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Accommodations and Modifications in CTE Classroom Instruction
Career Guidance - Tools for Practical Applications
Building Successful Partnerships

Best Practices: CTE Teachers Role in ARD Meetings
Accommodations and Modifications III

Career Guidance - Tools for Practical Applications

What is career assessment?

Career assessment is a process that provides useful information and experiences, beginning in elementary school and continuing through adulthood that will assist an individual to develop educational plans to reach goals and develop skills related to employment and community living (i.e. employability skills). Career assessment provides an ongoing, individual-centered monitoring of skills or aptitudes, interests, and values related to functioning in work, home and community positions, and encompasses all individual assessment practices including: (1) psychological and educational assessment, (2) functional living skills assessment (home and community), and (3) vocational assessment (work).

What employability skills are employers looking for in their new employees?

Employability skills are those basic skills necessary for getting, keeping and doing well on a job. Employers now seek for their employees to possess employability skills in addition to academic qualifications. Employability skills, while categorized in many different ways, are generally divided into three skill sets: (a) basic academic skills, (b) higher-order thinking skills and (c) personal qualities. The three skill sets are typically broken down into more detailed skill sets.

Basic Academic Skills	Higher-Order Thinking Skills	Personal Qualities
Reading Writing Science Math Oral Communication Listening	Learning Reasoning Thinking Creatively Decision Making Problem Solving	Responsible Self Confident Self Control Team Player Honest Integrity Adaptable and Flexible	Team Spirit Punctual and Efficient Self Directed Good Work Attitude Well Groomed Cooperative Self Motivated

Why should we consider the results of career assessment?

According to the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth (2005), in order to perform at optimal levels in all educational settings, all youth need to participate in educational programs grounded in standards, clear performance expectations, and graduation exit options based upon meaningful, accurate, and relevant indicators of student learning and skills. One such option is ensuring that youth have access to an assessment system that includes multiple measures. In addition, the Collaborative also emphasizes that career preparation and work-based learning experiences are essential in order for youth to form and develop aspirations and to make informed choices about their careers. A method by which to achieve this is to conduct career assessments to help identify students’ school and post-school preferences and interests.

Career Assessment Definitions:
Interest: The existence of a strong preference, attention, or curiosity about some occupational, vocational, or career-related activity or area.
Aptitude: A combination of abilities and other characteristics, whether native or acquired, that is indicative of an individual's ability to learn or develop proficiency in some particular area if appropriate education or training is provided.
Work Value: The goal or objective sought through work-related behavior, for e.g. recognition, status, money, social support etc.
Personality: Refers to an individual’s emotional make-up and stability. Such traits as anxiety, sociability, assertiveness, leadership skills, extroversion or introversion can either enhance or impede career progression.

Career Development Issues
Career Beliefs: Career beliefs are assumptions people make about themselves and what they must do to succeed in the world of work.
Career Maturity: Career maturity is defined as having definite career choices, making consistent choices over time, and making choices that are realistic.

What makes a career assessment package successful?

Career assessments are typically successful if they meet two key criteria:

Appropriateness: A career assessment tool must be used only if it was designed for and is suitable (norming – refer to Q5) to the students being assessed on the basis of age, gender, ethnicity and grade level.

Comprehensiveness: There are multiple factors that contribute towards or may slow down successful career progression/development among all individuals. Interests in a certain profession may not be enough to build a career upon because the individual in question has skills sets and personality traits suitable for other careers. A comprehensive career guidance system will enable counselors and teachers to discern compatibility among interests, aptitudes, personality traits, work values and career development issues upon which their students’ careers may be based.

What is norming?

Norming is the process of developing statistics or tabular data that summarize the distribution of test performance for one or more specific groups, typically test takers of various ages or grades. Norms are usually designed to represent some larger population, such as test takers throughout the country. The group of examinees represented by the norms is referred to as the reference population.

How are career assessment instruments scored?

