Connecting Academics into Career and Technical Education

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Connecting Academics into Career and Technical
Education

• Presented by
• Travis Ridley
• Colonial Heights High School

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Problems

• Preparing students for the Workforce
• Providing students with technical literacy
• Providing 21st century skills across the board
• The United States does not face a worker
  shortage, but a skills shortage.
• Source U.S. Department of Labor Futurework
  Trends and Challenges for the 21st Century,

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Integrating Academic and CTE Content
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Why the need to Integrate

• To help meet student demand for training
• To help meet short term labor market demand for
  trained workers
• To help meet long-term strategic goals for human
  resources and economic development

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What We Know

• To help all students reach common, high
  standards, the one-size-fits-all approach of
  todays high school must yield to a system that
  presumes students will learn through different
  pedagogies, institutional arrangements, and
  amounts of time. . .
• We must provide students with multiple learning
  options and pathways and varied lengths of time

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What We Know

• CTE courses inherently provide contexts for
  applied or experiential learning . . . delivery
  of content area curricula within a relevant,
  authentic, and presumably more motivating context
  . . . the creation of explicit connections
  between situations is critical if students are to
  transfer their knowledge and skills outside the
  classroom, whether it is to another context or to
  an abstract testing situation.
• Stone et al. (2006)

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CTE Trends

• Academic/CTE integration
• Career clusters
• Secondary/postsecondary articulation
• High tech
• Rigorous academic technical skills

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(No Transcript)
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Technical Literacy

• Read, understand, and communicate in the language
  of a career field
• Understand technical concepts and principles
• Use academic knowledge and skills to solve
  problems
• Use basic technology

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Integrating 21st Century Skills

• Essential 21st century knowledge and skills are
  not the focus of traditional academic courses
• Professionalism/work ethic
• Oral and written communications
• Teamwork/collaboration
• Critical thinking/problem solving
• Are They Really Ready to Work? (2006)

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Integrated 21st Century Curriculum21st Century
Skills and Content

• Communication skills
• Thinking and problem-solving skills
• Creativity and innovation skills
• Collaboration skills
• Interpersonal and self-directional skills
• Information and communications technology (ICT)
  skills
• 21st century content (e.g., global awareness,
  financial literacy, civic literacy, health and
  wellness awareness)
• Partnership for 21st Century Skills

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Definition of Career Academies
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Benefits of Academic and CTE Teacher Partnerships

• Academic teachers learn contextual applications
  which allows them to engage all their students
• CTE teachers demonstrate how their programs
  contribute to student academic achievement
• CTE no longer seen as an alternative to
  postsecondary education but an achievable goal
  for all high school students
• Partnership brings relief from high-stress
  testing environment

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Professional Development to Support Integration
Lessons Learned

• Common goal(s)
• Understanding of how this will benefit both
  teachers (and not just the students)
• View of integration of academics as an
  enhancement and not a threat to what teachers
  already do
• Maintenance of the integrity of the CTE
  curriculum so the academics emerge from the
  existing curriculum and are not superimposed onto
  it
• Teacher discretion in choosing their partner
• A true partnership (neither teacher is subjugated
  by the other)
• Proximity and accessibility
• Support from administration

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In conclusion we must . . .

• Prepare students for full-time employment
• Have strategies for teaching academics
• Eliminate in favor of a common academic program
  for all students
• Provide an occupational sequence integrated with
  rigorous academic coursework