Gamification is “the use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals”. (Gartner, 2014). What does gamification mean to career service practices? CERIC’s new literature search, Gamification and Career Development, highlights the concept and implications of gaming in career education.
Topics covered in the literature search include:
Concepts, tools and applications of gamification
Gamification and employee engagement
Use of gamification in the recruitment process
Gamification for millennials and non-millennials
Career counselling apps
Gamification vs game-based learning
Utilizing gamification in career assessment
Design and evaluation of gamification
There are now 55 literature searches available, including Career Development Theory and Career Management Models, Economic Benefits of Career Guidance, Parental Involvement in Career Development, Labour Market Trends, Mental Health Issues in the Workplace, and more.
Featuring comprehensive listings of key research and articles in career development, literature searches highlight critical points of current knowledge. As a student, academic or practitioner in the field, literature searches are helpful if you are researching the latest thinking or proven best practices. They are also valuable if you are considering a submission to CERIC for project partnership funding in order to gain an overview of major work already done in your area of interest.
In recognition of Elizabeth McTavish’s valuable contribution to the career development field, CERIC is awarding six bursaries to community-based counsellors for Cannexus20, courtesy of The Counselling Foundation of Canada.
CERIC received a total of 44 applications and wishes to acknowledge all the organizations that applied. Recipients of this year’s Elizabeth McTavish Bursary come from across the country, including Prince Edward Island, Quebec, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Bursary winners this year represent organizations that support youth, Indigenous peoples, newcomers, and people with mental health challenges.
The bursaries are awarded in honour of Elizabeth McTavish who began working with The Counselling Foundation of Canada in the late 1960s and served as Director of Counselling and as Executive Director of the Foundation for 25 years. As an early pioneer in career development, she believed that community-based organizations could play a significant role in providing career counselling and employment services on the front lines.
A bursary provides a full registration for the Cannexus conference plus $500 for expenses. The Cannexus20 conference takes place January 27-29, 2020 at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa.
The 2019 Survey of Career Service Professionals is a national survey run by CERIC, a charitable organization that advances career development in Canada. With the start of Canada Career Month, the survey is now open!
This comprehensive survey will take approximately 25–30 minutes to complete. Your responses will help CERIC, and the field at large, to better understand your interests and challenges, as well as your professional development and information needs.
This survey is only run once every four years – and presents a critical opportunity to take a snapshot of the profession and how it has changed over time. It was previously run in 2011 and 2015. In 2015, over 1,000 practitioners completed the survey and provided rich data that helped to inform CERIC’s work – from the research projects we fund to the learning we offer you.
CERIC is pleased to be partnering with local associations and organizations across the country to present several roadshows throughout November for Canada Career Month.
These FREE breakfast meetings will engage career development professionals as well as related stakeholders in the communities where they work and provide networking and learning opportunities linked to new CERIC research and resources.
The following dates have been confirmed for the roadshows:
CERIC wishes to thank the many local partners who are collaborating with us to host roadshows and share information with their members and networks.
If you’re interested in attending, simply follow the links to register or if you would like to partner with CERIC to host a future roadshow in your community, please contact Cyrielle Filias at cyrielle@ceric.ca.
CERIC supported the National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS) to carry out a nationwide research initiative in order to understand the current best practices around accessibility, accommodation and universal design in career education of post-secondary students with disabilities. The webinar will be led by Frank Smith, the National Co-ordinator of NEADS.
Webinar Learnings:
Importance of combined academic and career-related experience for disabled students in college and university programs
How career professionals on campuses can foster opportunities and break down barriers for disabled students and graduates
Challenges for persons with episodic disabilities in post-secondary and employment experiences
Opportunities and advantages to hiring persons with disabilities who have post-secondary education
A new pan-Canadian CERIC-funded research project Settlement Services Counsellors Profile has identified a need to rethink the role of front-line settlement counsellors, especially as immigration levels rise. In this webinar, Iren Koltermann, Managing Director eCaliber Group and Dan Scott, Principal, Calience Research and Consulting will discuss the eight core competencies of front-line settlement counsellors.
Webinar Learnings:
The nature of the work of settlement counsellors, including their career path
The need for this role to evolve in response to the changing landscape of immigration and settlement
A simple approach to the identification and use of competencies
A description of key emerging competencies for the role of future settlement counsellors
Registered participants will receive a link to the recording of the webinars. So even if you can’t make to any of these two webinars, you will still be able to access all the learning.
