Abstract
This paper uses a social justice perspective to recommend a number of program design strategies for improving high need, high opportunity youth access to quality education, career and workforce development. Globally, high need, high opportunity youth refer to the estimated 500 million youth who live on less than $2 per day, the estimated 600 million youth who are not in school, not employed, and not in training (i.e., NEET or Opportunity Youth). The recommendations are framed using a number of U.N. Sustainable Development Goals with the central aim being to increase access to decent work.
Drawing from Prillentensky’s Emancipatory Communitarianism (1997) and Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), a growing number of vocational psychologists and career development professionals are engaging in a postmodern assessment of the value and purpose of the career choice and decision-making paradigm (Blustein et al., 2005; Byars-Winston, 2014; Chronister et al., 2004; Diemer & Rasheed-Ali, 2009; Diemer & Blustein, 2006; Mcwhirter et al., 2019; Richardson, 1993; Solberg & Ali, 2017; Solberg, Howard et al., 2002). The application of Freire and Prillentensky’s ideas encourages vocational psychologists and career development professionals to consider whether and to what extent our program and service design strategies empower and liberate vulnerable populations. The purpose of this article is to offer recommendations and considerations for designing programs and services that enable one such vulnerable population, what we refer to as “high need, high opportunity youth,” to gain access to decent work. “High need, high opportunity” refer to youth whose demographic characteristics are associated with lower educational attainment rates. The term “opportunity youth” was introduced by Belfield et al. (2012) to describe the economic gains the United States could capture by focusing attention on youth who are disconnected from education and work—what the European Union refers to as NEET youth—not employed, in education or training (Dolado, 2015; OECD, 2019). In this paper, the demographic characteristics associated with high need, high opportunity youth the estimated 30 million youth who are living in low-income households in the United States that include high concentrations of racial/ethnic minorities (Koball & Jiang, 2018), 4.6 million disconnected youth (i.e., youth age 16–24 who are not in school, training or employed; Lewis et al., 2018), 1.3 million youth with disabilities aged 12–17 (Erickson et al., 2014), 420,000 youth living in foster care (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2019), 48,000 incarcerated youth (Sawyer, 2019) and 36,000 homeless youth on any given night (Henry et al., 2018). Globally, high need, high opportunity youth refers to an estimated 500 million youth aged 15–24 who make less than $2 (USD) per day (Advocates for Youth, n.d.) and the estimated 600 Million NEET youth. The rationale for using the term high need, high opportunity is the economic return to local communities that can be expected from designing and effectively implementing quality career readiness programs and interventions.
Using the U.N. Sustainable Design Goals to Organize Our Design Efforts
The design recommendations that follow are organized around a subset of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG; U.N., 2019). The U.N. established these sustainability development goals in response to continuing evidence of an impending global economic collapse (Meadows et al., 1974; Turner, 2012). This collapse is due in part to “subdued [economic] growth, rising inequalities and accelerating climate change” (Schwab, 2019). Using longitudinal data, Turner (2012) verified the trajectory of this global economic collapse by tracking reductions in global population due to death rates exceeding birth rates, reductions in industrial output per capita, challenges with respect to access and distribution of food, rises in greenhouse effects due to global pollution, decreases in fossil fuels, and lack of access to electricity and literacy rates. 1 One consequence of this economic collapse is a volatile formal and informal labor market. To enable high need, high opportunity youth to navigate within these volatile and fast-changing labor market conditions, career development programs and services must be designed in such a manner as to increase their perceived relevance of education and training opportunities to helping them pursue personalized career and life goals as well as help them develop the social emotional learning skills needed to become adaptable, resilient and proactive (Solberg et al., 2014).
For vocational psychology and career development professionals, there are a number of interconnected SDGs that relate to improving the lives of high need, high opportunity youth. These SDGs include Access to Decent Work (SDG 8), Reducing Poverty (SDG 1) and Hunger (SDG 2), Improving the Economic Competitiveness of Local Communities (SDG 11), Improving Access to Quality Learning and Education (SDG 4), Improving Health and Well-being (SDG 3), Addressing Equity in Income and Job Opportunities (SDG 5), and Preparing Youth with the Workforce Development Skills Needed to Enter and Contribute to Improving Industry and Our Global Environment (SDG 9). Rather than trying to design programs and interventions for each SDG, Lim et al. (2018) argues that the U.N. recommendations are interconnected such that designing programs and interventions for one domain are expected to impact other domains. With these recommendations in mind, Figure 1 offers an integrated SDG model for guiding program and intervention design efforts for high need, high opportunity youth.
Program design using sustainable development goals.
In Figure 1, we propose that the primary outcome of our program design efforts is to increase high need, high opportunity youth access to decent work (SDG 8). “Access to decent work” generally refers to occupations offering livable income levels as well as occupations that provide access to social welfare benefits and supports (e.g., healthcare, retirement benefits, unemployment benefits, sick leave, job stability (Blustein, 2006; Blustein et al., 2016; ILO, 2018). According to the International Conference of Labour Statisticians, decent work for youth includes a range of indicators that include having access to: (1) a wide range of employment opportunities, (2) adequate earnings and productive work, (3) appropriate work hours, (4) allow youth to balance work, family and personal life, (5) work that should not be abolished, (6) stable and secure employment, (7) equal opportunity and fair treatment in employment, (8) safe work environments, (9) social security and (10) mentoring opportunities that include social dialogue with employers’ as well as legal workers’ representation (ILO, 2018). Access to these decent work indicators is expected to vary based on the economic profile of a given country. While in principle, countries with robust formal labor markets should offer youth employment opportunities that reflect many of these decent work indicators, fewer employment protections are expected within economies where the informal labor market is much larger than the formal labor market opportunities (ILO, 2018).
