:
- The Career Academies in this study increased
both the level of interpersonal support students
experienced during high school and their participation
in career awareness and work-based learning
activities.
- The Career Academies substantially improved
high school outcomes among students at high
risk of dropping out. For this group, the
Academies reduced dropout rates, improved
attendance, increased academic course-taking,
and increased the likelihood of earning enough
credits to graduate on time.
- Among students least likely to drop out
of high school, the Career Academies increased
the likelihood of graduating on time. The
Academies also increased vocational course-taking
for these students without reducing their
likelihood of completing a basic core academic
curriculum.
- In sites where the Academies produced particularly
dramatic enhancements in the interpersonal
support that students received from teachers
and peers, the Career Academies reduced dropout
rates and improved school engagement for both
high-risk and medium-risk subgroups (about
75 percent of the students served). Academies
that did not enhance these supports actually
increased dropout rates and reduced school
engagement for some students.
2001:
Rigorous Review of Findings. In
2001,
The Institute on Education and the Economy at
Columbia Teachers College reviewed research
conducted throughout the country, and compiled
findings into one document entitled In School-to-Work:
Making a Difference. As presented on the
web site, “the report found that many
studies show participation in School-to-Work
(“School-to-Career” in California)
supports academic achievement in a variety of
ways, including reducing the dropout rate and
increasing college enrollment. Career Academies
in particular, which link corporate involvement
to secondary school education and foster small
learning communities, are cited as an effective
model. The report found that STW (School-to-Work)
contributes significantly to students' career
preparation, through exploration activities
and work-based learning experiences that teach
students skills that are useful in careers.
These activities help students think about and
plan for the future, including college. The
findings also indicate that participation in
STW helps students mature and develop psychologically
as they gain increased knowledge of the importance
of school."
"We are very encouraged by all the
positive results we found in our comprehensive
look at the research. Business/education partnerships
really show promise in giving students opportunities
that many wouldn't otherwise have, and in motivating
students to learn," said Katherine Hughes,
Senior Research Associate for IEE.
In
addition to the STW benefits to students, STW
research indicates that teachers and employers
are also enthusiastic about STW programs, according
to the report. The report also concluded that
even the most rigorous studies of STW initiatives
have turned up almost no negative results of
the School-to-Work Opportunities Act. Although
critics of the STW approach to education feared
it would weaken academic achievement and divert
students to low-skilled jobs, there is no evidence
to support this position among STW studies.
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of Page
2002:
California’s School-to-Career Evaluation.
In September, 2002, California completed its
own STC Evaluation, carried out by WestEd and
MPR Associates over a two-year period, and culminating
with 13 local partnership case studies. The
case studies included in-depth interviews with
school staff and administrators, partnership
directors and employers; surveys of all schools
regarding types and levels of implementation;
and surveys of randomly selected students both
just before and just after graduation from high
school. Five partnerships also looked at student
outcomes such as attendance, grades and test
scores. Results were similar to those found
in other studies.
Educators’
Perceptions of STC Outcomes for Students
-
Educators believe that STC has had a positive
effect on students’ preparation for
college and careers.
Student
Outcomes: The study found both 1) consistently
positive relationships between STC participation
and student attitudes about school and their
level of preparation for the future; and 2)
improved attendance and course-taking.
Students
felt that they had received
- useful career guidance
- knowledge
of career-related activities
- chances
to learn needed skills
- preparation
for employment
STC
had a positive effect on
- knowing skills needed for success
- knowing education and training needed for
career choices
Students
believed that
- STC made school more interesting and meaningful
- STC helped them understand why doing well
in school is important
A
number of measures of STC involvement were positively
associated with attendance rates.
STC
and Preparation for Postsecondary Education
- limited but suggestive evidence: participation
in a career-focused curriculum leads to higher
completion rates for A-G requirements
- participation in a career-focused curriculum
leads more students to complete Algebra II
One
of the local partnership studies found that,
when surveyed in the fall after graduation,
- 71% of the students wished they had had
more career guidance;
- 75% of the students wished they had had
more career-related classes;
- 74% of the students wished they had had
more activities such as internships. and job
shadows
In
sum, according to WestEd Senior Research Associate
Cathy Ringstaff, personal communication; “there
is a lot of evidence that there is a positive
affect on student attitudes – students
with more intense levels of participation were
more likely to know about and value career-related
activities at their schools and feel prepared
for future employment.”
The
Long View. In 1991, the Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation provided the University
of Chicago with a grant to study career formation
among adolescents. A research team of embarked
upon a virtually unprecedented longitudinal
study, the results of which were published in
2000 by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow
and Barbara Schneider, author of The Ambitious
Generation, of in their book becoming
ADULT: How Teenagers Prepare for the World of
Work. Their findings lead to the following
recommendations:
-
Develop
high school curricula in academic subjects
that stress creativity, flexibility, and emotional
intelligence. In the future it will be essential
to establish more links between disciplines,
to see commonalities among different subjects,
and to master synthetic as well as analytic
approaches to learning.
-
Encourage
high schools to provide more instructional
time in academic subjects and to use that
time in ways that are intellectually engaging
for students. Group projects should be utilized
more widely, taking advantage of teenagers’
natural inclination to work together with
peers.
-
Restructure
school-to-work programs in high schools so
that students come to realize that productive
employment in the future will require continual
training and learning. We need to develop
in young people a passion for life-long learning.
-
Encourage
intrinsic motivation and teach children to
enjoy what they do for its own sake, not just
for the sake of getting good grades. Children
who enjoy overcoming challenges will seek
out challenging situations in the future.
They will be more likely to seize new opportunities,
to seek new ways of doing things, to work
on tasks that have unclear solutions and to
inspire others to work on difficult problems.
These are the characteristics that the workforce
of the future will most urgently need.
-
Clarify
the links between time use and future job
options. Currently much of teenagers’
time is wasted. It is particularly important
to make sure that children do not fall into
the habit of feeling that what they do is
meaningless—neither like work nor like
play.
-
Find
situations that are more play-like for disadvantaged
youth. Students who perceived their life in
more play-like terms were more likely to matriculate
in selective postsecondary schools. The spontaneity
and creativity associated with play is something
we should support for all children, especially
as this quality builds self-confidence and
educational attainment.
-
Encourage
parents to become more actively involved in
their children’s lives. …Parents
must learn more about their children’s
interests and find opportunities to communicate
high expectations and unstinting support.
This kind of parental involvement requires
parental attention, but without it teenagers
will have a difficult time realizing their
potential.
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