Edition 24 - Starting early

Welcome back to another edition of Pondering Careers, where we talk about all things related to career education and development.

This week I've been starting to build the foundations for Ponder Primary, and it's brought me back to thinking about how we develop our ideas about the careers we do throughout childhood. So, for that reason (and because all these ideas are swirling around in my head), this week's newsletter will focus on the career development that takes place before children even start secondary school.

If you're thinking that you mostly work with adults and this newsletter is probably not for you, then I'd just challenge that for a second and ask you to read on anyway, because development doesn't occur in discrete, isolated stages. What takes place in our earliest days has a bearing on the work we do later in life, and it's worth talking about it.

Happy reading!

This is not a new idea

It sometimes feels like we're waiting to start talking about career education in primary school, because we need to focus on getting it right in secondary schools first, but perhaps if that's the case we'll be waiting forever.

But we've been talking about this for decades - in fact, this article from 50 years ago (yes, you read that right, FIFTY years ago), says pretty much the same thing that we're saying today:

Let me highlight the important bit:

It is being suggested that a comprehensive K-12 career education program, one that introduces every student to the world of work and prepares [them] for a place in it, is vitally needed if the United States is to continue a viable work force...

In other words, we needed a comprehensive, K-12 program back then, and we still need it now.

What vocational development actually happens during childhood?

Childhood vocational development takes the form of meaning-making, where children explore the world of work within their context to construct a narrative about what their career may look like. The development that takes place during childhood provides the foundation for their first significant career transition choices; they do not come to their decision as they prepare to leave school as a ‘clean slate’, rather, they bring embedded ideas, their vocational identity (VI), and the career adaptability skills they have developed to date.

All this means is that if we want to develop programs that work in a secondary context, or even later in life, we need to start by building solid foundations in childhood.

There are multiple theories of childhood development that exist outside of the realm of career development, and common among them is the idea that children develop as they construct their understanding both of themselves, and of the world around them.

Kimberly Howard and Mary Walsh developed a model we can use to visualise how children develop their ideas about careers and work which brings together these theories with core career development theory, and suggests that infants start developing their ideas about who they are (including in relation to work) around the age of two, when they start to separate their identity from that of their primary caregiver.

I'm never sure how I feel about this - ask anyone who's raised more than one child, and they'll tell you that they develop their own little personality very early on, and by two years old they generally have pretty strong ideas about who they are and what they like. My children certainly had, and, looking back, I can see that they'd started forming ideas about who they were in particular in relation to their gender very early on.

I tend to break development down into five rough stages - I say rough, because every child develops at a different pace, and I set the end at around 18 to 20, when we'd typically think of them as 'adults', but it's worth keeping in mind that some children miss the last stages, particularly if they leave school early for work or caring roles.

The First Stage

The first stage is not about conscious career development, but it is the stage when we first start to see their personalities evolve. Looking back, I can see that the traits my kids exhibit now as teens were there from the earliest days - Linc always slept through the night, right from birth, and he can still sleep just about anywhere. He was also stubborn at birth, and let you know if he didn't like what was happening, and he's still the same now (I blame it on the red hair).

The way I see it, what happens in these first few years creates a pool of characters and traits from which their future career story will be drawn.

The Second Stage

At this point, children are starting to build their sense of self in a wider context - playgroup, day care, swimming lessons etc. and their play often becomes more purposeful. They have opportunities to select the activities they want to engage with, and they go about 'trying on' different behaviours to see what fits.

The attitudes, beliefs, and competencies from earlier are solidified and refined in response to their wider frame of reference - so behaviours that developed at home but which are less socially desirable in the community may be discarded or adjusted to meet the social expectations of their friends and new significant adults, such as their teachers. They may also start comparing themselves to their friends, and will probably be able to tell you who is fastest or best behaved in their friend group.

Magical and concrete thinking is still the order of the day, because they don't have the ability to use reasoning yet, so jobs exist, but they don't know how they exist. The concrete thinking is also a big problem, particularly when it comes to gender-based roles, because if they form a belief at this age that girls do some things and boys do others it can be really hard to unpick that later on, even if they let go of their concrete thinking (which isn't guaranteed).

I often use the example here of interactions with the police force. In many communities, police officers will visit preschools and kindergartens to talk to the children and let them sit in the car or sound the siren. Children who have these experiences will usually develop positive ideas about the police and who they are, and align themselves with this career path. Children in disadvantaged or minorities may not have these same experiences, and they may also witness confronting interactions between the police and members of their community, which negatively impacts on the perception of policing as a career path.