CERIC’s Climate Change and Careers issue of Careering magazine aims to help professionals working in career development reflect on their role in preparing students and jobseekers to tackle this complex global issue. The issue comes as thousands of Canadians took to the streets last month as part of global protests demanding stronger responses to climate change, inspired by the leadership of 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
You will find articles examining how climate change will affect specific sectors as well as the labour market more generally, and how education can prepare youth to respond, including these articles from the print edition:
Careering is Canada’s Magazine for Career Development Professionals and is the official publication of CERIC. It is published three times a year both in print and as an emagazine, including select content in French. Subscribe to receive your free copy. You can also access past issues for free online.
The next issue of Careering magazine (Winter 2020) will be on the theme of “Ethics and Professionalism.”
There is a pressing need for greater training of settlement counsellors – those on the front lines of welcoming newcomers to Canada – as their role changes in response to rising immigration levels and an increasingly complex settlement landscape, according to a new CERIC-funded project research report. The pan-Canadian research from two Toronto-based consultants identifies eight critical competencies that could form the basis of training to help settlement counsellors be successful as the job is redefined and the range of work is extended. While the focus is on the role of settlement counsellors, many of the insights, conclusions and recommendations can be applied to other categories of front-line settlement workers.
Canada is widely acknowledged to have one of the strongest settlement sectors in the world. At its core are 500 non-profit organizations that deliver programs and services to help newcomers adjust to life in Canada, including by improving their labour market outcomes. Front-line settlement counsellors are one of the initial points of contact for immigrants, helping them adapt and participate in Canadian society. But with the ongoing rise in immigration levels that will see more than one million newcomers welcomed between 2019 and 2021, the report highlights that settlement service agencies cannot address the challenges alone.
The report, The Competencies of Frontline Settlement Counsellors in Canada, from Iren Koltermann of eCaliber Group and Dan Scott of Calience Research and Consulting, found that the work of settlement counsellors needs to go beyond a traditional approach of providing direct services to immigrants to include building capacity in communities that welcome newcomers. The role of settlement counsellors now fundamentally has two parts, each based on capacity-building: empowering newcomers and empowering destination communities.
Direct services – historically the main purpose of the settlement sector – involve assessing the needs of newcomers and providing appropriate information, orientation, referrals and direct assistance such as helping them navigate legal services, housing, healthcare, education, employment and language training, and assisting them to appreciate Canadian society and Canadian culture.
The emerging aspect of the role of settlement counsellors is focused on building capacity in the existing community to be inclusive of newcomers. This involves advocating to overcome biases and systemic barriers that prevent immigrants from participating in society and in creating environments based on “unity in diversity.” The report makes the case that this aspect is becoming more urgent and requires greater attention.
The eight critical competencies to help settlement counsellors be successful include the ability to:
Discern the strengths and identify the needs of newcomers
Assist newcomers to navigate social and economic systems
Help newcomers gain understanding of Canadian society and culture, and nurture a sense of belonging
Advocate for the well-being of newcomers
Contribute to building environments of unity in diversity
Uphold integrity
Promote learning
Foster initiative
Research for the report involved conducting 40 in-depth interviews and five focus groups with settlement counsellors, managers and regional co-ordinators in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia about how their work is evolving and their training needs.
The counsellors interviewed had diverse educational backgrounds, most including a university degree. Only about a quarter had studied for a diploma or certificate related to the settlement sector. In the interviews, several managers indicated they prefer to hire those who have themselves immigrated to Canada, the rationale being that it is possible to train people in the knowledge of Canada but not in the experience of leaving your homeland and resettling in another country. Maximum salary levels for settlement counsellors ranged from $46,000 to $52,000 per year. Retention was identified as an obstacle given low wages generally in the sector. Additionally, most settlement counsellors were satisfied to remain in the role and did not aspire to higher positions within the field. However, those interested in career progression found that accessing the training they need for leadership positions is a barrier.
This CERIC-funded project was conceived as a contribution toward a growing body of knowledge used by settlement agencies to:
Raise the profile of settlement workers;
Help identify potential candidates for the role;
Provide initial and ongoing training; and
Ensure talent is well nurtured.
A background report released in January explored the historic and current realities in Canada’s settlement sector. The ongoing research has had two interrelated aims:
The first is to gain insight into the work of settlement counsellors and map the career path of this position.
