Winter 2007

Careers and transition

Is that carer or career?

Rebecca Scott describes a project that involved working with parents and very young children. The project highlighted the importance of quality early years programs to the beginnings of career competency development in children.

Extra Edge Community Services (EECS) is a leader in Community Learning and Development based in the South East Metropolitan region of Perth, Western Australia. We work with the community to identify and achieve innovative learning and development outcomes. For parents with younger children not yet at school we support and run an early years program called Parent–Child Mother GooseProgram® (P–CMGP). This program originated in Canada and teaches 0–4 year olds language and social skills through the use of stories, rhymes and songs.

EECS was involved in the national trial of the Australian Blueprint for Career Development. The Blueprint is a national framework for facilitating the development of career services and products, and is designed to foster intentional career development for people at all stages of their development. It covers the span from kindergarten through to adulthood. It has been based upon the Canadian ‘Blueprint for Life/Work Designs’, which has been refined and modified for use in the Canadian setting from a framework originating in the USA. The trial was supported by Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) as well as the State governments through the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) and was facilitated by Miles Morgan.

Our project involved trialling the Blueprint with adult and child participants of the P–CMGP. The Blueprint was used to assess the career competencies of parents as well as the development of competencies in the children. Some of the mothers had already returned to work or were applying for part-time work, while others were full-time carers.

P–CMGP meets community needs on two levels. The first level is providing a group program to parents of very young children, which promotes bonding and positive communication between parent and child. On the second level, parents and children taking part in the program are developing competencies that can be easily related to career development. For example, many of the parents develop confidence in group situations, create networks and are linked to external resources, such as libraries or the Employment Directions Network. The young children develop listening skills, the ability to focus and quickly begin to respond to the patterned language, demonstrate likes and dislikes and explore the expression of feelings in a group environment.

One of the most important factors of our trial project was the diversity of the participants. The P–CMGP is free to the community, and participants may have been referred by local child health nurses, other agencies/individuals including social workers in the community, or through word of mouth. Participants come from varied socio-economic households; have different levels of education; cover a wide age range and represent many cultural backgrounds.

What did we do?

The P–CMGP was mapped to the Blueprint to show how an early years program can assist in the development of career competencies at a very young age, prior to entering the formal school system. Although not a career education curriculum, the program allows both children and parents a chance to develop competencies related to the Blueprint. Phase (I) of the personal management competencies was used in developing local standards relevant to very young children. Given the age of our child participants, we used specific performance indicators rather than full competencies. We developed local standards for eight performance indicators from Competency 1, 2, and 3.

With our adult participants it was not appropriate to use the phases based on age as our participants career development. We assessed adults across the competencies at all four phases and learning taxonomy levels. Appendix C of the Blueprint was trialled as a self-assessment tool by adult participants and feedback was sought regarding the language and structure. Appendix C was then modified and this new document was trialled with the same participants. The scores from the original Appendix C and the modified document were then analysed, with anecdotal feedback on the process also received from the adult participants.

Project hiccups

The language of the Blueprint and the use of the word ‘career’ and the term ‘career development’ caused difficulties in working with adults who are currently caring for young children. Many of our adult participants, although happy to take part in trialling the Blueprint, did not believe that it had any relation to them at all, as being a parent has no relation to ‘career’. Many of the parents felt that ‘career development’ is not a term that applies to being a full-time carer and despite discussions on the new meaning of the word ‘career’ and ‘career development’ struggled to understand how it applies to their situation.

This was also true of the parents who had already returned to work or were looking for part-time work. Many commented that they were not interested in a ‘career’ at this point but just needed a ‘job’. It was difficult to explain the concept that ‘career’ relates to everything that you do including caring for children, and that career development can still take place while not in the workforce. This belief seems deeply rooted in the language of the Blueprint and despite explanations that ‘career’ relates to everything that you do including skills gained as a parent, it was difficult to overcome this language hurdle within our project.

Our project design included conducting a career needs assessment with our adult participants and running three workshops related to those identified needs. Participants would complete a self-assessment of their career competencies before and after the workshops, and the results of the two assessments would be compared. It was anticipated the Blueprint and its appendices would streamline this process and provide the structure and language for the assessments and workshops. Unfortunately due to our participant’s deeply held belief that career development does not apply to parents we are unable to run the workshops. This was the case even with mothers who had already returned to work or were looking for part-time work. Comments received included; ‘Well I already have a job so I don’t need this’ or ‘I am not after a career, just a part-time job’, or ‘I am just a mum and happy to be a mum and don’t want to go back to work yet’.

Conclusion

The trial demonstrated that the early years are particularly important to Phase (I) Area A (personal management/ self-development) of the Blueprint. Children who had taken part in P–CMGP for a longer period of time demonstrated the beginnings of competency at a greater rate than children the same age who were new to the program.

Many of our difficulties in this project have come from the current meaning of ‘career’ and ‘career development’. Without educating the general public about these meanings and addressing the language barriers involved, career development professionals will have a difficult time working with adults who have missed out on formal career development as part of their education.

Appendix C was found to be too repetitive and confusing to be used as a self-assessment tool. Many participants found the wording difficult to understand. The amended document was simpler and it is believed that it produced a more accurate reflection of the adult participant’s current level of career competency.

Web references

www.nald.ca/mothergooseprogram

www.dest.gov.au/sectors/career_development/policy_issues_reviews/key_issues/australian_blueprint_for_career_dev

www.milesmorgan.com.au

Rebecca Scott is a Career Education and Employment Consultant and facilitates the Parent–Child Mother Goose Program® for Extra Edge Community Services.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au