A renewed emphasis on work-based learning (WBL) has been at the heart of
private, state, and federal STW initiatives in the 1990s. Engaging students in
work outside the classroom is seen as a direct way to prepare them for adult
responsibilities. Hershey
et al. (1997) confirmed that local partnerships
funded by STWOA through the states are placing high priority on developing WBL
opportunities for students.
The 1990s' WBL initiatives are reminiscent of the work experience movement of the 1970s, when the President's Science Advisory Committee (1973), headed by James Coleman, articulated the view of many experts that giving young people responsibilities outside of school would help them make the transition to adulthood. Experience and research since then, however, have clarified that not all work experience is necessarily beneficial (Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986). Quality matters (Stern, Stone, Hopkins, & McMillion, 1990b; Stern & Nakata, 1989). Connecting students' work more closely with school might improve quality, enhancing the educational and developmental value of work experience. Research on cooperative education (co-op), the most prevalent form of school-supervised work experience in the United States, has demonstrated that co-op students in high school and college generally do give more positive reports about their work than students employed in jobs that are not school-supervised (Stern et al., 1995; Stern, Finkelstein, Urquiola, & Cagampang, 1997). But co-op in high schools and two-year colleges has been used mainly as an adjunct to vocational education leading to specific occupations, and has not been tied to the academic curriculum or to preparing students for a four-year college or university. Except for some research on the Experience-Based Career Education program of the 1970s (Owens, 1980), WBL's potential value for purposes beyond acquiring specific job skills has not been explored very much before the 1990s.
The new interest in WBL as a possible means to achieve more general educational or developmental objectives raises fundamental questions. What does "work-based learning" actually mean, and how does it relate to learning in classrooms? This section explains the different purposes for which WBL is being tried, describes the most common formal structures for arranging WBL, and discusses some of the key issues that arise in trying to make WBL serve more purposes for more students.
WBL has been both pushed and pulled into the public policy limelight. The push has come from concern about chronically high levels of youth unemployment, declining numbers of high-wage manufacturing jobs for high school graduates, and a general lack of coherent career-entry paths for young people who do not attend college (William T. Grant Foundation, 1988). The idea of making WBL available to large numbers of youth, as in Germany (Hamilton, 1990), attracted widespread attention in the early 1990s among policymakers and politicians. It was a prominent theme in Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign.
At the same time, WBL has been pulled into discussions of an emerging learning-based economy (Berryman & Bailey, 1992; Marshall & Tucker, 1992; Stern, McMillion, Hopkins, & Stone, 1990a). Computers and telecommunications, globalization of markets for labor and capital, deregulation, and the spread of "lean" production have obliged workers at all levels to become increasingly flexible. Whether employed by a high-performance work organization or forced to move from one employer to another, people at work must continue to learn and adapt at a faster rate than in the past. WBL is a logical strategy to prepare young people for work that is more learning-intensive. In short, "workplaces are part of the education system of the future" (Hamilton & Hamilton, 1997, p. 1).
But what is "work-based learning"? For that matter, what is "work"? As educators and employers attempt to organize actual programs, these questions must be answered. Section 103 of the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act defined WBL as follows:
. . . work-based learning refers to learning that results from work experience that is planned to contribute to the intellectual and career development of students. The work experience is to be supplemented with activities that apply, reinforce, refine, or extend the learning that occurs during work, so that students develop attitudes, knowledge, skills, and habits that might not develop from work experience alone. (p. 13)
Another essential definition is proposed by Hamilton and Hamilton (1997):
Apprenticeship is the epitome of work-based learning. . . . We define work-based learning as occurring intentionally in a location where the primary activity is producing goods or services. (p. 6)
Hamilton and Hamilton also go on to define "work"
as employment-related activity rather than in its broader meaning of purposeful activity that includes schoolwork, working out at a sport, and so on. By our definition, studying about work, learning how to work, or simulating a workplace are all school-based learning, not work-based.
(p. 7)
Nevertheless, they point out,
If students perform services such as cleaning rooms or serving food in the cafeteria, if they work in school-based enterprises that produce goods or services for sale, if they serve as assistants or apprentices to teachers, librarians, or other staff members, and if these activities are designed as learning opportunities, they are doing work-based learning even though they are located in a school building. (p. 7)
A slightly different definition of "work" would be any activity that produces goods or services for sale or use. This is broader than "employment-related activity," but narrower than "purposeful activity." Defining work as production of goods or services would include participation in school-sponsored enterprises as work. This definition is, therefore, consistent with the inclusion of school-sponsored enterprise as permissible sites for WBL in STWOA. Other studies of WBL also define it to include school-based enterprise (Bragg, Hamm, & Trinkle, 1995; OTA, 1995; Pedraza et al., 1997).
Several distinct possible purposes for WBL emerge from a review of the literature and observation of efforts in the field. We may classify these as follows:
These purposes are not mutually exclusive. To some extent they may even be mutually reinforcing: for example, learning all aspects of an industry may promote career awareness and planning. Given that students have limited time, however, it is not possible to maximize all of these purposes simultaneously. Therefore, in practice, different programs emphasize different purposes. We will briefly discuss these purposes and give examples of each one.
Acquisition of Knowledge or Skill for Employment in Particular Occupations or Industries
This is the main purpose of traditional apprenticeship, co-op, and other forms of on-the-job training. Learning by doing, under the guidance of an experienced supervisor, is intended to develop knowledge and facility with specific equipment and procedures that are necessary to do the job.