The authors of the report believe the complex challenges of settlement will require government funders, educational institutions and settlement providers themselves to support training that develops these competencies and carves out career paths in the sector. Given the critical role settlement counsellors play in improving integration for newcomers, increasing the capacity of welcoming communities and enhancing public support for immigration, the value of the services provided by these workers will only continue to rise as immigration levels grow.
Learn more about this project and access the reports at ceric.ca/settlement. Also watch for an announcement of a free webinar and roadshow that will share the report findings.
Brookfield Institute report raises questions about the implications of four environmental trends on the labour market
Yasmin Rajabi and Erin Warner
Yasmin Rajabi, left, and Erin Warner.
The floods and tornado that hit Ottawa this past spring have cost the city $5.6 million and counting in damages (Chianello, 2019). Similar instances of climate change have devastated communities across Canada and will continue to do so as the climate crisis accelerates. In fact, the Insurance Bureau of Canada reported that the cost of insured damage due to severe weather was $1.8-billion last year, with other recent years as high as $4.9 billion (Scoffield, 2019). There is an urgent need for Canadians to anticipate and prepare for the shocks and stresses of a future affected by the changing climate – and to consider what can be done to mitigate the current course.
To help Canadians prepare for this future, and more specifically their future employment, the Brookfield Institute’s report Turn and Face the Strange identifies 31 trends with the potential to affect the labour market in the next 10-15 years (Thornton, Russek & O’Neil, 2019). This report is part of the Institute’s ongoing initiative, Employment in 2030, a national research project to develop a holistic forecast of in-demand skills, and the distribution of these skills across geographies, industries and demographic groups.
While Turn and Face the Strange is not a prediction of the future or a deep analysis of any one trend, it aims to spark exploratory and imaginative thinking and push readers to ask themselves “what if?” What if Canada sees a rise in wildfires, floods and mudslides? What if cases of mental-health issues associated with technology use continue to multiply? What if artificial intelligence (AI) becomes capable of performing creative tasks?
Key trends
The trends highlighted in the report were identified using a strategic foresight methodology called horizon scanning – a technique for gathering broad, emerging information in order to identify possible changes affecting a topic of study. We scanned academic journals, popular media and fringe news sources, unearthing more than 600 signals of change, which we synthesized into 31 trends that have the potential to affect the future of employment.
While many of us are well aware that technological change will continue to affect labour markets, it is also important to consider how broader environmental, social and political developments play a role. Environmental sustainability, in particular, is an area that we can no longer afford to ignore. To this end, we were able to identify four trends related to the environment that may have an impact on the future of work in Canada. As you read through each below, consider how these trends may affect your future job prospects or those of your clients.
Resource scarcity
As the climate crisis worsens, natural resources like clean air, water and sand could become scarce and therefore extremely valuable. According to the World Wildlife Fund (n.d.), by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may face water shortages. Resource scarcity across Canada and globally will affect industries that rely heavily on natural resources, such as energy, forestry and mining. Water-reliant sectors such as agriculture, food processing and manufacturing could struggle to maintain access to these resources. How will these industries develop new practices to conserve resources like paper and water? How will our policies and infrastructure change to adapt to water scarcity and air pollution? Will new, energy-efficient industries grow or develop in response to resource scarcity? How will we alter our habits to consume less?
Illustration by Jesseca Buizon.
Wildfires, flooding and mudslides
In August 2018, British Columbia declared a state of emergency as a result of 559 forest fires that burned across the province (Johnston, 2018). All over Canada we are experiencing similar instances of wildfires, flooding and mudslides due to a rise in extreme weather conditions. The tourism industry may be affected should these natural disasters become more common. How will other industries that Canada is so well known for, such as forestry, mining and agriculture, be hurt? Will others benefit from these unfortunate incidents, such as infrastructure or goods and services that monitor or prevent floods and wildfires? What will the impact be on economic activity in regions more susceptible to climate disasters?
Illustration by Jesseca Buizon.
Climate refugees
As climate change continues to take a toll on the places we live, millions of people will be displaced globally. While the current legal definition of refugees in Canada does not include provisions for climate-related displacement, we need to start considering how we will respond to this global issue. How might people from regions that have been devastated by climate change use their first-hand experience to help respond to the international demand for solutions? Would a new source of talent reduce the cost of labour in certain sectors? How will the government and other bodies react to an increase in demand for settlement services?
Illustration by Jesseca Buizon.
Alternative energy
The demand for energy is only growing as technology permeates every aspect of our lives, from the trains we take to work to the smartphones that never seem to leave our hands. In 2016, Canadian companies spent $18.1 billion on in-house energy research and development (Statistics Canada, 2018). There has been a focus on generating energy that is clean, efficient, renewable and affordable. How will this affect the traditional, resource-based energy sector? If significant strides are made toward clean, inexpensive energy, more companies could invest in AI, tech systems and increased computational power. How might this affect demand for skilled workers to operate alongside these new technologies?
As author Roger L. Martin and professor Alison Kemper write, the climate crisis will no doubt require both restraint and innovation (Martin & Kemper, 2012). Restraint, as we adapt our behaviour to try to limit further damage. Innovation, as we work to develop new technology to fix what we have done and to help us find a new way forward. In this way, with the devastation of climate change also comes an opportunity for new advancements. When reflecting on what climate change will mean for the Canadian labour market, career practitioners should consider: What kinds of new companies will arise in its wake? What new solutions will be developed? Where are gaps likely to emerge in the near future and how can we take advantage of these opportunities? We urge you to explore how these four environmental sustainability trends will affect the future of work in Canada and consider what careers may change or emerge as a result.
Illustrations by Jesseca Buizon. Buizon is a Toronto-based illustrator and graduate of OCAD University’s illustration program. She creates her illustrations by merging traditional and digital mediums.
Yasmin Rajabi is a Project Officer at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, where she experiments with novel research methods to advance actionable innovation policy in Canada. Rajabi has an Honours BA in Public Policy and City Studies from the University of Toronto.
Erin Warner is a Marketing and Communications Specialist at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship who is dedicated to making ideas and information easily accessible to a wide audience. She holds an MBA in technology and innovation from Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management and an Honours BA in anthropology from Western University.
With a goal of bringing greater clarity and consistency to our national conversations about career development, CERIC developed a set of “Guiding Principles of Career Development” that have been enthusiastically embraced across Canada. These eight Guiding Principles are intended as a starting point to inform discussions with clients, employers, funders, policymakers and families. Each issue of Careering features a Guiding Principle “in action,” exploring how a career professional is applying a Principle in practice.
Guiding Principle: Career development can be complex and complicated, so context is key – there may be both internal constraints (financial, cultural, health) and/or external constraints (labour market, technology).
As a career development professional working in primary and secondary schools, I realize that beginning career education and exploration in the early grades can be controversial. However, recent research including the CERIC-published book The Early Years, Career Development for Young Children by Mildred Cahill and Edith Furey (2017) and the Career-related learning in primary. What works? report by the Career and Enterprise Company (Kashefpakdel et al., 2018) provide support for this approach. Like these authors, I believe that “children create their own stories, but not in isolation” (Cahill & Furey, 2017, p. 64). Students have many co-authors, including teachers, who provide important context as they develop a vision of their possible future selves alongside their families.
A model for context in career development
The school district in which I work, located in El Cajon, CA, has 27 schools and 17,500 students. It is one of the most wonderfully diverse districts in the region, with some of the highest numbers of refugee families regionally as well as students from a mix of socio-economic backgrounds.
As Wehrle, Kira and Klehe’s (2018) and Eismann’s (2016) research highlights, first-generation students and refugees experience unique barriers that limit their engagement and advancement into available career paths, diminishing their career choice privilege. Understanding the internal and external constraints students may experience has been core to our mission of providing contextualized career development in our classrooms.
My school district uses a process called “World of Work” to provide every child with career development that is integrated within their classroom curriculum and deployed by teachers.
A framework within this called “Mission of Me” guides students through:
Learning about their strengths, interests and values
Exploring the labour market and learning about jobs and academic opportunities in their community
Forming their stories based on their increasing self-awareness and exposure to opportunities available to them
The Mission of Me is integrated through four levels of exposure: 1) explore a job, 2) participate in an “as if” experience or simulation, 3) meet a professional who does the job, and 4) participate in a demonstration of learning or practice. Through this process, teachers integrate technology, reading, math and science, and equally important, provide an opportunity to apply knowledge to real-world problems. We encourage students to reflect on their learning and how their Mission of Me connects to the people in the job they explored.
As we work with students to integrate careers education in the early grades, it’s important to communicate that this work is not about encouraging students to select a pathway or make decisions, but rather to create opportunities to explore, meet professionals, and develop context and application for what they are learning. The goal is to expose young people to all types of work environments and career skills and keep them from foreclosing prematurely on possibilities as they work to develop their identity. While career development is complex and complicated, it can also become more accessible to young people when they have a supported space in which they can explore the world of work.
