Career Development
Curriculum Overview
Welcome!
The new realities of the contemporary workplace and the contemporary worker have changed our perception and use of the concept of career. Career development is now viewed as complex and multidimensional, involving growing through life and work–an interweaving of learning, experiencing, living, working, changing, and identifying and discovering pathways. Thus, career development can be seen as the creation of an individual's life/work designs.
Kindergarten to Grade 12 career development is an essential component of a student's holistic development and can be intertwined in all subject area learning outcomes. Career development education helps students and teachers connect all learning concepts and student inquiry to the powerful ideas that will shape the rest of their lives. CD's learning goals are agency and personal empowerment. Students learn to integrate learning tools into all decision making, including making decisions about education and career choice. They see how art and engineering are interrelated; how computer programming is mandatory for biologists, musicians, and historians; how makerspaces offer students the opportunity to engage in the real work of mathematicians, scientists, composers, filmmakers, authors, computer scientists, engineers, and so on; how experiential learning, researching, making, and tinkering is what modern and relevant learning looks like. The empowerment experienced while engaging in experiential learning should influence other aspects of teaching, student achievement, and self-efficacy.
Career development learning by design helps students become active learners and problem solvers. Students are encouraged to pose problems, seek answers, and test solutions, and to expand and extend their learning to other curriculum units, becoming strong critical thinkers. Their confidence can increase, as they have to take responsibility for their own learning both inside and outside the classroom, becoming capable of researching, asking questions, and finding answers to questions they pose for themselves. Their questions become more complex and interrelated. Curriculum areas are no longer isolated for them; reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, and world issues become connected through design, and open doors to endless career possibilities.
Career Development Education
Intentional career development education can enrich and bring greater meaning and purpose to a student's learning. It can enable students to gain a personal awareness critical to a holistic education and student skills identification and development. Students who have a greater self-understanding are able to clearly identify their skills and competencies and recognize the skills and competencies they must develop to prepare for the future world of work.
Developing the creativity, critical thinking, and personal adaptability and agility required in the world of work assists students in their transitions and navigation of the rapidly changing world, developing the skills and competencies they need to become self-directed individuals who set goals, making thoughtful decisions, and take responsibility for pursuing their goals throughout life. A strong career development culture within a school infuses career development across all curricula and provides all students with relevant and experiential career learning opportunities available in Career Development Life/Work curricula, Career Development Internships, Credit for Employment credits, and Community Service Student-Initiated Projects. Students can become creative, active, and competent learners and problem solvers with a toolbox of knowledge in every field. They will apply the attitudes, skills, and competencies they develop to their learning inside and outside of school and to the rapidly changing working world and the needs of society. Students develop the skills to manage their lives more purposefully and effectively, enhance their personal well-being, and realize their full potential.
