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Career and technical education

Career and technical education is the way to teach, train and develop someone to enter a particular job field. High school and college educators most commonly use this type of skill development, but businesses or developing individuals can also apply it.

Key parts of career and technical education

There are a couple of key parts that go into a career and technical education program. Further, some important factors include the development framework, career pathways, curriculum, and key participants from teachers to the students themselves. Most important, it is crucial that these elements work together well from a program and individual perspective.

Career development framework

The career development framework is the overall approach and system used to develop technical talent. This overall framework should drive your program and be the core method across all pathways at your school or business. So for example, not just for the culinary program pathway at your school, but instead for all of the pathways.

While many technical careers are different, the manner in which you teach and develop job based talent, specifically technical talent, does not change. Also, at CyberForward Academy our development framework is based on Learn, train, work™. Regardless of the approach, some key characteristics of a CTE development framework include:

• The development model is designed from start to finish to get student to full proficiency
• Should integrate well with other CTE frameworks including those of schools and businesses.
• Changes as required over time

Technical education and career pathways

Technical education and career pathways serve as the category and description for an education program at a school or business. So some primary elements of these include:

• They should align to the overall development model being utilized.
• They should use appropriate curriculum, teachers and training environments.
• They should include transition training moving students from learners to workers.

Curriculum in career and technical education

CTE curriculum are the learning and development materials used to build proficiency in a course. So this instruction material should be appropriate as students move from initial learning experiences to work transition training. Some characteristics of strong curriculum include:

• It should be developed by experts in a specific pathway.
• Should align to both educational standards and the real business job tasks.
• Curriculum is only as good as they CTE teacher who will deliver it.
• Teachers and coaches may require credentialing at certain schools to deliver programs.

Training and development centers

An important part of career and technical development education are the physical CTE centers and virtual environments in which training is delivered. The best centers are appropriate and realistic to deliver the correct technical and career instruction. Some characteristics of these training environments include:

• These environments should optimize learning experiences not hinder them
• Training environments and the scenarios they create should be career realistic.
• They should be available and accessible to the students who need to access them.

CTE teachers and coaches

CTE teachers and coaches are the instructors that instruct and train individuals in vocational programs. Teachers generally provide instruction to students early in their development while coaches take over in training situations later on. Some key characteristics of these environments include:

• Teachers and coaches require different functional skills to best develop technical skills in students and future workers.
• CTE teachers and coaches can be developed in less time then the time it takes to develop students.
• Teachers need to be experienced in the domain of the CTE curriculum they are instructing on in a course.

Next steps in career and technical education

Explore some ideas on how to build world class CTE programs at your school. At CyberForward Academy, we collaborate with educators to create effective and practical CTE programs. Explore our educator pathway or contact us to discuss this information or potential partnerships.