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Creating a common language
We believe that context is key – as the Guiding Principle states – to understand both our students’ needs and how to develop programming to support their career development. This is why we actively engage parents in our programs and why we use the RIASEC as the guiding framework for building a common language of career interests across the school and family.
The RIASEC vocational interest typology developed by Holland (1959, 1997) is “the most widely adopted theoretical framework for interest measurement” (Briley et al., 2017, p. 6). Holland’s typology describes people according to their resemblance to six vocational personalities and environments known as the RIASEC.
Parents are invited to work with World of Work coaches in training aimed at improving student and adult learning related to the world of work. During this three-course experience, families can explore their own strengths, interests and work values, learn the language of the RIASEC, hear about career opportunities and begin to create a common language of careers they can use with their children.
More than 900 families have joined us for some form of career development learning over the past school year. Breaking down institutional and cultural barriers is critical to serving our families and leveraging the power of schools, which are trusted entities in the eyes of parents and a tremendous way to support career development across students’ life span.
Don’t miss our previous Principles in Action articles
Like many students in our district, Sammy began his schooling as an English-language learner and first-generation citizen. When Sammy was in Grade 4, his teacher became an early adopter of integrating career development in her class. Over the school year, Sammy participated in career exposure activities, simulations and meet-a-pro opportunities.
It was during one meet-a-pro experience that his idea about his possible future career options changed. He was introduced to the district superintendent during a school visit. During their conversation, Sammy realized they both identified with the same RIASEC themes. As he learned more about the work of a superintendent, his interest piqued and he even envisioned himself in the role. The superintendent offered Sammy the opportunity for a job shadow. Now in Grade 5, Sammy continues to be interested in the path of superintendent. And, importantly, as he heads into middle school, he’s even more motivated to do well and achieve his goals.
Access for all
Providing career development in the early grades affords educators the opportunity to proactively moderate contextual barriers that can impede students’ success, such as gender, race, learning differences and socio-economic status. Integrating career development with classroom learning ensures access for all students, which in turn benefits the communities where they live by putting them on a path to gainful employment.
Ed Hidalgo is the Chief Innovation and Engagement Officer for the Cajon Valley Union School District in San Diego, CA. Prior to his current role, he was the Director of the World of Work Initiative at the University of San Diego Jacobs Institute for Entrepreneurship in Education. His experience in career development and training comes from nearly 20 years in human resources, staffing and government affairs, most recently at Qualcomm. RIASEC: SEA; MBTI: ESFJ. Follow him on Twitter @EDhidalgoSD.
References
Briley, D., Rounds, J., & Hoff, D., & Wee, C. (2018). Normative changes in interests from adolescence to adulthood: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 144(4).
Cahill, M., & Furey, E. (2017). The Early Years: Career Development for Young Children: A Guide for Educators. Toronto, ON: CERIC.
Holland, J. L. (1959). A theory of vocational choice. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 6, 35– 45.
Holland, J. L. (1997). Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environments (3rd ed.). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.
Wehrle, K., Kira, M., & Klehe, U.-C. (2018). Putting career construction into context: Career adaptability among refugees. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 111, 107–124.
When Amanda Felske decided to leave full-time work to return to school as a mature student, she had to navigate financial and time-management challenges
In this Careering feature, jobseekers reflect on successes and struggles in their career development
When I was considering my career path at the end of high school, the trajectory seemed pretty straightforward: choose a college/university program, complete it and get a job. I had never considered what lay ahead after getting that job and was naive to the fact that there could (and would) be challenges and changes, and that my path wouldn’t always go in a straight line. I didn’t anticipate that I would be at a crossroads in my mid-30s, with big and scary decisions to make.
I chose a three-year chemical engineering technology program, completed it with dean’s list honours and landed an amazing job as a chemical lab technologist at a local biopharmaceutical company. Prophecy fulfilled, right? I loved that job and worked there for 10 years before the company was sold and operations moved to another province; they were generous and offered re-location for all employees, but due to family matters, I was not able to move with them. This was the first time I realized that the path ahead wasn’t as clear as I thought it would be.