Another challenge to finding decent work is an increased emphasis within the formal labor market on hiring peripherals as opposed to core workers. While core workers are generally salaried and receive access to a range of social benefits, peripheral workers are generally self-employed class of employees who provide time-limited contract work for organizations (Weber et al., 2018). Weber et al. describe two groups of peripheral workers – those with high skills but work under self-employment contracts for specific, time-limited roles within the organization. The second group consists of individuals with fewer technical skills and whose job opportunities are being replaced by technology and automation and are working in lower income occupations. For the self-employed worker, the challenge includes lack of key benefits such as vacation time, sick leave, access to quality healthcare, and employer matched retirement benefits. For example, in response to changing economic conditions and projected decreases in admissions, universities are increasingly hiring part-time instructors or full-time limited contract faculty. Unlike tenured and tenure-track faculty, contract faculty are more easily let go in response to shifts in program enrollment. In the United States, the U.S. Department of Labor conservatively estimates that about 7% of workers are employed as peripheral (e.g., gig, freelance) workers while an independent study of 6,000 workers sponsored by Upwork and Freelancers Union predicts that within the next decade contracted and freelance work may comprise 50% of the working population.
Hooley et al. (2020) argue that the rise of peripheral workers and the general erosion of social benefits such as job security, retirement, healthcare, and sick-leave is part of a neoliberal position adopted by many countries in order to encourage business to relocate and provide jobs to their citizens. To be attractive to business interests, these countries remove regulations that otherwise would govern worker rights and protections. Economists have linked recent rises in income inequality to the adoption of neoliberalism policies. Kwon (2018), for example, found that by adopting neoliberalism, countries are supporting a business context motivated by increasing profit using a range of financial activities such as increasing peripheral workers as a way to reduce worker protections and social welfare benefits as strategy for reducing costs (Kwon, 2018). Rather than increasing sales and productivity, these financial activities are motivated by a desire to increase stock value and attract investment capital from the wealthy rather than providing decent work conditions for their employees.
Figure 1 offers a theory of change to guide our program design efforts. The theory of change proposes that access to decent work is predicated upon our ability to design career development programs that result in higher levels of educational attainment (SDG 4) and ensure that youth develop a range of workforce readiness skills that expand their employability (SDG 9). When designing these programs, Hooley et al. (2020) argue that, as a matter of social justice, we must incorporate critical consciousness activities that enable youth to become aware of the macrosystemic challenges that prevent or reduce their likelihood of gaining access to decent work. At the mesosystemic and microsystemic levels, we must also incorporate culturally responsive and critically conscious activities that enable youth to become aware of how differential access to quality education and workforce development vary as a result of differential economic constraints and access to quality learning opportunities that result in differential outcomes by race, gender and ability status (Howard et al., 2008; McWhirter et al., 2013). With the tremendous disruptions to employment caused by technological advances (referred to as the 4th Industrial Revolution; Schwab, 2012), it is imperative, for example, that our workforce development efforts enable youth to become critically conscious of how their future employability is affected by their ability to acquire advanced technical and social emotional learning competencies (Cappelli & Tavis, 2018; Lim-Lange & Lim-Lange, 2019; Schwab, 2012). Social justice and critical consciousness is also consistent with the values of the counseling psychology profession (Toporek et al., 2006; Vera & Speight, 2003) and is reflected in vocational psychology’s adoption of emancipatory communitarianism and liberation psychology (Blustein, 2006; Blustein et al., 2005) and a number of vocational and career development intervention efforts (Ali et al., 2017; Ali et al., 2012; Chronister & McWhirter, 2006; Fitzgerald et al., 2013; Solberg et al., 2002).
Figure 1 proposes that if successful at increasing access to decent work, our program design efforts will impact a broader range of social justice and equity concerns that include reducing poverty and hunger (SDG 1 & 2), improving mental health and well-being (UN SG 3; Center on Society and Health, n.d.) and improving the economic competitiveness of local communities (SDG 11). There is also an opportunity to address inequity issues related to representation of women, racial diversity, and individuals with disabilities that are found in many employment sectors such as STEM occupations (SDG 5).
Using Exemplarian Action Research to Collaborate on Program Design and Implementation
When designing and implementing programs to improve educational attainment and workforce development among high need, high opportunity youth, it is critical to gain a variety of perspectives on the nature of the challenges and range of design elements that should be considered. We recommend consideration of exemplarian action research which is derived from Gidden’s structuration theory (1976, 1993) as a community-based participatory action research strategy. While action research is traditionally focused on helping individuals become critically conscious of their current practices with the intent to change and improve their efforts (McNiff, 2013), exemplarian action research begins with a team of stakeholders who collectively engage in data-based decision-making efforts to establish a shared perspective of the problem and then using this shared perspective to design and implement new practices. Exemplarian action research explicitly considers the need for establishing authentic collaborations between researchers, practitioners and policy makers with the goal of helping the collaboration team to become critically conscious of the resources and practices that contribute to inequity (i.e., establishing a shared perspective; Coenen, 1998; Solberg, 2003). As such, exemplarian action research is focused on system level change whereby the goal is to leverage changes in how resources are allocated (e.g., time and funding for career and workforce development practices) as well as to mobilize action by creating a division of labor among key stakeholders for implementing and sustaining the new, innovative practices. For our work in supporting high need, high opportunity youth, the aim of exemplarian action research is to mobilize the resources needed to build capacity within schools and youth serving organizations to design, effectively implement and evaluate, and sustain access to quality education and workforce development opportunities.
