It would be great if entrepreneurs and other industry partners would bring educators into their workplaces for extended periods of time (over the summer perhaps?).  These teacher externship opportunities may provide the entrepreneurs with a new set of eyes on their issues/problems and also help educators see more of "cutting edge" work and bring examples of that work back into their classrooms.  Often it is difficult to bring students into workplaces, particularly those with inherent safety issues.  However, providing students with opportunities to visit entrepreneurial worksites would do a lot to motivate some to move along an entrepreneurial career path.

Sorry I don't have one at my fingertips, but will look out for one.

Thanks for the question and sharing the AGU paper, Leigh. In the webinar, a few panelists agree that career exploration/development should center around the students’ interests or needs instead of limiting them within certain industrial fields. This is particularly critical given the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of current and future job tasks. In our AI education project, the career development focuses on supporting students to find their interests/needs (our target audience are middle schoolers who start exploring their career interests) and build their career adaptability skills that can help them thrive in the future. We have activities such as “Inventory of Me” and “Personal Roadmaps”. Students also explore a series of videos where a high school student talks with people working in different fields that use AI. The interviewees include artists, people working in social media, and lawyers. They talk about what their daily jobs look like and share their personal and professional journeys, just like role models. Through these videos and discussions, students develop a more concrete idea of what kinds of skills are critical in the fields they are interested in, how AI may impact these jobs, what resources they can leverage on, and what barriers they might encounter. Overall we found that the combined approach of career discerning and exploring AI’s impact on jobs is engaging to students. If you are interested in our curriculum, you can find it here.

Good point Leigh. I'm often asked about how we measure the impact of our work-- can we see that the career pathways lead to more students entering STEM careers. When we recognize the dynamic nature of career trajectories and that the skills required of the workforce are also constantly evolving, this becomes a complicated question. One point that was made across our presentations and the discussion was the importance of helping students find connections to STEM, and the relevance of STEM for the careers they see across their community. For example, do students recognize that computational thinking skills or the engineering design process can be applied to a wide range of potential careers, even careers that students might not think about as STEM focused. Also, skills like collaboration and communication might be essential not only in STEM workplaces now, but across careers in the future.

Well you know I'm empathetic to your point, Jackie!

I am grateful Leigh that you raised the issue of the pipeline metaphor misrepresenting reality. Thanks for sharing the article as well. For me, a pipeline implies an extruder (like leaky pipelines) and may even drum up images of oil pipelines depending on the context. I see pipelines as a metaphor for signifying a particular industry area and that there is a way people fall off or are extruded from the pipelines. They are a way to discuss STEM career development in terms of the workforce/labor perspective. But pipelines are fixed and seemingly disregard local contours and contexts. Pathways are not individual "journeys" but structures. Although both metaphors—pathways and pipelines—entail movement, pipelines are conduits for people to move through, with no clear entry or exit points, whereas pathways to me feel more nimble and can invite more local flexibility and adaptability, and perhaps allow for more meaningful opportunities for people to be active agents directing their own learning. 

The issue raised with the pathway metaphor (pipeline is out and not worth talking about anymore) is, in my mind, a question of perspective. A person-centered perspective differs from an infrastructure and institutional perspective. Both are legitimate and they address different problems. When individuals look forward to their own future, "pathways" are not good metaphors (possible selves might be better). But when I look from the outside and wonder how to analyze large data sets of people's education and career behavior, then a pathway metaphor can be a good guiding framework, as could be a Markov chain or similar ideas. It matters what issue we are addressing at what grain size of the system, at least from the perspective of research

Good point Martin.  The career education perspective followed in the US is one that strives to support an individual's career development interests and institutionalize a system that broadens STEM career opportunities for all students.  Our system supports students' learning in any field they choose. This is different from systems in some other countries which strive to control the future workforce by limiting education and training opportunities to only those areas in need of economic growth.  An institutional perspective is needed to establish an well functioning education to workforce system. We should not be afraid of addressing our needs for a systemic solution.

Indeed!  And different actors play different roles. An educator on the ground supports the development of learners and is focused on the whole person when doing that... a STEM advocate wants to create more on-ramps into STEM careers and lower barriers for certain pathways... a labor economist at a state agency might simply want to ensure that there is great fit between supply and demand in any job... so long as we know that there are different and sometimes overlapping roles we can all be tolerant of the other, but also understand who else is addressing the stuff we can't from our position.

