The Importance of Career Education
Children as young as five years old are already talking about the job they want when they grow up. Students from preschool to twelve years old already have the capacity to understand career development.
Research suggests that it is important that we begin career education early to avoid missing valuable opportunity to influence and enhance the career development of students.
Career education is about providing young students with a context for their school learning and the skills, knowledge and attitudes to make future career decisions. It is not about expecting students to make lifelong career decisions at a very young age.
A comprehensive career education program can show students the real life relevance of their school experience, help students acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes they will need to develop meaningful, achievable and worthwhile senior education and training plans, prepare student for today’s constantly changing world of work, and developing partnership with parents and local community.
The following steps for introducing a comprehensive career education program in schools have proved useful:
Forming a working party from the school community is the first step to make a career education program. It is important that people who volunteer should belong from the major stakeholder groups like teachers, administrators, guidance officer, students and parents. If possible, inviting coordinators of different educational programs from your local community would prove useful.
Developing a rationale for the program based on students needs, and the school’s goal.
The next step would be to begin promoting the program to your school community.
Next, select a coordinator for the program, then select a student outcomes framework. Followed by mapping the career learning and identifying the gaps and overlaps in what is currently being delivered in the program.
Develop the career education program to ensure that all students have an opportunity to meet the student outcomes of the selected framework.
Conduct teacher in-service to inform and to reassure. Teachers participating in the delivery of the career education program need some background in career development and a thorough understanding of the objectives of the school’s career education program.
Conducting a public relations campaign is an excellent way of promoting the school. It ensures students, parents and the general community are aware of the school’s program.
The program should set up monitoring, review and evaluation process to evaluate the school’s career education program.
Components of a Career Education Program
Self-Awareness Activities
• Exploring the relationship between their personal attributes and the skills required to be effective in different life and work situations.
• Evaluating different conditions that have an affect in the student’s education.
• Identifying their personal attributes.
Opportunity Awareness Activities - This involves students in investigating, exploring and experiencing the world of work and the various pathways within it.
Decision Learning
• Identifying good decision-making styles and strategies.
• Generating a range of career related options for themselves.
• Understanding the influences on a person’s decision-making and exploring how other people make decisions.
Transition Learning - This relates to the awareness and skills students need to cope with both desired and undesired new situations.
Career development is complex and there are many pathways available for students to choose from. Therefore, it is important that the school personnel involved in the school’s career education program be appropriately trained. Personnel should have formal qualifications in career development and career counseling and access to supervision.
A247Source.com- Education Sitemap