Solution
Driven by research, curriculum alignment and career pathways development occurs while leveraging local assets based on regional data findings based on employer and learner needs.
COMPONENTS
STEP 1 – Promote and deploy regional curriculum offering and career pathways based on regional occupational demand and gap analysis.
STEP 2 – Conduct curriculum alignment based on regional occupational skill and knowledge demand and college readiness standards with input from employer partners.
STEP 3 – Integrate high quality regionally contextualized career awareness, self exploration, career exploration and career pathways planning into the mainstream curriculum while addressing rigorous career and college readiness standards in literacy and math and promoting workplace learning. This component recommends the integration of career portfolios / individual education plans (IEPs) and a pathways to apprenticeship credential into the standards based curriculum. See Research Base diagram
STEP 4 – Promote the use of relevant career and college readiness assessments that are relevant to the workplace.
STEP 5 – Provide community wide professional development to support regional career pathways deployment to support common language development between business, education and the workforce while providing enhanced professional development to human resource professionals, career counselors and classroom instructors.
STUDENT WORK EXAMPLES
Electronic Portfolio – Leveraging both career development research, academic research and standards integration, the use of career portfolios embrace the the career development theory of “story” as well as constructivist learning theory. This allows learner to construct their meaning of “career” while addressing both career and college readiness standards and skills. In this case, learners are engaged in technology as they construct webpages that result in their IEP and their personal meaning of career.
Printed Portfolio / IEP – Addresses the above while providing learners and job seekers with a presentation tool to email and/or provide potential employers with a copy during the interview process. This hard copy format serves as a presentation support for learners and job seekers during the interview process.