Challenges for creating community career partnerships: perspectives from practitioners.

Community career partnerships can draw into working alignment the critical aspects of career development for students (K-16) and the key social contexts that either promote or inhibit growth. The authors, using a qualitative research methodology, describe challenges faced by practitioners when attempting to create and implement a community career partnership. Implications for practice, theory, and public policies are discussed.

The June 2000 special issue of The Career Development Quarterly (Amundson & Niles, 2000) drew attention to the unique opportunities offered by collaborative partnerships to effectively promote the career development needs of highly diverse populations. The need for effective career development services to be made available to all individuals across their life span was identified as critical national and international concerns, with significant implications for public policy (Herr, 2000; Watts, 2000). Herr (2000) highlighted the importance of creating effective and seamless ways to help youth make the transition from school to work. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 (STWOA) provided funding for states to create locally controlled community partnerships that would strive to improve outcomes of the post-high school transition for all students. True community-wide partnerships could potentially provide more effective and sustainable interfaces between business and education (Herr, 1995). Partnerships, tailored to the unique needs of highly diverse local communities, would have the ability to forge lasting relations between critical stakeholders to create a sustainable career opportunity system for all individuals (Hamilton & Hamilton, 1998). Stakeholders are individuals, community groups, educational institutions and government agencies, and businesses as well as local, state, and federal decision makers who have a commitment to and/or a vested interest in assisting young people to make the transition into more productive adult roles.

The STWOA assumed that individuals, by themselves, were not the exclusive cause of their post-high school successes or failures. Rather, the act focused on the community-wide structural contexts that shape individual development and outcomes. This position reflected concerns raised over the past 30 years that have highlighted the responsibility of the community to provide students both the means and the opportunity to make more successful transitions after graduating from high school (e.g., Herr, 1991; The William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship, 1988). Creating community-wide partnerships that are dedicated to providing individuals the resources and supports necessary to reach their goals could empower young adults to more effectively thrive in the social contexts in which they live (Richardson, 1998).

Community career partnerships have the potential to draw into working alignment the critical aspects of career development and the key social contexts that can either promote or inhibit growth. Such partnerships can offer the emotional and instrumental support systems necessary if individuals are to effectively navigate the interlocking social contexts fundamental to successful school-to-work transitions (Blustein, Phillips, Jobin-Davis, Finkelberg, & Roarke, 1997; Feij, Whitely, Peiro, & Taris, 1995; Lapan & Kosciulek, 2001). For example in their 1999 evaluation report to Congress on the progress being made to implement community partnerships funded by STWOA, Hershey, Silverberg, Haimson, Hudis, and Jackson argued that STWOA partnerships were being used by a wide range of students. Students who were planning to attend 4-year colleges were as likely as non-college-bound students to participate in career development activities sponsored by community partnerships. In addition, participation of non-college-bound students in classes that were focused on career goals after high school had doubled since 1996. Women, especially African American women, were more involved in school-related workplace activities. In addition, participation in academic classes focusing on career interests had significantly increased, particularly in high schools with large African American student populations.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of our study was to learn from practitioners who have been deeply involved in creating and implementing community career partnerships about the opportunities and challenges they face. Understanding the perspectives of practitioners who have been attempting to implement community partnerships can both inform and challenge career theory, research, and public policy. Our study used a qualitative, focus-group research methodology to describe the issues and concerns being faced by these practitioners.

Method

Focus group methodology, a long-standing tool in marketing research, is becoming increasingly popular and useful for data collection and analysis in the social sciences (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998; Stewart & Shamdasani, 1990).

Krueger (1994) has argued that focus group techniques are particularly useful not only for determining the feeling and thoughts of individuals toward a particular product, service, or experience but also for ascertaining the reasons behind their beliefs. In addition, the value of conducting interviews in groups is that the conversation shifts from the questioner to the respondents, thus making the environment more conducive to free-flowing, frank discussion than in individual interviews.

The focus group approach is particularly useful when evaluating the needs, practices, and experiences of individuals directly involved in social programs (Krueger, 1994), such as community career partnerships. Lengthy, frank interactions among key stakeholders can influence individuals who are making decisions regarding future funding for programs such as STWOA community partnerships. In addition, data culled from implementing the focus-group methodology can indicate the ways that community career partnerships can be assessed, changed, and improved.

