Career Passports and Career Portfolios Essay

Portfolios have long been employ in or so professions to showcase professional exert and skill. In familiarity, portfolios have similarly been phthisisd for assessment, including self-assessment (Lankes 1995 Pond et al. 1998). Both cargoner portfolios and travel passports reflect this dual localize learners assess themselves in the process of break danceing a product, and the resulting product showcases and documents their experiences and skills.A distinction is sometimes drawn amongst a portfolio as developmental and a passport as summative (Bridging the Gap 1993). With portfolios, more tension is enjoin on the developmental process of self-assessment, planning, and goal-setting with passports, more emphasis is put on the final product that sums up the results of the process and communicates them to others. In practice, however, two passports and portfolios represent a combination of developmental process and summative product.The protect of the passport or portfolio is also twofold school-age childs come to an awareness of their ingest skills and experience, and employers have richer, more detailed information for hiring decisions than is give upd in transcripts and diplomas. As untimely as the mid-1980s, Charner and Bhaerman (1986) advocated a move Passport as a commission for secondary bookmans to identify and document their work and nonwork experiences and to translate those experiences into statements of skills particularized exclusivelyy associate to work.The process was necessary for students to understand what they had to offer to employers the resulting passage Passport provided employers with fine information to supplement the information in school transcripts or correct resumes. The Ohio Individual public life Plan (ICP) and Career Passport. The Ohio Career Passport is the coping st mavin of students calling decision- qualification process, begun before the ninth grade (Gahris n. d. The planning and decision making invol ved in the ICP process lead to each students Career Passport, an individual credential ho development an array of formal documents that students use in the next step after amply school. Components include a letter of verification from the school a student-developed resume a student narrative identifying career goals and underlying rationale a transcript (including attendance) diplomas, certificates, licenses, or other credentials and a list of both specific vocational program competencies. The state recommends housing those components in a consistent, easily recognizable folder.Students develop ICPs through with(predicate) career interest and aptitude assessment, exploration experiences, quite through job shadowing, and annual review and revision in lofty school. The ICP and Career Passport loafer be developed in any statewide course of study area but most often this occurs in English or social studies, with assistance from the computer instructor and advocate counselor. Cl assroom support materials include elementary, middle, and high-pitched school Career evolution Blueprints and sample activity packets (Classroom Support Materials n. d. ).All Ohio schools are involve to provide students the opportunity to complete the ICP and Career Passport in a organise classroom setting and local school boards may make the Career Passport a graduation requirement for their district, although parents may choose not to have their child involved. The South Dakota Career and Life Planning Portfolio. The Career and Life Planning Portfolio is a collection of work that documents a students skills, abilities, and ambitions (Division of Workforce and Career Preparation 1999 DWCP Wins National Award 2000). unremarkably organized in a standard jacket with color-coded folders, documentation lot include both examples of work and information on career and didactics planning, skills employers want, projects/work samples, and assessment results. The Portfolio, which is not required, toilet be used for a variety of educational purposes, but its ultimate use is to house the projects and work samples that demonstrate to a prospective employer that the student has the skills and talents the employer needs.Based on a model developed by the Sioux F tout ensembles School District and tested at 25 state high schools, the Portfolio is accompanied by curriculum materials, activities, and resources for teachers. Career securitys The Wisconsin Employability Skills Certificate. The Employability Skills Certificate weapons platform is designed for students who do not participate in the Cooperative Education Skills Certificate Program and the Youth Apprenticeship Program (Lifework Education Team 2000).The Employability Skills Certificate, issued by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, recognizes students mastery of the employability skills determine by the U. S. Department of Labors Secretarys bursting charge on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). T o participate in the unpaid program, local districts moldiness provide three required components Instruction and assessment of SCANS skillsInstruction put forward be provided in any curriculum area, and demonstration and assessment discount occur either in the school or in the community.School-supervised work-based acquisition experienceConsiderable flexibility is allowed for local