In the 1990s, however, this traditional practice is being placed in a lifetime career perspective. Preparation that is limited to a particular entry-level job is increasingly regarded as insufficient because the job is likely to change soon. New skill standards for various industries and occupational clusters, therefore, include "core competencies" or "foundations" that should enable people to progress and adapt as conditions change (Klein, 1996; Tucker, 1995). Hamilton and Hamilton (1997), in proposing "technical competence" as the first of seven "principles for work-based learning," explain it this way:
Work-based learning teaches young people how to perform work tasks. . . . Technical competence includes not only mastering procedures but also understanding fundamental principles and concepts underlying procedures, increasing capacity for analytical judgment, and, in most occupational areas, becoming computer literate. (p. 10)
The following observation[34] by an NCRVE researcher in a St. Louis high school indicates the range of occupationally related knowledge and skill that students may develop through WBL:
Marilyn, a senior who is double majoring in pre-nursing and pre-medicine, was shadowed at her internship at a university laboratory and at a hospital out-patient clinic. Both locations are part of large medical complex that includes several specialty hospitals, a medical school, and research laboratories. Marilyn drives herself to the internship every Thursday beginning at 7 a.m. at the hospital. After approximately 3 to 3.5 hours there, she makes her way by a series of enclosed tunnels and overhead walkways to the university research laboratory in cell biology.The work at the hospital is directly linked to Marilyn's high school class in Ambulatory Care, which has provided an introduction to terms, human biological systems and treatment processes. In class, students have practiced the series of questions to ask an incoming patient to elicit the symptoms and descriptions of pain or conditions that would help a medical practitioner make a diagnosis such as, "What hurts," "How long has it been hurting?," or "Have you had previous injuries?" At the hospital, Marilyn, dressed in hospital "blues," interviewed patients who were arriving for out-patient surgery. She checked with her supervisor and an in-out board to determine which patients would be arriving at what times, for what kinds of surgeries, and with what prior conditions. That particular day, for example, there were several dental surgeries for adults with severe mental disabilities that required anesthesia and prevented the patients from being able to have normal dental care at a dentists' office. These patients are particularly difficult to interview and prepare for surgery and are accompanied by adult "handlers." Marilyn has also observed various surgical procedures along with medical students and done research for her science project at the hospital library.
At the university research lab, Marilyn and her "mentor researcher" discussed the series of experiments they had been conducting in search of a particular protein believed to be involved in the development and loss of elasticity in the skin. They described the findings and directions the experiments were leading. The mentor-mentee relationship began during a summer in which Marilyn was selected as one of 10 "Summer Scientists" in a partnership between the university and the city's high schools. Although the program ended at the end of the summer, the research project was to continue, and Marilyn worked out an agreement with the researcher to serve as her mentor for her senior project, which she plans to enter in the Science Fair for the next school year. The research uses samples of skin from calves and cows obtained on trips to the nearby stockyards where Marilyn accompanies the university researchers. The lab is chock full of expensive equipment, and Marilyn moves comfortably from the walk-in refrigerator containing her samples to the various lab stations where she conducts her research. Marilyn continues the kind of question-and-answering with her mentor that she began with her Advanced Biology teacher the previous day to continue preparing for the Science Fair.
Generally, worksites outside of school are better places than schools for students to experience the most up-to-date procedures and equipment because competitive pressures force businesses to stay current, and schools seldom have sufficient budgets to stay up-to-date in all areas. An example that illustrates this comes from a high school, observed by an NCRVE researcher in New York City, that includes WBL as part of its graduation requirement:
Ted is an unpaid intern at a small telecommunications firm, founded in 1995. He works there about ten hours a week. Currently, his assignment is to find technical support software for the new email system the company is implementing.The school requires him to fill out a workbook daily, reporting what he does and keeping track of his hours. His daily reports are signed by his supervisor, and his English and Computer Applications teachers then grade his workbook, which becomes part of his portfolio.
Ted's internship exposes him to cutting-edge technology. The firm updates its software more frequently than the school, so he learns the most recent versions of programs such as Lotus while at work. Work also introduced him to email. He has ingratiated himself to a number of workers there, who have taken him under their wing and explain their varying tasks to him. Thus, he not only learns about the products that he is researching, but he also sees the kinds of tasks that others do.
Ted has a designated supervisor who oversees his projects on an informal basis, checking in periodically in person or via email.
New forms of youth apprenticeship that have appeared in the 1990s use WBL outside of schools to teach knowledge and skills for particular occupations or industries, while keeping students' career options open. An example was described by Pauly et al. (1995) in Wisconsin, one of the first states to develop youth apprenticeship. This particular case is a printing program located in the small town of West Bend.
West Bend's workplace instruction is designed to expose youth apprentices to many occupations and specialties in the printing industry. Youth apprentices are grouped in pairs and assigned to line-level trainers as they rotate through several divisions during the first semester. In subsequent semesters, students spend more time at each work station. The curriculum is made up of competencies that are broken down into specific steps that the student learns to perform. Examples of competencies that youth apprentices are expected to learn during the first semester include using job cost estimating software, performing basic electronic publishing operations, producing pasteup sheets, producing a diffusion transfer line print, producing a metal offset plate and an electrostatic plate, and preforming a lithographic offset duplicator setup. Trainers are responsible for determining when students have achieved a specific competency and for rating overall performance. Students develop portfolios from their work-based experience that include checklists of their competencies, test results from training they have received, and samples of their work. Grades are determined jointly by classroom instructors and workplace staff. (p. 142)
Two-year colleges, as the largest civilian providers of advanced vocational and technical education (Grubb, 1996a), offer various kinds of WBL to help students prepare for work in particular occupations or industries. Examples are given by Bragg and Hamm (1996), who describe how this kind of WBL can be offered through traditional apprenticeship, new-style youth apprenticeship, Tech Prep, co-op, clinical internship, and school-based enterprise.
One of Bragg and Hamm's (1996) examples, from a co-op program, points to an added dimension of WBL: In addition to learning achieved by the student involved, it can contribute to organizational change in the host company.
Employed by a major telecommunications company, the student . . . presented her Cooperative Education Learning Objectives Agreement with pride. The learning objectives focused on statistical analyses of unit productivity. This project is one that her supervisor needed, but its scope went beyond the normal demands of her job description. Excited about the expected importance of her results, he arranged for her to present her project to the company's vice presidents. (p. 110)
Although the student in this case is already a regular employee, this vignette illustrates how WBL in general may foster the development of "learning organizations."