Procedure

The principal investigator (first author) of this study was awarded a grant from a large, midwestern state's STWOA management team to conduct independent evaluation research studies on the development of local community career partnerships across the state. The state's federally funded STWOA proposal outlined how 57 local partnerships would be funded across the 13 Joint Training and Partnership Act (1982) regions of the state, thus ensuring representative participation across urban, rural, and suburban areas. The management team created a structure through which local partnership personnel were to be supported and linked together by regional coordinators. Toward the end of the community partnerships' first year of operation, a research team (consisting of the authors of this article), organized by the principal investigator, conducted focus groups for each STWOA region in the state. Use of this qualitative methodology enabled the research team to openly explore practitioners' experiences in creating and attem pting to implement community career partnerships (Lee, Mitchell, & Sablynski, 1999).

The partnerships had outlined in their funded proposals how they would implement the key STWOA objectives outlined in Appendix A. The research team developed a series of open-ended questions, from the partnerships' intended implementation procedures, that focused on common program elements that all the partnerships were required to implement. Prior to collecting any data, all participants were mailed this set of questions and were informed that the questions would serve as a guide for the focus group session in which they had agreed to participate. For example, practitioners were asked (a) Please describe your partnership, what parts are going well and what challenges are you currently facing? (b) How are you involving the community in your partnership? (c) How do you involve parents, businesses and trade unions, and school personnel in your partnership? (d) How do you involve all students, including special needs students, in partnership activities? and (e) 'What benefits will accrue to students who particip ate in partnership activities, and how will you evaluate these student outcomes? (Author's Note. A complete list of the open-ended stimulus questions used in this study is available upon request from the first author.)

Toward the end of the community career partnerships' first year in operation, we conducted ten 2-hour focus groups for each STWOA region in the state (for logistical reasons, one of the focus groups had representatives from three regions). One of the rural regions did not participate in these sessions because it was just starting to implement its partnership. Seven of the focus groups were conducted using videoconferencing. This technology allowed a greater representation of practitioners from remote regions of the state while dramatically reducing travel time and costs for all participants. With participants' permission, sessions were audiotaped for later transcription.

Each focus group session comprised two phases. During the first few minutes of each focus group session (Phase 1), members of the research team attempted to create a supportive, collegial environment by introducing themselves to the participants and then asking introductory questions (Krueger, 1994) that served to foster comfortable conversation and the sharing of common experiences. Subsequently, one member of the research team highlighted the purpose of the interview (i.e., jointly to explore issues facing partnership implementation) as well as how the results from the focus groups would be used to benefit local partnerships. Issues about confidentiality were introduced: The participants were told that any comments presented as suggestions to the state's STWOA management team would preserve the anonymity of the participant, locale, and region. The relationship between the research team and the state STWOA management team was also addressed. Participants seemed very comfortable with these arrangements and ge nerally engaged in energetic give-and-take exchanges with research team members and other practitioners. Research team members unanimously agreed that the practitioners spoke assertively, critically, and directly about a wide range of challenges that they were facing and the assistance that they needed to be successful.

At the start of Phase 2, research team members placed the list of open-ended interview questions (the same list that had been sent to the participants several weeks previously) on a screen so that the questions were visible to all participants. The practitioners were reminded that the questions would serve only as a guide for discussion; they were encouraged to take the discussion in any direction they wanted, and the researchers allowed questions to be addressed out of order if the conversation so dictated. On several occasions, participants began to share effective strategies with each other, and they were encouraged by the research team to take the lead and describe experiences important to their work. Although this approach is common to focus group methodology (Krueger, 1994), the researchers nevertheless ensured that the participants related both positive and negative experiences and that all the questions on the projected list were addressed before the end of the interview session.

During each session, researchers made written recordings of any salient observation from participants' comments, reactions, and attitudes during the interview. Immediately after each session, researchers independently typed their session notes. To avoid influencing each other's observations, the moderators did not share any of their notes or reactions between interview sessions. No discussions between research team members on the content and interpretation of focus group sessions were held until all the data had been collected.

Participants

Practitioners. For each region, the principal investigator invited the local partnership coordinators and the regional coordinator to participate in focus group sessions. In total, 75 individuals responsible for organizing and implementing STWOA programs participated. The local partnership coordinator was accompanied by key stakeholders. Although the choice of which stakeholders would attend was left to the discretion of the local partnership coordinator, he or she was asked to involve a wide range of stakeholders who were important to the creation and implementation of their partnership. In this way, a wide diversity of school professionals (i.e., school counselors, teachers, principals, and superintendents), business partners, community leaders, and parents participated in the focus groups.