Children at this age conflate career choice with an expression of their identity; so, when they are asked what they want to do when they grow up they respond with a career that they think matches who they are; the child who believes they are brave and strong may aspire to become a super hero or fire fighter, while the child who loves dancing and believes they are graceful may want to become a ballerina. They lack the ability to reflect and question these beliefs, just as they lack the ability to question whether their preference for the colour blue, for example, has anything to do with their biological gender.

This stage is crucial because they haven't yet started to limit their career exploration, and we can introduce them to a huge range of diverse people working in diverse careers. If they see a new career they like, which they think fits them better, they'll swap it out.

In other words, we need to think long and hard about the careers we introduce children to at this stage, and we can't just leave it to chance.

The Third Stage

This is the last stage we're going to talk about today, because it's the last phase before they hit middle/secondary school, and it's during these years that children start to crystallise their identity. It's unlikely that they'll shift much after this phase, it's more about fine tuning then, so the foundations we lay in primary school and what we'll have to work with later on.

By the start of this stage, children begin to understand that they may know things that others don’t know, and that they may have different beliefs, values, and aptitudes from others, which helps them develop their ideas about who they are and who they could be. They also usually get to choose how they behave (or not) and the activities they get involved in, which further reinforces their identity.

We often see children begin to rein in their aspirations at this stage, as they move towards more realistic careers and away from the grandiose and fantastical imaginings they had before, which is why it's so important to ensure children have accurate information about pathways, particularly towards the end of primary school, so they don't limit their options unnecessarily.

What does all this mean?

We need to think long and hard about what we teach from infancy if we don't want young people to limit who they are. We need to do more of some things, like I'd love to see more diversity in children's books and cartoons, but we also need to stop doing some things, like we need to stop gendering everything for very young children.

Boys and girls don't need different types of sheets, like these ones from Pottery Barn Kids for example, we can just have sheets for toddlers:

We also need to talk about what work actually looks like, and give them information so they can be informed as they're still trying things out, which is why I'm so excited to see so many fantastic primary career interventions taking place.

Helpful resources for primary Career-Related Learning (CRL)

I feel like we're starting to see more and more chatter around primary CRL over the past 12 months, and we're certainly starting to get more questions now from schools about our own programs, which means there's quite a bit out there now.

The UK has taken steps to make CRL compulsory in primary schools as well as in secondary schools, and it will be interesting to watch the rest of their pilot program as it rolls out. Here's the latest recommendation from the Government's Report :

Recommendation 11: The Department should evaluate the success of its careers programme for primary schools after its first year, and if it has been shown to have a positive impact, scale it up to cover all areas of England. In doing so the Department should consider working with the full range of providers who have demonstrated their ability to provide effective programmes in this space.

So, while I've listed a few things here there are more out there and more still in the works, which is just awesome.

myfuture Primary Resources

These resources from Michael Healy and the team at myfuture are great, and I really like this framework - it's structured and builds in stages as children move through primary school, plus it's based on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development which gets a big tick from me.

They also have a great resource created by Tristram Hooley which makes a succinct case for CRL in any primary setting.

Canadian CRL resources from CERIC

Here are three literature reviews created by a team headed by Lorraine Godden, PhD as part of a project to roll out primary CRL in years 4 to 6, and they've also created a guide for educators which is really handy.

The Indiana Career Explorer

While I have reservations about asking children in primary school to complete personality quizzes (and that won't be a feature of Ponder Primary) there are some interesting ideas in here that are worth further exploration.

I like how the program builds throughout their time at school, and that they prioritise student data security. They also recommend Xello to their schools, which leads me into:

Xello Elementary

There's a lot to like in this program with all the bells and whistles - students go through a gamified career exploration process and refine their thinking about themselves along the way.

The system may be less accessible than some of the others - there's a cost involved, plus you really need good wifi and individual student devices to run the program, but for those that have the ability it might be a good starting place for a CRL program that runs alongside curriculum.

Primary Futures

This is a great program from Education and Employers (based in the UK, but doing some work in Canada) which connects schools with volunteer speakers who share their career stories with primary students. I love this model, and it's great that they focus on getting a range of speakers into all schools, so it can really play a role in broadening horizons at that crucial early age.

And while we're talking about the UK, there are also some great resources available from The Careers & Enterprise Company , who are also running the Start small, dream big pilot.

What Works? Career-related learning in primary schools

I've shared this report before, but it's one of my go-to documents and I feel it's worth sharing again in this context.

I love that they review what's working, and suggest tweaks to improve delivery rather than just suggesting new programs. I'm constantly referring to this document as I flesh out our own framework for primary CRL.

Anything I've missed?

There's so much out there once you start digging, but if I've missed anything you'd like to share please let me know!