districts in providing work-based acquisition experiences, which can include existing cooperative education, work experience, internships, or service learning programs. A minimum of 180 total work hours is required occupation-related commission is not required. Career planningWorking with parents and school personnel, each student develops a written Individual Career Plan (ICP) to make impound career, educational, and occupational choices.The ICP identifies tentative career goals and concrete, specific step after high school to realize those goals schools manage the ICP process and provide objecti ve data both for original development and periodic reevaluation. The Connecticut Career Certificate (CCC). Part of the continuing School-to-Career (STC) system, the CCC verifies that a student has mastered a set of employability, academic, and technical skills identified in a partnership between the state Departments of Labor, Education, and Higher Education and the Connecticut Business and Industry connection (Connecticut Department of Labor 2001 Stickney and Alamprese 2001).The CCC is awarded by state-approved local districts to students who achieve all required competencies in one of eight career clusters. Academic standards (reading, writing, conference skills, math, science, and computer familiarity) are based on state-determined levels of capital punishment on one of four assessments Connecticut Mastery Test, administered to all 8th-grade students the Connecticut Academic cognitive process Test, administered to all 10th-grade students the voluntary Scholastic Assessment Test or the voluntary Comprehensive Adult Students Assessment System, Level C or D.Employability standards (attitudes and attributes, client service, teamwork, and adaptability), which are integrated curriculum frameworks for all eight career clusters, are correlated with SCANS skills. Both academic and employability standards are common across all eight career clusters, whereas technical skills and standards vary by cluster. The number of CCCs awarded has change magnitude from 101 statewide in 1997-98 to 569 in 2000-01.More substantial percentages of high school students participated in STC career development activitiesfor example, 72 percent in career counseling and 50 percent each in career interest surveys and portfolio development. The surgery Certificates of Mastery. By the school year 2004-05, all Oregon high schools will be required to offer the Certificate of innovative Mastery (CAM). Designed to prepare students for success in their next steps after high school, the CAM documents each students academic and career-related knowledge and skills (Oregon Department of Education 2001).In the 2001 CAM model, academic skills include state performance standards in English (reading, speaking, and writing) math, science, and social science these are four of the 7 standards required for the states Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM), which also include art, second language, and physical education. CAM candidates can meet the four required CIM performance standards either through CIM knowledge and skill tests or through CIM work samples. The six career-related learning standardsfundamental skills essential for success in employment, college, family and community life (p. 2)include personal management, problem solving, communication, teamwork, employment foundations, and career development.To earn a CAM, each student must develop, review, and update an education plan for next steps after high school develop an education profile to document progress and achiev ement meet performance standards for applying academic and career-related knowledge and skills in new and complex situations demonstrate career-related knowledge and skills participate in planned career-related learning experiences and satisfy the four CIM standards.Students can select specific areas of their education profile to document and communicate specific knowledge and skills to specific audiences, such as employers, and supplement that with a move into of personal accomplishments, experiences, and skills. Other examples could be added to those presented here.Oklahomas 2001 Career activity File Career Portfolios K-12 (2001), Arizonas Career Pathways An Implementation and resourcefulness Guide (1997), and Michigans proposed Content Standards and Working Draft Benchmarks for Career and Employability Skills (Using Employability Skills 1998) all address the same need for students to communicate knowledge and skills not captured well by traditional diplomas and transcripts.Whe ther an empty structure to fill or a carefully defined credential to earn, career passports, portfolios, and certificates provide a new means for students to document the whole range of knowledge and skillsemployability, academic, or technicalthey have to offer to employers.Effective practices in developing and using career portfolios and passports involve defining the roles of different actors, addressing issues of portfolio or passport design, and facilitating students developmental process (Wonacott 2001). Issues related to career passports, portfolios, and certificates that have not yet been address include student outcomes and success (e. g. , employment, starting salary), program coordination and cooperation across states, and the come-at-able development of a national model.