March/April 1997

Making Schoolwork More Like Real Work

Exemplary School-to-Work Programs Show Promise for More Purposeful and Engaged Learning

by Adria Steinberg

"During freshman and sophomore year, I didn't pay attention in class because I really did not care. I care now because this is something I really want to do. When you are interested in the work that you are doing, you will go the extra step . . . you will not be bored as you would if you were in a classroom listening to the teacher. . . . The program is not just about being released from school, but more about learning because you want to learn."

Rohit Rana shared these views in an article he wrote during his junior year at Cambridge (MA) Rindge and Latin School, several months into an internship in facilities management, that was cosponsored by Rindge and Harvard University. His words appeared in a newsletter that he and fellow interns put together as part of the language arts component of their integrated program of school and workplace learning.

Only a small percentage of students have the opportunity to participate in such programs while in high school. Asked to comment on their experiences, many--like Rohit--use it as an opportunity to critique "regular" school. Although this in itself is not surprising, what is striking is the frequency with which students report that at work they have better learning experiences and feel better about their relationships with adults than they do at school.

On one level, this makes little sense. Schools are organized to be settings where knowledge passes from one generation to the next, and where young people receive guidance from adults in developing their minds and characters. In contrast, the emphasis at the workplace is on being a productive employee who pays attention to the "bottom line." Why, then, would some students feel they learn more from real work than from schoolwork?

Going Through the Motions

One does not have to look far for evidence that many students are disengaged from their studies. Astute observers, like Theodore Sizer, have been calling public attention to this problem for well over a decade, with telling portraits of schools where the norm is to "get by" with as little effort as possible. In a 1994 national survey of more than 20,000 high school students, nearly 40 percent admitted that they were "just going through the motions" in school. This response was equally true of those "surrounded by suburban affluence or urban poverty," according to the lead researcher Laurence Steinberg.

Research into what actually occurs in a typical classroom or school day helps to explain why students are so quick to call school boring. One method researchers use to collect such data is to select a random sample of students and give them digital watches, programmed to beep at eight random times each day for a week. Students are to respond to the signal immediately by filling out a detailed self-report form. Using this "Experience Sampling Method," Barbara Schneider, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Suanti Knauth collected data on 376 high school students as part of a comprehensive longitudinal study, known as the Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development.

Concluding that schooling is primarily a passive activity, the research team reports that students spend less than 5 percent of the time in their academic classes in discussions, although students reported spending more than twice as many minutes chatting with classmates. Very few moments are spent talking to a teacher. The largest blocks of time are spent listening to lectures or waiting to do something (roughly one-fourth of their time) and doing independent work, such as individual "seatwork" and taking tests or quizzes (roughly one-third of the time).

Students are asked to state not only what they are doing, but whether the activity is challenging and whether they feel motivated by it (the latter is gauged by students' indicating whether the activity is interesting to them, they wish to be doing the present activity and enjoy what they are doing). Unfortunately, the courses that challenged students the most were also largely ones in which their motivation was low and their anxiety high. On the whole, the researchers find that students feel more challenged in academic than in nonacademic courses, but they also feel less motivated. Interestingly, students who reported feeling both challenged and engaged were more likely in follow-up interviews to see some connection between school-related activities and their future.

However, as other parts of the Sloan study reveal, for most high school students the future is a blur. They respond to queries about their career plans by naming a variety of high-status and high-paying jobs. "Maybe I'll be an athlete, maybe I'll be a neuro-surgeon, maybe I'll be a model," is how Charles Bidwell, a principal investigator for the study, characterizes student responses in Education Week. Teenagers seem to have little knowledge about the careers that interest them. The only students who could offer real information about career fields were the small number taking part in work internships.

Few Opportunities to Practice

Despite the amount of time students spend doing seatwork, they do not get as much opportunity as one might think to practice their skills. In a study of job literacy and school preparation, Larry Mikulecky of Indiana University arrives at the surprising finding that students in high school spend fewer minutes reading and read much less varied materials than do adults in a range of jobs from blue collar to professional.

Not surprisingly for student participants in the study, 95 percent of their reading came from textbooks. In contrast, in the course of completing a task, middle-level workers were observed moving from one format to another: their reading included texts, manuals, flyers, product directions and labels, forms and computer screen printouts. Based on interviews, tests, and an analysis of the reading level of job-related materials, Mikulecky concludes that high school students face easier material that they read to less depth, and that they employ fewer and less effective reading strategies than do adults on the job.

Using Their Minds?

While students might find a degree of challenge in their academic courses, these experiences are not necessarily synonymous with intellectual rigor. How can we bring the intellectual qualities involved in complex adult accomplishments into our schools? This question is the starting point for a study conducted by Fred Newmann and Gary Wehlage of the Center on Organization and Restructuring of the University of Wisconsin.