Career Exploration and Planning
The school-to-work movement of the 1990s arose in part from concern that young people in the United States often spend several years "floundering" in the labor market before they find steady, long-term jobs (Hamilton, 1990). As explained in the first section of this report, some amount of job search and exploration is necessary and beneficial, but bouncing aimlessly from one unrelated job to another, with periods of unemployment in between, can be frustrating and wasteful. If a young person's journey through school and various kinds of early work experiences could be more connected and purposive, the chances of eventually finding enjoyable and rewarding work might be better. The idea of "career majors" in the 1994 STWOA is intended as a structure for students to create a coherent sequence of learning and work experiences. In this context, WBL allows students to taste and sample different kinds of work, to understand what is going on and how they might fit in, but without necessarily making any long-term commitment.
Many local programs are now sequencing WBL for high school students to start with brief job shadowing visits, and lead to longer experiences later. Based on observations in 1992-1993, Pauly et al. (1995) noted,
The widespread use of career exposure activities is particularly striking. Career academies, occupation-academic cluster programs, and restructured vocational programs have worked with employers to create career-exposure opportunities that appear to go far beyond those available to most high school students. There are numerous examples of these activities among the case studies. The co-op placements in Fort Collins include opportunities to participate in several community service activities for short periods so that students can try several different jobs. Job shadowing is used in the Los Angeles, Central Point, and Portland programs to enable students to observe the range of activities of an adult worker during a typical workday. The students participate in job shadowing several times in order to compare the tasks and responsibilities of different jobs. Some employers have developed summer internship programs that expose students to high-skill tasks that are normally reserved for senior employees; working with skilled staff members, Baltimore finance academy students help prepare reports on loan applications and Oakland health academy students have assisted in delivering babies. Borrowing the concept from medical training, some employers rotate students among all of their major production centers; for example, Socorro health academy students spend time in each of the main departments of the largest hospital in El Paso.Students use journals to record and reflect on their workplace experiences in some school-to-work programs, including the Socorro health academy and the Cambridge vocational restructuring program, which also includes a seminar for students to discuss their workplace experiences and journal entries. Since many young people have virtually no knowledge about the world of work, these career-exposure activities can widen their horizons dramatically--a particular benefit for students who have no vision of a productive future life. (pp. 139-140)
Revisiting these same programs in mid-1996, the researchers found that WBL sequences and options were being further elaborated. Job shadowing was being used more frequently, sometimes sandwiched between internships. One program required students in tenth grade to complete a job shadowing experience in each of four career paths before choosing one path the next year. Since job shadowing requires less effort than internships on the part of employers, larger numbers of employers are willing to participate in this way. In addition to acquainting students with a variety of work settings, job shadowing provides a way for employers and school staff members to start building a relationship that can lead to more intensive kinds of WBL (Pedraza et al., 1997).
Students interviewed by NCRVE on the topic of their WBL experiences readily talk about career exploration and decisionmaking. A health academy student in Oakland, California, reflected,
I think it's beneficial because I think with a lot of careers there's misconceptions about what really goes on, how things really work and function. So when you're there you get to see it; you get a complete understanding of it as opposed to reading about it in books. I think it helps you make a better decision.
Occasionally, students feel they have found their true calling as a result of their WBL. One student at Roosevelt High School in Portland explained,
I knew I wanted to work with people but I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And then I was able to go on an internship at an elementary school nearby and work with third graders, and through that experience I made my full decision that I wanted to be a teacher and it really helped me. It just clicked right there. I'd been on several job shadows, which [are a] one-day thing, and nothing really--I kind of went all over the place with my job shadows and finally with that internship I was able to really see what I wanted.
Other students describe how their experiences changed their ideas of what they wanted to do. The following excerpt comes from high school students in a small town in South Carolina:
A Medical Science student shadowed an emergency room nurse, realizing that she was not cut out for the high pressured and gory work when she passed out. She then began a shadowing experience with a Physical Therapist, first thinking she would just want to be an assistant. "He had a lot of paperwork," she explains. "I didn't want a lot of paperwork. . . . Then watching this Physical Therapist that I'm watching now, she has just set my mind that that's what I want to do. . . . You see different people every day. You do different routines with every person you do. So it's not a job I'm going to get bored with."An Academy of Finance student reported similar clarity as a result of a work experience. "At first I wanted to be a Real Estate agent and I expressed that interest. The Academy of Finance director offered me the job as a receptionist at a Real Estate office. . . . I found that Real Estate is not my thing--I'm not that competitive. That really helped a lot because that eliminated it." A field trip to the Federal Reserve with a Banking and Credit class helped her find a new direction. "I loved it down there and I thought, well gosh, I know I want to work in a bank!" She has requested an internship placement at a bank.
Some students say they have not yet settled on any particular kind of work, but their WBL placement has helped them clarify what they do not want. For instance, a student in Oakland declared, "At first when I joined the Media Academy I thought I wanted to go into broadcasting, but once I had my internship, I realized that's not what I want to do."
At the postsecondary level, an elaborate structure for work-based career exploration and planning has developed at LaGuardia Community College in New York City (Grubb & Badway, 1995): "Every full-time day student--including those majoring in Liberal Arts--is required to enroll in three 12-week internships or co-op placements, varying from 15 to 40 hours per week" (p. 4). Students become eligible for co-op after completing all the prerequisites for a major, at least one course in their major, and the co-op preparation course. Each student meets with a co-op faculty adviser to find an appropriate placement. In conjunction with each of their three internships, students also enroll in a six-week seminar. Generally, the seminars provide "a framework for analyzing and evaluating students' internship experiences, linking work experience with critical analysis and reflection." (p. 11) The second in this series of three seminars, titled "Fundamentals of Career Advancement," focuses specifically on career planning.
Using short practical exercises, research activities, and case studies, students gather and analyze information about career options and about four-year colleges. An important element in this second seminar is a "map" for extracting the greatest potential learning from any work experience, by replicating strategies used by successful executives: seeking challenging assignments; coping with hardships; observing key people; and getting feedback on strengths and areas for improvement. (p. 13)
This description illustrates how advanced forms of school-supervised work experience for older students can merge with and enhance the process of lifelong learning at work.