As noted, creating authentic collaboration is a critical feature of exemplarian action and is the foundation for being able to establish a shared perspective. Drawing from multicultural counseling, achieving a shared perspective involves becoming aware of the different world-views and goals of the various team members. As researchers, our world view is often shaped by theoretical constructs and research methods. Practitioners are often motivated by wanting to know what practices work best for their unique population and to ensure that the practices are responsive to the populations and settings in which they work. Policy makers often focus on identifying practices that align to their existing policies and can be scaled effectively and within reasonable costs to the larger population. As researchers, our ability to participate in developing effective and authentic collaborations involves establishing our credibility. Sue and Zane (1987) describe two forms of credibility. Achieved credibility relates to how well we can establish trust and translate our research in ways that allow policy makers and practitioners to share their own ideas and lived experiences as well as ask questions and challenge the implicit biases or simplistic solutions that may underlie our theory and research. Ascribed credibility occurs when members of the policy and practice community reach out to us because we have established a reputation as being able to understand their needs, values, and represent our science and evidence base in a flexible manner that is perceived as relevant and meaningful for addressing their needs. When collaborating with practitioners and policy makers, it is important to monitor signs for whether credibility has been established otherwise the system may resist the adoption of new, innovative practices (Hains & Fouad, 1994).
Using Individualized Learning Plans as an Organizing Framework
An underlying theme throughout the recommendations is the use of individualized Learning Plans (ILPs). ILPs are being implemented in schools throughout the United States (U.S. DoL, ODEP, n.d.) and internationally (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2012) as a career management strategy for helping youth identify their skills, connect these skills to the world of work, identify a purpose and establish flexible life goals, and identify learning pathways that will enable them to pursue those goals (Solberg, 2019). ILPs have shown promise in facilitating positive youth development in a range of areas including pursuing more rigorous academic courses, decreasing teenage pregnancy rates, increasing secondary education attainment rates, and establishing postsecondary learning goals (Solberg et al., 2014). Some of the critical design elements for quality ILPs include youth identifying career and life goals that align with their talent and interests as well as the design of a scope and sequence of activities that are facilitated by caring and encouraging adults. As a career development effort, ILPs focus on “talent development” rather than career choice and decision-making, fosters goal-setting, critical consciousness, self-regulation, deeper human skills and incorporates access to work-based learning and early access to college (Solberg, 2019). For high need, high opportunity youth, the ILP process enables the emergence of proactive, resilient and adaptable young adults who are actively pursuing future opportunities with purpose and hope.
In national research investigating the nature and promise of individualized learning plans, we found that youth who were able to describe clear career and life goals that emerged as a result of receiving access to career development lessons were found to report higher levels of Social Emotional Learning skills (SEL; e.g. academic self-efficacy, career search self-efficacy, academic motivation, and goal setting) which in turn were associated with better academic grades, stress and health management, and fewer career decision-making difficulties (Solberg et al., 2014). Longitudinal research in Germany also found that developing these skills in adolescence predicts future employment and job satisfaction in adulthood (Pinquart et al., 2003). These results are consistent with experimental research revealing career and life goals as an important psychological mechanism that produces self-directed and proactive behavior (Bandura, 1997; Salmelo-Arlo, 2010).
Program Content Design Recommendations
Below are a number of recommendations collaborative design teams to consider when developing career and workforce development programs and services. These recommendations were distilled from a range of experiences in working with schools (Solberg et al., 1998; evaluation of ILPs with IEL), state and federal policy makers (Solberg et al., 2013; Whitehouse et al., 2016), and international collaborations (Boston University, 2019a, 2019b; Solberg, 2016; Solberg et al., 2017). With respect to Prilleltensky’s (1997) emancipatory communitarianism (Blustein et al., 2005) and more specifically his SPECS model (strengths, prevention, empowerment, and community conditions; Prilleltensky, 2005), the recommendations focus on program redesign strategies from a positive youth development perspective that seeks to build the collective capacity among educators, youth serving organizations, employers, families, and higher education systems to proactively implement quality programs and services that enable youth to develop the skills needed to become self-directed, resilient and self-determined learners. From the perspective of Freire’s Liberation Psychology, the recommendations incorporate critical consciousness by helping high need, high opportunity youth explore their own talent within the context of living within conditions of inequity and unequal access to resources and support as well as by helping ourselves and the policy makers and practitioners we are working with to become critically conscious of our own implicit biases.
Identify Transferable and Resiliency Skills
Using a Positive Youth Development framework (PYD; Silbereisen & Lerner, 2007; Solberg & Ali, 2017), we propose that educational attainment and workforce development programs begin by helping youth become aware of their emerging talent that can be framed as transferable workforce readiness skills. The major implication for program design is the hypothesis that by facilitating youth awareness for how their emerging talent transfers into the world of work will increase their sense of hope and purpose. Within the context of individualized learning plans, identification of transferable skills is considered part of helping youth develop their own self-exploration skills (Solberg, 2019).
Two transferable skill domains that are especially relevant for gaining access to decent work within the current 4th Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2012) include becoming aware of one’s emerging technical skills and deeper human skills (i.e., advanced social emotional learning skills; Cappelli & Tavis, 2018). Gaining access to decent work will increasingly involve the acquisition and continued development of advanced technical skills that are used within an occupational area. “Deeper human” skills refer to a range of advanced social emotional learning skills such as empathy and compassion, complex communication, adaptability and resilience, entrepreneurial thinking, personal branding, social capital and marketing (Lim-Lange & Lim-Lange, 2019). For high need, high opportunity youth, efforts to identify and develop critical social emotional learning skills also support mental health by establishing psychological and emotional stability (Greenberg et al., 2017; Payton et al., 2000).
