Over the last several years, America’s education policy makers have rediscovered the value of career pathways, apprenticeships, and other efforts to connect young people to the workplace. Long before the pandemic upended the economy, it was clear that our school-to-work pipeline was broken. Millions of well-paying middle-skills jobs were going unfilled, many adults with graduate degrees were struggling to find jobs, and state and federal leaders from both sides of the aisle had come to agree on the need to invest in opportunities for high school students to explore their career options and begin working toward credentials in desirable fields.
This is not a new idea. Support for career and technical education (CTE) has waxed and waned for generations. What is new, however, is the depth of the recent research into the social and psychological dimensions of workplace readiness. In the past, career educators tended to assume that once students become competent and qualified to work in auto mechanics, culinary arts, or any other field, they would have no problem finding a job. However, success in the workforce depends on more than technical skills and content (what I call habits of mind). Equally important is social capital, or the capacity to navigate relationships (what I call habits of association). According to a growing body of evidence, the old adage had it right: What you know is only as important as who you know (and how you get along with them; Fisher, 2018).
Thus, career educators are becoming much more intentional about helping students build their social capital, including both the ability to bond with like-minded colleagues and create bridges with new and different kinds of people — bonding allows workers to support each other and “get by” when work is hard, and bridging allows them to expand their views, so they can “get ahead” (Claridge, 2018).
That’s why if you visit the country’s most successful CTE programs, you’ll see that they’ve put relationship building and networking at the center of the curriculum. Whether they feature apprenticeships, internships, staffing and placement services, or other designs, they make a point of connecting students to real workplaces over extended periods of time, encouraging them to build personal connections, develop a strong sense of their own occupational identity (Ferris, 2017), and get to know people who’ve taken on new job roles and responsibilities.
And since this requires placing students in healthy workplaces that are willing to provide long-term mentoring and support, you’ll also see that the best CTE programs have built robust partnerships with local employers. In Los Angeles, for instance, the Wiseburn Unified School District and Da Vinci Schools, a charter network, have more than 100 business and nonprofit partners offering extended mentorships, workshops, boot camps, and consultancies. In Boston, Match Public Charter School has partnered with Southern New Hampshire University to assist students with college and career placement, including comprehensive career services for up to two years after graduation. And in Atlanta, Fulton County Schools and Junior Achievement created 3D Education, in which 11th-grade students are paired with coaches in off-campus work settings in such career pathways as business and technology, entrepreneurship, marketing, and financial services.
Such partnerships require more careful planning than traditional CTE models, but once they’re up and running, they provide much more effective pathways into jobs and careers, helping students not just to learn technical skills and content but also to bond with other members of the workplace and build bridges with those who’ve taken their skills in new directions.
References
Claridge, T. (2018, January 2). What is the difference between bonding and bridging social capital? Social Capital Research and Training.
Ferris, D. (2017, July 5). What is occupational identity? Career Trend.
Fisher, J.F. (2018). Who you know: Unlocking innovations that expand students’ networks. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bruno V. Manno
Bruno V. Manno is a senior adviser for K-12 education at the Walton Family Foundation.