This inclusive selection process resulted in a highly diverse group of individuals who participated in the focus groups. The diversity of this sample extended across the following factors: (a) gender, (b) racial/ethnic minorities, (c) professional background and work experiences, and (d) place of residence. The local partnership coordinators had a wide range of prior work experiences, both in education and business. Approximately one third of the local and regional coordinators had at one time been school counselors. Approximately one half of the participants were female, and all the participants had varying degrees of experience with career transition initiatives, ranging from 1 to 8 years. Approximately 10% of the participants had a background in business as a small business owner. Fifteen percent of the participants were members of ethnic and racial minority groups (12% were African American and 3% were Hispanic American). Because the focus groups came from all parts of the state, the perspectives of indiv iduals working to implement career partnerships in urban, suburban, and rural settings were well represented in this study.

Research team. The research team, who were also the authors of this article, consisted of four individuals from backgrounds diverse in training and experience. The team leader (first author) was a counseling psychologist with a background in career development research. The project director (third author) was completing a Ph.D. in musicology and had a strong liberal arts background. One research associate (second author) was an educational psychologist who was expert in qualitative research methodologies but did not conduct career development research. A second research associate (fourth author) was a rehabilitation counselor and conducted research on the career development of individuals with disabilities. At least two team members were present to cofacilitate each focus group session.

Coding and Analysis

We used a grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to analyze the focus group transcripts and notes and used a qualitative analysis software program (NUD*IST; Qualitative Solutions and Research, 1997) to store and manipulate the data. An initial coding rubric was based on the common elements for community career partnerships presented in Appendix A. The first few passes through the transcripts allowed the researchers to place large segments of the transcripts (i.e., groups of sentences and paragraphs) into the major categories defined by the rubric.

Once all the data were placed in the major categories, we then used more rigorous grounded theory techniques to uncover general themes and patterns about the participants' experiences and perceptions of the regional partnerships. Our approach involved attaching codes to words, phrases, and sentences in the transcripts so that new organizations and categorizations would become apparent on subsequent examinations of the data (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996).

After the completion of the coding process, we examined the transcripts again so that meaningful subcategories could be formed within each of the major categories in the initial rubric. Subcategories were created if they (a) represented an important insight on the ways in which the common program elements had or had not been implemented by the partnership or (b) reflected a common element or theme expressed by several of the participants, both in and across focus group sessions. In addition, all the research team members had to agree on the creation of a subcategory before it was entered into the computer program.

We used various heuristics (as suggested by Krueger, 1994) to guide our coding and categorizing of the data. First, we examined the words and terminology used by the participants to make decisions about commonalities and differences across partnerships and individuals. We paid close attention to the context of each utterance, because the context could be used as additional evidence in the interpretation process. The frequency of experiences and beliefs was noted, as well as the extensiveness of the participants' comments (the number of participants within and across sessions who responded in a certain way). The range and diversity of participants' experiences were also marked during the categorization process. In addition, we examined the intensity with which each response was made, and we made note of specific utterances that indicated a change from previous speech patterns (e.g., if an individual spoke very softly during the beginning of the session but later made one specific comment in a loud voice). Fina lly, we weighted concrete, personal experiences more heavily than either hearsay or comments about abstract attitudes and beliefs.

Results

Appendix B lists the general categories that resulted from our grounded theory analysis. These categories provided an inclusive framework from which to describe practitioners perspectives regarding the creation and implementation of community career partnerships. Every substantive comment expressed in the focus group sessions regarding the creation and implementation of a partnership could be assigned to one of these categories. Following is a discussion of the issues that practitioners raised in each of these categories. We have used selected quotations to give examples of prototypical comments representative of practitioners' perspectives in each category.

Getting Started

Focus group data clearly highlighted how practitioners were actively engaged in a wide range of diverse and highly complex activities. These activities ranged from teaching business entrepreneurship to urban students, assessing high-growth careers using WorkKeys (ACT, 1996) jobprofiling analyses, to engaging students in career exploration activities over the Internet. Although buoyed by positive reactions from students, practitioners new to such endeavors, together with those who were starting partnerships where no programs had existed before, experienced a certain amount of anxiety and confusion in the beginning stages of program implementation. For example, one said,

At first that was kind of scary to me. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I would have liked some kind of a guideline maybe to go by, but now that I've gone out and I've talked to [name of coordinator] and [name of second coordinator] and [name of third coordinator] and [name of fourth coordinator]. They were real helpful with it. You know, we've got a program going and our teachers have more input into it, kind of have to do what works best for your community. But I can see where, like I was starting, I just felt like, "well, what do you want me to do now?" It would have been nice, I guess, if there had been something that just says, "This is how we'd like for you to do this." And I know that's kind of hard to do, but it really was scary there for a while. I felt really lost. And I just had no idea what I was doing at all. And, because there really isn't a lot of training that you can take in school-to-work, you know. I came into it from, my background is in math, but I pretty well, I've grown up in our comm unity and I've lived there my whole life so I pretty well know everyone there. So it worked out that I was a good candidate for this.