In their examination of labor market trends, Burning Glass (2015) identifies six baseline skill clusters that describe the transferable technical and deeper human skills that will enable youth to access a wide range of decent work opportunities. These baseline skills clusters include: Presentation and Persuasion, Customer Service, Project Management, Research and Strategy, Positive Disposition, Supervision and Detail Oriented (Table 1). Industry recognized lists of transferable skills like these offered by Burning Glass can be added to group activities such as the “Who Am I” lesson found in Making My Future Work (Perry et al., 2014). “Who Am I” is a group activity that engages peers to reflect on each other’s personal brand qualities. In facilitating these activities, youth should also be encouraged to consider transferable skills they may have developed from experiences outside of traditional education settings. In the United States, informal learning opportunities may offer access to a range of work-based learning opportunities that focus on a range of technical and deeper human skills through after-school programs or out of school programs such as Scouting, 4-H, Future Farmers of America.
Burning Glass (2015) Basic Skill Requirements.
Many high need, high opportunity youth have experienced trauma, violence, and poverty. It is especially important therefore to explore transferable skills related to SEL (CASEL, n.d.) and deeper human skills that align with resiliency, adaptability and empathy. For example, Zaff et al. (2016) explored the personal narratives of 27 youth who left school prior to graduation. They found that most youth left school to pursue short-term goals that were relevant to their personal circumstances such as caring for ill family members, to escape abuse or violence, or to address pressing financial needs of their family. Using a positive youth development lens, Zaff et al., concluded that the personal narratives of many of the out of school youth demonstrated a range of SEL skills including the ability to make responsible decisions, career management with respect to being able to set short and long-term goals, create and implement strategies for goal pursuit, and understanding how their thoughts, feelings, and experiences relate to their development.
Working with homeless youth, Williams et al. (2001) describe a range of resiliency domains that emerged from their multiple case study design featuring five runaway and homeless youth. These domains included determination, meaning and purpose in life, self-care and readiness to accept help. Determination refers to self-efficacy, tenacity, persistence to overcome previous trauma and resulting life challenges. Meaning and purpose centers on the emergence of hope and gratitude, a desire to give back to others, and establishment of a spiritual connection. Self-care refers to being able to identify and meet one’s needs and development of problem-solving skills. Readiness to accept help involves becoming ready to accept help as well as care to ensure that youth have access to caring and encouraging adults.
Zaff and his colleagues also investigated the support systems that enable high need, high opportunity youth to thrive. They recommend that when designing programs and services for high need, high opportunity youth, it is important to ensure access to a “web” of caring and encouraging adults (Pufall-Jones et al., 2017). This web of support helps high need, high opportunity youth establish their social capital by providing (a) emotional support from someone offering unconditional positive regard, (b) instrumental support that helps them access and/or manage education, financial, and other life challenges, (c) informational support that connects them to valuable resources, (d) companionship support such as someone to participate in social activities, and (e) validation support that helps them reframe their personal challenges as normal responses to trauma and other life circumstances. Aviles and Grigaluanas (2018) describe an effort to provide a web of support for homeless youth. In order to facilitate the ability of the adults to provide caring and encouraging support, they used a participatory action research strategy to facilitate the adult’s critical consciousness about the experience of homeless youth while also helping youth develop the advocacy skills needed access social services. Babcock’s (2015) trauma informed strategy for homelessness focuses on helping individuals improve their “stability” as part of an integrated strategy that also incorporates making strides to improve education and workforce development opportunities.
In sum, the aim of focusing the design of education and workforce development efforts to begin with identifying transferable skills is to enable each youth to explore the assets and qualities they have acquired and that have direct relevance to the world of work. As a trauma informed strategy, it is important to ensure youth receive access to a range of support from caring and encouraging adults who are able to consider the range of resiliency skills they have developed.
Help Youth Become Aware of the Relevance of Their Transferable Skills to the World of Work
After helping youth become aware of their transferable skills, we recommend designing activities that enable youth to identify how these skills expand the range of occupations for which they may qualify. The aim is to help youth recognize that their employability expands as they acquire a broader range of advanced technical and deeper human skills as well as help youth realize the relevance of increasing their educational attainment. For vocational psychologists and career professionals working in higher income countries such as the United States, connecting skills to formal labor market occupations is facilitated through online systems such as O*NET (n.d.). However, 60% of the world’s population is employed within informal labor sectors that do not incur taxable income or provide social welfare benefits such as protection or health and retirement benefits (ILO, 2018). With the rapid changes in access to formal labor opportunities, many have expressed concerns that the word “career” is no longer applicable because there are few “ladders” that enable one to be promoted within one occupational area (Savickas et al., 2009). And, from the positionality of high need, high opportunity youth, the majority may not resonate to the concept of “career” which could be considered a privilege (Blustein, 2006) for those living in communities with clear access to secondary and tertiary education and have access to a robust formal labor market. Designing programs in areas with a constricted range of formal labor market opportunities such as rural communities and many low income countries, it is important to examine our own critical consciousness regarding the relevance of terms such as “career” for the populations who will be receiving our programs and services. In working with high need, high opportunity youth in South Africa, for example, Marsay chooses to use the term “sustainable livelihood” rather than “career.” Furthermore, she believes that the concept of “guidance” which implies an external authoritarian approach should be replaced with “enabling and empowering” which implies strengthening of inner resources of the person within the community. She advocates a “Hope Based Future Oriented Approach” to assisting young people make decisions about their future (Marsay, 2016, 2018, 2020).
