GLEANINGS: Focus on Work-Based Learning

by Damaris Moore

Work-based learning has become an increasingly popular part of the effort to redefine the relationship between school and work and to help youth make the transition from school to employment. Engaging students in work outside the classroom is seen as a direct way to prepare them for adult responsibilities. Cooperative education, youth apprenticeships, clinical experiences, school-based enterprises--instructional programs that deliberately use the workplace as a site for student learning--are all forms of work-based learning. The passages below offer some guidelines to help programs succeed.

from How Health Career Academies Provide Work-Based Learning
by David Stern and Mikala Rahn (MDS-1026)

(This report discusses how properly structured jobs, whether paid or unpaid, can provide high school students with the opportunity to apply and extend what they have learned. Health-related occupations lend themselves readily to this career-related model of education.)

In American high schools, the benefits of learning by doing have traditionally been reserved for students enrolled in vocational education courses. Each year, about half a million students participate in cooperative education or other arrangements where specific learning objectives are met through part-time employment in office occupations, retailing, and other vocational fields. Vocational classes also engage tens of thousands of students each year in school-based enterprises, where they build houses, run restaurants, repair cars, operate retail stores, staff child care centers, and provide other such services.

But major changes are now taking place in vocational education. Today's high school diploma provides access to fewer and fewer stable, high-paying jobs. Accordingly, more of the training for specific occupations is taking place in two-year colleges and post-secondary technical institutes.

At the high school level, new forms of career-related education are creating options for all students, from the developmentally disabled to the academically gifted. Among the new models are career academies, youth apprenticeships, and tech prep and career major programs. These models use work-related themes to focus the curriculum and prepare students for post-secondary education, including four-year colleges and universities. (The history of vocational education in this country shows that unless the four-year college option is kept open, it will be difficult to attract ambitious students and avoid acquiring a second-rate image.) These new options were supported by the 1990 Perkins Act and by the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act, but successful implementation requires changes that go well beyond the traditional vocational departments of the high school.

from Linking College and Work: Exemplary Policies and Practices of Two-Year College Work-Based Learning Programs
by Debra D. Bragg and Russell E. Hamm (MDS-795)

(This in-depth study of ten programs analyzes what enables work-based learning programs in two-year colleges to succeed, and what gets in the way.)

The research team documented numerous strengths as well as limitations for the ten selected work-based learning programs. A very important objective of the study was to identify common factors, elements, phenomena, activities, and issues that could help to distinguish or explain exemplary policies and practices of two-year college work-based learning programs. . . .

• Strong program leadership entails an individual or small group of individuals who serves as the leader(s)/director(s) and ensures the ongoing success of the program. . . .
• Exclusive connections between the program and its environment is another factor. The location of the program relative to its industry is a critical factor that operates in three ways: (1) the programs capture the major share of the training market because other competing programs are small and/or ineffectual, (2) the programs are extremely closely connected to the local industry for which they prepare employees, and (3) the programs are perceived as having a direct impact on the local economy since well-qualified employees transition easily into local companies where they are immediately productive.
• Frequent and effective communication with local employers was the essence of the kinds of "close" relationships needed to sustain work-based learning programs. The relationships are nourished by formal and informal communication mechanisms that are carefully planned or sometimes simply emerge out of necessity. Seemingly, the more college personnel and employers/employees are in contact with one another, the stronger the relationship grows. . . .
• Beliefs about program excellence help to perpetuate the idea that a work-based learning program is successful and that students and graduates are held to high standards. . . .
• An effective school-based learning component ensures the programs maintain support from other college personnel and upper-level college administrators. Exemplary programs are well-connected to the rest of the college curriculum, maintaining prominence within the mainstream of campus life. . . .
• Adequate and diverse financial support is critical if two-year colleges expect to maintain a sufficient funding base to support existing and potential work-based learning programs. . . .
• Innovative program and pedagogical features such as multiple teaching, learning, and support strategies are very evident in exemplary programs. Their presence helps to support the notion that teaching- and learning-associated work-based learning is indeed practical, realistic, and applied, while also being academically challenging. . . .

from Learning How to Learn at Work: Lessons From Three High School Programs
by C. Stasz, T. Kaganoff (MDS-916)

(Through case studies of three high school programs, this report describes the characteristics of teaching and learning in work-based learning, and identifies how the work context supports or hinders both.)

Overall, we conclude that most of what we learned in examining teaching and learning opportunities in these programs was quite positive. The longer-term, fairly intensive work-based learning experiences studied here provided opportunities for students to learn many work-related skills and attitudes. Students were generally satisfied with their work experience, although, on average, felt work was not very challenging. Although the programs varied with respect to opportunities for learning specific skills, the work-based learning experiences generally met each program's goals. However, the study does raise some questions and implications that we offer not as criticisms of the programs we studied, but as general lessons to consider when developing educationally valuable work-based learning opportunities for young people.

• Make Sure Students Are Work Ready

Students' attitudes and dispositions toward work are perhaps more important than technical skills, since the jobs they are given are not very demanding to learn and do not require specialized skills. In this environment, to be successful, students must be energetic, meticulous, and sociable. Students who are shy or slow in their work habits are less successful. . . .

• Match Students to Social Context of Work

A corollary to preparing students for work is to carefully match students and worksites. Program coordinators spend a great deal of time getting to know employers so they can maximize employer satisfaction. A good experience with a student is often the best selling point for a program and the best way to keep employers involved. . . .

• Maybe Smaller Is Just Better

These three different programs have one thing in common--all enroll a small number of students. . . . An important question, which we cannot examine but only raise here, is the extent to which the small size and focus of these programs contributes to any positive outcomes. It may be that while work-based learning or industry exploration provides a focus for the program's activities, the real power in the program, from the students' perspective, is being part of a small group that includes caring adults. The "treatment," per se, may not matter as much as the fact that there is one.

• Must School and Work Be Connected for Work-Based Learning To Have Value?

This study corroborates other research on school-to-work programs in finding that school and work are often only loosely connected and that connections are difficult to establish. But the study also shows that students learn many valuable lessons and develop many skills even though connections between school and work are weak. . . .

Perhaps the effort to connect school and work is misplaced. Perhaps the real power of the work-based learning concept is pedagogical--authentic work experiences should give students opportunities to apply knowledge in useful contexts, thereby gaining a deeper understanding of both their abilities and the opportunities they can create for themselves through experience and/or education. By this criterion, all the programs arguably have value, whether they explicitly connect to school or not. By focusing on how learning happens, rather than where it happen--at school or at work--and how the two are connected, perhaps we can better determine what value work-based learning provides over other learning opportunities. In the end, learning is a personal, developmental transformation, so we must pay attention to whether or not that transformation occurs, as well as to the context that will make such a transformation possible. It is this context that educators and teachers, in and out of schools, have the most ability to shape.

Damaris Moore, a member of the Dissemination Program, handles NCRVE's public information initiatives.