WHYS FROM THE RESEARCH

We can’t help but examine the counterargument for the briefest of moments to illustrate the validity of the cause – simply ponder for a second the amount of research you’d speculate exists arguing against the value of work experience.

You may be surprised though to learn it totals more than a century’s worth of formal thought and research arguing for work-based learning (WBL, the industry term for getting students into workplaces) for our youth, starting perhaps most notably with John Dewey in the early twentieth century who said, "The only adequate training for occupations is training through occupations." And the disciplines naturally weighed in over the years – human development, learning theory, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, education – all resoundingly in favor. If you were to review it all, we’d imagine you’d be left with the same feeling we had – shock that we’ve barely moved (only in some small circles) in the direction of WBL at all.

Perhaps the top 20 most salient whys we came across, organized by domain, can leave you with a sense –

1. Work-based learning’s purpose “is to introduce young people to the world of work so they can succeed in the job market as adults. Its rationale is simple: The best way to teach young people about work is to expose them to actual workers, job-related tasks, and workplaces. To be career-ready, young people must actively engage with the work context, including different environments, people, and responsibilities.” ¹

2. “If students were to be adequately prepared to be responsible and accountable for their own continuing development after graduation, they ought to have experience of being responsible and accountable for their own development before graduation." ²

3. The Harvard Graduate School of Education concluded in its Pathways to Prosperity Project that we must embark on the development of a comprehensive pathways network, of which WBL is a key ingredient, if we are to meet the widely diverse needs, interests, and abilities of all our young people. ³

4. At its best, learning should feel and actually be like practice in the adult world. It cannot be watered down, oversimplified, standardized, or made inert because young people are different (younger, less mature) or because it is too complicated to immerse young people in adult practice. ⁴

5. According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, “There remains a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces … Work-based learning (WBL) provides the link that can help bridge that gap.” ⁵

6. “We believe that WBL is worth pursuing and expanding. They [WBL experiences] build new kinds of knowledge and skill, foster new ways of thinking and problem-solving, engage young people in new forms of social interaction, and give first-hand information about careers and industries. Our studies show work-based learning clearly adds value to the education of young people. It brings more adults into the education system and into the lives of young people. It engages them with the world outside of school in compelling ways, encourages them to develop new reserves of self-respect and social skill, and challenges them to use new knowledge in solving unfamiliar problems. These benefits strike us as good reasons for continuing and furthering work-based learning as an educational strategy.” ⁶

7. “The first result to quote is that we confirmed the findings of other research studies (Burgoyne and Reynolds, 1997; Eraut, 1998) that most learning that is of relevance to work is not achieved through education or training. The figure that comes out as a general average from all the research studies is that at most 10 to 20% of what makes a person effective comes from education and training.” ⁷

8. The skills employers want most from entry-level workers, such as responsibility, initiative, teamwork, problem solving, and an understanding of the work environment and its demands, are often best learned through experience. ⁸

9. WBL has been found to increase students’ persistence, graduation, and employment rates, with notable gains for students from underserved racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds (Holzer & Lerman, 2014; Kuh, 2008; Lerman, 2010; National Survey of Student Engagement, 2007). ⁹

10. Overall, WBL allows students to demonstrate their ability to apply their knowledge and skills in real-world settings. These experiences help students develop a sense of social responsibility, as well as intellectual, technical, and workplace skills that increase their labor market value (Hart Research Associates, 2013). Students who participate in WBL are more engaged in their academic programs and more active in their career planning (Fox, 2014; Fuller Hamilton, 2015). They also have better learning outcomes and are more likely to persist in and complete their academic programs (Rogers-Chapman & Darling Hammond, 2013). These benefits are more pronounced among underserved students, especially those who participate in apprenticeships (Holzer & Lerman, 2014). As a result, evidence suggests students who participate in WBL experiences are more likely to gain postsecondary credentials and labor market rewards in high-demand fields than students who do not participate in such experiences (Holzer & Lerman, 2014). ⁹

11. When done well, WBL provides young people with meaningful exposure to workers, job duties, and workplaces, and offers opportunities to learn occupational and employability skills in ways that are difficult to achieve in the classroom alone. ¹