And, there is a tremendous opportunity to translate our work globally into communities with high concentrations of informal occupations. The Women’s Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing agency classifies a range of informal occupations with high concentrations of women as including domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors, waste pickers, garment workers, agriculture and farming, and transport workers (WIEGO, n.d.). What is missing is a translation strategy whereby youth serving organizations and educators can help youth identify the transferable and employability skills associated with high demand informal labor occupations (see Palmer, 2017). What is also missing is clear messaging about the value and dignity of informal labor market opportunities. By focusing attention on developing entrepreneurial skills and small business management skills as well as developing the financial literacy, it is possible to engage in informal labor market opportunities in ways that produce livable and sustainable wages.
Within high income countries with large formal labor market sectors, youth will likely have access to career information and communication technology (ICT) such as online career information systems (Bimrose et al., 2015; Kettunen & Sampson, 2019; O*NET, n.d.). These ICT solutions provide detailed information about the range of occupations that align to transferable skills. For example, O*NET’s “Skills Search” feature enables youth to identify 35 employment skills. After “clicking” the various skills they deem relevant to their own experiences, the system generates a list of occupations that align to those skills. For countries or areas with high concentrations of informal occupations or where ICT is not available, it is possible to facilitate awareness of the relevance of transferable skills by engaging youth in conversations with adult role models from various occupations through activities such as job fairs, information interviews and job shadowing. And, efforts need to be made to provide ICT access using SMART phones.
In sum, more effort is needed to help youth become aware of how their emerging talent and skills apply to the world of work. For countries with strong formal labor markets, the use of ICT can help youth learn how their efforts to increase their educational attainment and gather workforce readiness skills will expand the range of occupational opportunities. For youth living in lower income countries, it is important to explore how their emerging talent and skills can be applied within the local formal and informal labor market.
Use SEL Skills to Establish Future Ready Learning Objectives
In many schools and youth serving organizations, career development programs and services is assumed to be provided by someone in the role of a “career/school counselor.” Unfortunately, many high need, high opportunity youth are participating in communities that do not have adequate access to career services. In the United States, a report from the Education Trust (2019) in collaboration with Reach Higher and the American School Counseling Association reports that youth have less access to school counselors if they are from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds or live in lower income households. The European Network on Youth Employment (Zanaki et al., 2010) argued that the design of educational attainment and workforce development efforts in schools should become a whole-school effort whereby all youth participate in curriculum that is administered by all educators. This sentiment has been embraced by U.S. states that are mandating or strongly encouraging schools to use ILPs (Solberg, 2019) as well as being advocated by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop), the European Commission, the European Training Foundation (ETF), the International Labor Organisation (ILO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO; CEDEFOP, 2019).
One challenge to implementing programs and services that involve all staff within schools or youth serving organizations is gaining “buy-in.” To address this issue, the Social Emotional Learning International Research Network (SEL IRN) was established with research teams from 15 countries (Boston University, 2019a, 2019b). Recognized as an international research network by the World Educational Research Association, this effort aims to help educators become aware of the value of SEL and workforce readiness and thereby increase their interest in delivering career development programs and services. One of the exciting implications of this work is the opportunity to compare educator beliefs about the nature of SEL from a cross-cultural context. This comparison has enabled the researchers to become more critically conscious of the assumptions, language and privileges associated with each country. And, it is interesting to note that there was consensus among educators across the 15 countries regarding a number of SEL skills including resiliency, adaptability and proactivity.
Within the South African context, the SEL efforts aligns well with Marsay’s reframing of “career” as sustainable livelihood and the goal of program design as to enable youth to find “purpose, hope and future readiness” (Marsay, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020). Currently, South Africa is focused on the implementation of a National Skills Development Plan 2030 (2019). The plan aims to mobilize and align education, workforce readiness, and work-based learning opportunities with high demand occupations. The plan proposes a multi-tiered approach and will begin with learning from employers about what skills they are needing. While the plan emphasizes education and technical skills, it is expected that in time the implementation language will include social emotional learning skills.
The SEL IRN used an SEL framework that was developed in the United States in order to gather educator perceptions about the nature of SEL and its connection to career readiness (CASEL, n.d.). The CASEL framework organizes SEL skills within five categories—self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management, and responsible decision-making. Using a modified grounded theory strategy to assess SEL responses from 68 South African educators serving youth with disabilities, Marsay (2019) identified 64 SEL skill themes. Given the fact that South African youth experience tremendously high rates of violence (Leoschut, 2009), it is not surprising that educators identified a number of trauma-informed SEL skills. Examples include: (a) Compassion which was defined as “caring and understanding the suffering of others;” (b) Restorative Justice which involves the ability to “repair the harm to the relationships between offenders and victims, and offenders and the community;” (c) Conflict Resolution which involves the ability to “facilitate the peaceful ending of conflicts;” and (d) Forgiveness which involves “a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.”
With respect to future readiness, South African educators reported a number of SEL skills including: (a) Personal Development which involves “a way for people to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realize and maximize their potential;” (b) Personal Values which involves “decision-making guidelines that help us connect to our true selves;” (c) Potential which involves “abilities that may be developed and lead to future success or usefulness;” (d) Work Ethic which involves the “principle that hard work is intrinsically virtuous or worthy of reward;” and (e) Future Orientation which was defined as “the extent to which an individual thinks about the future, anticipate future consequences, and plans ahead before acting.” The theme that emerged most frequently in the qualitative analysis of the data, was the need for improved interpersonal relations. This theme emerged for the educators themselves, as well as the students in the classroom, as well as for future use in the world of work.