Learning All Aspects of an Industry
Learning all aspects of an industry is an explicit objective in both the 1990 Perkins Amendments and the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act. This stipulation was intended to ensure that vocational education or STW programs teach more than the skills needed for specific entry-level jobs. According to the Center for Law and Education, a chief proponent of the concept, providing students with understanding and experience in all aspects of an industry or industry sector is essential to integrating vocational and academic education, empowering students to make career choices, preparing them to adapt to technological change, and equipping them to play an active part in economic development of their local communities (Jacobs, 1995, p. 9). Hamilton and Hamilton (1997) add that broader knowledge and skill enables students to participate in flexible work teams, which are becoming more prevalent in many settings.
The 1994 law, with only minor changes from 1990, specifies eight "aspects." Jacobs (1995) explains them as follows:
Goldberger, Kazis, and O'Flanagan (1994) describe three ways in which work experiences have been structured to promote this learning agenda. Rotating students through departments "is a powerful antidote to narrow occupational training" (p. 46). If students are paid, it helps if their wages are billed to a central budget, not to their work units or departments. In addition to spending relatively long periods of time in department-based training, a second strategy for teaching "all aspects" is to provide shorter experiences in a variety of different settings within the organization or industry. Third, students are sometimes paired with worksite mentors who have broad organizational responsibilities, and who can help students understand the bigger picture.
Hamilton and Hamilton (1997) also advocate rotation through different placements. They also mention two additional approaches to teaching all aspects of an industry through WBL. One is straightforward: Give students an initial orientation to the organization, provide literature, and include them in events like company picnics. The second is more difficult: Structure projects for students to plan and carry out at the worksite. Hamilton and Hamilton give an example of project activities undertaken by a participant in their youth apprenticeship demonstration project in Broome County, New York. This young man was learning Manufacturing and Engineering Technology through WBL at The Raymond Corporation, a manufacturer of electrically powered fork lift trucks. In his fourth year of the program, while enrolled in community college, he was assigned to
write plans; work on design and drafting; order and process requisitions for materials for special material handling carts; assemble and weld the carts; update a computer database for welders and their qualifications; complete a time study and product flow analysis of various work stations and present results and recommendations; report on active usage of fixtures to assess storage status and recommend dispositions; [and] further develop welding and cutting torch skills. (p. 20)
Clark et al. (in Nielsen Andrew, 1996) also illustrate how workplace projects can teach all aspects of an industry.
These strategies for helping students understand and experience multiple aspects of work all focus on participants as individuals. Another kind of approach is to bring together students as a group to reflect on their different work experiences. This was a feature of Experience-Based Career Education in the 1970s. Conventional co-op programs also include a related class where students discuss various aspects of their different work experiences; this is particularly well-developed at LaGuardia Community College (Grubb & Badway, 1995). Groups such as these give students a chance not only to reflect on their own experiences, but also to hear about other students' situations.
School-based enterprises offer some advantages as work settings in which students can learn about all aspects of an industry. Because their main purpose is educational, school enterprises can give students more room to experiment and make mistakes than a nonschool enterprise usually can do. Students working both in school enterprises and in outside jobs have reported that school enterprises provide more opportunities for learning, doing a range of tasks, and working in teams (Stern, 1984; Stern et al., 1994). Numerous testimonial statements from students in high school and community college enterprises were reported in Stern et al. (1994), including descriptions of how some school enterprises even engage students in designing or redesigning job structures and organizational procedures. Recent examples of school enterprises teaching many aspects of an industry come from Sebastian River High School in Sebastian, Florida, where
the school's restaurant provides hands-on experience in a school-based enterprise. The restaurant, Sharky's Cafe . . . is open to the public several days each week and for special breakfast and lunch events by local community organizations. According to a school brochure, "Students will be equipped to handle every phase of the business of running a restaurant, and they will be taught the skills for commercial food preparation. Upon completion of the culinary arts program, students will be ready for many phases of commercial restaurants as well as for further culinary arts training."The Environmental Science Academy uses both school and state property to extend learning from the classroom to the outside world. There is a greenhouse and aquaculture project on campus, and the academy students are landscaping a section of the school grounds to support an outdoor teaching facility complete with open-air theater and sample flora from around the state. In addition, the academy participates in a partnership with the local water management district in which, according to the school brochure, students "help implement a management plan. . . . The students take an extremely active role, including surveying the habitat, inventorying species, and designing nature trails to allow public use of the land."
In community colleges, Bragg and Hamm (1996) give recent examples of college-sponsored enterprises, including a fruit tree orchard and a childcare center, where students can learn many aspects of their chosen field.
Increasing Personal and Social Competence Related to Work in General
Beyond technical skills, career awareness, and learning all aspects of an industry, many contemporary discussions of WBL also point to a broader set of capacities that are assumed to be desirable in most or all work situations, not only in particular occupations or industries. Sometimes termed generic work skills, core competencies, or transferable skills, they encompass two basic dimensions that Hamilton and Hamilton (1997) call personal and social competence.
Making up lists of these generic capacities has become a popular activity in the 1990s, and many public and private groups of employers or educators have produced frameworks (see Klein, 1996). The one that has had the most influence in the United States so far was the SCANS (1991) report. The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, appointed by the Secretary of Labor, proposed a way for schools to conceive of knowledge and skill beyond the traditional academic disciplines. The SCANS framework consists of a three-part foundation, then five general competencies. The three-part foundation consists of the following:
Over and above this foundation, SCANS sketched competencies along the following five dimensions:
A more parsimonious list was proposed by Murnane and Levy (1996), based on their observation of hiring practices by employers who screen new applicants carefully:
In addition to things that employers have always looked for--reliability, a positive attitude, and a willingness to work hard--these employers now look for hard and soft skills that applicants wouldn't have needed 20 years ago:
- The ability to read at the ninth-grade level or higher
- The ability to do math at the ninth-grade level or higher
- The ability to solve semi-structured problems where hypotheses must be formed and tested
- The ability to work in groups with persons of various backgrounds
- The ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing
- The ability to use personal computers to carry out simple tasks like word processing
These are the New Basic Skills, the minimum skills people now need to get a middle-class job. (pp. 31-32)
Both SCANS and Murnane and Levy meant their lists to guide curriculum and instruction in regular classroom teaching as well as in WBL. As Stasz, McArthur, Lewis, and Ramsey (1990) have demonstrated, generic work skills can indeed be learned in classrooms, and it would be wrong to assume that they can only be acquired at worksites.
