Working with Young People to Construct Order out of Chaos

Paul DalzielAERU, Lincoln University

Presentation to the Careers Research Symposium: Order and Chaos

Career Development Association of New ZealandUniversity of Canterbury, 17 October 2013

Mihi

E ngā tāne, e ngā wāhine, e tau nei, tēnā koutou katoa.Ka tino nui tāku mihi o aroha ki a koutou i tēnei ra.Kei te mihi ahau ki ngā taonga o Ngāi Tahu, tāngata whenua o tēnei wahi.Ka iti tāku mōhio o te reo Māori, ēngari kei te mihi ahau ki tēnei taonga o ēnei motu.Tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou. Kia ora tātou katoa.

Outline of the Presentation

1. Brief introduction to the EEL programme.

2. A chaotic environment.

3. Empowering young people.

4. Organisational roles/models.

5. The changing role of the career practitioner.

Brief Introduction to EEL

• The Education and Employment Linkages research programme was funded by FRST, MSI and MBIE from June 2007 to September 2012.

• There were four research leaders– Karen Vaughan (School Communities)

– Jane Higgins (Regional Communities)

– Hazel Phillips (Māori and Pacific Communities)

– Paul Dalziel (Employer-Led Channels)

“At the centre of our research is the young person, a dynamic individual who is continuously constructing self-identities in diverse contexts, discovering and developing their personal abilities and making purposeful choices that are influenced by perceived and actual social, economic and cultural constraints.”

Quasi Mission Statement of EEL

Family and Whānau

School Community

Polytechnics

Wānanga

Private Trainers

Universities

Gap Year(s)

Employers

A Chaotic Environment

Coping with Chaos

• Karen Vaughan (NZCER) has written an article “Learning Workers: Young New Zealanders and Early Career Development”, published in Vocations and Learning, 2010, Vol. 3: 157-178.

• It presents results based on two sets of interviews with young people in the Pathways and Prospects study led by NZCER.

Clusters Drawn from Recent School Leavers

Cluster Cluster MaximThe Hopeful Reactors “I’m not going to end up a bum.”

The Passion Honers “I’m becoming something in a secure career.”

The Confident Explorers “I’m building my self for my future.”

The Anxious Seekers “I don’t know which way to turn.”

Source: Vaughan (2010).

Clusters Drawn from Older School Leavers

Cluster Cluster DescriptionThe Risk Managers

Satisfied with their career, but driven by financial need or avoidance of bad outcomes.

The Fine- Tuners

Careful planners, wanting either to specialise or to use their skills in quite a different way.

The Opportunity Initiators

Open to change and risks, especially keen to take up new learning opportunities.

The Discontented Trialists

Unhappy with their lives generally, no sense of career identification, disengaged from learning.

Source: Vaughan (2010).

Key messages from Vaughan’s paper

• Young adults can be understood as learning-workers who actively develop their careers rather than simply enter them.

• Some young adults experience lifelong learning as self-fulfilling while others experience it as burdensome.

Empowering Young People

Karen Vaughan’s article noted that (page 158): “Many policy messages in New Zealand have suggested that young people making seemingly messy or nonlinear transitions from school to tertiary education and work arise from not making the right choices.”EEL tried to move away from that suggestion.

“At the centre of our research is the young person, a dynamic individual who is continuously constructing self-identities in diverse contexts, discovering and developing their personal abilities and making purposeful choices that are influenced by perceived and actual social, economic and cultural constraints.”

Quasi Mission Statement of EEL

Empowerment through Skills

“Skills have become the global currency of the 21st century. Without proper investment in skills, people languish on the margins of society, technological progress does not translate into economic growth, and countries can no longer compete in an increasingly knowledge-based global society.”

(OECD, Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives, 2012)

Policy has aimed at higher education levels

• Raise the school leaving age to 16.

• Increase the proportion of 18-year-olds with NCEA level 2 or equivalent qualification.

• Increase the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds with advanced trade qualifications, diplomas and degrees (at Level 4 or above).

These are not enough without other changes…

What creates labour market skills?

