Ako Aotearoa National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence
Research report
This report discusses findings from the Transforming Industry-Led Assessment of On-Job Learning project. The project has been a collaboration between the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) and the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation (BCITO), funded by Ako Aotearoa. The project’s aim was to shed more light on systems of on-job assessment generally by focusing on one ITO specifically—the BCITO—and its improvements in organisational capability in order to improve outcomes for learners.
It’s a big deal to become an apprentice. You’ve decided you’d like to get trade qualified and your boss thinks you’re worth the time and effort. That’s why they signed you into a training agreement. While on the surface things might seem a little overwhelming, it’s not out of control. In fact it’s really under your control. So now is a good time for you to take charge of your apprenticeship because let’s face it – it’s your apprenticeship, your qualification and your career!
How can teachers support young people in thinking about and crafting these pathways? Over the period of their working lives, there is a high likelihood that young people will seek (or be required) to develop in changing occupations, to move into many (possibly different) jobs at different times in life, and to manage learning opportunities or requirements (at tertiary institutions, in the workplace) throughout life. In such a dynamic environment, when the jobs in which many young people will be employed don’t yet exist, is it possible to talk about ‘future-proofing’?
Career management competencies have recently emerged in New Zealand and in international policy addressing people’s capabilities to build successful (working) lives in de-industrialised, knowledge societies. This article shows how career management competencies could address three major and long-standing problems with New Zealand school-based career education – inequitable access, marginalisation, and lack of fitness for purpose. It argues for an overall shift from careers information and guidance delivery to longer-term capability building.
School-based careers advisors have been given a key role in assisting young people in transition from school to work and further education. Their role is especially significant in light of the strategic importance attached to career development for workforce preparation and development policies. However major changes in the nature of work and in contemporary transitions from school, as well as shifts in career education theory and delivery, mean that careers advisors are often left playing continual “catch up” challenge in terms of knowledge and expertise.
Young adults’ early career development is an increasingly important field of inquiry. With the complexity of modern transitions from school and the lifelong learning demands of emerging knowledge societies, governments are concerned to improve learning pathways into, and through, tertiary education and work. Young adults are exploring new learning and work possibilities and understanding these create a challenge for governments trying to validate their experiences and enhance their employability.
Secondary school students in New Zealand are offered an extensive smorgasbord of “taster” courses through a resource called STAR - the Secondary-Tertiary Alignment Resource.
Jane Higgins, Karen Vaughan, Hazel Phillips and Paul Dalziel
2008
AERU Research Unit, Lincoln University
Research report
This report is the second in the Education Employment Linkages Research Report series. Its purpose is to document what is already known in the international literature, drawing on the research team’s respective backgrounds in education, sociology, indigenous studies and economics to begin a trans-disciplinary account of key issues for young people making education and employment choices in their transition years from school to work.
Competent Children, Competent Learners is a longitudinal study which began in 1993 and follows the progress of a sample of around 500 New Zealand young people from early childhood education through schooling and beyond.
This article shows how one longitudinal youth transition study has attempted to draw on the idea of ‘working the hyphen’ of researcher-researched relations by paying attention to a second hyphen-that of policy-research.