Time to pivot
I moved on to an R&D lab at a plastics manufacturer, where I spent two years doing work I found boring in a hostile environment. I was frustrated and unfulfilled, and knew I had to switch directions. I had been interested in upgrading my education for a few years and began investigating programs at local colleges, which is where I stumbled across the one-year, post-grad Cannabis Applied Science program at Loyalist College in Belleville, ON, where I live.
It was all over the news that large cannabis companies were staking out our area, so this seemed like an ideal time to make a move; the program would complement my previous education and experience, and hopefully give me an edge to advance my career at one of these companies. It all sounded pretty perfect discussing it over a campfire with my husband (who ultimately gave me the final push to go through with it), but we also had many challenges to consider: Would we be able to manage the loss of income while I studied? How would we handle appointments and childcare for our eight-year-old son if I had less flexibility in my schedule? It had been a long time since I was a full-time student; could I handle this alongside household responsibilities? What if this was all for naught, and the companies didn’t actually come to the area or I was unable to get a job in the field? It took digging deep to build up the courage to make this a reality, but I was accepted to the program and quit my job. It was happening.
Financially, we crunched some numbers and realized we could make it work. My husband’s salary, along with a chunk of our savings, could pay for the course and sustain us while I was unemployed. I did look into some forms of financial aid, but we decided to leave that as a last resort and try to do this without incurring more debt. We managed, which was a huge relief. Not financially contributing to the household was the largest mental hurdle I had to overcome during this process; as a mom you are so busy putting everyone else first that it can be hard to accept the support of others and focus on yourself.
Child care worked out, partly due to my husband’s flexible schedule, but also pure luck that we had no major conflicts or issues to deal with (no broken bones!). After being in school for a bit, I could gauge when I could and couldn’t miss class in order to spread the responsibility of appointments and was open with my professors any time I was away.
As for being a full-time student again, that was a difficult transition but an incredibly rewarding experience. This was tough for me because my “jobs” around the house had to be spread out and deprioritized if I had a heavy work load. Sometimes the floors didn’t get vacuumed or the dog didn’t get walked, but we found a balance that worked. My son thought it was both funny and annoying that I had homework because I wasn’t as available to him as he was used to, but he was proud of me and sometimes helped out more around the house. I had always been a good student and those practices came back easily, so the bulk of the challenge ended up being in juggling homework and housework, while getting in some family time here and there, too.
Studying cannabis
While local employment opportunities were a big draw, I was also excited to dive into the science of cannabis, which turned out to be so much more engaging and intriguing than I had anticipated. We covered everything from regulations to extraction, but I was, not surprisingly, drawn to the chemistry and analytics. It was amazing to learn about so many aspects of the industry while finding out where my passion lay, which helped me to visualize where I saw myself once the course was done.
I was very lucky to get a student research position while I was in school, which was a collaboration between a local cannabis company and the college. After school ended, I continued to work part-time on this project, hoping to transition to full-time. I saw a job posting on LinkedIn for cannabis drinks producer Truss Beverages, a start-up company coming to the area, and I had a huge gut instinct that this was the job I had been waiting for. I applied and my gut led me in the right direction; I started with Truss as a senior chemist at the end of August.
We knew there would be difficulties to navigate and did our best to anticipate them and have a plan in place, which served us well; open communication was an integral part of this transition for all of us. Despite the challenges we faced as a family to make it happen, the decision to return to school was one of the best I have ever made.
Amanda Felske lives in Belleville, ON, with her husband and son. When she’s not in the lab, you can find her walking their dog, Bailey, playing ultimate Frisbee or enjoying all things outdoors at her cottage.
As a career development professional working in primary and secondary schools, I realize that beginning career education and exploration in the early grades can be controversial. However, recent research including the CERIC-published book The Early Years, Career Development for Young Children by Mildred Cahill and Edith Furey (2017) and the Career-related learning in primary. What works? report by the Career and Enterprise Company (Kashefpakdel et al., 2018) provide support for this approach. Like these authors, I believe that “children create their own stories, but not in isolation” (Cahill & Furey, 2017, p. 64). Students have many co-authors, including teachers, who provide important context as they develop a vision of their possible future selves alongside their families.
A framework within this called “Mission of Me” guides students through:
When I was considering my career path at the end of high school, the trajectory seemed pretty straightforward: choose a college/university program, complete it and get a job. I had never considered what lay ahead after getting that job and was naive to the fact that there could (and would) be challenges and changes, and that my path wouldn’t always go in a straight line. I didn’t anticipate that I would be at a crossroads in my mid-30s, with big and scary decisions to make.