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Research Round-up: Impact of Career-Connected Learning on Learner Engagement and Hope

Monday, October 30th, 2023

Advance CTE’s “Research Round-Up” blog series features summaries of relevant research reports and studies to elevate evidence-backed Career Technical Educational (CTE) policies and practices and topics related to college and career readiness. This month’s blog highlights the impact of career-connected learning on learner engagement and hope. These findings align with Advance CTE’s vision for the future of CTE where each learner skillfully navigates their own career journey.

The New Hampshire Learning Initiative (NHLI) partnered with Gallup to survey a group of New Hampshire learners to better understand the impact of Career Connected Learning (CCL). Specifically, this study sought to measure the interactions between CCL participation, school engagement and hope among middle school and high school learners. CCL is an education strategy aiming to boost learners’ knowledge of potential career options and the skills needed for those careers. CCL bridges CTE and core academic classroom experiences to expand career exploration and work-based learning opportunities.

This sample included 9,600 learners, across grades 5-12 from 28 schools and 13 districts throughout the state of New Hampshire.

In this study, participating in CCL opportunities, as explained in the chart below, was measured by engagement and hope.

Engagement indicates the degree to which learners are involved in and are enthusiastic about school
Hope refers to the ideas and energy learners have for the future

Findings from the Gallup-NHLI learner poll demonstrate strong relationships between learners’ career-connected learning participation and their hope and engagement. These encouraging results indicate that CCL opportunities may help move the needle in improving learner outcomes.

Learners in fifth and sixth grades (37%) are the most likely to be engaged out of all learners in grades 5-12. Starting career exploration early could be more impactful when paired with high levels of engagement.
The vast majority of learners (88%) report participating in at least one career-connected learning opportunity.
Career-connected learning opportunities that match learners’ interests are more likely to inform their plans.
Those who agree they have a mentor who supports their development are more likely to be hopeful about the future than their peers who do not have such a mentor (40% vs. 25%).
Those who agree they have a mentor who supports their development are more likely to be engaged than their peers who do not have such a mentor (37% vs. 16%).
This study found a strong relationship between engagement levels and whether a learner says “I know I will graduate from high school”. This connection is the most pronounced among learners who report receiving average or poor grades. For example, among engaged middle schoolers with average or poor grades, 86% of students believe they will graduate from high school, compared to 67% of not-engaged learners.

What type of Career Connected Learning activities were observed in this study?
CCL learning opportunities occur in various ways within schools or even in the community. Common types of CCL include learning about a job or career in their core academic courses, participating in a career fair or attending a job talk or panel. The graph below demonstrates the frequency of learner participation in various types of CCL activities.

About one in three high school students (35%) — and one in four middle school students (26%) — say CCL opportunities at their school have informed what they plan to do after high school.

These results are encouraging and provide educators and leaders with the data they need to best foster learner success — an important step in closing the gap between the skills learners have and the jobs employers need to fill. Partnerships between industry and school districts to increase the frequency of CCL could increase knowledge of local and regional opportunities and peak learner interest. For state and local leaders seeking to leverage the power of CCL in CTE programs, consider the following:

- Conduct climate surveys to understand the current state and availability of CCL-type activities.
- Investigate the process for creating partnerships with local and regional industry leaders to ensure that CCL opportunities are aligned with career pathways.
- Assess the current strategies for communicating the CCL that are available to learners and their families.

Creating opportunities for learners to engage in CCL during the school day in their core courses mitigates barriers presented by transportation, geography or conflicting school schedules.

Please visit Advance CTE’s Learning that Works Resource Center for resources to support connecting the learner experiences in the classroom to careers.

With Learners, Not for Learners: A Toolkit for Elevating Learner Voice in CTE: This toolkit provides state and local CTE leaders with actionable resources, guidance and tools to ensure CTE learner voices are elevated and heard for the improvement of CTE policies and practices.
ECMC’s Question the Quo Report: This national report highlights Gen Z’s desire for increases in the information and opportunities to explore career options.

Amy Hodge, Membership and Policy Associate

By Layla Alagic in Research
Tags: Gallup, graduation, Learner Engagement, Middle grades, New Hampshire, Research Review

Poll finds overwhelming support for more CTE, internships in high school

Thursday, September 18th, 2014

Research Image_6.2013 A new PDK/Gallup poll released Tuesday showed 87 percent of Americans believe high school students should receive â€œmore education about possible career choices.â€ Further, a majority of Americans agreed that the factors that help students get a good job include working on a real-world project, possessing employability skills such as teamwork and dependability, and having a mentor or advisor.