Hamilton and Hamilton (1997) offer a list of skills that is specifically tailored to WBL. Developed by the "workplace teachers" at the various companies that participated in their demonstration project, the "Guide to Evaluating Personal and Social Competence" consists of two separate lists. Major headings under "Social Competence: Participate in an organization" are
Under "Personal Competence: Act responsibly," the major headings are
Stasz and Kaganoff (1997) use a slightly different set of categories to analyze what students learn through WBL. Under "generic skills" they include problem solving, communications, and teamwork. They also propose a separate category of "work-related attitudes," which "include work habits and personal qualities that are crucial for success on the job" (p. 61). Working hard and taking responsibilities seriously are examples. Stasz and Kaganoff also consider "personal and social skills" as distinct from generic skills or attitudes. Being generally friendly, feeling confident, and respecting themselves and other people are examples of these.
Plausible and insightful as these lists of skills are, they have been subjected to very little empirical validation. The most stringent validation would demonstrate that people who possess the stipulated skills or capacities actually perform better than those who do not. This would involve measuring the skills, measuring performance, and demonstrating that more skill causes better performance. For example, Murnane, Willett, and Levy (1995) have shown that math skills were a more potent predictor of wages for recent high school graduates in the 1980s than in the 1970s. Such studies are rare, however. Another approach is to watch people at work and observe the skills and capacities they are using. For example, Stasz, Ramsey, Eden, Melamid, and Kaganoff (1996) used this method to understand the role of teamwork, communication skills, and certain general "dispositions" or attitudes in several different technical occupations.
Despite considerable uncertainty about whether and how these personal and social skills actually affect performance at work, it is not difficult to find testimonial evidence from young people who participate in WBL. For instance, one obvious effect of WBL is to confront students with the expectations and demands of customers or clients who are depending on them. Even for older students, this can spur personal and social development. An employer of a co-op student at LaGuardia Community College was quoted as saying,
It's something other than sitting in a classroom or even in a lab. It's the real world. You drew it, you just put it together, and it still doesn't work. But we're on a deadline, we've got to have this done because we've got a real customer that's screaming for it. You know. So here is the real world. (Grubb, 1995c, p. 11)
Working engages students in social interactions they would not otherwise have. For example, a high school intern working with the East Manhattan Chamber of Commerce in New York City
was responsible for soliciting new membership to the Chamber, which involved "pounding the pavement" and approaching store owners in person. She described this experience as new and challenging, and was extremely proud that her supervisor had the confidence to allow her to represent the Chamber to the public. It was this kind of empowerment that was preparing her for a future in business, and she was well aware that this internship would look very good on her rsum in the future.
The awareness of how capacities acquired or demonstrated on the current job will be useful in future work is likely to be greater in WBL than in jobs that are not supervised by a school because WBL involves paying explicit attention to what is being learned at work.
A young woman who had recently graduated from a high school in Boston explained to an NCRVE interviewer how the social skills she developed in her internship helped her get her present job:
Basically, I wouldn't have a job if I didn't have my internship. . . . Where I come from, if you talk to me in the wrong way, I'm going to address you back in that same manner. I'm not going to be nice to you and try to get you to calm down or whatever. . . . But because I've worked, I've learned how to tolerate things, I've learned how to deal with people and their attitudes and I've learned how to, you know, thank people when they're nice to me, when they give me my forms on time, you know, things like that.
More systematic attention to how WBL can develop personal and social competence is a major advance over the more limited, traditional focus on WBL as a means to acquire specific technical skills. As personal and social dispositions become part of the curriculum, however, educators and program designers will have to face some difficult questions.
One fundamental question is whether WBL is intended merely to adapt young people to jobs, or whether it is also intended to develop their capacity for creative and critical thinking about work (Simon, Dippo, & Schenke, 1991). Obviously, an employer's interest sometimes conflicts with the interests of employees. The basic fact that employees' pay and benefits are costs to employers is a perpetual cause of conflict, though it may not be overt. Health and safety, the division of work responsibilities, and lack of participation in decisionmaking are other sources of conflict between employers and employees. One way or another, WBL designers and teachers have to deal with these contentious issues. Confronting them openly might help students better understand what their options are. Rather than run the risk of stepping into a political minefield, however, most programs seem to be keeping silent.
A more subtle kind of conflict may also arise between the interest of employers and the well-being of customers or clients. Here the basic issue is that it costs money to make a product or service better. Product specifications or service contracts may state what customers or clients have the right to expect, but buyers generally have less information than sellers about what they are getting. How many customers are able to judge whether their cars have been properly serviced, X-rays have been properly read, or computers have been properly built? Even though a company's long-run success depends on keeping customers satisfied, resources are always limited, which means that people at work face a perpetual tradeoff between keeping down employers' costs and making clients or customers better off. Since WBL is being supported by public funds, program designers and teachers would seem to have some obligation to make sure that students understand their responsibility at work to protect the interests of the buying public.
Enhancing Students' Motivation and Academic Achievement
Farthest removed from the goal of teaching skills and knowledge related to particular occupations is the objective of improving students' academic performance in school. It may even seem too great a stretch: Why should experience on a job be expected to improve achievement in the classroom? The answer has a negative and a positive part.
