What are CTE development phases?

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CTE development phases are the defined levels that you assign for tech proficiency across your career and technical development program. They are what let both administrators, teachers and the students themselves understand how a course or pathway will support their level of proficiency.

You should establish and communicate these critical standards within your overall CTE technical development framework.

Considerations with CTE development phases

Common in sports but not academia

In sports such as soccer, everyone in the game, from club administrators to coaches and players, understands the defined development levels and phases. These levels help determine the appropriate administrative resources, coach, and player skill level for a team.

However in academia, we more commonly either use the grade level, the student grade point average or nothing at all.

Importance of technical proficiency in CTE development phases

The problem with most defined CTE development levels in academia is they only measure knowledge in students, not tech proficiency. But knowledge of a career is not what gets someone a job, their proficiency does. In soccer, it is not Messi’s knowledge of the game rules that makes him great, it is his skills and abilities on the field.

In career and technical education we need to focus a lot more on proficiency and a lot less on knowledge to make our students competitive for a technical career.

Lack of technical proficiency assessments

While there are many formative and summative assessments to measure knowledge in academia and in CTE, there are less that measure tech proficiency and overall work readiness. Due to this, administrators, teachers, and students may struggle to succeed in a CTE program at a school.

Administrators may apply the wrong resources to the wrong development level. So this can include giving a teacher that is either under skilled or over skilled for a course. Finally, students will have difficulty understanding their current state of work readiness.

As a result, less ability to help students plan their progression to the next level. Here is the tech ready assessment model we use at CyberForward Academy.

Build an administrator versus student perspective with CTE development phases

Administrators and teachers approach these CTE development phases differently than students and early workers. Administrators use the information to allocate resources for each phase, while students use the levels to track their progress, set goals, and work alongside peers with similar proficiency.

In the National Basketball Association (NBA), administrators understand the specific coaching and drills required at each level. Similarly, a college basketball player gains clarity on the skill level needed to transition into the NBA.

Most schools do not define these critical CTE development levels

So you may be saying to yourself, our school does not do this in our CTE program. We do not define CTE development levels outside of standard grade models. Do not worry, this is the norm. However in proficiency driven disciplines like technology it really helps if you do.

Example of a Development Phase Model

At Cyberforward Academy we use 3 different aspects to our CTE development phases. At the highest level, our primary model is Learn, train, or work™. We offer all of our development and training programs into these categories.

The second way we do it is our measurement system for students. We also have levels and a scoring system there as well. Finally, we also have defined levels of our work center environments.

All of these models are interconnected to ensure that we put the right resources from an administrative perspective, with the level of students and the developmental environment. Our model is very closely with the US soccer developmental academy model.

Conclusion and moving on

There are many different ways to define and establish these developmental phases. Most important, you should have something as a starting point to keep everyone on the same page. Then mature it over time.

Please check out our educator pathway to see how we can partner with you on bringing some of these concepts to your school.