The researchers note that a bridge designer draws on established knowledge in a variety of fields (e.g., engineering, architecture, mathematics, and natural sciences), produces new ideas of design and construction in order to address the problems and conditions of a particular setting, and uses this knowledge to make something of utilitarian and aesthetic value. Drawing from this example, they propose that classroom instruction and assessment be held to the same criteria--students should construct knowledge through disciplined inquiry in order to produce discourse, products, and performances that have meaning beyond success in school.

Based on these criteria, Newmann and Wehlage have developed a set of standards they use to gauge the intellectual quality and authenticity of classroom pedagogy and of the work students do. Analyzing the mathematics or social studies work of 2,100 students from classes with high, medium and low levels of authentic pedagogy, the researchers find that in classrooms where the pedagogy scored high, students also scored significantly higher on a performance scale designed to measure the intellectual quality of their work, as well as on more conventional measures of achievement.

Achieving Authenticity

In its emphasis on "connecting activities" that link school and work, the 1994 federal School to Work Opportunities Act holds out a vision of purposeful and engaged learning, in which students' exploration of various work identities offers contexts for making sense of academics. Not surprisingly, this is an appealing vision, particularly to educators in urban districts. At the same time, some parents and educators are suspicious that school-to-work will prematurely narrow students' options. Some also fear that control of schools is being ceded to corporations that will benefit from schools' picking up the tab for training a new supply of cheap labor.

In many debates about school change, it is critically important to go beyond labels to the actual features of the reform. At this point, the term "school-to-work" is used to describe everything from shop classes or work placements that offer narrow skill training to integrative, college preparatory programs that connect academic studies to career interests and internships. Some communities have adopted the term "school-to-career" to indicate a commitment to academic integration, but the terms continue to be used interchangeably.

For the purposes of this discussion, the focus is narrowed to a relatively small group of programs that have been studied as pioneering or exemplary efforts. These include career academies in California, New York City career magnets, and a variety of work-based learning programs selected for study by nonprofit research and technical assistance organizations, such as Jobs for the Future (JFF) and the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC).

In characterizing the programs included in its research, MDRC offers a caveat that applies more generally to the programs that have been most documented and studied. These are "ambitious efforts"-- older than many of the current school-to-work initiatives, with deep local roots, high staff and community commitment, and program features that may be "relatively uncommon." Although these efforts vary in the exact configuration of school-based and work-based activities, they share a commitment to developing strong connections between the two--even when this implies a need for organizational and pedagogical changes.

Key Features

Some of the strongest research findings come from studies of small, focused learning communities--career academies (schools-within-a-schoolwith a career theme) and career magnets (whole schools with career themes). The promise of this type of school organization is also evident in a recent follow-up study of 16 programs first studied by MDRC in 1992-93. Programs that began with a career academy or school-within-a-school structure have maintained this way of organizing instruction, while others have moved to adopt this type of approach.

This same study indicates a growing emphasis among the programs on occupational and interdisciplinary themes and project-based learning techniques--including bringing industry examples and employers into the classroom. In its ongoing studies of exemplary programs, JFF also calls attention to the use of projects to make the work more authentic at school and more "learning rich" on the job. In such projects, teaching and learning are not separate activities in themselves, but are embedded in solving problems and accomplishing tasks that create a strong need to know and to find out.

Another feature that is particularly noted by students in promising programs is the opportunity to form connections with adults--through job shadowing, internships, academic study in workplaces, and career-related projects in which experts act as coaches or audience. In interviews, students repeatedly bring up their surprise and excitement at how caring and helpful adults have been. In a JFF survey of over 100 students in pioneering initiatives, 75 percent said they formed special relationships with adults in the program.

Positive Results

Although relatively few in number, the promising programs that have been studied call attention to the potential of school-to-work. Well-constructed programs have contributed substantially to improved student outcomes in the following areas:

• College-Going: Students have developed ambitious career goals that, in most cases, involve higher education. In the JFF student survey, 90 percent reported plans to enroll in a two- or four-year college. Individual programs that have kept track of graduates report actual college-going rates between 77 and 84 percent--all the more significant when one considers that a majority of their students did not start out "college-bound."

• Academic Focus: One reason for the high college-going rate is that more students are taking prerequisite courses. The MDRC follow-up study reports that many sites have developed strategies to prepare students for college, including several that have students take post-secondary courses while in high school. In more than half of the programs included in the JFF study of 10 promising programs, students were taking more science and mathematics than their peers who were not in the program.

• Finding a Future: Students see themselves as gaining a better sense of career paths and the steps along them. In the JFF student survey, 82 percent said that the workplace experience provided useful career exploration and 46 percent identified career exploration/ job exposure as the aspect they most liked about the program.

• Reading and Math: In New York City, eighth-graders have the opportunity to enter a lottery for a slot in a career magnet program. Comparing scores on the New York State Regents exam of students who "won" the lottery with students who lost and hence had a different educational program, researchers find several positive effects of attending a magnet school. Students with low reading scores prior to grade nine were more likely to pass the New York State Regents exam in math if they attended a career magnet school. And, students with average initial reading scores increased their reading scores as much as 50 percent faster in career magnet schools than in regular schools.

