Career Clusters: Tool for Seamless Educational Transition

1
Career Clusters Tool for Seamless Educational
Transition
2
Overview

• What are Career Clusters?
• Why Career Clusters?
• What are the Benefits?
• What Resources are Available?
• How Do You Get Started?

3
Career Clusters Definition

• Career Clusters represent a grouping of
  occupations and broad industries based on
  commonalities.
• Instructional Guidance Model

4
Career Clusters Tool

• A TOOL for seamless educational system that
• Blends rigorous academic/technical preparation
• Provides career planning
• Offers options for students to experience all
  aspects of an industry
• Facilitates/assists students with transitions

5
What Career Clusters DO

• Provide a framework that current programs slot
  into
• Provide a framework for seamless education
• Provide MORE career options for learners
• Provide a framework for addressing the entire
  world of work
• Provide a picture of how knowledge and skills
  transfer vertically and horizontally

6
What Career Clusters DONT Do

• Do not take away current programs
• Do not take away occupational areas
• Do not track learners into a single job

7
Career Clusters Titles

• Agriculture, Food Natural Resources
• Architecture Construction
• Arts, Audio/Video Technology Communications
• Business, Management Administration
• Education Training
• Finance
• Government Public Administration
• Health Science

• Hospitality Tourism
• Human Services
• Information Technology
• Law, Public Safety Security
• Manufacturing
• Marketing, Sales Service
• Science, Technology, Engineering Mathematics
• Transportation, Distribution Logistics

8
Career Clusters Model

• Organizes the occupations, within each cluster,
  into pathways that group the cluster occupations
  based on commonalities

9
 
 
 
10
Career Clusters Why?

• Career-focused strategy supporting
• Educational reform
• Workforce preparation
• Economic prosperity

11
Career Clusters Educational Reform

• Help develop employability, academic and
  technical skills
• Build a repertoire of skills within the broad
  context of a career
• Enhance career guidance and transitions
• Add relevance to the curriculum
• Provide smoother transitions between educational
  levels
• Provide for re-tooling, changing careers

12
Career Clusters Workforce Preparation

• Driven by local business/industry and economic
  development
• Prepare the emerging workforce
• Cross-train/re-tool the workforce
• Build a flexible, Gold Collar workforce

13
Transition to 21st Century Workplaces

Source Adapted from Schray and Sheets (2002)
14
Career Clusters Economic Prosperity

• The career clusters framework is the educational
  undergirding of industry clusters
• Career clusters are industry groupings of
  occupations with common knowledge and skills
• Industry clusters are geographic concentrations
  of related businesses and industries

15
Career Clusters Benefits

• Learners are more likely to enroll in rigorous
  and relevant coursework
• Enhanced guidance services through the cluster
  models identification of many careers and their
  pathways
• Aligned linkages from secondary feeder programs
  to academic and/or technical postsecondary
  education
• Learners better equipped for successful career
  transitions

16
Resources

• www.okcareertech.org/iis
• www.okcareertech.org/guidance
• www.careerclusters.org
• Preferred Product/Technical Assistance Providers
• Brochures
• Career Cluster Resources CD (only place to obtain
  printed copy of Knowledge Skills)
• Posters
• Pathway Models
• Plans of Study (see Plan of Study handout)
• Interest Inventories/Surveys
• Assessments Workplace Readiness, Cluster
  Specific
• Annual Career Clusters Institute
• www.careervoyages.com

17
Tips for Getting Started

• Use resources to
• Enhance existing programs.
• Strengthen/align programs, courses, and skill
  sets.
• Serve as a career theme for career academies,
  small learning communities, schools within
  schools, charter schools, home schooling and
  magnet schools.

18
Three Basic Implementation Stages
Career Preparation and Planning (9-Postsecondary
)
Career Awareness and Career Exploration (K-8) Exp
loring all clusters
Lifelong Learning (K-Careers) Cross-training,
retooling within a cluster or across related
clusters

• Focusing on cluster
• Focusing on pathway within cluster
• Focusing on occupation within pathway