The Broader Professional Context:week 30

The Broader Professional Context

Applied Practice Two, Activity Six

The trend I am going to reflect, critique and evaluate my practice on is the Heightened Demand for Career Readiness. I will Rolfe et al’s (2001) Reflective Model to examine this trend.

Step 1 - What?

The trend that captivates my attention is the national and global trend of heightened demand for our school leavers to be ready for careers in our ever changing career environment. My reflections on this are based around; how do we prepare our students for a world of changing employment opportunities that we don’t even know about yet?

I am a classroom teacher and Hub Leader of Year Seven and Eight students. Teaching and learning about careers is required at this year level. I have just recently met with a representative of Careers New Zealand and discussed a Careers programme with her. Very little, if any, emphasis was placed on our unknown future and what we can be doing to prepare our students. I would like to introduce a careers programme within our senior school that incorporates the skills and attributes that will be required in future employment.

Step 2 - So What?

Examining this trend is important because this is the trend of a mismatch between school leavers skill sets and employment opportunities in the marketplace. Daggett, B. (2014) has identified two issues in this area.

Firstly, employers are struggling to fill positions that require a highly skilled employee. School leavers are not leaving the education system with the required high level skill set needed to fill these positions therefore causing a skills gap problem.

Secondly, middle to entry level jobs are being replaced by technology. Technology is used because it’s cheaper and more reliable than employing people.

The key challenges/ opportunities for myself and other educators across New Zealand  around this trend are:

• How do we as educators keep abreast of future employment trends, translate that into skill set requirements then develop teaching and learning programmes to address it?
• How do we make use of currently resources and acquire new resources to assist in these programmes?

This trend will impact my and others teaching by:

• The critiquing of our own curriculum delivery and understanding the gaps in skills taught compared to the skills needed in the employment market.
• Developing integrated skill set teaching and learning programmes for our students to better prepare them for the future and meet the demands of an ever changing employment market.

Step 3 - Now What?

The NZ Ministry of Education is currently seeking input from Educators, students and the wider community about the future of our curriculum and education delivery in New Zealand. As part of this Education Work Programme, there is a big review underway on vocational education and training. There is however no direct reference to examining future focussed skills in the New Zealand Education system.

Business New Zealand have also identified the issue of the lack of high level skills needed for the ongoing productivity of the country’s business organisations. They state “Our tertiary education system must be capable of providing young people, with quality opportunities, ensuring they have the technical/specialist knowledge, capabilities and employability skills to work effectively in the community (as job creators or takers), today, tomorrow and in the future” (Carrie Murdoch, 2016).  One of their recommendations is that market information be readily accessible to the key decision makers in the Education sector to better ensure school leavers are able to meet the skills demand of the future.

The growing tier of upper-level jobs requires increasingly sophisticated skills and the ability to be a lifelong learner in a technological, information- based environment Daggett, B. (2014). The changes that may need to be adopted in my context are:

• Discussions with whanau and outside organisations to better understand the needs of the future workforce.
• Integrating the teaching and learning of these identified needed skills into our curriculum as having the same priority as core subjects.

The curriculum would need to include the teaching and learning of skills and attributes that can be transferred across employment sectors such as resilience, perseverance, problem solving etc. This way students can adapt and move with the future rather than get left behind.

References:

Carrie Murdoch, 2016, Letter of submission to the Inquiry into New Models of Tertiary Education, Business New Zealand, Retrieved  from ttps://www.businessnz.org.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/116008/Inquiry-into-New-Models-of-Tertiary-Education.pdf  

Daggett, B. (2014). Addressing Current and Future Challenges in Education. Retrieved from http://www.leadered.com/pdf/2014MSC_AddressingCurrentandFutureChallenges.pdf

Korero Matuaranga - Let’s Talk about Education, (2018), Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://www.conversation.education.govt.nz/

New Media Consortium. (2017, August 29). NMC and CoSN Release the Horizon Report: 2017 K-12 Edition [Video]. Retrieved from Youtube

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan