Many states and local districts use career clusters as a means of broadening the focus of secondary education, particularly career and technical education, as preparation for both further education and work. One continuing trend in career clusters is sheer variety. Cluster frameworks vary in the number, nomenclature, and organization of clusters.…

Both face-to-face and distance learning methods are currently being used in adult education and career and technical education. In theory, the advantages of face-to-face and distance learning methods complement each other. In practice, however, both face-to-face and information and communications technology (ICT)-based distance programs often rely…

The gold-collar worker has problem-solving abilities, creativity, talent, and intelligence; performs non-repetitive and complex work difficult to evaluate; and prefers self management. Gold-collar information technology workers learn continually from experience; recognize the synergy of teams; can demonstrate leadership; and are strategic thinkers…

Secondary educators are using ways other than the traditional high school diploma and transcript to communicate students' new and different sets of knowledge and skills to employers. A career passport may be characterized as a formal product or document in which students present the many marketable skills they have developed through their life…

Proprietary and career schools have long provided postsecondary career and technical education (CTE) as private, for-profit institutions. In recent years, they have been joined at the secondary level by charter schools providing CTE. These issues affect proprietary, career, and charter schools as providers of secondary or postsecondary CTE: the…

These key features overlap, criss-cross, and reoccur in discussions about postmodernism: plurality of perspectives, antiessentialism, antifoundationalism, antiscientism, and end of metaphysics and ideology. Other characterizations focus on the discrediting of modernism's grand narrative, the positivist assumption that objectivity is the only…

Leadership development is an important, longstanding concern in career and technical education (CTE). CTE's focus on leadership development has traditionally started in secondary programs, continued in postsecondary programs, and included formal credit and noncredit activities for preservice or inservice CTE teachers or administrators. Because of…

Distance education (DE) is increasingly seen as a powerful vehicle for delivering various types of education, including career and technical education (CTE). Fast-paced, pervasive changes in the economic, social, and technological foundations of education and educational delivery, including the increasing use of information and communications…

Dykeman and colleagues developed a taxonomy of career development interventions used in United States secondary schools that can help career and technical education (CTE) practitioners evaluate and improve the effectiveness of guidance programs. The interventions include introductory, advising, curriculum-based, and work-based interventions.…

How are vocational educators staying up to date in their occupational areas in the high-tech, high performance, 21st century workplace? Is the meaning of "up to date" the same as before? While traditional methods such as attending workshops and reading professional literature are still in use, distance communication technology has also led to the…

Career portfolios contain evidence of individuals' knowledge and skills and are useful tools in job search and career change, especially now that employers want generalizable workplace skills not well portrayed by traditional means and students are often inept at communicating their skills and knowledge to employers. Career portfolios contain and…

To many educators, Web-based training (WBT) is the constructivist ideal--learners can construct meaning through self-directed inquiry, guided activity, and group collaboration on the information highway, the digital library, cyberspace, or the global village. Although research on the effectiveness of WBT as a vehicle for constructivist learning is…

Traditional academic diplomas and degrees remain the most prominent credentials for the workplace. Educational participation and rates of attainment of traditional and other credentials at all levels are at an all-time high. Between 1970 and 1997, female postsecondary enrollments increased by 67.2%. Blacks and Hispanics, however, remained…

Although apprenticeship used to be viewed as academically questionable, today many educators consider it an ideal vehicle for the work-based learning necessary for the school-to-work transition. In particular, youth apprenticeships are seen as having potential to minimize youth floundering in the labor market, ensure educative work experiences,…

New ways of work and new workers and workplaces need education and training systems and occupational classification systems based on the skills that different occupations share rather than on the industry sectors to which they belong. This new approach to providing occupational information (career majors or clusters or pathways) corresponds to…