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Article Excerpt
Preparing adolescents from diverse backgrounds to transition more effectively into satisfying, productive, and personally valued post-high school settings has become one of the central responsibilities for counselors working in school settings. In addition to facilitating academic and personal/social development of students, the National Standards for School Counseling Programs, adopted by the American School Counselor Association (1997), called on counselors to promote the career development of all students. As attested to by the passage of Texas Senate Bill 158 that requires all school counselors to effectively advise all students on higher education opportunities ("Texas Senate," 2001), career development services will continue to be an important component of comprehensive counseling programs available to students in schools.
The recognition that student success is partially explained by and enhanced when counselors effectively address students' career development needs has been an important part of comprehensive guidance and counseling reform efforts over the past 25 years (e.g., Gysbers & Henderson, 2000). In particular, the transition from high school has been understood as one of the most difficult developmental challenges confronting adolescents. To meet this challenge, more career counseling services that are also more comprehensive and systematic need to be available to all students (Herr, 2000). To create effective programmatic responses, counselors need information on the curriculum strategies and support services that facilitate successful post-high school transitions. Counselors could then use this information as they advocate for all students and convince policy makers of the efficacy of comprehensive, developmental school counseling programs.
Important information on needed curricular strategies and support services can be obtained from studies that examine the impact of community career partnerships that have been funded by the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 (STWOA). The STWOA focused national attention on the need to prepare adolescents better to make successful post-high school transitions. The STWOA has provided states with funding to assist communities in creating local partnerships to improve students' educational readiness for careers, thus strengthening the labor force and making the United States more competitive in the global economy (Hershey, Silverberg, Haimson, Hudis, & Jackson, 1999; Krumboltz & Worthington, 1999). Three central program components were to be implemented by each local partnership. School-based learning activities were to provide students with early career awareness and exploration activities to help them establish career goals and pursue a broadly defined career path. Work-based learning programs were intended to allow students the opportunity to link school-based studies with work experiences in those career paths that they were interested in pursuing. Connecting activities were then to be in place to match students to appropriate work-based learning settings. Schools and employers were to systematically focus and integrate the instruction that was offered to students in both settings.
In their report to Congress, Hershey et al. 0999) provided results of initial STWOA implementation efforts in eight states. They argued that partnerships were much more likely to engage students in exploring broad career paths rather than training students in industry-specific skills. Students were receiving additional support and guidance in how to plan their high school course work around a career goal and were now more likely to use elective courses to follow their career interests. Also, partnerships were found to be engaging a wide spectrum of students. Although non-college-bound students were taking many more classes that focused on a career goal than they had in the past, students who were planning to attend 4-year colleges were as likely to participate in partnership activities as were students who were not planning on attending college. Girls, especially African American girls, were more involved than were other students in school-related workplace activities. In addition, students were now taking more high school classes that matched their career interests (particularly noted was a substantial increase for African American students). Hershey et al. speculated that school-based learning activities (i.e., career awareness and exploration activities) would likely be sustained after STWOA funding ends. However, it would not be possible to maintain work-based learning and connecting activities without continued funding.
An overriding goal of the STWOA was to establish community-based partnerships that would empower students to overcome barriers related to demographics, geography, socioeconomic level, or disability/health status. Community stakeholders (e.g., parents, school counselors, teachers, and employers) were to provide the emotional/instrumental supports necessary to make partnerships work for students. Within the context of supportive community-based programs, it was hoped that middle and high school students would develop the skills and attitudes that would motivate many more of them to seek additional education after high school and ultimately find substantive employment in an increasingly technologically sophisticated economy. Our study evaluated the effectiveness of curricular strategies and emotional/ instrumental supports recommended by the STWOA to prepare rural adolescents to make post-high school transitions.
Prior research has suggested that rural adolescents must contend with a range of formidable challenges to their career development and preparedness to make post--high school transitions (e.g., Bores-Rangel, Church, Szendre, & Reeves, 1990; Howley, Pendarvis, & Howley, 1988; Lamb & Daniels, 1993; Lapan, Hinkelman, Adams, &Turner, 1999; Post-Kammer, 1985; Rojewski, 1995). For example, rural adolescents may have lower career aspirations and greater expectations for entering the workforce immediately after high school than do adolescents who live in other settings. Many rural young people face geographic isolation that limits future employment opportunities (Rojewski, 1995). Church, Teresa, Rosebrook, and Szendre (1992) found that boys and girls had different efficacy expectations and that these expectations were important determinants for rural minority adolescents from seasonal farm worker families in considering or rejecting a wide range of career alternatives. To assist rural adolescents, researchers need to identify the curricular strategies and emotional/instrumental supports that promote increased career development growth and outcomes that are more satisfying and successful in young adulthood (Blustein, Phillips, Jobin-Davis, Finkelberg, & Roarke, 1997).