Based on responses from 40 educators, the United States SEL IRN effort yielded 123 SEL themes. In collaboration with CASEL and a number of school counselors, the U.S. themes are being used to generate Future Ready learning objectives that can be used to guide the development of whole school program design efforts. Using CASEL’s five SEL domains, sample learning objectives include: (a) Ability to describe emerging talent, competencies, and values (Self Awareness); (b) Engages in perspective taking by being aware of the diversity of roles, skills and knowledge needed to complete group tasks or simulated work activities (Social Awareness); (c) Demonstrates proactive and self-motivated behavior by identifying ways to develop their talent and competencies (Self Management); (d) Ability to demonstrate effective communication skills needed to give and receive feedback from peers (Relationship Management); and (e) Ability to identify two to three career and life goals (Responsible Decision-Making).
While access to decent work is argued to have a positive impact on mental health and well-being, exploring the SEL skills needed to pursue one’s goals can also help youth reflect on their mental health, health and/or ability challenges (SDG 3). The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning (ICF; WHO, n.d.) offers an excellent positive youth development model. The ICF model argues that all individuals—those with and without disabilities, mental health or health difficulties—function at an optimal level when they receive the supports and accommodations needed to fully participate and function within their community (e.g., school, work, social opportunities). Educator Julie DiPilato (2019) and School Counselor Erin (E. Eastman, personal communication, 2019) from the Barnstable School District in Massachusetts shared a story about the transformation of one disengaged youth after they learned about the SEL skills needed to become a firefighter. The story began at the end of 7th grade when the firefighters visited the school as a work-based learning activity. The individual had not participated academically throughout the year but on this day they were animated and asked lots of questions. And, they were noticeably upset finding out that “maintaining composure” was one of the most important SEL skills to become a firefighter. It turns out that the student was struggling with anger management. DiPilato reports that for the remainder of that school year the student not only engaged in academic activities, they also began working actively on learning how to manage anger. Eastman describes how the local fire department continued to mentor the student throughout high school and after graduating was able to pass the emergency medical technician certification and was a volunteer at the fire station and in line for a full-time position. By learning about the transferable skills needed to pursue decent work opportunities, youth will discover for themselves why it is important to manage their personal challenges. While engaging in these activities can motivate youth to address their mental health or physical challenges, the ICF model reminds us that when designing programs for high need, high opportunity youth, it is critical to incorporate access to additional supports and services that can provide the accommodations or skill development opportunities to manage them.
In sum, adopting SEL as a framework for engaging educators in providing opportunities for high need, high opportunity youth to develop deeper human skills can result in their becoming more engaged learners as well as developing the skills needed to access decent work opportunities. In the United States, CASEL (M. Schlinger, personal communication, 2019) has also come to the conclusion that middle and secondary education teachers are more likely to engage in SEL practices if they understand how SEL supports career. From the perspectives of emancipatory communitarianism (Blustein et al., 2005; Prilleltensky, 1997) and liberation psychology (Freire, 1970), establishing a cross-cultural examination of SEL and career readiness has made us critically conscious of how the word “career” is less relevant to the majority of high need, high opportunity youth who may not have access to formal labor market opportunities due to economic conditions found in their communities or lack of access to the education and training needed to take advantage of existing opportunities. To achieve this, it is important to reconsider practices and language in ways that are more inclusive and responsive to the lived experiences of high need, high opportunity youth. Some examples include replacing the word “career” with “access to decent work,” “sustainable livelihood,” and framing the objectives of our efforts as enabling youth to discover “hope and purpose” in order to become “future ready.”
Incorporate Trauma Informed Program Design Strategies
As noted in the introduction, there are over 500 million youth living in extreme poverty. Compounding this challenge are reports that as many as 1.4 Billion of the total global population of 2 billion youth are exposed to violence (Hillis et al., 2016) as well as serious gender inequities in youth unemployment rates (see Figure 2; ILO, 2019). While youth unemployment is relatively low and generally equal between females and males in the United States, in most regions of the world, there is serious inequity and unemployment rates for female youth. For youth with disabilities, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (US ODEP; n.d.) tracked monthly youth employment rates through 2014. Their data indicates that 16% of youth with disabilities aged 16-19 and 31% of those 20–24 were employed compared to nondisability youth employment rates of 30% and 65%, respectively. The World Health Organization (2018) estimates that globally 15% of the estimated 1 billion people have some form of disability, and the most recent estimate is among working age youth and adults with disabilities, only 30% are employed throughout the Americas—North, South and Central (International Disability Rights Monitor, 2004).
2018 youth unemployment rate. Note: BRICS refers to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa; G20 refers to the European Union and 19 individual countries; MENA refers to Middle East and North Africa. In the United States.
For high need, high opportunity youth who are exposed to violence and significant life challenges, it is critical that program design strategies incorporate trauma-informed practices. While originally developed to support homeless adults, Empath offers an excellent trauma-informed model that incorporates educational attainment and workforce development as two of their five program design areas that also include family stability, health and well-being, and financial literacy (Babcock, 2015). Drawing from advances in brain science, Babcock argues that trauma-informed efforts need to consider how overactivity within the limbic system due to prolonged exposure to poverty, stress and trauma impacts development of the prefrontal cortex which is needed for establishing a future time perspective, setting goals and problem-solving. While Zaff and his colleagues advocate for a web of support to work with high need, high opportunity youth (Zaff et al., 2016), given the potential for emotional and mental health challenges, it is also important that programs provide access to counseling support, especially to help youth become ready consider future possibilities.
