National Career Awareness Project

Throughout 2011, NCTN and Literacy Information and Communication System's (LINCS) Regional Resource Center Region 1 led the National Career Awareness Project, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education.

The overall goal of the project is to increase and improve adult learners’ career awareness and planning throughout all levels of the ESOL, ABE, and Adult Secondary Education spectrum by helping adult education program staff incorporate career awareness and planning into their instruction and counseling activities.

This extended professional development project involves two phases over a six-month period. The first is an online course to prepare practitioners to explore the career planning process using the Integrating Career Awareness into the ABE/ESOL Classroom (ICA) curriculum guide, where teams of practitioners develop a customized approach to implementing the curriculum guide with the support of a group of peers and facilitators/advisors with expertise in the area of career exploration and planning. The online course is followed by an implementation phase, supported by project coaches and an online peer learning community. At the end of the implementation phase, the state-level team leader develops a written plan for statewide dissemination of career planning curriculum and related professional development activities.

Sixteen teams from the following states were selected to participate: Arkansas; California; Colorado; Delaware; Georgia; Maryland; Minnesota; Missouri; New York; North Carolina; Pennsylvania; Texas; Washington; and West Virginia.

The approach to professional development used in this project is based on what we know about effective professional development:

Sustained over time: minimum involvement of six weeks
Focus on subject matter knowledge: career planning models and resources
Collective participation of teachers from the same program: two teachers/counselors per program
Active learning, ideally job-embedded: incorporation of online course material directly into classroom/counseling practice with support from peers and project staff
Coherence—alignment with program/state policies and standards and teacher beliefs: State teams that inform planning for future training and dissemination and ensure alignment with state standards

The online course used in this project to prepare instructors and counselors to use the Integrating Career Awareness curriculum guide will be available to the public in early 2012. For more information visit ProfessionalStudiesAE.

Questions: Contact Sandy Goodman by email at sgoodman@worlded.org or by telephone at (617) 385-3816.

This project is supported by funds from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, through CFDA 84.2567T, LINCS Regional Resource Center Grant No. X257T06001. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service or enterprise mentioned in this course is intended or should be inferred.