Super (1954) suggested that career guidance and counseling services would be greatly improved if theory and research could identify those "traits and trends of development observed in adolescence" (p. 18) that predict more successful career patterns in young adulthood. Worthington and Juntunen (1997) had called attention to the lack of career development theory in the STWOA that inhibited both program development and evaluation efforts. In a special issue of The Career Development Quarterly suggesting ways that career development theory could be usefully incorporated into STWOA efforts, Lent, Hackett, and Brown (1999) echoed Super's hope by suggesting that it was necessary to understand the school-to-work transition as a "process that unfolds gradually throughout the school years and beyond" (p. 299). To help adolescents develop more planful, adaptive (Savickas, 1999), and proactive (Claes & Ruiz-Quintanilla, 1998) approaches to their post-high school transitions, overlapping lines of career development research and theory suggest that growth in each of the following areas is required: (a) academic achievement; (b) expectations, including efficacy expectations and outcome expectations (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), and career-related attributions (Luzzo & Jenkins-Smith, 1998); (c) initial goal formation and exploratory actions [Lent et al., 1994; Robbins & Kliewer, 2000); (d) work readiness behaviors and social skills (Bloch, 1996; Job Training Partnership Act, 1982; Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills [SCANS], 1991); (e) systematic exploration of the "career-related aspects" (Gati, 1998) that promote better person-environment fit (Swanson & Fouad, 1999); find (f) active engagement in the process of crystallizing and beginning to implement one's vocational preferences (Strong, 1943; Super, 1983).
We adopted Super's (1954) and Lent et al.'s (1999) position that the school-to-work transition should be understood as a gradually unfolding process across the K-12 school years. Furthermore, an individual's capacity to make a more effective and adaptive post-high school transition is enhanced if positive development in these six interrelated career constructs crystallizes in adolescence (Savickas, 1999). Interventions, such as those promoted by the STWOA, need to be evaluated in terms of their ability to facilitate those "trends in development" that increase an adolescent's chances for making a more successful transition into post-high school educational and vocational training settings. To accomplish this, we treated these six interrelated career constructs as a composite variable that both predicts important indicators of post-high school transition and is itself significantly influenced by STWOA interventions.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
In the present study, we evaluated the impact of four STWOA curriculum strategies and three levels of stakeholder support on the preparation of rural adolescents (8th, 10th, and 12th graders) for their post-high school transitions We assessed preparation for the post-high school transition in two ways. First, measurements of each of the six career constructs previously described were collected. Second, we assessed students' satisfaction with their school's help toward achieving future educational and career goals and the level of education required by students' anticipated first post-high school setting. The four curriculum strategies studied were (a) the organization of classes around a career goal (organized curriculum), (b) teaching instruction that demonstrates to students the relevance of course content to the world of work (relevant curriculum), (c) work-based learning experiences, and (d) connected learning activities. Emotional/instrumental support for students from the following stakeholders was also studied: (a) school counselors, (b) teachers, and (c) multiple stakeholders (i.e., global rating of overall support from eight different sources, including parents).
We tested three research hypotheses. First, we predicted that career development, curriculum strategies, and stakeholder support would each explain significant portions of the variance in student satisfaction that their education was helping them to attain their educational and career goals. Second, we predicted that career development, curriculum strategies, and stakeholder support would each explain significant portions of the variance in the level of education required by the student's anticipated setting immediately following high school. Third, we predicted that curriculum strategies and stakeholder support would each explain significant portions of the variance in career development. In all regression analyses, we used parents' level of education and student sex as covariates to control for potential confounding differences between students.
METHOD
Participants
Students living in rural areas of a large midwestern state participated in this study. Three hundred and forty-seven 8th graders (girls = 206, boys = 141) completed a 50-minute survey. Ninety-two percent of the students were Caucasian American and 3.5% were African American. The mean age of these students was 13.96 years (SD = .70). Two hundred and eighty-one 10th graders (girls = 160, boys = 121) also completed a 50-minute survey. Ninety-one percent of these students were Caucasian American and 3.6% were African American. Their mean age was 15.83 years (SD = .63). Two hundred and fifty-six 12th graders (girls = 143, boys = 113) completed a longer survey in two 50-minute sessions. Their mean age was 17.79 years (SD = .48). Ninety-two percent of these students were Caucasian American and 3.8% were African American. Students were randomly selected to represent both a wide range of academic achievement levels and extent of participation in school-to-work activities. Although the ethnic/racial composition of these three samples of students is representative of the rural student population in the state, there were two areas in the state that had more African American and Hispanic American students attending public schools than did the areas that participated in this study. Partnerships in both of these areas were invited to participate; unfortunately, they declined to do so.
Procedure
The state's STWOA management...
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