The Role of Career Education on Students' Education Choices and Postsecondary Outcomes: Theoretical and Evidence Base Preparation - SRDC

The Role of Career Education on Students’ Education Choices and Postsecondary Outcomes: Theoretical and Evidence Base Preparation

Authors:SRDC SRSA

This project focuses on policy and practice intended to influence youths’ career decisions. It has compiled knowledge from the existing literature and generated new evidence from unique Canadian data to support decisions of policy makers and practitioners on:

(a) how and when to intervene to assist youth in their career decision making, and

(b) for whom supports are effective yet currently lacking.

The intent of this venture in secondary analysis overall is to help equip the career counselling profession to respond authoritatively to increasingly urgent policy questions about how optimally to structure career education for young people. SRDC is using two rich longitudinal data sources created to test experimental career interventions through the linkage of education records to surveys of youth and parents in three provinces.

The data document the lives of 7,000 young Canadians, including their occupational aspirations as high school students at age 14, their post-secondary education and employment outcomes over 10 years. Positive and negative impacts of interventions and tracking of outcomes following specific mediators of advice (such as parents, teachers, counsellors, peers) help point to future best practices and the development of tools to support the work of counsellors and guide students in their planning and decision making regarding career choices early in, and throughout, high school. This is the final technical report of three prepared for the project.

For simplicity, we summarize all three reports here, at the expense of producing an unusually long executive summary. SRDC began by reviewing the literature on youth’s career decision making and career education to inform the later empirical exploration of the long-term effects of career education interventions.

The design of the analysis was included in the second report and is outlined again in the present report alongside the results, conclusions, recommendations, and next steps.

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