GROUP-ORIENTED CAREER PROGRAM

Group-oriented Career Program

Group-oriented Career Program

Introduction

Career education as a discrete subject or program in secondary schools developed initially in countries such as the United States of America has been accepted as a constituent part of the Australian secondary school curriculum since the 1970s. (Doe, 2007)

Career education is now a curriculum-oriented program of personal and career development operating against a background of traditional liberal education. This specific form of education is now considered an important program in schools, particularly. All state secondary schools have a trained Careers Adviser who usually provides class lessons and individual and group counselling, organises work experience, and provides audio/visual and written reference information. (Doe, 2007)

Career education programs have as a significant feature a commitment to links between and among vocational preparation, career planning and job placement in the senior years in addition to the more traditional assistance to students to choose a full-time post-school course of study.

Explanation

Objectives

Six common themes underpin best practice in career education and guidance:

it is client focused - it is based upon the needs of clients, it consciously monitors outcomes against these needs, it uses feedback to improve practice, and it contains tangible outcomes for students such as a portfolio;

it is mainstream and systemic - it is an entitlement for all students, it is whole-school provision;

it is multi-faceted - it includes information, learning from the workplace and experience, personal guidance, a curriculum perspective, enterprise education, the development of the key competencies and an emphasis on post-school choices;

it actively involves students - it gains students' perspectives on jobs, courses and careers, and uses students to gather and report on this information;

it involves the wider school community - it embraces employers, mentors, parents, and ex-students, and on-going access to community agencies; and,

it uses relevant, accessible and user-friendly information - it employs a variety of tools and methods to deliver information to suit different students' needs (Doe, 2007)

Goals

Career education programs have, in the main, provided for the needs of the general secondary school student population. In the same way that the students at each end of the general population spectrum - those in intellectually disabled student programs and those in rehabilitation of talented student programs - need special support to achieve at their full potential in their schooling experiences, the same students also require career education programs oriented to meet their special needs (Wagner, J. McElligott, E.P. Wagner 2nd and L.H. Gerber, 2005). The recognition of the special needs of rehabilitation of talented students within their general education indicates the likelihood that these needs should extend to the provision of career education. How specialised and/or different does the career advice for rehabilitation of talented students need to be?

Target population

The target population of this study is the students aged around 15-20 years.

A body of literature reveals that career education for rehabilitation of talented students needs to emphasise:

multipotentiality;

where to focus student effort;

the involvement of students in their program construction;

support to reduce career stereotyping, particularly gender-based;

development of aspiration enhancement, especially for ...