Work in Progress

Informing post-school pathways: Investigating school students' authentic work experiences

• Summary
• Purpose
• Approach
• Research questions
• Methodology
• Organisations

Summary

Purpose

The aim of this project is to co-opt high school students' authentic experiences in their paid part-time work, school-based apprenticeships and voluntary work based experiences to assist them and their peers understand more about work and working life, and inform decision-making about pathways towards and through working life. Through classroom-based activities, it aims to utilise these paid authentic work experiences, which are freely and widely available in every senior high school student cohort, to develop an informed and critical appreciation of work and working life.

Approach

Focus groups, data gathering and analysis.

Research questions

The key research question is: How best can school students' experiences in authentic work experiences be used to understand work, working life and educational-work pathway options?

Sub-questions include:

* What framework can best assist students describe and critically appreciate the qualities of paid work?

* What classroom processes can be utilised to best assist students reflect upon their authentic work experiences and share these with other students?

* How best can school students' experiences in their work experiences be used to understand the kind of pathways that they face in working life?

* In what ways will these collective experiences be useful in pressing students to consider post-school educational pathways?

Methodology

Stage One - Selecting schools

The first stage comprises identifying schools and teachers to participate in the project. The aim here is to locate, the interest and consent of a small number of schools (up to 5) in metropolitan and near-metropolitan locations in which to develop and trial this approach to student learning about working life. At least one of those schools will be a non-government school. It is anticipated involving in total up to 10 classes of year 10, 11, and 12 students and their teachers in this project over one school term in 2004 and one in 2005, thereby giving access to two cohorts each.

Stage Two - Negotiating the curriculum with teachers

Stage Two involves working with teachers in the selected schools to refine the instructional focus and the pedagogic practices which might support their success. The goal in this stage is to develop the most appropriate pedagogic responses and strategies to assist students to describe and understand their work experiences and reflect upon appropriate post school pathways. The second phase of the research is focussed on determining how the research questions can be best implemented in school settings. The findings will be essential to the further implementation of this initiative. The proposed framework for teachers to use, adapt and refine comprises engaging students in describing that work comprises categories of work activities and interactions. This framework was developed and has been used to describe the requirements for work performance in earlier studies (Billett, 2000; Billett, Barker & Hernon-Tinning 2004).

Stage Three - Enacting the interventions (descriptive and reflective learning experiences in schools)

At particular points during two terms, the instructional approaches that have been negotiated with the teachers will be enacted. The aim is to engage up to 10 classes of students within a small number of government and non-government schools in each of two semesters in these trials and in metropolitan schools. The teachers' role might be to pose questions such as those suggested above in order for the students to describe, share and critically appraise their workplace tasks. It is anticipated that the first trialing of the strategies will be with up to 10 classes across years 10, 11 and 12 in the final term of 2004, and the second group in the first term of 2005.

Stage Four - staged formative and summative evaluation of the interventions from students and teachers' perspectives analysis, reporting and dissemination

Parallel to Stage Three will be processes of gathering evidence on:

(i) how the strategies are being used; (ii) the efficacy of the approach from the students' and teachers' perspectives; and (iii) the kinds of outcomes that are being realised. This evidence will be in the form of data gathered in interviews and through the use of schedules of questions and, possibly student assessment tasks. The data will be gathered progressively and summatively. The findings will be analysed, reported and disseminated. The findings are expected to comprise those on: (i) how the approach had to be adopted to address different student and situational needs (thereby informing future practice); (ii) those associated with the efficacy of the approach to strategy use (thereby informing future practice); (iii) those about perspectives from both students and teachers, that can permit an appraisal of (i) and (ii); and iv) those that capture instances of outcomes to validate the approach and inform further practice. The dissemination of the research findings and the instructional practices utilised by the teachers is a further element of this stage.

Organisations

The Adult and Vocational area within the School of Vocational, Technology and Arts Education, Griffith University has a demonstrated capacity for quality research and its conduct in a prompt manner way, particularly through the Centre for Learning and Work Research. The University has extensive research infrastructure to support the effective enactment of this research. This includes library sources, access to computing, data processing and research support facilities. In addition, the Human Research Ethics Committee plays a role in verifying the ethical conduct of the research project. There are also University admission resources that will be used to support the administration of the research project from within the University.

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