These results came from the second installment of the 46^th annual PDK/Gallup poll. Be sure to check out our coverage of the first data release here, which primarily focused on the Common Core State Standards.

The findings add to a growing cadre of support for CTE in preparing students for success in both college and careers. The disaggregated survey results were filtered into the following categories: national total, public school parents and political affiliation.

Public school parents strongly agreed that high school students should be required to participate in at least one paid or unpaid internship and should be allowed to earn credits toward graduation from instruction they receive outside of school or online. However, results were mixed about whether students should specialize in a career area of their choice during high school.

Given the enthusiasm shown here for exposing students to more career opportunities, there are clear opportunities to continue educating parents and the public about the benefits of CTE and further breakdown the mentality of CTE as an either/or decision for students — particularly when it comes to preparation for college and careers.

Andrea Zimmermann, State Policy Associate

By admin in Research
Tags: career readiness, Gallup, high schools, internships, work-based learning

CTE Research Review

Wednesday, August 20th, 2014

The 46^th annual â€œ2014 PDK/Gallup Poll of the Publicâ€™s Attitudes toward the Public Schoolsâ€ is being released in two parts this year, with part one debuting Wednesday. The findings present a complicated picture of public attitudes toward the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), standardized tests and issues surrounding local control. This yearâ€™s topics were selected by an expert panel that included NASDCTEc member Katherine Oliver, Assistant State Superintendent at the Maryland Department of Education.

Making headlines were results indicating that support for CCSS is fading fast. This may be tied to misunderstanding of its purpose, as the study found that most Americans oppose public education efforts that they believe were created or promoted by the federal government and strongly support local control of what schools teach. While CCSS is neither a federal initiative nor designed to mandate specific curricula, the poll indicates that many Americans see CCSS as an example of federal overreach. According to the poll 56 percent say local school boards should have the greatest influence in deciding what is taught in public schools. Almost 30 percent of respondents indicated that state governments should have the greatest influence on what public schools teach.

Persistent across age, income and education levels, a majority of Americans also oppose using the CCSS to guide instruction, though opinion splits by political affiliation — Republican (76 percent), Independents (60 percent) and Democrats (38 percent). Nationally, just one in three people said they favored the standards, primarily because they will help students learn what they need to know regardless of where they go to school.

Each year, the study asks the public to grade the Presidentâ€™s performance in support of public schools. This year, President Barack Obama received the lowest grade since becoming president in 2009. Underscoring the deep divides over education in the country, respondents equally gave the President an A or B (27 percent) or a Fail (27 percent).

The studyâ€™s co-author and CEO of PDK International, William J. Bushaw, said policy makers are often faced with a tough reality when public opinion and public policy conflict, with the question being whether to modify the policy to align with public opinion or launch a communications campaign to better explain the new policy.

â€œTo address higher achievement and greater equity, the United States needs standards of excellence, and there is wide agreement that the Common Core State Standards offer these standards. In this case, modifying policy is not a solution,â€ Bushaw wrote. â€œâ€¦ Working together, education professionals through their associations, along with business and political leaders can work together to mount a nonpartisan communications campaign explaining to Americans why the Common Core State Standards are essential to the nationâ€™s future and to the success of all children. Public support for the standards is declining â€” we need to fight for these standards since we are losing in the court of public opinion.â€

Check back on September 17 for the second part of the 2014 poll with topics such as preparing students for college and careers, importance and affordability of college, preparing and evaluating teachers, support for reforming Americaâ€™s schools, and student well-being.

Andrea Zimmermann, State Policy Associate

By admin in Research
Tags: common core state standards, Gallup, standardized testing

Visiting the ECS 2014 National Forum on Education Policy

Thursday, July 3rd, 2014

Yesterday, the Education Commission of the States wrapped up its national forum on education policy in Washington, DC, and I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days attending sessions and meeting educators and administrators from all over the country.

While there, I met Debra McDonald, the Ohio Teacher of the Year, who teaches CTE at the Wayne County Schools Career Center. She told me about graduating from the same career centerâ€™s early childhood education program and how happy she was to be able to come back as a teacher.

Despite the increasing momentum driving Career Technical Education nationally, this yearâ€™s forum only featured one session dedicated to CTE and another on dual enrollment that touched on aspects of the field.Â Both sessions, however, were heavily attended.

Another standout from this yearâ€™s forum was the plenary session, â€œPublic Perception and Education Policymakingâ€ with Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup Education. His presentation was filled with results from the myriad surveys Gallup has conducted in recent years, and made an effective case for the value of education â€“ in particular, CTE. Itâ€™s worth revisiting those surveys as we go out into our communities to make the case for CTE.

