One of the key goals of any academic program is to ensure that skills taught in the classroom apply to post-graduate employment. Failure to do so can impact an academic department's recruitment and retention efforts, strain relations with alumni and damage the institution's reputation. Using interviews conducted during a faculty externship at a…

The OECD Career Readiness project makes use of quantitative evidence to investigate how teenage career-related activities and attitudes are associated with better adult employment outcomes. Review of multiple national longitudinal datasets confirms 11 indicators of better outcomes linked to the ways in which teenagers explore, experience and think…

Although a multitude of programs in higher education integrate formal pedagogy with practical work experience (e.g., internships, practicum, and cooperative education), their underlying logic is largely the same: to enhance the value of the learning experience through an integration of work and education. To date, however, there appears to be no…

This article presents the winners of the 2012 Cliff Weiss Memorial Essay Contest. They are Naim Owens from Washington, DC, and Colissa Menke from Warrensburg, Missouri. The 2012 essay topic is "How do you feel CTE prepares individuals, including yourself, for a future career?"

Engineers and skilled tradesmen stood side by side with executives and politicians as Liverpool High School technology teacher Dan Drogo welcomed parents to a one-of-a-kind graduation ceremony at New Process Gear in Syracuse, New York. The manufacturing shadow program had immersed 25 high school students in an intensive five-week experience inside…

Suggests that the success of job shadowing and mentoring depends on the coordinator's ability to create communication channels between students and those who hold the jobs they are training for. Offers suggestions for creating productive communication in these settings. (Author/JOW)

A training manual for mentors was developed by Pennsylvania educators to ensure success in the student/mentor relationship. It spells out the goals and objectives of job shadowing, reviews participant roles and expectations, and addresses communication with students. (JOW)

On Groundhog Day, more than one million young people will have an opportunity to explore their possible future careers, according to the Job Shadow Coalition. However, with its components of career exploration, school-to-career training and cooperative learning experiences, career and technical education programs may include job shadowing for…

Examines two topics related to the mass media internship experience: realities and strategies related to internship coordination in the rural, isolated university setting; and the value and potential on broadcasting and mass communication curricula for the "externship" (a one-day activity in which a student "shadows" a media professional for a…

This practicum was structured to provide a clearer understanding of guidelines and procedures for students, field teachers, and administrative staff at a community college to ensure a successful "job-shadowing" experience for future teachers. The focus was on developing a job-shadowing packet to provide forms, procedural guidelines, and criteria…

This report uses national data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) to evaluate the effectiveness of the types of school-to-career (STC) programs that were encouraged and supported in California by the grants received by the state from the federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 (STWOA). In particular, the…

"Job shadows" offer young people a chance to investigate the world of work by spending time with adults in the community and experiencing the culture of the workplace. A job shadow gives a student a meaningful introduction to the world of work and provides a context for understanding the connection between school and careers. This guidebook was…

This paper tests whether school-to-work (STW) programs are particularly beneficial for those less likely to go to college in their absence--often termed the "forgotten half"' in the STW literature. The empirical analysis is based on the NLSY97, which allows us to study six types of STW programs, including job shadowing, mentoring,…

Video Job Shadows encourages students to develop questions about a job and offers them the chance to videotape a business person answering those questions about his or her job. The program can be an effective method of teaching high school students about the world of work and the specific requirements and responsibilities of some jobs in their…

Using a pre- and post-test design, this study examined the relation of an adult's credibility and message frequency to the beliefs of female high school students participating in a job-shadowing program. Hypotheses were based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model of attitude formation and change. Findings indicate that credibility of the adult…