First, students' work experience might be redesigned so that working long hours does less damage to achievement in school. Most students in the United States already hold jobs while they attend high school or college. Numerous studies have found that students who work more than a certain number of hours per week tend to perform less well in school (Stern et al., 1995, 1997). In particular, they often get lower grades. The number of hours beyond which academic performance starts to deteriorate varies from study to study, but is usually in the range of 10 to 20 hours per week. A possible explanation is that the students who work long hours and get low grades are simply more interested in work than in school. Most studies have not been designed to test whether working long hours actually causes students' academic performance to decline, but this is also a possible explanation for the fact that students who work long hours perform worse in school. Work time may crowd out homework time. Students may work in the evening and come to school sleepy. Working students may feel that they do not need what school is trying to teach them because they can already get jobs and earn money without that. If students' work experience were more closely connected with school, it might do less harm to academic motivation and performance.
Second, research in the 1980s on learning outside of school stimulated new interest in the idea that providing some kind of "contextual" or "situated" learning opportunities for students would improve their understanding and retention of academic subject matter (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Raizen, 1989; Resnick, 1987). Many educational authorities in the past, notably Dewey (1916) and Whitehead (1929/1949), have argued that education should confront students with problems that matter to them, including practical problems that arise in the context of productive activity. In the United States, however, debates have tended to oscillate between the ideological poles of "relevance" and "rigor." The advocates of work experience in the 1970s, for example, were clearly tilting toward relevance, and the "excellence" movement of the early 1980s was in part a reaction against that. Cognitive scientists in the late 1980s and 1990s offered the possibility that "applied learning" or "cognitive apprenticeship" might achieve rigor through relevance. And there is evidence that engaging students in activities which have value beyond the classroom contributes to academic achievement. even as measured by conventional tests (Newmann & Wehlage, 1995). This research has prompted educators to take another look at WBL as a possible means to improve academic performance.
Hamilton and Hamilton (1997) list "academic achievement" as one of their seven principles for work-based learning. Their demonstration project revealed, however, that WBL by itself was not sufficient to raise students' academic achievement:
We conclude that neither grades nor course enrollments will improve as an indirect result of work-based learning; improved academic performance must be a central focus of school-to-work systems and specific steps taken to foster it. The most critical need is for a variety of learning options and instructional approaches, for explicit links between knowledge and application, and for new school structures. (p. 54)
Nevertheless, they provide testimonial evidence illustrating how WBL can enhance academic study in the classroom. A math teacher who had visited students' worksites explained,
When material can be made meaningful to their everyday life as it is in the workplace, it has some relevance. I had a couple of good examples this year where apprenticeships were a factor in my classroom instruction, and that would not have happened if I had not been familiar with the work environment. One was teaching standard deviation with a student who was doing very poorly in math. I was able to say, "Gee, I think we use standard deviation in the workplace. I wonder if someone could tell us what that means?" And sure enough [finger snap], it came to life and he explained exactly what a standard deviation was, why it was important to the statistical research of the company, and how he was using it on a regular basis. No problem whatsoever because it was in a meaningful context for him. So that was application for the whole class. But he would not have volunteered if I hadn't known enough to go for it. It was my familiarity with what they were doing and what he was doing that made me able to use that kind of knowledge. Unfortunately, few teachers have had those opportunities. (p. 58)
This story shows how WBL can enliven an abstract concept not only for the particular student who uses it at work, but also for other students who hear about the application.
Teaching academic concepts through WBL is not a new idea. In health-care occupations, a clinical internship has traditionally been part of the curriculum. When Bragg et al. (1995) surveyed community colleges around the country asking for exemplary WBL programs, most of the programs nominated were in the health field. Pauly et al. (1995) give an example of a high-quality WBL program for high school students:
At the King-Drew Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles, all students take a curriculum that includes work experience linking learning in school and at the workplace. Students learn biological, chemical, and physiological concepts, as well as methods and ideas of scientific research. Students work in ten different medical settings over the course of three years . . .Los Angeles program and hospital staff work together to create training plans that specify experiences and outcomes for each student placement. Close coordination between workplace supervisors and school staff maximizes learning opportunities at the workplace and their connection to classroom instruction. Workplace objectives are designed to help students understand scientific aspects of their work experience in the context of the division or department to which they are assigned. For example, during the rotation in gastroenterology, students learn the parts of the stomach and their functions, why biopsies are performed and how they are used, and procedures for gastric analysis. Grade 11 and 12 students who select a research laboratory as a placement are expected to learn how to set up a scientific investigation, how to perform laboratory techniques and procedures, and the procedures for conducting a scientific investigation. Hospital staff prepare reports that students have learned specified topics.
Each semester, students in the Los Angeles program take a course related to their work experience. . . . As part of these courses, students must show that they have completed the learning objectives specified for their work placements. . . . Students are also given assignments that require research efforts at the workplace, and grade 12 students must write two research papers based on investigations completed at their workplaces. . . . Students' academic courses also draw on their workplace experiences; for example, English assignments and vocabulary words draw on students' work-based experiences, and eleventh graders write a term paper related to the workplace as part of their history course. Teachers spend some of their planning periods at workplaces to gain a better understanding of students' experiences. (pp. 140-142)
Some high schools and community colleges have been able to take the internship-based teaching model from the health field and apply it elsewhere. At a high school in Boston visited by an NCRVE researcher, internships have become a central part of the junior and senior curriculum:
The school's internship handbook states, "The goal of the . . . internship is to provide students an opportunity to demonstrate the application of their acquired academic skills to real work situations. First-hand experiences will give students greater insights about the career which they believe they would like to pursue. The experience enables students to research a complex and in-depth question within their field." While at their internship, the handbook states that students must do the following: keep a daily log, keep a weekly list of skills that are being acquired, write or draw a diagram of the internship site after touring the facility, conduct at least two interviews with persons at the internship site, design a flow chart of how decisions are made and communicated at the site, write a one-page site policy manual, research and write an in-depth paper that probes the major internship question, read two books . . . and participate in the evaluations.The culminating piece of the internship is the Senior Project, described as "a personalized independent learning experience that demonstrates in an interdisciplinary fashion skills and knowledge. Students will investigate a topic of interest with the assistance of their Advisor, House and Senior Institute Coordinator. . . . The final project should include technology application, math application as well as an oral and visual presentation with a written conclusion. The senior project will be presented and defended to students' graduation committees." The handbook suggests that there are basically two kinds of questions that can be addressed by the Senior Project: Experimental (e.g., "How does reading aloud to preschool children affect their reading ability in kindergarten?") or Ethical (e.g., "Should cameras be allowed in courtrooms?").
