Knowledge-Information-Service Era Changes in Work and Education and the Changing Role of the School Counselor in Career Education

Career Development Quarterly, March, 2001 by Kenneth B. Hoyt, Pat Nellor Wickwire

Desired learner outcomes, identified in terms of general employability, adaptability, and promotability skills, include basic academics; productive work habits; personally meaningful work values; basic understanding and appreciation of private enterprise; understanding of self and available educational and occupational opportunities; career decision making; job seeking, finding, getting, and holding; productive use of leisure time; reduction of bias and stereotyping and respect for full freedom of career choice for all persons; and humanizing the workplace for oneself (Hoyt, 1981). These goals and desired learner outcomes are certainly appropriate in relation to the needs for career development as they relate to current changes in life and work.

Career education models have been developed and implemented for different settings (Hoyt, 1981). The basic conceptual content sequence includes career awareness, career exploration, career planning and decision making, career preparation, career entry, career maintenance, and career progression (Woal, 1994). Delivery of this content can be personalized and recycled as appropriate and necessary for individual career development needs. In the planning, delivery, and evaluation of career education in kindergarten though Grade 12, management, pupil services, instruction, and classified components, as well as agents outside of the school system, are collaboratively involved in a team approach. Throughout the lifetime, all parts of the community are involved.

School counselors, who are key personnel in the kindergarten through Grade 12 career education team (Hoyt, 1977a, 1977c, 1981; Wickwire, 1992), can contribute in large degree to support student career development needs in a society with increasingly close relationships of education and work.

The Changing Role of the School Counselor in Career Education

The emerging information society calls for increasingly close relationships between education and work (National Center on Education and the Economy [NCEE], 1990). If these relationships are to be effective, four growing needs of all school leavers must be recognized. These include (a) the need to plan for postsecondary career-oriented education; (b) the need to acquire general employability, adaptability, and promotability skills to enable occupational changes during adulthood; (c) the need to emphasize the importance of work values; and (d) the need to plan ways of engaging in both paid and unpaid work as part of total career development.

The contention is that today's school counselors can make important contributions toward meeting these needs if they attempt to do so in the context of career education. The basis for each of these student needs is presented in the following discussion.

Need for Postsecondary Career-Oriented Education

Approximately 8 million (30%) of the 26.3 million new jobs expected during 1994-2005 will require a bachelor's degree ("OCChart: Projected Change," 1994). When both new and replacement job openings are considered, 23.3% of them are predicted to require at least a 4-year college degree ("OCChart: Occupations," 1995-1996). Yet, 77% of high school seniors expect to receive the bachelor's degree (Olson, 1996), and 67% of the 1997 high school graduates were enrolled in college in the fall of 1997 (U.S. Department of Labor, 1998). On the basis of these projections, an annual surplus of approximately 300,000 graduates from 4-year colleges is predicted for the number of jobs available during 1994-2005 (Shelley, 1996).