A Process for Developing or Adapting
Career-Ready Performance Tasks
America Achieves Educator Networks
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As the world of work continues to change, so do the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and character needed to meet its demands.
These competencies can be considered in three broad categories: academic content, industry-specific skills, and cross-sector competencies.
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As individual communities articulate their own vision for career readiness and develop deliberate approaches to make that vision a reality, career-ready performance tasks offer promise for helping students to develop these skills and prepare for career and life success.
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Throughout 2017-18, America Achieves Educator Voice Fellowship programs in Louisiana and Colorado engaged educators from across each state to learn about the shifting 21st century economy, necessary cross-sector competencies, and models of career development in order to design career-readiness curriculum.
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In the process, project-based learning (PBL) emerged as a promising instructional strategy.
As a result, a variety of high-quality performance tasks and curricular resources aligned to industry were developed that can be used as models across Louisiana, Colorado, and the rest of the country.
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The goal of this guide is to describe the process used to develop these tasks and share a variety of related resources that may be useful for schools and districts to imagine and build capacity for similar work.
Step 1: Become familiar with the landscape of the dynamic, changing 21st century labor market and the “why” for the work. Connect with industry partners in this step.
It doesn’t take much to realize that the economy is shifting. The rate of change and interconnectedness of changes make prior economic shifts seem more like evolutions than revolutions. The dual influences of technology and globalization, in particular, are causing the world to change faster than ever, creating new demands in the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and character needed for career and life success.
The first step when developing career-ready performance tasks is to understand the changing labor market and why we need approaches that empower students to develop the necessary skills and competencies and to navigate this dynamic landscape.
America Achieves Tools Available for Step 1 (click to access):
Game to learn about CO economy and mining industry
PPT explaining rapid shifts in CO economy
“Speed-dating” game to learn about 21st century economy
Industry Site Visit Planning Guide
Promise of Partnerships: Engaging Industry for Career Readiness (Video)
The Promise of Partnerships: Engaging Industry for Career Readiness
Step 2: Identify the skills that matter, define your cross-sector competencies, and develop your profile of a graduate.
Connect with industry partners in this step.
Many high schools are responding to the shifting labor market by redesigning CTE pathways, developing work-based learning opportunities, expanding industry partnerships, or rethinking core curriculum. If these activities are not leveraged around a shared vision of a career-ready graduate, there is a concern that worthwhile initiatives will result neither in program coherence, community buy-in, nor the desired outcomes.
Whatever approach one takes, it needs to be driven by clear and measurable definitions of what students need to know and be able to do to be successful in 21st century careers and life. The second step is to define the cross-sector competencies which are most important to your community and school and then develop your profile of a graduate, which incorporates these competencies.
America Achieves Tools Available for Step 2 (click to access):
Getting Real about Career Readiness: A Focus on Cross-Sector Competencies
Process to identify cross-sector competencies for your community
Industry engagement tips for partnering with business
PPT detailing promising practices for engaging industry to identify skills and competencies
PPT explaining Colorado Essential Skills
The Promise of Partnerships: Engaging Industry for Career Readiness
Step 3: Understand PBL and how to it as a tool to help students develop the necessary cross-sector competencies for career and life success.
- The components of PBL (using modified America Achieves Modified Career Development Rubric)
- The use of PBL to help students develop competencies
- The considerations for accessibility and equity within PBL design
- The what and how of Understanding by Design (UBD)
- The process transfer from UBD to Evidence-Centered Design (ECD)
Over the last few years, we have seen significant growth in the interest of PBL as a teaching and learning strategy. Perhaps one of the greatest potential benefits of PBL is the role it can play in helping students become career-ready by taking a deeper interest in their studies, experiencing improved learning outcomes, and developing the critical cross-sector competencies.
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The third step is to understand how to use PBL to accomplish these goals. Grasping the full realm of possibilities means understanding the components of high-quality PBL including considerations for equity and understanding how educators can use the processes of Understanding by Design and Evidence-Centered Design to create performance tasks.
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America Achieves Tools Available for Step 3 (click to access):
America Achieves Modified Career Development PBL Rubric
One pager describing PBL design principles
PPT explaining use of capstones for career readiness
Leveraging Project-Based Learning to Improve Career Readiness
Project-Based Learning: A Promising Practice for Career Readiness (Video)
Ensuring Equity in Problem Based Learning Reflection Tool
Step 4: Develop or adapt performance tasks. Connect with industry partners in this step.
- Identify internal capacity to complete the work and external expertise to support the process.
- Develop the templates for the process.
- Define the evidence, claims, and essential questions using Entry Level Job Template and Competencies-Claims-Evidence Template.
- Design or adapt tasks to be authentic to the world of work and aligned to evidence, claims, and essential questions using Performance Task Planning Template and Teacher Guide Template.
- Design or adapt rubrics to measure, reflect, and provide feedback.
- Continue to design or adapt the tasks including the major instructional activities and key resources using Student Learning Guide.
In effective PBL, the learning goals and the process for achieving them are central to the design. The potential of PBL and the associated career-ready performance tasks to support students’ mastery of core content and cross-sector competencies is conditioned on the intentionality of the planning.
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The actual design process for the performance task starts with defining the evidence, claims, and essential questions before developing the task. Connecting and engaging industry partners is essential during this step.
Developing rubrics and other key resources such as teacher guides is the final stage of this step.
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America Achieves Tools Available for Step 4 (click to access):
Readings to understand ECD process
Competencies-Claims-Evidence Template (see the "Small Business, Big Impact" exemplar)
Performance Task Planning Template (see the "Small Business, Big Impact" exemplar)
Teacher Guide Template (see the "Small Business, Big Impact" exemplar)
Rubric to Evaluate Student Work (see Essentials Skills and Final Product rubrics, adapted for "Small Business, Big Impact" by Colorado Educator Fellows)
Student Learning Guide Template (see the "Small Business, Big Impact" exemplar)
Step 5: Pilot performance tasks, reflect, and revise.
Fully leveraging performance tasks to ensure that students develop the necessary cross-sector competencies takes time and will not happen in a day. Schools should consider an intentional piloting process of these tasks and how they will collect data to inform revisions of the tasks.
If school and district leaders possess the broader vision of performance tasks to develop cross-sector competencies, then they will be able to ensure that a focus on these tasks aligns to other curricular work and that the conditions for successful implementation are adequately developed.
Learn more at
www.americaachievesednetworks.org
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