Most published career assessment tools will be accompanied by a technical manual. The text in the technical manual will provide you with information on how the instrument was developed, normed and what scores were used to interpret results. The norming tables will be published at the back of the manual and instructions will be provided on how a student’s obtained score (also known as a “raw score”) should be interpreted. To ensure fairness, the tools’ raw scores are standardized (based on a single mean and standard deviation), i.e. can be interpreted as “average”; “above average” or “below average” or another similar scale. Raw scores are also mathematically converted into standard scores. Typical standard scores that can be seen in a technical manual include:

Grade Equivalent Scores: The school grade level for a given population for which a given score is the median score in that population. Grade Equivalent scores are useful primarily because of three characteristics: 1) they indicate the developmental level of the pupil's performance, 2) they may be averaged for the purpose of making group comparisons, and 3) they are suitable for measuring growth. For example, if a student obtains a grade equivalent score of 6.3 on a math test we would say that his raw score is equivalent to the average raw score obtained by students in the norm group who were in their third month of the sixth grade.

Percentile Rank: A test score that is used to convert raw scores (number of correct answers) into something more meaningful. Percentile rank is the percentage of test takers who had a raw score that was the same as or higher than a given score. If a student received a raw score of 15 on a test and this put the student in the 75th percentile, it would mean that the student had a higher score than 75% of those who take the test.

Stanine Scores: Stanine scores are normalized standard scores with a range of 1 to 9, a mean of five, and a standard deviation of two. The first stanine is the lowest scoring group and the 9th stanine is the highest scoring group.

Are there career assessments available for students with special needs?

Commercially available career assessment packages can be used for students with special needs when administered with appropriate accommodations. For e.g.

Items are administered orally (in other languages if necessary).
Extra time is given.
Allowing for parents to aid in administration (at home or at school).
Using a magnifying glass or larger font for students with visual impairment.

Administrators need to be aware that most commercially available instruments are not normed on students with special needs. Developing local norms may have to be considered as an alternative solution (refer to the Career Guidance: Tools for Practical Applications module for more information).

Using a technique such as a card-sort exercise or adapting the CACE survey is also recommended (refer to the Career Guidance: Tools for Practical Applications module for more information).

Where can I go to find career assessment instruments or the Career Aspirations and Career Expectations (CACE) survey?

Refer to the toolbox that is available on the CTSP site – http://ctsp.tamu.edu/videos/videos07/toolbox/career%20guidance/index.php

I have administered the assessments and obtained the students’ results. Now what?

We recommend that you now match your students to career clusters. A federally recommended model, the career clusters provide a way for schools to organize instruction and student experiences around broad categories that encompass virtually all occupations from entry through professional levels. Salient features include:

Career exploration through career assessment within the cluster structure allows students to match their interests, skills, and education requirements with possible careers.
The cluster model identifies knowledge and skills that are needed in the workplace.
This knowledge and these skills are tied to standards and curriculum to better prepare students. Core courses and electives are provided in the 9^th grade through 12^th grade and throughout the curriculum.
By providing the links between school and the workplace, students understand the relevancy of what they are learning.

In Texas, 16 career clusters are identified and recommended for use in schools by the Texas Education Agency. Refer to http://www.achievetexas.org/ for more information.

What post-secondary options are available to my students with special needs?

A student-centered career assessment program that receives school-wide support and that was developed on the basis of industry standards can lead to success for students in various post-secondary arenas including:

1. Licensure or certification

2. Apprenticeships

3. Associate Degrees

4. Two-year Community College with articulation into

5. Four-Year Colleges

I don’t have time to do all this extra work related to career assessment. What can I do?

Consider infusing employability skills into your classroom curriculum.

Use group assessment sessions where possible.
Utilize contextual learning experiences to infuse workplace learning into classroom learning experiences.
Incorporate worksite learning opportunities, e.g. field trips.
Provide students with current labor market information.
In addition to counselors utilize teachers, other school personnel, business/industry representatives and mentors to provide career guidance information.
Expand the range of resources for career guidance information by making optimal use of the World Wide Web and additional computer-based packages.
Develop ways of exposing students of both genders to a wider range of occupational options.
Utilize curriculum-based assessments for developing career guidance plans. The term curriculum-based assessment (CBA) simply means measurement that uses direct observation and recording of a student's performance in the local curriculum (i.e. measures basic skills) as a basis for gathering information to make instructional decisions.

What about my students who are interested in non-traditional careers? How can I help them?

Nontraditional Occupations (NTOs) are jobs in which 25 percent or less of the workforce is of one gender (U.S. Department of Labor). Using the techniques we describe in the Career Guidance: Tools for Practical Applications module, you can encourage your students to pursue non-traditional careers. However provide them with information so that they may be aware of the pros and cons of choosing a non-traditional path. Click here for more.

Last updated: 11 August, 2008

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