Discover Individual Abilities

Individual Abilities

Discipline through Education

Individual Abilities

Education InvestmentHuman

Capital

Display to Potential Employers

Individual Abilities

Education Investment

Employment Opportunities

HumanCapital

TrustedQualifications

Matching = Skills

Individual Abilities

Education Investment

Diverse Skills

Employment Opportunities

HumanCapital

TrustedQualifications

MatchingStrengths

Individual Abilities

Education Investment

Diverse Skills

Discover Discipline

Display

Employment Opportunities

HumanCapital

TrustedQualifications

MatchingStrengths

The Four Ds

• Mark Oldershaw is chief executive of the Industry Training Federation:“At the moment the senior secondary school programme is heavily structured around the ‘pathway’ to university.The 70% of students who don’t go to university are not given the same clarity as to what they need to do get on a pathway to further training and work.”

We have not been good at “Diversity”

Recent Positive Developments

• The curriculum in New Zealand schools is being broadened.

• Links between schools and employers are being strengthened (e.g. Gateway).

• Trades Academies and the Manukau Institute of Technology Tertiary High School have been established.

Vocational Pathways

• The Ministry of Education, the industry Training Federation and and individual ITOs have worked together to produce vocational pathways in the NCEA qualifications.

• This will need support and resourcing in schools to realise its full potential.

Labour Market Skills

“Skills have become the global currency of the 21st century. Without proper investment in skills, people languish on the margins of society, technological progress does not translate into economic growth, and countries can no longer compete in an increasingly knowledge-based global society.”

(OECD, Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives, 2012)

Organisation Roles/Models

“In New Zealand, the introduction of standards-based secondary school qualifications in 2002 brought a great degree of flexibility to course content and the kind of learning that can be formally recognised, thereby demanding that young people make many more decisions, at earlier stages, about different credit combinations, qualifications, and pathways through school.” Vaughan (2010, p. 158)

Family and Whānau

School Community

Polytechnics

Wānanga

Private Trainers

Universities

Gap Year(s)

Employers

A Chaotic Environment

Family and Whānau

School Community

Polytechnics

Wānanga

Private Trainers

Universities

Gap Year(s)

Employers

Careers Offices as Nodes in NetworksC.O.

C.O.

C.O.

C.O. is the Careers Office

C.O.

C.O.

• One part of the EEL programme sought to understand whether the networking framework can be used to suggest how a university careers office can add value to its different stakeholders?

• The research was based on “soft systems methodology” developed over 30 years at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.

The changing role of the career practitioner

• Checkland, P. and J. Poulter (2006) Learning for Action: A Short Definitive Account of Soft Systems Methodology and its Use for Practitioners, Teachers and Students. Chichester: John Wiley.

• It is designed to produce insights into system behavior when people are acting purposively in pursuit of their own values and goals.

The Research Method

“At the centre of our research is the young person, a dynamic individual who is continuously constructing self-identities in diverse contexts, discovering and developing their personal abilities and making purposeful choices that are influenced by perceived and actual social, economic and cultural constraints.”

Quasi Mission Statement of EEL

The careers team at the University of Canterbury helped EEL test these ideas.

Rich Picture of a Careers Office

Careers New Zealand• Careers New Zealand provides

the national backbone of careers information, advice and guidance for these regional networks of careers offices.

• It has published career education benchmarks for secondary schools and for tertiary institutions.

Careers Offices as Nodes in Networks

CI&E proactively engages and works with students, faculties and employers achieving their career and employment-oriented goals,

by using its professional and financial resources to design and deliver an integrated set of services that adds value to these three groups,

in order to contribute to the overall mission of the University of Canterbury.

Purposeful Behavior of CI&E

Findings from the Case Study

• The careers office can be a hub of career education networks.

• It should build on what is already happening in employer engagement:– Employer recruitment visits to campus– Student part-time employment– Regional development agencies

Kua mutu tāku korero mo tēnei rā. That finishes my talk for today. Ka tino nui te mahi i mua. There is a lot of work in front of us.No reira, me āwhina tātou ki a tātou. Therefore, let us help each other. Tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou. Kia ora tātou katoa. That is you. That is you. May you and I, all of us, enjoy well-being.

Copies of the research reports produced in the Education Employment Linkages programme are available at:

www.eel.org.nz