The overall aim of this research is to contribute insight that will guide and support decisions about the direction, focus, and resourcing of careers education in New Zealand schools.
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.
A number of New Zealand research studies and evaluations have found evidence that careers guidance delivery remains haphazard in some schools. There is also evidence that some schools are working innovatively in relation to the Ministry of Education's requirements.
We surveyed secondary school principals and careers staff for insights into how schools organise careers education, what activities it consists of, and how the careers staff view their jo
This article draws on the first two years of a longitudinal study of young people’s pathway and career-related experiences and perspectives. It argues for a richer conceptualisation of young people’s transition to study, training and employment than allowed by simple school-to-labour market models.
We present four clusters of young people’s interview narratives
Meet the "confident explorers". They are young people who are engaged in various forms of study, training and employment in their first three years out of school. Their commitment to their various pathways can only be described as short-term, yet they have a strong sense of purpose. It's just that it's not a purpose aligned to a particular job or vocation. Rather, they think in terms of being a particular kind of enterprising person with a range of high-level and adaptable skills.
This article summarises the key features of the transition support, offered to students at seven low-decile schools, which impacted on their career decision making and postschool destinations. This article reports results from an NZCER study: Innovative pathways from school.
The Parker Brothers' 1971 game of "Careers" may be light-hearted but the career decisions faced by young people leaving school today are no game. Those decisions are considered more serious and seem more complex now.
Karen Vaughan discusses findings from the Prospects and Pathways study of young people moving into tertiary study and employment, and their bearing on career guidance principles.
Pathways and Prospects is a 4-year study of young people's pathway and career experiences and perspectives after leaving school and entering study/training and the workforce.
This report analyses two years worth of in-depth interviews with 114 young people in employment, the army, apprenticeship, university, and youth training.
It focuses on how they make career choices in relation to the different dimensions of security and exploration in their outlooks.
Youth transition has been targeted by the New Zealand government as an area for increased policy and programme development and budget support.
The budget and transition package attempts to bring together transition policy and programmes under the rubric of a ‘pathways’ approach to young people moving beyond school.
This article engages with current debate in New Zealand over the legitimacy of various young people's activities within a transition-to-work framework based around the metaphor of "pathways".
The article argues for a more complex understanding of the imperatives young people now face in choosing careers within a deregulated, seamless tertiary education system and an intensification of particular kinds consumer choice-making.
Youth Pathways / He Ara Rangatahi was a one-on-one career guidance and general well-being support service set up to support "at risk" young people in their transition from school. It was piloted by Career Services between October 2003 and July 2004 and part of the government's Youth Transitions Strategy.
This paper explores some of the more disturbing aspects of research on what was, at the time, the only state-funded alternative secondary school in New Zealand.
Throughout the five years of research, New Zealand's school inspectorate, the Education Review Office, publicly released a series of highly critical reports on the school which resulted in it being closed down.
The purpose of this paper is to sketch a picture of young people’s experiences and thoughts about their schooling, identities, and future career opportunities. It’s basically the result of some thinking I’ve been doing as NZCER begins a new longitudinal project in transition. And transition is currently a hot topic – the government have just allocated millions to a Training and Education Package, covering a number of transition initiatives.