12. “Extensive literature by researchers like Scribner and Sternberg on the concept of practical intelligence, as well as the studies of real world math by Lave and others, suggest that people rarely perform the kinds of cognitive operations outside of classrooms that they perform inside them.” ⁶

13. Resnick’s article Learning In School and Out argues that there are broad differences between school learning and other learning, that thinking practices in school settings contrast sharply with those in the everyday world, including workplaces. The authors then note, “If school and work are so different, and individuals do not easily transfer knowledge gained from one to the other, it follows that in order to be fully prepared, young people should have both.” ⁶

14. John Dewey stated, “Education through occupations consequently combines within itself more of the factors conducive to learning than any other method," arguing that occupations were superior to any other method of organizing instruction for the following three reasons –

    1. “An occupation is the only thing which balances the distinctive capacity of an individual with his social service.”

    2. An occupational focus would help avoid passive, didactic teaching as education through occupations “is a foe to passive receptivity. It has an end in view; results are to be accomplished. Hence it appeals to thought; it demands that an idea of an end be steadily maintained, so that activity cannot be either routine or capricious. Since the movement of activity must be progressive, leading from one stage to another, observation and ingenuity are required at each stage to overcome obstacles and to discover and readapt means of execution.”

    3. And finally through his simple and straightforward logic in stating, “The only adequate training for occupations is training through occupations.” ¹⁰

15. Cognitive psychologists argue that students learn most effectively if they’re taught skills in the context in which they would use those skills. ⁶

16. New evidence from the fields of brain science, achievement, motivation, and adolescent development confirm that adolescents tend to learn best when their learning environment provides, as Halpern puts it, “a window to the adult world by blending academic and applied learning through introduction of apprenticeships, project-based learning, and other real-world applications.” ¹¹

17. "The most intensive forms of workplace learning - apprenticeship and sustained internships - are especially effective in meeting the developmental needs of young people. They provide a structure to support the transition from adolescence to adulthood lacking for the majority of young people in the US. Apprenticeships provide increasingly demanding responsibilities and challenges in an intergenerational work setting that lends a structure to each day. Adult relationships are built on support and accountability, mentoring and supervision." ³

18. Developmental relationships with adults offer the chance for children and adolescents to understand their experiences, learn self-regulating behavior, develop social skills, and build resiliency. Such relationships and the social interactions they entail “provide critical opportunities for children to experiment, learn, and grow within and across the various contexts they inhabit every day.” These relationships are sometimes called the “active ingredients” in healthy human development. ¹

19. "The most interesting and compelling role for vocationally oriented learning is personal. It fosters maturity and nurtures a sense of personal competence and of having a place in the world. As one tentatively identifies oneself as a chef or engineer or dancer, one is motivated to explore what this means. For some young people vocationally oriented learning offers a pathway that can continue into early adulthood.” ⁴

20. “Young people need experiences that actualize new cognitive and social skills; that foster curiosity, persistence, and competence; that nurture the will to learn and the desire and the courage to invest in further learning experiences. They need learning settings that are demanding yet also responsive to developmental needs and differences. Learning experience works best for young people when there is room for them to grow and change inside the experience, to take on more responsibility and new roles as they master earlier ones. And they need experiences that provide opportunities to contribute - to a discipline, cause, community, or traditional or emergent cultural endeavor … Young people need space for their own individual purposes, space to construct and remake culture. They need to feel a sense of openness and ownership and have the opportunity to create meaning that is shared rather than imposed. To grow up, young people also need what they cannot create or provide themselves: access to the ‘shared reservoir of accumulated ideas, skills and technologies’ that constitute the richness of culture and provide some scaffolding for maturing. And they need very particular, immersive learning experiences. The best base for real growth for expanding young people's sense of the world at large comes from deep inside some particular discipline, set of ideas, or social practice. The ensuing capacities that develop are situated; they are tied to sustained experience in that particular cultural domain – observing, emulating, practicing, applying, and revising – but not wholly so. Learning and practice in a particular domain provide cognitive, affective, and social templates for other parts of life. Immersion in a particular endeavor also helps foster a sense of belonging, of personal identity, and of continuity in the experience of life, day-to-day and over time." ⁴