Working with Young People to
Construct Order out of Chaos
Paul Dalziel
AERU, Lincoln University
Presentation to the Careers Research Symposium:
Order and Chaos
Career Development Association of New Zealand
University of Canterbury, 17 October 2013
Mihi
E ngā tāne, e ngā wāhine, e tau nei, tēnā koutou katoa.
Ka tino nui tāku mihi o aroha ki a koutou i tēnei ra.
Kei te mihi ahau ki ngā taonga o Ngāi Tahu,
tāngata whenua o tēnei wahi.
Ka iti tāku mōhio o te reo Māori,
ēngari kei te mihi ahau ki tēnei taonga o ēnei motu.
Tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou. Kia ora tātou katoa.
Outline of the Presentation
1. Brief introduction to the EEL programme.
2. A chaotic environment.
3. Empowering young people.
4. Organisational roles/models.
5. The changing role of the career practitioner.
Brief Introduction to EEL
• The Education and Employment Linkages
research programme was funded by FRST, MSI
and MBIE from June 2007 to September 2012.
• There were four research leaders
– Karen Vaughan (School Communities)
– Jane Higgins (Regional Communities)
– Hazel Phillips (Māori and Pacific Communities)
– Paul Dalziel (Employer-Led Channels)
Quasi Mission Statement of EEL
“At the centre of our research is the young
person, a dynamic individual who is
continuously constructing self-identities in
diverse contexts, discovering and developing
their personal abilities and making purposeful
choices that are influenced by perceived and
actual social, economic and cultural constraints.”
A Chaotic Environment
Private Trainers
School
Community
Polytechnics
Wānanga
Employers
Universities
Family and
Whānau
Gap Year(s)
Coping with Chaos
• Karen Vaughan (NZCER) has written an article
“Learning Workers: Young New Zealanders and
Early Career Development”, published in
Vocations and Learning, 2010, Vol. 3: 157-178.
• It presents results based on two sets of
interviews with young people in the Pathways
and Prospects study led by NZCER.
Clusters Drawn from Recent School Leavers
Cluster
The Hopeful
Reactors
The Passion
Honers
The Confident
Explorers
The Anxious
Seekers
Cluster Maxim
“I’m not going to end up a bum.”
“I’m becoming something in a secure career.”
“I’m building my self for my future.”
“I don’t know which way to turn.”
Source: Vaughan (2010).
Clusters Drawn from Older School Leavers
Cluster
Cluster Description
The Risk
Managers
The FineTuners
Satisfied with their career, but driven by
financial need or avoidance of bad outcomes.
Careful planners, wanting either to specialise
or to use their skills in quite a different way.
The Opportunity
Initiators
The Discontented
Trialists
Open to change and risks, especially keen to
take up new learning opportunities.
Unhappy with their lives generally, no sense of
career identification, disengaged from learning.
Source: Vaughan (2010).
Key messages from Vaughan’s paper
• Young adults can be understood as learningworkers who actively develop their careers
rather than simply enter them.
• Some young adults experience lifelong learning
as self-fulfilling while others experience it as
burdensome.
Empowering Young People
Karen Vaughan’s article noted that (page 158):
“Many policy messages in New Zealand have
suggested that young people making seemingly
messy or nonlinear transitions from school to
tertiary education and work arise from not
making the right choices.”
EEL tried to move away from that suggestion.
Quasi Mission Statement of EEL
“At the centre of our research is the young
person, a dynamic individual who is
continuously constructing self-identities in
diverse contexts, discovering and developing
their personal abilities and making purposeful
choices that are influenced by perceived and
actual social, economic and cultural constraints.”
Empowerment through Skills
“Skills have become the global currency of the 21st
century. Without proper investment in skills, people
languish on the margins of society, technological
progress does not translate into economic growth,
and countries can no longer compete in an
increasingly knowledge-based global society.”
(OECD, Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives, 2012)
Policy has aimed at higher education levels
• Raise the school leaving age to 16.
• Increase the proportion of 18-year-olds with
NCEA level 2 or equivalent qualification.
• Increase the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds
with advanced trade qualifications, diplomas
and degrees (at Level 4 or above).
These are not enough without other changes…
What creates labour market skills?
