Work-Bound Youth

The majority of youth enter the world of work prior to receiving postsecondary education or training. By age 26, 85% of youth receive a high school diploma; however, only 27% receive a 4-year college degree. The economic consequences of being in the world of work without a college degree in the United States are staggering. The U.S. Federal Reserve reported that the median income level for individuals without a high school degree was $17,000 per year, $34,000 for individuals with a high school degree, and $41,000 for individuals with some college experience.

Renewed efforts must be made to establish optimal learning environments within school and community settings that effectively prepare all youth to make successful transitions into the world of work. Fortunately, the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) has provided an excellent outline of necessary work readiness skills and dispositions. SCANS identifies a set of five competencies considered to be hallmarks of expert workers, and a three-part foundation of personal qualities and skills considered essential for success in the workplace. The five competencies include the ability to effectively use resources, interpersonal skills, information, systems, and technology. The three foundation skills and qualities include basic skills (such as reading, writing, mathematics, listening, and speaking), thinking skills (such as thinking creatively, making decisions, and solving problems), and personal skills (such as displaying responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management, and integrity).

With this foundation of essential work skills and dispositions, the counseling profession can facilitate the ability of youth to successfully enter the world of work by helping schools and youth-serving community settings establish optimal learning environments. [Page 1679]One of the first models of career development, Parsons's traditional person-environment fit model, argued that individuals and occupations possess relatively stable characteristics, and the goal of career counseling is to establish a match between personal characteristics and occupations that rely on those characteristics. Recent theory and research in developmental psychology and changes in the world of work have cast doubt on the utility of traditional person-environment fit strategies as the only means of establishing work readiness. An alternative perspective is that individuals possess modifiable dispositions, rather than stable trait characteristics. According to Lerner's developmental contextualism, youth are embedded within environments that facilitate or impede their development. For example, the quality of teachers in the classroom influences the development of youth literacy and numeracy skills. It is assumed in this perspective that the vast majority of lower-income youth, urban youth, and youth of color possess the ability to read and perform mathematical operations. Thus, the large achievement gap between these populations and higher income and predominately White youth are accounted for by differences in the quality of learning environments, not ability levels. Establishing optimal learning environments allows youth of all ages to move toward achieving their true potential.

The SCANS skills and dispositions include both cognitive and affective developmental domains. Cognitive development involves traditional academic outcomes such as literacy and numeracy, whereas affective development involves motivation and confidence. Counselors can support educators by helping students become invested in using learning opportunities to develop the range of skills and dispositions needed to achieve their career goals. Counseling as a discipline can help establish optimal conditions for developing work readiness skills and dispositions by focusing attention on the affective development areas necessary for success in school and work, such as motivation, confidence, and social connections.

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