Similarly, LaGuardia Community College in New York City has connected WBL with course content through its co-op seminars. As explained in the discussion of career exploration, LaGuardia requires students to engage in a series of three co-op placements. Along with each placement, students participate in a seminar. The second seminar in the series focuses on career exploration; the first and third relate to students' majors. According to Grubb and Badway (1995), five major-specific seminars were available at the first level: Accounting Information Systems; Application of Computer Information Systems Concepts in the Workplace; Management Principles: Theory and Application; and Introduction to Teaching. They go on to report, "At this initial phase, topics include information gathering, data organization, quality standards, maintaining currency in technical skills, and other issues specific to the major" (p. 13). The third-level seminars related to majors were Accounting Information Systems for Decision-Making by Objectives; What Do Managers Do: An Advanced Approach; Advanced Computer Information Systems; and School Food Service Management. At this advanced level, "seminars demand the use of systematic research skills in an independent and professional way. . . . [S]tudents are expected to review theory while applying complex knowledge to their fieldwork experience" (p. 14).
As these accounts suggest, bringing out the academic content of students' work experience is mainly done by the school or college, though worksite supervisors must collaborate and support the effort. To the extent that WBL is intended to promote students' academic achievement rather than teach specific job skills, enterprises sponsored by schools and colleges themselves become more advantageous. For example, Stasz (1996) describes an urban high school enterprise that
began in 1993 as a community garden: students sold produce at local farmers' markets. The student-owners decided to create a product that they could successfully market on a wide scale, and "Food from the `Hood" salad dressing was born.While the business creates a focus and motivation for student learning, nearly as much time and effort is spent on academics. The calendar posts both business-related events and SAT test dates. Volunteer mentors work closely with students to help them study for the SAT and to complete college applications. Student conversation is often about school, grades, classes, and college. And nearly all the student-owners go on to college, as compared to fewer than half of the students enrolled in the same high school. (p. 2)
Another school-based example comes from NCRVE observation of a high school in Portland, Oregon:
The Industrial & Engineering Systems class is a yearlong project-based course in Computer Assisted Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM). Partnerships with local firms have enabled students not only to read about race cars, but to design and build one from the ground up to race in the Portland General Electric "Electron Run." Students voted as a group to build a race car because the class as a whole was interested in cars. Students divide tasks among themselves according to their specific interests and aptitudes. For example, students with an interest in engineering chose to develop the three-dimension drawings of the vehicle with the latest CAD systems, while others with a marketing focus are developing fundraising plans and soliciting business sponsorships. One student with a flair for graphic design is electronically producing the car's logo, while still others have chosen to machine parts under the supervision of machinists at a local plant. Every morning at 8:10, students meet with their teacher for a "board meeting" in which they all give reports and updates to the status of their individual responsibilities. Because individual duties overlap in many instances, communication and teamwork is essential. Students are not paid, but they do receive class credit.Because this work-based learning experience is also a class, academics tie directly into the job tasks. Students are able to draw connections between math and engineering through the design process using CAD/CAM equipment. Likewise, English, communications, and marketing combine as students try to solicit businesses for advertising support.
In addition to creating a cognitive connection between academic concepts and their practical application, WBL also can strengthen students' motivation. For example, in a South Carolina high school where the curriculum has been organized into career clusters with extensive WBL, students told NCRVE interviewers
of changes in their attitude toward school as a result of their participation in the Clusters. A self-described average student explained the motivation she found: "I never excelled in science, I never excelled in English, I never excelled in math . . . I never found my thing. But this, it really gave me a focus. I totally know what I want to do. . . . I'm not ignorant to the fact that I may change my mind because everyone changes their mind, but I think that I will stay in this general area and it really has given me assurance." She went on to imagine what her high school experience would have been without the opportunity to participate in a Cluster: "I would probably go through the basic classes and just do the routine." In actuality, she reported that before, "I was discouraged because I couldn't do well. Now I'm doing okay in the business and I'm striving--it's given me more self-esteem that I can do this, when I was falling behind in Chemistry and science." Her grades have improved to all "A"s and "B"s.
Similar testimony was given by a career academy student in Oakland, California:
I think if they had more programs like this a lot of people would think twice about their high school years. They would take advantage of their high school years if they know they have something to look forward to, like a job, a real job, a respected job where they can actually get the position. It's just that a lot of people just don't know what's out there. They're not exposed to a lot of the stuff that's like right around the corner. And that's what internships try to introduce us to. They try to expose us as much as they can to the real world. And unfortunately some people in high school think this is the real world, that there's nothing after high school, and I think it's sad because if you think "Oh, high school--I'm graduating from high school that's the end of my life." That like it's not. There is so much more out there. They just have to see it. They just have to give us a chance to see what's out there in order for us to want to get out of high school and graduate and continue going to college.
It may seem paradoxical that WBL and work-related curricula can increase students' desire for schooling, but this is not an uncommon finding (e.g., Phelps, Scribner, Wakelyn, & Weis, 1996). Apparently, students gain confidence in their ability to master school subjects when they connect them to activities they understand and value.
