The Structure of School Career Development Interventions: Implications for School Counselors

Note: The work reported herein was supported under the National Dissemination for Career and Technical Education, PR/Award (No. VO51A 990004) as administered by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education. However the contents do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the Office of Vocational and Adult Education or the U.S. Department of Education, and the reader should not assume endorsement by the federal government. Each year, large sums of state and federal dollars are spent on career development provided through America's public schools. The annual federal expenditure alone on career development interventions exceeds one billion dollars (Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, 1998). Such expenditures are seen as a sound investment, for it is believed that they increase the relevance of education for America's youth (Herr & Cramer, 1996). However, despite these benefits, researchers have not attempted to define the actual structure of career development interventions that occur in America's secondary schools. Without the knowledge of such a structure, real progress in career development interventions and practice will be either severely circumscribed or absent. This taxonomic project was undertaken in order to develop a taxonomy of career development interventions provided through America's secondary schools. In his monograph on typologies and taxonomies in the social sciences, Bailey (1994) commented that without classification, there could be no advanced conceptualization, reasoning, language, data analysis, or for that matter social science research (p. 1). The production of a career development interventions taxonomy has benefits for both researchers and practitioners. First of all, a taxonomy would bring a standardized nomenclature both in terms of content and structure to this area of classifying interventions. With this standardization, different initiatives then can be accurately compared and contrasted (Brickell et al., 1974). One of the major problems noted in the reviews of early career development was the lack of definition of the treatment. Because of this lack of definition, the reviewers found it difficult to draw an accurate conclusion about the relationship between career development interventions and important outcomes such as student achievement (Bhaerman, 1977; Bonnet, 1977; Evans & Burck, 1992; Hoyt, 1980). When a field lacks a taxonomy, it is difficult to compare the efficacy of certain types of interventions against other sets of interventions (e.g., guidance curriculum vs. experience-based learning). This lack of comparative leaves school counseling practitioners with no alternative other than employing an inefficient and expensive shotgun approach to career development for America's youth. Brickell et al. (1974) held that since taxonomies can be used to generate a set of distinctive choices, they can help frame the debate about what choices to make. Thus, policymakers at all levels can draw useful guidance from them. With a taxonomy, school counseling researchers can explore systematically and comprehensively questions about the relationship between career development interventions and desired student outcomes. example, one outcome question might be: Does the sequencing of career development interventions taxa interact with a successful transition to postsecondary education? Another important question that the production of a taxonomy would open for study is: For students of color, which career development intervention taxa most leverage academic achievement? A taxonomy can also help with other formative evaluation questions. example, a taxonomy of career development interventions would give a school counselor a parsimonious framework within which to examine if there are areas of career development where her or his district is underdeveloped (Bailey, 1994). …