An example of a trauma-informed approach to support educational attainment and workforce development is Right Turn. Right Turn is a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education (IEL, n.d.) that uses ILPs (i.e., individualized career development plan) as a key strategy for helping court-involved youth make successful education and workforce transitions. Their trauma-informed program works with community-based organizations who provide youth with caring and encouraging adult mentors, places the youth in educational settings that will enable them to either complete or receive an equivalent high school degree, provides workforce development opportunities, places them in jobs, and encourages participation in postsecondary education. Program staff describe the important role of relationship building before moving to setting goals and considering future options. Once the relationship with the lead staff is established, youth are assigned a mentor and program efforts seek to match youth to an educational pathway that will enable them to either graduate from high school or equivalent, enter workforce/postsecondary training, or find employment. Youth report that one of the most meaningful elements of the program is discovering their transferable skills and learning how these skills align to the world of work. They report that this discovery and the support of their mentor enable them to consider a wider range of occupational opportunities and to seek the postsecondary training and education options needed to pursue them. Evaluation results indicated that 65% of the 816 of the court-involved youth who participated in job placement services, 77% of the youth aged 17 and below (n = 278) successfully remained in school for 12 months or more, 59% participated in exploring postsecondary opportunities, 69% of participants 18 or older (n = 145) completed a postsecondary degree or received an industry recognized certificate, and 73% of those 18 or older received unsubsidized employment (Solberg & Park, 2018).
In sum, when working with high need, high opportunity youth populations, it is important to incorporate trauma-informed practices that include access to professionals and youth workers who can establish a strong working alliance that can enable youth to begin experiencing hope for their future.
Address Inequity in STEM Occupations
Despite years of efforts to increase access to STEM careers there remain significant inequities with respect to gender, race/ethnicity and disability. In the context of the United States and by extension many high income countries, longitudinal studies indicate that addressing the lack of equitable racial/ethnic representation in STEM fields will only shift by designing learning opportunities that encourage youth and their families to consider STEM occupations provides access to encouraging adults and work-based learning opportunities that enable them to imagine themselves as a STEM professional (Archer et al., 2012, 2014). Program design should focus on increasing self-efficacy related to their perceived ability to perform the required occupational skills (Whiston et al., 2017), As many high need, high opportunity youth may not perceive themselves as being “brainy” enough to pursue a STEM career, it is essential to help youth identify their existing transferable skills that can be applied within STEM occupations (Archer et al., 2014).
Using the NSF ITEST as an opportunity for designing STEM career development programs for high need, high opportunity youth (see Connors-Kellgren et al., 2016; Yanowitz, 2016), Howard and her colleagues (Howard et al., 2020 have established a collaboration with Sociedad Latina which offers after-school and summer STEM enrichment to middle school youth as well as offers support through highs school in an effort to increase postsecondary participation rates among Latinx youth. The collaboration involves developing a strategy to translate STEM research in higher education for use in middle and high school settings as well as using individualized learning plans to help youth and their families explore the ways in which the technical and deeper human skills they are learning within these activities enable them to consider an expanded range of STEM and nonSTEM career opportunities. A primary outcome of the efforts is to help youth and their families design a four-year academic plan for high school that describes (a) in and out of school learning opportunities they intend to pursue, (b) work-based learning and early college learning opportunities, and (c) career pathways they can pursue and that will lead to industry-recognized credentials they can obtain before graduating from high school and entering postsecondary education.
In sum, in addition to providing higher wages, designing programs that actively encourage high need, high opportunity youth to consider pursuing STEM occupations addresses a critical and long-lasting area of inequity in the workplace.
Summary and Concluding Thoughts
In forging a new paradigm in vocational psychology and career development, researchers and practitioners have begun to focus on social injustice and inequity. Using the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the central thesis of this paper is that our collective social justice and liberation efforts will be most impactful when our program design efforts increase access to decent work because better wages and life conditions will address a number of global concerns including decreasing poverty and hunger, improving health and well-being, as well as addressing equity in income and expanding job opportunities. While we believe that the program design strategies can be generalized to a wide range of populations, we introduce “high need, high opportunity” youth as an important population for consideration. High need, high opportunity youth represent low income adolescents and emerging adults which includes high concentrations of racial/ethnic minorities and youth with disabilities. Globally, high need, high opportunity youth includes over 500 million youth who make less than $2 per day and the over 600 million NEET youth who are not in school, employed or in training. In the United States, high need, high opportunity youth refer the over 30 million who are living in low income households as well as disconnected youth, youth with disabilities, court-involved youth, homeless youth and youth involved in foster care. Drawing from Belfield et al. (2012), these youth are referred to as “opportunity” youth because of the positive impact that access to decent work will have both on their personal lives as well as the economic effect on their community.
For high need, high opportunity youth, we recommend strategies for designing program efforts that focus on improving educational attainment and providing access to quality career and workforce development. These program design strategies include: (a) using exemplarian action research as a collaborative strategy for engaging educators, policy makers, and youth serving community-based organizations in all phases of design, implementation, and evaluation of the programs and services; (b) empowering youth by helping them become critically conscious of the inequities in resources from macrosystemic, mesosystemic, and microsystemic levels that contribute to unequal access to range and quality of learning and workforce development opportunities; and (c) aligning our efforts with efforts to engage youth in individualized learning plans that enable them to find hope and direction by identifying future career and life pathways.
