Proposals to reshape the relationship between academic and vocational preparation coincide with other challenges to the prevailing curriculum, pedagogy, and social organization of secondary schools. Repeated criticisms of the American high school have prompted numerous publicly- and privately-funded initiatives to supply greater rigor and utility to the curriculum, to seek more meaningful connections among academic subjects, and to engage adolescents more productively with adults and with one another.
Despite certain broad areas of agreement among these various reforms, however, they tend to differ in their views of the primary purposes of secondary schooling and the way in which those purposes should be expressed in the curriculum. Specifically, advocates of reform place different emphasis on work preparation among the remedies for the present failings of high schools. Indeed, some of the highly visible secondary-school reform initiatives seem largely unconnected with parallel reforms in the transition from school to work, even retaining a pronounced ambivalence toward explicit vocationalism (e.g., Sizer, 1992). Some other initiatives, such as those centered on a more interdisciplinary curriculum and on closer ties between in-school and out-of-school learning, seem particularly compatible with the direction taken by vocational reform. Still others, such as the proliferation of subject-specific standards and assessments at the state and national levels, remain relatively silent on the matter of vocational education, but tend to reinforce existing divisions in the high school.
In this report, we argue that the prospects for integrating academic and vocational purposes are linked to two conditions: first, the impetus provided by specific reform initiatives to look toward or away from work preparation as a fundamental aspect of secondary schooling for all students; and second, the capacity of the schools to engage in a thoroughgoing "reinvention" or "redesign" that challenges many of the taken-for-granted assumptions of what the high school experience should constitute. Consistent with prior studies of large-scale change, we anticipate that the impetus to change existing arrangements--or to preserve them--will be found partly in the histories and contexts that shape the internal life of particular high schools, and partly in externalities: the views of schooling expressed by influential political figures, policymakers, or organizations; the imperatives or inducements contained in legislation or formal policy; the availability and appeal of alternatives; and the opportunities created by special initiatives or by more stable revenue streams. Further, we acknowledge that these various sources of constraint and support rarely seem to point clearly and consistently in the same direction. A school's capacity for "redesign" thus rests not only on individual knowledge and skill, but also on the ability to reconcile competing views and pressures, mobilize sources of human and material support, and sustain a certain collective will.
Favorable conditions for the wholesale redesign of schooling are demonstrably difficult to achieve. Certainly the record of successful school reform is uneven at best; the fundamental "grammar of schooling," as Tyack and Tobin (1994) term it, proves remarkably durable (see also Cuban, 1985; Sarason, 1971, 1990). The separation of academic from vocational pursuits is one long-standing feature of that grammar (Goodson, 1994; Little, 1995b; Oakes, 1986). If enduring change in schools is difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances, then change in the form, content, and status of vocational education seems highly unlikely, unless explicitly embraced as an element of a reform agenda.
We have therefore sought opportunities to investigate the integration of academic and vocational education in the context of more sweeping changes in comprehensive high schools. In doing so, we extend two previous lines of work: research on the ordinary, comprehensive high school, which documents the myriad ways in which the separation of academic and vocational education is sustained (Little, 1993; Little & Threatt, 1994); and research on innovative programs of vocational education, which concentrates on the features of selected programs such as career academies or Tech Prep programs (Andrew, 1995; Katz, Jackson, Reeves, & Benson, 1995; Raby, 1995; Ramsey, Eden, Stasz, & Bodilly, 1995; Stern, Raby, & Dayton, 1992).
In this report, we draw upon the experiences of teachers and students in two "restructuring" high schools to examine the internal impetus and capacity for redesign of the high school. Specifically, we pursue three central questions regarding the place of vocational reform amid the evolving purposes and content of schooling, and the social and professional organization of the school:
To examine the relationship of vocational integration to other fundamental reforms, we undertook a two-phase study in each site. In the first phase, we sought interviews with administrators and teacher leaders who were well-positioned to articulate the school's official posture toward reform, and with academic and vocational teachers who presented a wide range of subject backgrounds and teaching assignments. In a second phase, we focused on selected cases within each school that embodied the school's reform strategy: a comparison of a grade-level interdisciplinary team and a career academy at Southgate; and a comparison of a career academy with both traditional and house-based arrangements at Prairie.
To the extent possible in each site, we attempted a "focused ethnography" that immersed project staff as frequently and widely in the school as possible. Data collection methods included open-ended and semi-structured interviews with teachers, administrators, counselors, students, and community members; observations in classrooms, meetings, teacher planning sessions, and inservice education activities; informal observation throughout the school grounds, including the staff lounges and offices; informal time with teachers outside the school day; and review of key school documents, including various demographic data, reports, yearbooks, teachers' work assignments, course offerings, and students' academic transcripts.
We were not able to realize the intended design equally in both sites. At Southgate, we completed the first phase, and had completed a first round of teacher interviews and classroom observations for the second phase, when an unexpectedly high level of staff turnover led us to abandon the effort shortly before the beginning of the 1993-1994 school year. Staff losses included the district director of secondary instruction, the site principal, three of the five career academy teachers, and two of the four teachers of our target academic teacher team. A relatively large turnover throughout the school generally complicated the problem. It is certainly the case that early-stage turmoil and staff turnover are common dilemmas associated with whole-school change. Had this study placed the process and consequences of "restructuring" in the foreground, we would likely have sought a way to adjust our design and remain in the site. Our central concern was for the emerging place of vocational education within a more broadly restructured environment, however, and we judged the level of instability at the site to be too great, and our own resources too limited, to justify continuing. Thus, Southgate has less presence in this report than Prairie. Specifically, we lack systematic and comparative data on students in academy and team-based arrangements at Southgate, and we have fewer interviews and observations by which to compare the experience of teachers in the academy and team environments. Nonetheless, the picture that emerges from Southgate corresponds in some consistent and potentially important ways as with that at Prairie.