Beginning in the early years of childhood education though to senior years in high school, students are learning about the world of work and careers. And teachers are leading students’ learning about their futures. When it comes to career development learning in schools, teachers provide crucial learning experiences that expand their students’ imaginations and possibilities. Despite their obvious importance, teachers’ expertise in career development learning is pretty much unknown. ACCELL doctoral researcher, Greg Souvan, is exploring teacher’s interest and knowledge of career development learning that occurs in mainstream subject classes.
Career Learning in Mainstream Subjects
The primary focus of the research is to investigate mainstream teachers’ beliefs about teaching career development concepts within their classes in secondary schools. The findings of this research should heighten education departments’ awareness of career development learning in schools. Also, the findings will inform professional development for teachers in the future.
Teachers may have high self-efficacy beliefs when teaching in their specialist subject area. However, many secondary school teachers without qualifications or professional development in career development studies are asked to take a career education class. This research project is exploring teachers’ beliefs about their pedagogical expertise and their perspective on career development activities in subject classes.
The participants involved in this research are secondary school teachers. It does not matter if they have taught or have not taught a specific career education class. The research is exploring a mix of perspectives from different teachers.
Tell Us What You Believe
We want to support teachers who are doing great work in their classrooms and schools. If you are a teacher, please complete an online survey that should take about 5-10 minutes. Click on the link here to access the anonymous survey: http://www.createsurvey.com/s/lFjVMl/
If you know a teacher then please share this article. You can use the share buttons to spread the word through twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
By completing or sharing the survey, you will help us to discover more about what teachers want to learn to do their important work to inspire students. Please accept our thanks for your support of the project.
Greg Souvan is a registered teacher and guidance officer who works for Education Queensland. His doctoral research is supervised by ACCELL’s Research Director, Peter McIlveen PhD, and Dr Stephen Hughes PhD. The research project is approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) of the University of Southern Queensland. The project is approved by the following Education Departments:
- QLD Department of Education & Training,
- NSW Department of Education,
- SA Department of Education & Child Development,
- VIC Department of Education & Training, and
- Catholic Education (Melbourne).
You can find more detail by clicking on these links:
ACCELL Research Team 
Hi Ed. I just noticed your response. Thank you for your input. I am keen to hear how career development in schools for K-8 is going in your district. There is a lot of ‘chatter’ about career education for primary schools at the moment her in Oz. Sounds like you have your teachers on board who have a belief that that can be effective career development practitioners. Teacher self-efficacy is my focus in this research and I am looking forward to crunching the data very soon. I am just trying to gain a few more responses before closing the survey.
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What an amazing project. At a time when the world of work is changing so quickly – we need students engaged in relevant world of work exploration. Wish we could participate from here in the US. Your work is relevant to us because in our district we have deployed the world of work initiative with 700 teachers across 26 schools in K-8. We believe that career development is a human process and have designed a model for our teachers to lead this work with their students. Teachers are starting with our framework deploying Holland and our materials aligned to the O*Net, it has been marvelous to watch the craftsmanship from teachers integrating career exploration within their core curriculum. If we can support please let us know. Much to learn from your work. Thank you for your efforts.
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