With respect to the design of the career and workforce development activities, it is recommended that the design team: (a) use a positive youth development perspective that begins with helping youth identify their talent and explore the ways in which their talent serves as transferable skills across a range of occupational opportunities; (b) focus on helping youth develop a wide range of social emotional learning skills that serve as important employability skills, especially for employment in occupations being shaped by the 4th Industrial Revolution; (c) incorporate trauma informed strategies by connecting high need, high opportunity youth with caring and encouraging adult supports; and (d) consider addressing gender and racial/ethnic inequities in the STEM professions.
For researchers, these design recommendations involve levels of engagement that may be perceived as quite daunting. In considering the potential impact of this work on balancing responsibilities for teaching and service, these recommendations will involve significant time and effort due the level of interpersonal engagement and expanded responsibilities that are associated with collaborative efforts. While significant grant funding can help alleviate some of these challenges by allowing for more staff support and release from teaching, other considerations involve whether and to what extent the time spent in the field and in collaboration will be favorably assessed with respect to tenure and merit reviews. Public institutions who are using tax payer funds to support their positions may begin to receive pressure to account for the “impact” of their work when considering merit and tenure. The United Kingdom, for example, has directed faculty to complete annual “impact case studies” that describe whether and how their research is making positive contributions to society (Research England, n.d.). Local community pressure may also play an important role in encouraging impact and community-based research. In Boston, for example, as a way of justifying the privilege of not paying property taxes, private and public institutions of higher education are asked to account annually for the ways in which faculty and institutional resources are effectively supporting the needs of the city. And, unless supported by grant funding, tenure-track faculty should consider collaborating with senior faculty or organizations that are engaged in this type of research in order to gain timely access to preexisting data that can be quickly turned into publications. And, there are ways to organize the collaborative work in ways that provide access to the data needed to publish during the early phases of the collaboration. For example, in conducting exemplarian action research, Solberg conducts a needs assessment that provides data needed to establish a shared perspective before using the data for publication purposes (e.g., Chen & Solberg, 2018; Close & Solberg, 2008; Solberg et al., 2007; Solberg, Howard, et al., 2012). For example, the initial grant funded research studying the nature and promise of individualized learning plans (Solberg, Phelps et al., 2012), collected survey data from 14 high schools. Each school received a personalized needs assessment report which was then aggregated to produce a path analysis that offered evidence that students perceived engagement in ILPs was associated with reported higher levels of a number of social emotional skills that collectively contributed to improved grades, stress and health management, and career readiness (Solberg, Howard, et al., 2012). This process was replicated by Chen in working with a number of high schools in China whereby each school received a personalized report while the aggregate was used to conduct a structural equation model that found that career adaptability (i.e., career search and academic self-efficacy, goal setting, and intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between a number of key contextual factors (i.e., perceived availability of quality learning opportunities and social connections) and positive youth development (i.e., stress management and career readiness; Chen et al., 2020).
Another challenge is gaining informed consent, especially when there is no grant funding to track down the family signatures from high need, high opportunity youth. Sieber (2012) argues that when conducting collaborative research with community organizations and schools, especially with vulnerable populations, it is important for the university to take responsibility for navigating the IRB process. While IRB approval from school districts must also be sought, starting with the university places the ethical responsibility to assess whether and how the work may impact the youth populations is important. In the United States, it is common for IRB committees to designate these efforts as “exempt” from gathering informed consent when the activities involve normal academic practices and are being implemented by school educators or staff from youth serving organizations. In the United States, the argument that career development programs represent normal academic activities is supported by state ILP implementation policies as well as federal workforce development policies (e.g., U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, 2013). Moreover, IRB committees are able to designate exempt status when it is clear that the school or youth serving organization is conducting the “evaluation” and the researcher will only have access to de-identified data. For example, a current project involves doctoral student who was a former UK football academy player interested in studying the relationship between social emotional learning and career readiness skills among academy youth. After visiting three football clubs to discuss the idea, it was clear that the football academies were beginning to address positive youth development and that a collaboration would benefit their club in helping them develop a shared understanding among coaches and parents as to the nature and value of SEL and career readiness. The teams collaborated on adapting the measures to be more relevant to both UK and the football context and will be facilitating youth in completing the online survey. The IRB determined that the protocol was exempt when it was clear that assessing SEL and career readiness was part of the academic and youth development efforts underway by the organization (normal academic practice) and that our role was to help evaluate the results first on behalf of the clubs using de-identified data. Universities are often comfortable with the firewall between the using university resources (e.g., Qualtrics, Survey Monkey) to send an online link to the organization for data collection with a clear understanding that any codes for being able to identify individuals is maintained by the organization such that the data received by the researcher is de-identified. This is not to say all researchers will agree with this rationale or that all IRB committees will grant exempt status. One of the key logistics is being able to explain how the data collected by the school or organization is intended to help them evaluate the needs of their youth and/or evaluate the program’s efficacy. Once that phase is completed, the data is now considered pre-existing and can be used for research purposes. The logistics and potential challenge is being able to honestly reflect that collaborative nature of the project and that there are tangible benefits of the assessment phase that will benefit the school or organization. Once this is completed, then the data is used to conduct follow up research. We recognize that these efforts to gain access to data and developing collaborative efforts with organizations is harder that collecting data with college student adult populations. In the end, the primary drive for engaging in this type of work is about our personal values as researchers use the status and privilege of working in higher education as a means for improving the lives of populations and communities who otherwise will not have access to quality career and workforce readiness programs and services.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
