CTE Is Becoming a Lifelong Learning Journey

Career & Technical Education has come a long way from what many of us traditionally thought of as vocational education. For years, CTE was often viewed as a collection of individual courses or programs designed to prepare learners for a particular occupation or teach a specific set of technical skills. While that is still an integral part of CTE, it has now become part of a much larger journey.

Career awareness and exploration can start in middle school and grow into more focused pathways in high school. Following graduation, learners may continue into postsecondary education or training, enter the workforce, or pursue an apprenticeship. Once learners accept their first job, it is no longer necessarily the end of the journey. Career advancement, new technologies, additional training, upskilling, reskilling, and career changes can all bring people back to learning throughout their working lives.

For those of us developing curriculum and learning experiences, this raises an important question: How do we continue building strong CTE courses while also thinking about how those courses connect to what learners may need next?

Looking Beyond the Individual Course

We are already seeing this broader thinking reflected in the CTE landscape. Advance CTE’s recently updated National Career Clusters Framework® includes 14 Career Clusters, 72 Sub-Clusters, and three Cross-Cutting Clusters designed to recognize skills and careers that intersect across multiple industries. The idea of skills crossing traditional boundaries is important. Technology skills aren’t limited to technology careers. Management and entrepreneurial skills aren’t limited to one industry. Communication, problem-solving, data literacy, and other skills travel with learners across different occupations and throughout their careers.

Strong courses are still at the core of effective CTE programs. Learners need thoughtfully sequenced instruction, meaningful practice, assessment, context, and opportunities to apply what they’re learning. In addition, we need to consider how those courses fit into the larger ecosystem as learners determine their paths. Instead of looking only at what needs to happen within an individual course, curriculum teams must also consider what learners should know when they enter, what skills and competencies they should leave with, where those competencies connect across a pathway, and what opportunities the course is preparing them for next.

Connecting the Learner Journey

Viewing CTE as a lifelong journey also changes how we think about the connections between learning experiences. For instance, a foundational skill introduced during career exploration may appear again in a high school pathway. A technical competency developed in a secondary course may help prepare a learner for an industry credential or the next level of education and training. Later, some of those same underlying skills may become relevant again as someone develops new capabilities or moves into a different role.

The learning experience will, of course, differ for each of those audiences. A middle school learner exploring careers has very different needs from a high school CTE learner or someone already in the workforce. However, understanding the skills and competencies underneath the curriculum can help us see where those experiences connect, where there may be gaps, and where learning can build more intentionally from one experience to the next.

Credentials are becoming a more visible part of this journey as well. As industry-recognized credentials and other demonstrations of competency become more common, curriculum teams need to understand how courses, competencies, industry expectations, and credentials relate to one another and how to make those connections clearer for learners. We’ll explore that shift more closely in the next article in this series.

Building Stronger Connections Takes Partnership

No single organization is responsible for every stage of a learner’s journey, which is one reason partnership continues to be so important in CTE. Educators understand learners and the realities of teaching. Industry experts understand how occupations and required skills are evolving. Employers understand the capabilities they need from their workforce. Publishers and content providers understand how to turn those needs into meaningful learning experiences.

Bringing those perspectives together can help us think more holistically about the curriculum we’re developing. It can help identify gaps or unnecessary repetition in knowledge and skills, create stronger connections between courses, and ensure learning builds intentionally as learners move through a pathway. Most importantly, those connections can help ensure learners are prepared to apply what they’ve learned in the real world.

There is evidence behind the importance of these partnerships as well. Research from Advance CTE found that 77% of employers surveyed had hired someone in part because of their CTE experience, while ACTE reports that about three-quarters of employers want to partner more with CTE programs. ACTE also identifies Business and Community Partnerships as one of the core elements of a high-quality CTE program, with industry partners helping ensure programs remain aligned with workforce needs.

Thinking About What Comes Next

For publishers and curriculum leaders, the shift toward lifelong learning means looking at courses through a wider lens and considering how the courses they create fit together. Some content is very specific to one course or program, but other skills, competencies, activities, and assessments may connect across multiple courses or pathways. Understanding those relationships can help create stronger programs today while giving learners more opportunities to continue building on what they already know.

At Contentra, we’re continuing to listen and learn alongside our clients and partners as CTE evolves. We’re also thinking about the practical curriculum work behind these larger shifts, from course and program development to competency and standards alignment, assessment, editorial, and all that is required to bring high-quality CTE learning experiences to life.

If you’re developing or expanding a CTE program and thinking about how your courses, competencies, credentials, and pathways can better connect, we’d love to hear what you’re seeing and compare notes.

CTE is shifting from simply preparing learners for their first job to being more about creating learning experiences that learners can continue building on throughout their education, careers, and lives.

In our upcoming installment, Competencies and Credentials Are Reshaping Learning, we’ll take a closer look at what this shift means for CTE curriculum development.

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