Background
Choosing and pursuing a career has been an important and difficult consideration for the youth, both now and in the past. With a wide variety of available occupations, a globalized economy, and the dominance of the internet in every person’s daily life, the number of specific occupational choices one can make is immense. In this climate, individuals can find it difficult to understand what career path they want to walk, or how to combine personal fulfillment with professional success. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce the younger generations to a range of services and programs capable of helping them discover their future careers.
This process includes professional intervention, in community and educational settings. In the process of career intervention, teens gain the ability to explore or establish their identity, learn more about potential career paths and talk with a qualified professional. This project will design a career intervention program, utilizing the available body of research and data. First, a specific population will be chosen for the intervention. After the age group is confirmed, it will be possible to identify the objectives and goals of the programs. Particular details of the intervention strategy will also be covered, including the necessary resources, length, and result confirmation approaches. As a result of the career intervention, it will be possible to improve occupational decision-making skills, and increase children’s certainty in their future.
Target Population
The population selected for the intervention are middle school children. This means school students in 6 to 9th grades.
Needs of the Population
In the middle school, children become more deeply familiar with career planning and considerations of the future. They start to engage with the idea of having a job, or working, more seriously. Outside of the barriers of pretend play and playground roleplaying, many children have their own miniature jobs that prepare them for their real equivalent. Walking family pets, throwing out the trash or cleaning, babysitting younger relatives – all of these can be examples of early career-adjacent practice. According to existing research into human development (Hicks et al., 2020), such curiosities are a central part in an individual’s journey of self-determination, allowing them to understand themselves as a part of society. As the result, this population experiences a need to access more information regarding human career development. There this a growing and emergent need to introduce middle schoolers to practices that will become staple in their future professions, which should be answered for the benefit of the new generation.
Another important need of middle school children is recognition, understanding and trust. Children spend the majority of their time overlooked by their parents and teachers, or other responsible adults. Much of their life, routine and habits are decided not entirely by them, but by their environment. Comparatively, adult life most often requires people to make decisions by themselves, control and manage the way they live their life. Therefore, there is a discrepancy between the way young children are taught to live, and how they should learn to exist when they reach adulthood. It is necessary to help children adapt, and place larger emphasis on their ability to choose. By giving middle schoolers more “breathing room” in considering what they want to do, it may be possible to enable a smoother transition into adulthood. In addition, feelings of respect, agency and self determination are important for the correct formation of identity, maintenance of personal happiness. The young population must be shown that their opinions and ideas are worthwhile, that their understanding of themselves is valid and accepted by the world around them.
This is also the period where children get to know about colleges, professional ladders and the expectations others might have for them in the future. As a result, middle school also becomes the critical time to facilitate skills needed for academic success in the future. This includes planning, time management, work distribution, cooperation, focus, diligence and other much-needed concerns for any working professional. According to Hicks et al., (2020), helping middle school children make sense of career orientation is vital in allowing them to commit to a thought-out study plan later on during their education. By giving middle schoolers a way to plan ahead for their future, career counsellors are able to plant roots of habits necessary for success in both teenage and adult life. Therefore, the main need of this population is to gain a fuller knowledge base regarding careers, as well as the supplementary skills and competencies.
Program Objectives
As a way to help the children gain the necessary knowledge and capabilities, the program will address the lack of career information, making this process its primary goal. Oftentimes, children may hold a comparatively reductive view of different professions, or not consider their own inherent strangths/weaknesses in thinking about the future. A program that focuses on a career intervention will be capable of introducing the subject of preparing for the future in a different light, and discussion it in a more serious tone. According to existing research into career intervention strategies, middle school children require action that increases their independence in career-related decision making, and the sufficient pool of information to understand potential career paths (Babarović et al., 2019). This program will work to inform, affirm, and assert the ability of children to form their own vision of the future successful career.
Program Plan
The idea of the self-concept and individual development will be taken as the central idea of this program. One’s perception of the self grows, changes, and develops throughout their life, along with the ever-increasing pool of available information and experience. In childhood, this is especially relevant, as the person is open to many opportunities. When a path in life is decided from middle school, a person can further narrow down a specific profession they find suitable, and devote themselves to it. If a career is decided upon in early childhood, an individual may have more time to explore themselves in the context of said profession, finding if it aligns with their understanding of themselves. To help people develop a smoother and more coherent image of professional achievement career counsellors are able to work with all ages of schoolchildren.
Career counsellors have the capacity to help people understand themselves and their professional path more clearly, define a way toward fulfillment and success. Ginzberg et al.’s assessment-focused method, then, can be a desirable tool for helping middle school children realize their wishes for the future. Their approach focuses on autonomy and introspection, things that can often be overlooked in early age. Children live in an environment where their freedoms and capabilities are restricted, partially for their own safety. As a result, the capacity of young schoolchildren to express themselves, understand what they can or want to do is limited. Using an personality-interest-value assessments for younger children, then, is an opportunity to give them something they lack, and start their proper journey on the way to self-determination and success. Career counsellors have the potential to become a vital agent in the growth and development of young children.
Resources Needed for the Program
- Survey forms
- A classroom or a free room to gather children
- Desks
- Chairs
- A smartboard or a blackboard
- Pens and pencils (black and colored)
- Assessments
These resources will form the necessary basic components of presenting the intervention program, interacting with children, and translating tasks to them.
