Try Before You Choose -- the need for experiential career education

For many young people in the United States, career choice is arbitrary and conducted with little or no experience. Many people choose an occupation on the basis of a stereotype with little knowledge of what people in that occupation actually do, how it feels to work on the tasks and problems, or what the joys and frustrations are. Career choice can be particularly problematic for low-income minorities who often have limited exposure to positive career role models. Yet no other decision in life has such far-reaching consequences. One’s income, spouse, family, friends, leisure, neighborhood, security and peace of mind are directly influenced by career choices.

Some people with luck and good guidance make satisfying career choices, but many others find themselves stuck and miserable in unfulfilling jobs. Sizable investments of time, money and emotional energy go into training for occupations which ultimately prove unsatisfactory. Nearly half of adult employed Americans would rather be in a different line of work and would make a different career choice if they could choose again. They report significant job-related stress and believe their skills are not well utilized. Some 69% would seek additional information if they were choosing a new career (National Career Development Association, 1988; United Press International, 1995).

Career decisions are not a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. The U.S. Department of Labor has estimated that a twenty-year-old will switch career directions an average of six times in a lifetime. With accelerating technological changes, mergers, layoffs and economic fluctuations, the need for help in career decision making will intensify. Some job turnover is inevitable and probably desirable, but it is wasteful of human talent and energy and detrimental to human happiness for large numbers of people to be making choices that they regret or that underutilize their abilities.

Career choices can be made on the basis of any factor—warmth of the climate, parental suggestions, or occupational prestige. A study by Walls (2000) revealed that high school students aspired to occupations that were the highest in status, mental requirements, earnings and preparation time. However, the one factor that is often unknown and thus is not considered will ultimately be the most important—first hand experience of the actual work environment and tasks related to that profession.

What help is available to people in making critical career decisions? Vast quantities of occupational information are available, but reading factual information about carpenters, actors and computer programmers has little appeal. Even though these resources transmit some accurate information, they can also communicate many career myths and misunderstandings. These materials are often created from the perspective of adult professionals, and are not necessarily relevant to what students most want to know about different careers. The challenge, therefore, becomes to educate people experientially as well as intellectually.

One Solution: The Career Video Project

Since the passage of the national School-to-Work Opportunities Act in 1994 there has been a steady growth in programs that provide experiential opportunities for students in the work place. Job shadowing programs, in particular, have grown in popularity over the last few years as a means to help introduce young people to different career opportunities. For example, in 2003, a job shadowing day sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, America’s Promise and Junior Achievement, attracted over one million student participants and more than 100,000 participating employers (Job shadowing: Current News, 2003).

We have recently begun testing a new type of experiential activity, the Career Video Project. In this activity high school students are teamed up with career volunteers and they create a video about that person’s occupation. The students are matched with a career professional employed in a field of potential interest for the students. The students meet with the career participant, and they mutually plan the types of tasks, activities and information that are most salient and should be included in the video. The career participant then “stars” in the video, and the students do the videotaping and production work. Students are encouraged to make videos that are creative, entertaining and that show people actually doing their jobs, not just talking about them. Students are also encouraged to include themselves in the videos—for example to show themselves interacting with the career participant or engaging in tasks at the job site. At the conclusion of the activity a class session is devoted to showing all of the student-made career videos. The resulting videos are then posted to a web site (http://www.inspired2work.com/) where they can viewed by other students interested in exploring different career directions.
The Career Video Project provides a number of advantages over traditional job shadowing programs, some of which include:

• Collaboration. The student does not just meet and passively observe a career participant, but actively collaborates with the career volunteer to come up with ideas for scenes for the video and to decide what information should be included.
• Active Participation. In traditional job shadowing programs students often passively watch the career participant and ask generic, pre-scripted questions. There is little opportunity for students to shape the experience. In the Career Video Project students are encouraged to create well organized videos that are entertaining, informative and that capture the most important aspects of the career. To do this they must become actively involved in planning the video and in processing the information. They have to come up with interview questions and create a story board of desired video scenes. During the video production they have to take an hour or more of video tape and edit it down to less than twenty minutes of the most important material.
• Structured. In traditional job-shadowing activities the students and the career participant are often unclear about what they are supposed to do. The Career Video Project provides a structured activity that provides a flexible yet focused way for the students and career participant to interact and spend their time. The project also provides a tangible product of the interaction—the career video.
• Motivational. Youths tend to love working in creative ways with new technologies and enjoy creating stories. Digital video production taps into youths’ associations with screen media as a preferred means of communication, and is an excellent way to enhance student engagement in educational activities. At the present time thousands of digital videos have been produced by K-12 students, often through organizations such as the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, or the Visible Knowledge Project at Georgetown University. By incorporating the creation of career video as part the job-shadowing activity, it makes the project more fun and memorable for both the students and the career participant.
• More Alternatives. A problem with job shadowing programs is that each student is limited to visiting a single career participant. Students often choose careers that they are already familiar with and thus are not exposed to new possibilities. By creating a video, the student’s individual experiences can be more broadly shared. A class session can be devoted to displaying all of the student videos, so each student is exposed to many different careers. Because the career videos are posted on a web site, they are available to anyone in the world with internet access.