As the WBL revival of the 1990s has gained momentum, however, there is still controversy about whether it can benefit students who are already performing well in school, or whether it should mainly be reserved for the "noncollege-bound." Few would object if students who were performing poorly in school become encouraged by WBL and a related curriculum to continue their studies after high school. But there is definitely opposition to the idea of adding WBL to the college-prep curriculum (Bailey & Merritt, 1997a; Vo, 1997). As a result, students in career-related programs featuring WBL sometimes express mixed feelings. Pauly et al. (1995) reported,
In several schools, students complained that other students who are not part of their program see it as being for "dumber kids and dropouts who can't handle academics." One student said, "It's like they all think we're the stupid ones, and we're dropouts. And that we're only good for working, not for learning." These students pointed out that many of their program's graduates attend college, and students in more than half of the programs characterized their courses as more demanding than the regular high school courses. Nevertheless, they were aware that the stigma attached to programs with a workplace component or an occupational theme remains strong.
(p. 152)
Although some high schools have committed themselves to preparing all students for college and careers (Business Week, 1996), the traditional division between academic and vocational education is still strongly engrained in the minds of many students, teachers, administrators, policymakers, and parents. If the established mindset is to change, it will probably require some evidence that adding WBL can in fact improve understanding and retention of academic knowledge by students who are already succeeding in conventional classroom and lab instruction. That evidence can come only after WBL is actually tried with such students. And trying out WBL as a means to improve the academic performance of college-prep students requires the existence of curriculum materials or ideas for using the workplace as a laboratory in a rigorous way. Examples of such materials do exist (Vickers, 1996) and will be described below. Until instructional ideas like these are adopted and tested on a wide scale, the academic benefits of WBL are likely to remain restricted in many schools to students who are not deemed academically promising.
Methods and Challenges
Implicit in this discussion of purposes has been a description of methods for WBL. To make that explicit, we can simply list the most common forms:
The NCRVE telephone survey of STW partnerships directly funded by the federal government included questions about the use of these different methods. Responses are displayed in the Appendix. Answers to Questions 22 and 23 reveal that most sites were using a mix of methods. Job shadowing and unpaid internship seem to be the most common overall. But a few sites were concentrating their efforts on paid work experience, service learning, or school-based enterprise.
The challenges to making high-quality WBL available to large numbers of students are formidable. The first report on the evaluation of STW partnerships funded through the states found that the great majority of WBL placements were obtained by the students themselves, not by the school. Although it is possible to convert students' part-time jobs into powerful learning experiences, students' responses suggested that this was not usually happening. Links between students' work experience and the classroom were infrequent and generally tenuous. Only 16% of the seniors responding to the survey indicated that they had completed a classroom assignment using information or skills gained from an intensive work-based activity, and that they had their performance in that activity count toward a grade at school (Hershey et al., 1997, Chapter V). Pedraza et al. (1997) conclude that a tradeoff exists between scale and intensity: Involving more students will mean offering less intensive experiences.
If WBL is intended not only to expose students to the workplace and give them an opportunity to acquire specific procedural know-how, but also to accomplish any of the broader purposes we have discussed, then it must be carefully planned and monitored by people who understand both the work setting and what is to be learned there. Steinberg (1997) spells out six "A" questions to ask when designing projects in general, including projects at the worksite:
These questions echo and elaborate on the definition of authentic pedagogy developed by Newmann and Wehlage (1995).
Vickers (1996) and her team have produced outstanding examples of project designs that meet these criteria and are expressly intended to be carried out at worksites by high school students. By addressing practical questions that arise in specific work settings, students can master certain concepts that are included in current curricular standards for high school science. One unit focuses on the human cardiovascular system; a second on water testing and aquatic ecology; and a third on heating, ventilating, air conditioning, and heat flow. Each unit involves students in a set of common workplace experiences, complemented by lessons and exercises in the school classroom and laboratory. Exposing all students to the same events in the workplace is necessary to ensure that they all have the same experience to analyze. This is a deliberate departure from the typical practice of WBL in the United States, where individual students usually do different things. It is more similar to German apprenticeship, which is designed to ensure that all trainees acquire a common core of knowledge.
Another example of a program creating group experiences for students at worksites is the Rindge School of Technical Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As part of a learning sequence that integrates various kinds of classroom instruction and school-based enterprise with workplace internships, Rindge sends some of its academic teachers out to conduct classes for student interns at some of the host companies. Rosenstock (1997) points out that these classes serve the purpose of "connecting activities" as specified by STWOA, by physically and intellectually joining instruction in academic subjects with students' workplace experiences.
Even without trying to ensure that a whole group of students experience something in common, extracting valuable learning from students' work experiences takes a lot of doing. Packer and Pines (1996) describe what it takes to produce "learning-rich work experience" (pp. 53-54). Managers at the worksite have to support the idea. Sufficient lead time must be allowed for preparation. Job supervisors have to be trained in their new role, then matched with students. Students need time and help to reflect on what they are doing at work and what they are learning from it. Students' learning should be documented so that school credit can be awarded. Program operators have to be alert for unexpected problems and opportunities that occur along the way, and everyone involved should participate in continuously improving the process. Obviously, all of this takes someone's time, which has to be budgeted.
One additional feature is needed to ensure that WBL becomes an integral part of the curriculum: Teachers of academic subjects have to be involved. Traditionally, cooperative education has linked structured WBL with instruction in vocational subjects, and has been supervised by vocational teachers. If WBL is to serve broader educational purposes and a broader cross-section of students, it will have to be linked to instruction in the core academic subjects of English, math, science, and social studies. This is possible, as we have seen. But it will not happen on a large scale unless and until academic teachers are persuaded that it is worthwhile for themselves and their students. Resistance may be strongest on the part of teachers in college-prep courses. Whether WBL helps students prepare for the Advanced Placement examination in calculus or history, for example, still remains to be seen. Sending nonvocational teachers to spend some time in workplaces outside the school may help them find practical applications of their subject matter, and STW partnerships have been providing this kind of opportunity through summer internships and other arrangements (see Appendix, Question 25).
There may be a chicken-and-egg problem here, however. Teachers who do not believe WBL has anything to offer their students are unwilling to spend the time looking at workplaces themselves. If they believe that good instruction in academic subjects builds intellectual skills which are useful in work settings--which is probably true--they may also believe that school-supervised work experience for students has little to add and is not worth the trouble. Cracking this resistance may be essential to making WBL an option for all students.