By Sandy Cutshall, Techniques Contributing Writer
A New Career Tech
Overcoming a negative public perception of ?voc-ed? is one of the biggest challenges facing our field. The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) is strongly committed to educating the public on what is really taking place with teachers and students today within the many diverse and challenging subjects that make up CTE.
Career and technical education is about helping students, workers and lifelong learners of all ages fulfill their working potential. Central to that effort is providing students with academic subject matter taught with relevance to the real world, i.e. ?contextual learning.? Students in CTE also concentrate on employability skills and education pathways to help them explore interests and careers as they progress through school.
ACTE Agricultural Education Division Vice President Gary Moore, a professor at North Carolina State University, has created a model he calls ?Moore?s Hierarchy of Education.? (See chart on next page.) The pictured diagram demonstrates the basic theory that every level of education is integrated into the next level.
According to his theory, one level of education would include the fundamental skills needed to function in society, including reading, writing and calculating. Another would feature the fundamental skills needed to be a ?knowledgeable member of society,? such as literature, geography, history, government, science and work literacy. The next level would contain the fundamental skills needed to be a contributing member of society?that which we might term career and technical education and professional education. Finally, according to Moore, there are the skills and knowledge to enjoy life, such as the arts.
?People are constantly moving up and down within the hierarchy,? says Moore. ?There are always exceptions, but generally this is the way education works. Education should not be viewed as vocational versus academic. Vocational and academic are interrelated.?
In this model, even the term ?level? may be misleading, since there is fluid movement among all the different segments of knowledge-gathering.
Putting Students First
According to Dr. Ethan Lipton, dean of Educational Support Services at California State University, Los Angeles, education is all about meeting the needs of students.
?It?s not about teaching classes,? says Dr. Lipton, ?it?s about teaching students.? Realizing this concept, he says, will be those teachers who focus more on meeting the learning objectives for students and worry less about staking out subject matter territory between departments.
Dr. Lipton suggests that it need not be the case that only the math teacher teach math or only the English teacher teach reading. Instead, he says, there are many different educational models where core skills may be integrated into different CTE subjects. One example would be the academy model, where teaching may occur across curricula and within a team environment. Jackson Academy in Florida exemplifies this kind of interdisciplinary cooperation.
Successful integration might also occur in a traditional school setting if, for example, English, math and CTE teachers simply got together to discuss what topics that they needed to cover and then created units and projects that worked together. Timing and sequencing is an important part of making this type of cooperative effort work.
A further example could be an English teacher grading the writing assignment that is given in a CTE course, or a student producing a project that would meet the requirements for (and get credit in) two or more courses.
His own area expertise, printing and the graphic arts, offers intriguing possibilities such as integrating papermaking skills with chemistry.
?Most important? says Dr. Lipton, ?is that students see the relevance of academic subjects and understand how these skills are applicable in the real world.?
What Works
In many diverse subjects, core academic skills are being successfully integrated into CTE curricula. The advantage of this being done, when it is done well, is that career-oriented students may begin to appreciate the practical applications of academics and may improve in these areas as a result.
Teacher Becky Ayers at Jordan High School in Durham, N.C., has incorporated academic skills directly into her Animal Science and Biotech Research classes. For example, her biotech students write lab reports that demonstrate math skills, such as percentages and word problems. Math also comes into class with the use of measurements and conversions. Her animal science students create diets for animals, using math skills to balance rations.
Students also work on historical research projects, write papers on current topics and read supplemental materials such as The Hot Zone or Fast-Food Nation.
?Kids are surprised to read a popular book for an assignment in animal science?but they really like it,? says Ayers. Sometimes, an educational institution can help to foster integration between academic and CTE skills through its structure. For example, Mid-America Technology Center in Wayne, Okla., has hired math and science teachers to work directly with CTE teachers as a complement to the applied skills students are learning.
According to ACTE Health Occupations Education Division Vice President Gina Doyle?a practical nursing coordinator/instructor at Mid-America?this approach has worked in a number of interesting ways to incorporate academic skills into the teaching of nursing and biosciences.
?We find that many of our students need supplementation of academic skills,? says Doyle. ?But we also know that these students need to see real applications of such skills?not a theoretical approach.?
Doyle says that the practical result of working in partnership with science teacher Dan Cole is that students are better able to understand the scientific principles and limitations that influence the medical field. For example, last year in a high school pre-nursing course, students learned to build a skeletal joint that worked just like a real joint in that it was required to support weight and be moveable. This project integrated principles of physics and biology.