Length of the Program
The intervention will be split up into lesson-like sessions, allowing children to participate in a way that is familiar to their school routine. According to the existing body of work regarding middle school career counselling, 45 minute sessions may be an effective pathway to introducing career counselling. The sessions will be held over a period of one month, on a twice-a-week basis. On the first session, Levick Emotional and Cognitive Art Therapy Assessment will be used in order to understand the students’ “social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive success” in regards to both studies and career development (Hicks et al., 2020, p.248). Then, the assessed data will be subsequently used to help each student individually, by further exploring aspects of their identity. The second session will explore the results of the assessment, and apply personality instruments in order to better realize which professions may fall in line with the student’s capabilities. On the 3rd and 4th meetings, interest inventories and values tests can also be performed, as a way to narrow down a list of potential career developments for each student. After all of the assessments have been performed, a test to measure the effectiveness of the intervention will be performed, focusing on understanding the student’s career-related knowledge and confidence.
Assessments
Assessment Tools
- Levick Emotional and Cognitive Art Therapy Assessment – an assessment strategy which understands a child’s growth and development through the completion of art-related tasks. Each child will be asked to complete drawings showing themselves, their house or family, with results being analysed.
- Personality instruments – a measurement strategy that defines an individual’s personality within a set of understandable parameters. For the purposes of this work, a framework such as the MBTI will be sufficient.
- Interest inventories – an assessment that identifies and records the interests of each student, as presented by the students themselves. Allows each child to write down their interests. The information can be further used to define potential career options.
- Values test – a test developed to determine the values central to each individual. Using values as a guiding force can be helpful in narrowing down the profession selection.
Assessment Rationale
The Levick assessment makes it easier for a counsellor to understand the state of children’s development regarding professional knowledge, emotional and academic capacity. The tasks contained within this assessment engage children from a creative standpoint, allowing them express their thoughts, emotions and concerns through the medium of drawing. This approach turns emotional-psychosocial assessment into a game, and allows the counsellors to more easily capture the attention of children. In addition, knowing more about each students allows the professional to tailor their interpersonal approach and career suggestions accordingly to the capabilities of the students.
By considering the psychological and emotional capabilities of students, a counsellor will be able to change their speech, line of questioning and interview direction appropriately. Other assessment tools work as an additional aid in the process of understanding each child’s career potential and desires. Personality instruments, interest inventories, and values tests, subsequently, work to crystallize the image of a desired profession in a child’s mind, and make it easier for them to determine a career path to work toward. Together, they broaden the potential scope of options that are comfortable for each individual, while also excluding options the child themselves would not see as fitting. These assessment methodologies are a way to connect the concerns of a counselling professional together with the opinions and views of the children they work with.
Interpretation and Evaluation
In order to interpret the results of the intervention program, it is necessary to view its effects from the perspective of each individual middle school participant. Since the intervention design prioritized individual approach to each student, careful planning and in-person discussion with the children, a similar approach is required to tell students about the project’s effects. To estimate the success of the program, it is necessary to plan the evaluation of the program from the start. An objectives-based model of evaluation will be applied, where the stated goals and intentions of the intervention strategy will be outlined should be created. Then, by comparing the recorded results of the initiative, compared to the goals set, it should be possible to estimate the success of the career intervention.
Surveys of the children will be performed pre- and past-intervention. In this way, it will be possible to find any changes or improvements in the degree of career awareness, knowledge and confidence. Furthermore, this method of assessment will work to identifying the potential challenges or weaknesses of the intervention method, which is conductive to its improvement in the future.
In addition, other methods of evaluation will also be implemented. A satisfaction survey will be given out to all middle school participants, and their parents as well. The children will be able to share their feedback regarding the implementation, duration, effectiveness and success of the program, as well as any potential wishes in case such an intervention will be implemented again. As the primary receiving party in the career intervention program, the feedback of middle school children is vital in forming a better understanding of how well the counsellors acted and planned the project.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Obstacles
The main strength of this approach is that it promotes the autonomy, choice and individuality of each child. Giving every participant a chance to voice their own opinions, express their individual personality, knowledge, or discuss their skills is conductive to introspection, which is vital to choosing a correct professional path. First, a counsellor understands how they should approach each student. Then, they use their interpersonal skills and professionalism to guide a child through understanding their interests, personality traits and values. When this process is complete, a specific set of potential career paths is able to emerge, brought about as a result of the child’s own knowledge and interests. Instead of deciding for children, this method allows each middle schooler to define their own path to future fulfillment, or seek the necessary guidance to find it.
On the other hand, this method also has a number of significant weaknesses. In particular, an individualized approach to counselling, and discussing each participant’s future prospects is time consuming and complicated. As a result, the possible participant group will be limited in size, and it may be necessary to compromise on the depth of analysis for the sake of time. Only a smaller, pre-determined portion of time may be devoted to each student, regardless of their individual troubles or considerations. This problem can be mitigated with planning, and observing which students take longer to accommodate. However, it is difficult to fully anticipate the real-life workflow of a session.
An evident obstacle in presenting students with an opportunity for self-exploration may be an inability of some participants to engage in introspection to a sufficient degree. As mentioned previously, it may be difficult for some children to consider their own values or identity without reaching a specific level of physical and mental maturity. Middle school children are still learning about themselves, and about the world around them. As a result, it is possible that some may not have the full understanding of their interests, or wishes for the future. Such students may require more time or consideration during sessions.
References
Babarović, T., Dević, I., & Blažev, M. (2019). The effects of middle-school career intervention on students’ career readiness. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 20(2), 429-450. Web.
Hicks, J., Flamez, B., & Mayorga, M. (2020). Career counseling: Theory, practice, and application. Cognella Academic Publishing.