All presentations from the forum, including Brandonâ€™s, can be found here.

By admin in Public Policy
Tags: cte, dual enrollment, Gallup

New Poll: Employers Value Skills & Knowledge Over Institutional Prestige

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014

Today Gallup and the Lumina Foundation presented the findings of two polls gauging employer and the publicâ€™s perceptions of Americaâ€™s higher education system. The results, presented this morning at Gallupâ€™s D.C. headquarters, found that a vast majority of employers value occupationally relevant skills, technical competencies, and knowledge gained through a postsecondary education much more than where a student went to school or what their major was. In fact, only 9 percent of employers reported that a job candidateâ€™s alma mater was â€œvery importantâ€ for their hiring purposes and a mere 28 percent reported that a candidateâ€™s major was a â€œvery importantâ€ factor in their hiring decision. Tellingly, 84 percent of employers said that the amount of knowledge the candidate has in a particular field was â€œvery importantâ€ and 79 percent responded to the poll saying that applied skills were of the same value.

Overall the two polls, conducted in late 2013, provide five main insights:

Employers value relevant skills and knowledge much more than where a degree, certification, or credential was conferred.
A large perception gap persists between employers and academic institution leadersâ€” 96 percent of chief academic officers said they were â€œextremely or somewhat confidentâ€ that their institution prepares students for the workplace, while only 11 percent of business leaders shared this view.
The value Americans place on postsecondary education continues to grow. 43 percent of Americans without a postsecondary education have reported researching their options for further education, yet 77 percent of Americans say that higher education remains unaffordable to everyone who needs it.
Confidence in the value of online degrees and educational programs continues to grow among both the American public and employers. 59 percent of business leaders say they would be more to likely hire a candidate with an online degree over a candidate with the same degree from a traditional postsecondary institution.
There is a need for greater transparency when assessing the quality and value of a postsecondary education. Faculty quality, job placement after graduation, program costs, and graduation percentages are among the most important criteria to the American public when selecting a program or assessing its quality. However, Americans report that finding this information is often difficult.

These results have come as a surprise to many. A panel discussion followed the release of these findings which provided a forum for how best to redesign Americaâ€™s higher education system to respond to these findings. Among the many proposals offered, greater employer engagement and an increased role for community colleges emerged as two important pieces to solving what Gallup has now termed the â€œwork preparation paradox.â€ Panelists argued that community colleges are an underutilized bridge between colleges, high schools and the world of work and should be used more to promote access to other forms of postsecondary education outside of a traditional four-year degree.Â Other recommendations for better employer engagement included providing more experiential learning opportunities to students and also increasing the role employers have in faculty professional development.

The full survey with further analysis from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation can be found here.

Steve Voytek, Government Relations AssociateÂ

By Steve Voytek in News, Public Policy
Tags: Gallup, postsecondary

Gallup and Harvard Education Leaders Join CTE Foundation Board of Directors

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

Tim Hodges, Director of Research for Gallupâ€™s Education Practice, and William (Bill) Symonds, Director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education Pathways to Prosperity Project, have joined the Board of Directors of the National Career Technical Education Foundation (NCTEF). Hodges and Symonds bring to NCTEF their reputable experience in and longstanding commitment to quality education.

Dean Folkers, NCTEF Deputy Executive Director, calls Hodges and Symons “visionary leaders who are committed to charting a new path for education in America” who will help NCTEF’s work in supporting and pursuing high-quality CTE.

Under NASDCTEc,Â NCTEF develops and funds activities and programs that are designed to improve CTE. Â NCTEF has focused significant efforts in support of Career Clusters â„¢ projects and efforts to increase the visibility and advance quality of CTE. As public members of the Board of Directors these leaders will advise and influence the policy and direction of the work NCTEF supports in CTE and Career Clustersâ„¢

Hodges consults with K-12 school districts and higher education institutions to lead research projects in strengths development, employee selection and engagement, and wellbeing. Â Â Hodges experienced formal CTE through marketing and agricultural programs, and served in leadership roles for Career Technical Student Organizations as well.

Symonds is the primary author of a groundbreaking report â€“Â Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21^stÂ Century â€“Â which was released in February 2011.Â Since, he has been invited to speak about the report in more than half the 50 states.Â The reportÂ analyzes the reasons America has failed to prepare so many of its youthÂ to lead successful lives as adults, and notably suggests supporting high-quality, comprehensive pathways, such as those used in CTE, that will lead students to a certificate or a postsecondary credential.

Erin Uy, Communications & Marketing Manager

By admin in Advance CTE Announcements
Tags: Gallup, Harvard, National Career Technical Education Foundation, NCTEF, pathways

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