• Drop-Out Prevention: In studies of career academies in California, David Stern finds a higher graduation rate for academy students than for a matched group of students at each school. In some sites, most notably the Oakland Health and Biosciences Academy at Oakland Technical High School, research also revealed that students had better attendance, more credits, higher grade point averages, and fewer classes failed. "It is possible to achieve the goals of dropout prevention and college preparation at the same time, in the same program," concludes Stern.

What Matters Most?

A central problem with much of the research on school-to-work is that it is too broad-gauged to indicate exactly what it is about the programs studied that makes the most difference. As with any educational reform, the absence of such information can feed a tendency to appropriate the label without necessarily adopting best practice. One way to maintain a sense of quality is to return to the research on teaching and learning cited at the beginning of this article. This research provides a useful lens for focusing on why some programs seem to be achieving positive results.

The projects and performances of students in promising school-to-work programs come strikingly close to meeting the standards for intellectually rigorous work outlined by Newmann and Wehlage. Perhaps the process of working alongside adults at a workplace, or being coached by experts who come into the school, helps students to develop a sense of what is involved in accomplished performance and to internalize a set of real-world standards.

Furthermore, such projects call upon students to practice their literacy skills, in much the way workers did in Mikulecky's study. In fact, depending on the nature of the projects, students might not only read a variety of texts, but also write in a number of genres (e.g., proposals, reports, memos), engage in mathematical reasoning and modeling (e.g., graphing, inventory control, spreadsheets), and make use of their "soft skills" such as dealing with a semistructured problem, managing their own contributions to a team, and communicating well with others.

Certainly the active nature of work-based learning or work-like projects in schools differs markedly from the passivity documented in the Sloan study. That study also reports a negative relationship between intellectual challenge and motivation. In contrast, the career focus of exemplary school-to-work programs appears to motivate students to become more focused academically. A majority of students surveyed in 1994 indicated that their courses were more interesting than those taken by students not in the program and reported feeling more positive about school as a result of the program.

A Growing Constituency

Rather than serving as a "dumping ground" for the most at-risk students (a function often played by vocational education), promising school-to-work programs appear to be attracting a growing number of students from the top half of the class. In order to continue serving low achievers, some programs have had to be vigilant in their recruitment efforts--an interesting phenomenon for programs that started out targeting at-risk students.

Such results have helped to bolster support for school-to-work initiatives, as have testimonials from students. Growing interest can be seen in the proliferation of new, small schools centered on internships and work projects, and in the endorsement by administrators of clusters or pathways organized around career themes. It also helps explain why large school districts like Milwaukee and Boston have committed to a set of benchmarks that measure the effectiveness of school-to-work initiatives, and why suburban systems in Larkspur, CA, and Mamaroneck, NY, invest in professional development to help teachers create field study projects and senior career internships for their students.

In traditional classrooms, students are given structured assignments, in which the correct way to proceed and the right answer have already been determined. They are expected to do most of their work alone and to be tested on what they can remember. These learning conditions are quite different from the world outside of school, where problems are often complex and ambiguous, and what matters is one's ability to work with others, find relevant information, and improvise and evaluate multiple solutions. Cognitive scientists point out that it is time to reconsider the dominant methods and strategies of teaching and learning in light of this gap. Perhaps it is the willingness of school-to-work programs to take on this challenge that is what is most compelling to students and teachers alike.

For Further Information

H. Kopp and R. Kazis. Promising Practices: A Study of Ten School-to-Career Programs. Jobs for the Future. 617-742-5995; fax 617-742-5767.

L. Mikulecky. "Job Literacy: The Relationship Between School Preparation and Workplace Actuality." Reading Research Quarterly 3, vol. xviii, no. 3 (1982), pp. 400-419.

F. Newmann and G. Wehlage. Successful School Restructuring. Madison, WI: Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, 1995.

L. Olson. "The Career Game," Education Week , October 2, 1996: 31-33.

E. Pauly, H. Kopp, J. Haimson. Homegrown Lessons: Innovative Programs Linking School and Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.

B. Schneider, M. Csikszentmihalyi, and S. Knauth. Academic Challenge, Motivation, and Self-Esteem: The Daily Experiences of Students in High School." In M. Hallinan (ed.), Restructuring Schools: Promising Practices and Policies. New York: Plenum Press, 1995.

L. Steinberg, with B. Brown and S.M. Dornbusch. Beyond the Classsroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

D. Stern, M. Raby, and C. Dayton. Career Academies: Partnerships for Reconstructing American High Schools. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1992.

D. Stern et al. School to Work: Research on Programs in the United States. London: Falmer Press, 1995.

A former editor of the Harvard Education Letter, Adria Steinberg is currently a program director at Jobs for the Future in Boston, MA. She recently completed a book, Real Learning, Real Work, featuring high schools that bring work and community experiences into the center of instructional practice. Real Learning, Real Work will be available from Routledge in Fall 1997.

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