Discover Individual Abilities
Individual
Abilities
Discipline through Education
Individual
Abilities
Human
Capital
Education
Investment
Display to Potential Employers
Employment
Opportunities
Trusted
Qualifications
Individual
Abilities
Human
Capital
Education
Investment
Matching = Skills
Employment
Opportunities
Matching
Strengths
Trusted
Qualifications
Diverse
Skills
Individual
Abilities
Human
Capital
Education
Investment
The Four Ds
Display
Employment
Opportunities
Matching
Strengths
Trusted
Qualifications
Diverse
Skills
Discover
Individual
Abilities
Human
Capital
Education
Investment
Discipline
We have not been good at “Diversity”
• Mark Oldershaw is chief executive of the
Industry Training Federation:
“At the moment the senior secondary
school programme is heavily structured
around the ‘pathway’ to university.
The 70% of students who don’t go to
university are not given the same clarity
as to what they need to do get on a
pathway to further training and work.”
Recent Positive Developments
• The curriculum in New Zealand schools is
being broadened.
• Links between schools and employers are
being strengthened (e.g. Gateway).
• Trades Academies and the Manukau Institute
of Technology Tertiary High School have been
established.
Vocational Pathways
• The Ministry of Education, the industry
Training Federation and and individual ITOs
have worked together to produce vocational
pathways in the NCEA qualifications.
• This will need support and resourcing in
schools to realise its full potential.
Labour Market Skills
“Skills have become the global currency of the 21st
century. Without proper investment in skills, people
languish on the margins of society, technological
progress does not translate into economic growth,
and countries can no longer compete in an
increasingly knowledge-based global society.”
(OECD, Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives, 2012)
Organisation Roles/Models
“In New Zealand, the introduction of standardsbased secondary school qualifications in 2002
brought a great degree of flexibility to course
content and the kind of learning that can be formally
recognised, thereby demanding that young people
make many more decisions, at earlier stages, about
different credit combinations, qualifications, and
pathways through school.” Vaughan (2010, p. 158)
A Chaotic Environment
Private Trainers
School
Community
Polytechnics
Wānanga
Employers
Universities
Family and
Whānau
Gap Year(s)
Careers Offices as Nodes in Networks
C.O.
Private
Trainers
School
C.O.
Community
C.O.
Polytechnics
C.O.
Wānanga
Employers
C.O.
Universities
Family and
Whānau
Gap Year(s)
C.O. is the
Careers Office
The changing role of the career practitioner
• One part of the EEL programme sought to
understand whether the networking framework
can be used to suggest how a university careers
office can add value to its different stakeholders?
• The research was based on “soft systems
methodology” developed over 30 years at
Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.
The Research Method
• Checkland, P. and J. Poulter (2006) Learning for Action:
A Short Definitive Account of Soft Systems Methodology
and its Use for Practitioners, Teachers and Students.
Chichester: John Wiley.
• It is designed to produce insights into system behavior
when people are acting purposively in pursuit of their
own values and goals.
Quasi Mission Statement of EEL
“At the centre of our research is the young
person, a dynamic individual who is
continuously constructing self-identities in
diverse contexts, discovering and developing
their personal abilities and making purposeful
choices that are influenced by perceived and
actual social, economic and cultural constraints.”
The careers team at the University of Canterbury
helped EEL test these ideas.
Rich Picture of a Careers Office
Careers New Zealand
• Careers New Zealand provides
the national backbone of
careers information, advice and
guidance for these regional
networks of careers offices.
• It has published career
education benchmarks for
secondary schools and for
tertiary institutions.
Careers Offices as Nodes in Networks
Purposeful Behavior of CI&E
CI&E proactively engages and works with students,
faculties and employers achieving their career and
employment-oriented goals,
by using its professional and financial resources to
design and deliver an integrated set of services that
adds value to these three groups,
in order to contribute to the overall mission of the
University of Canterbury.
Findings from the Case Study
• The careers office can be a hub of career
education networks.
• It should build on what is already happening
in employer engagement:
– Employer recruitment visits to campus
– Student part-time employment
– Regional development agencies
Kua mutu tāku korero mo tēnei rā.
That finishes my talk for today.
Ka tino nui te mahi i mua.
There is a lot of work in front of us.
No reira, me āwhina tātou ki a tātou.
Therefore, let us help each other.
Tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou. Kia ora tātou katoa.
That is you. That is you.
May you and I, all of us, enjoy well-being.
Copies of the research reports produced in the
Education Employment Linkages programme are
available at:
www.eel.org.nz