That's a really nice way of looking at STEM pathways.

I absolutely agree.  The world is changing so fast that to keep up we need to think out of the box and ahead of the curve. We can't wait for a direction to be articulated and confirmed.  By then the concrete ideas will be outdated or replaced by a new innovation that may likely change our direction/perspective.  This type of thinking requires a bit of risk taking and a level of comfort working in grey areas where things may not be completely clear.  Business and industry with quarterly goals/deliverables is more quickly able to respond to change.  Some businesses can change quickly - like maneuvering a speedboat.  Education systems are like ocean liners or air craft carriers - slow to change direction.  New models coming out of NSF STEM funding resources can help point us in positive directions.

Interesting question that distinguishes technological literacy needed to be a functioning citizen in a modern society, no matter what job one has, from having the foundational and advanced skills to compete in a rapidly changing labor market. Lots of people are working on this, and it is useful to consider how countries with functioning trade-based education systems are doing.  Check this out: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. Building America's Skilled Technical Workforce. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.https://doi.org/10.17226/23472.

I'd like to sharpen this question a bit, Martin.  There are so many statements about the "rapidly changing workforce," but if you spend a little time with the Bureau of Labor Stats analysis of workforce opportunities and their educational requirements over the next decade or so, one sees a very large numbers of jobs that do not require advanced/post-seondary  education, but do require rather a lot of on-the-job training.  (for those who are interested, the latest report is here: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/occupational-pro...).

   To what extent is the emphasis on STEM Careers distracting from figuring out how to address the need for STEM for all?  To what extent has the focus on a narrow view of the "future of work" shaped the writing and interpretation of, say, NGSS? 

That's a nice sharpening of the question, Brian, one that resonates with me. I think it is indicative of a culture's norms and values how we frame the purpose of education. I enjoy very much my observation on how these discourses differ between, say Germany and the US (a difference I understand best), and how the role someone plays in the societal system changes their focus when discussing education. On the spectrum of individualism vs collectivism, the US is pretty far on the individualism side, Germany more on the collective one. The public discourse on education reflects it. But even in Germany there are different camps: the people who worry about effective and efficient pathways into professions worry about preparedness, the usefulness of BS and BA degrees and the role of the Dual System (apprenticeship in the company blended with bloc-based schooling in CTE-schools), and now the in-between of the education in the universities of applied sciences. All very legitimate conversations that always involve employers, and people who worry about social mobility and inclusion. The other question: what are primary and secondary education all about, and to what degree are they (also) helping prepare students for future careers, is connected but with a much broader societal framing around functioning in a pluralistic and democratic society. It is a strong discourse. We have both in the US as well, but it does seem that the job focus dominates. Given the harshness of the social system and its overall emphasis on the individual (in terms of success and failure) one should not be surprised. In a country where whether you receive medical services without going bankrupt depends on holding down a permanent job that supplies decent health insurance people's anxiety over career is a natural...

Apologies for the rant  ;o)

I like to take a strengths-based approach to answering this question... the uniqueness of our youth is in their diversity and creativity.  For youth in Hawaii, their gift is aloha... and how that can transform STEM and possibility give them a leg up in the STEM future.  STEM needs the moral compass of aloha... we can teach youth the tangible skills of T and E, but how do we uplift their internal gifts to transform not only STEM but also the world.  And maybe thatʻs that youʻre getting to @Joyce... that we canʻt solely rely on the rigorous and academic educational experiences or even trade-based education systems and that there needs to be a little something "extra".  

I can totally see that @MaryAlice. On a small scale... It makes me think of the work weʻve been doing on our project to connect teachers, students, and industry partners through problem-based learning.  The problem-based learning curriculum gives teachers an excuse to invite industry partners into the classroom and work along side students.  What I like about problem-based is that youʻre not just inviting guest speakers to talk about things, but content area experts are brought into the classroom to work along side students towards solutions.  In our teacher training, it really was setting time aside in the schedule to talk teachers through how they can connect with industry or community partners to accomplish this. I think thereʻs also a need to support the industry partners that come into the classroom as they work with students... but thatʻs the next project.