?It?s not a matter any more of students wondering, ?why do I need this?? When they do these projects, they see directly how to use the science in their chosen field,? says Doyle.
True Teaming
Dr. Wally Holmes Bouchillon, associate professor at the University of West Florida in the Division of Teacher Education-Special, Primary, and Career and Technical Education, has been involved with many schools where she has seen what she calls ?true teaming? between academic and CTE teachers.
She points to examples from the ?New Millennium Schools? effort in the state of Florida, where 10 secondary schools were selected in 1999 as having highly distinguished themselves through three main principles:
1) a challenging academic curriculum that demands a high level of achievement and assures a direct path through postsecondary education without the need for repetition or remediation;
2) a technical curriculum articulated with postsecondary education programs and invigorated by a strong linkage among schools, postsecondary education institutions and the local business sector; and
3) the power of a demonstrated return on investment in education.
The curriculum framework model designed for schools in Florida was based upon thorough research and identification of ?best practices? for each broad academic area. The frameworks for the career and technical programs and the academics had many common threads.
According to Dr. Bouchillon, integrating the ?real world-real life? context from applied technology provided a bridge in many secondary classrooms to motivate students to become more responsible for their own learning and success.
One of the notable characteristics of Florida?s millennium schools is that the faculty view themselves as members of curriculum teams with special skills which support each other and the students in their career and education goals. These schools were also successful because of committed administrative support.
Bouchillon says that barriers between academic and vocational programs have disappeared in most cases and been replaced by mutual respect for the contributions each makes to the full development and success of the students.
The article "Water, Water, Everywhere. Yet Do I Dare to Drinks?" by Dr. Bouchillon takes a look at one of these excellent schools. You can also check out the Florida Millennium High Schools on the Web at http://uwf.edu/pals.
Teaching Teachers
In recent years, a common educational trend has been to emphasize collaborative learning, promoting the concept of students working together in the classroom. However, according to many in the field, it is time to get even more teachers to think about collaborative teaching.
The process of career and technical educators teaming up with academic teachers can help to meet common goals and, ultimately, give students the best educational experience of all. According to Dr. Lipton, this is possible when teachers from various disciplines come to work together with mutual respect for one another. Unfortunately, there have been misperceptions in the past about the qualifications of CTE teachers versus academic subject teachers and this has been a stumbling block in true cooperation. However, this may well be changing as perceptions of CTE change.
One place to start to make this difference is in teacher training programs. At North Carolina State University (NCSU), for example, student teachers in agriculture carry out curriculum integration as part of their student teaching practicum in the field.
According to Dr. Beth Wilson of NCSU, pre-service teachers are more likely to conduct integration activities in their own programs if they practice the process during student teaching. For the past 15 years, Wilson, an assistant professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences? Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, has been recognized for her approach of teaching agriculture as life science.
?All agriculture teachers naturally integrate science and other subjects into their program content,? says Wilson. ?However, we believe by conducting activities with other academic teachers the students become more aware of the application of academics in agriculture and vice versa.?
Such integrated activities have included team teaching, paired labs and switching classes. Wilson notes that many of the student teachers have undertaken some unique and outstanding integrated activities, such as Tara Runion at North Davidson High School, Lexington, N.C.
Runion conducted an animal science lab with a cooperating science teacher, integrating anatomy and physiology at the ninth and tenth grade levels. Students dissected and identified the parts of bovine digestion tracts, obtained from a local slaughterhouse. Runion used the tracts to teach and illustrate the ruminant digestive system; while the science teacher used the tracts to teach about different types of animal tissue.
Wilson lists other successful activities that teacher-students have conducted including: teaching the parts of the plant with plant processes such as respiration and photosynthesis; teaching about jobs in agriculture and learning to create a letter of application with an English teacher; teaching the history of agriculture with a U.S. history teacher; teaching land measurements with a geometry teacher; and teaching DNA extraction and analysis with an advanced biology teacher.
According to Wilson, integrated activities ?help students answer the old question ?Why do we need to learn this stuff?? and teachers learn from each other by sharing lessons, facilities and equipment. Integrating academics is a win-win situation for everyone involved.?
The mission of technology education is to help students learn how to appropriately use, assess, and apply technology to make decisions effectively and contribute to a rapidly changing technological society.
According to Dr. Ethan Lipton of Cal State-Los Angeles, technology education may best be considered a core subject, along with reading, writing and mathematics. "Understanding and properly using technology is now a part of a student?s overall general education?a core skill," says Lipton.
Sandy Cutshall is a regular contributor to Techniques. She works as a writer/editor in Mountain View, California, where she also teaches adults English as a second language.