The state's management team had made a clear decision, which they had held to firmly, not to impose a top-down program structure on the local partnerships. Believing that the best solutions were to be found at the local level, the state management team resisted assuming an active directorship role. This created, for some practitioners, a certain amount of ambiguity and tension. However, these same individuals agreed that this more "bottom-up" approach was having a positive effect on their partnerships and set a tone for approaching and dealing with potential community partners. Several coordinators responded with a certain amount of creativity and resiliency to the challenges they confronted during the beginning phases of such a complex and ambiguous undertaking.

Career Planning Activities

School-based learning. Practitioners' comments strongly suggested that they had actively begun to develop and implement a number of the facets of school-based learning. Career exploration and work-readiness courses were regularly offered. To meet the STWOA objective of having students choose a career major by Grade 11, several practitioners indicated that they were having success using a broad career pathways framework in student advisement services and in organizing their schools' curriculum. The state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had funded the development of materials for practitioners' use that linked these broad career pathways to the ACT World-of-Work Map (Prediger & Swaney, 1995) and the six Holland (1997) themes. As the following comment suggests, practitioners saw the utility of a framework that could organize curricula and help students see connections across courses to possible career futures:

[T]he way we have done it in [name of school] is we will identify career areas and try to put those into career pathways. There's some curriculum that was developed through the TechPrep that we have used in identifying career pathways and working with the students. We had a system where we worked individually with each student at the sophomore level with parents involved. We had a parent-student conference. And that's something that we thought was beneficial in helping to identify and narrow down some of those eareer paths.

As exemplified in the following passage, many successful job-shadowing experiences were now regularly available to students:

Well, [names of two local hospitals) gave us like 31 different shadowing opportunities ... 7 of them were nursing, 7 different styles of nursing. They shadowed doctors, they shadowed pediatricians, they shadowed computer people, they shadowed business administrators. We hit it high and low, like she said, not just the medical field, per se. They even shadowed helicopter pilots. We had a pretty good round there so, yea, so maybe it was kind of top-heavy but maybe it wasn't because we had like 2,000 employees at [one hospital] and about 1,000 at [the second hospital] so that's almost 10% of our population in [name of city) is related to the medical field--not counting other private doctors and nurses.

With leadership from the school's administrators, one school that had been working on these issues since the early 1990s had restructured its schedule to allow teachers to act as advisers and to encourage school-to-work activities that take longer than the traditional class period to complete. In this high school and with the support of school counselors, student advising had become a legitimate duty for teachers.

At the high school level, we spent a long time getting our curriculum aligned in such a way that we could clearly talk to students about what it is they should be taking in high school. ... It does require we spend some time in training [teachers], talking to them about what's going on in the other departments. We feel very strongly that it's created that personalized education of them [the students] in terms of them staying with that particular teacher all 4 years, somebody that knows their outside interests and knows what they're doing and what their plans are, communicates well with the parents. We have a, an alternate day block schedule and we, we've dedicated one block in that schedule and that is advisement every other day.

To do effective student advising and engage in successful curriculum development activities, practitioners expressed a desire to have a more refined level of vocational information than was currently available to them. Most partnership application proposals identified the need to conduct analyses of the local labor market. The following narrative describes the need for and the effort to obtain accurate and more sophisticated occupational information:

Well, what we're trying to do, hopefully, with the grant being funded, is we're looking at 25 hot jobs. So, naturally, we're looking at local labor market information to find out what jobs would there be that are--that produce a wage [a living wage] that a youth coming out of high school or with less than a 4-year degree could go into. So with some training or without training or on-the-job training, but less than a 4-year degree could move into that program and it would provide them with a living wage. So, we're looking at local labor market information for that, for choosing those careers. We have an advisory group that reviews that.

Work-based learning. Practitioners consistently identified several common factors that helped them to establish work-based learning opportunities for students (e.g., student interest and enthusiasm, a strong economy, and support from businesses and trade unions). This was clearly expressed in the following narrative by a local partnership coordinator who reported having already made substantial progress in establishing work-based learning opportunities for students:

As far as, as far as the work program is concerned, I always work from student interest. And I learned that almost by accident, because what happened is I attempted to do a blanket commercial with the community and had such support, they got so excited that they were disappointed when I didn't have a student that was ready to do it immediately. So I backed off and started doing it one at a time. When students applied for the program, we'd sit down and talk about their interest, what career they're interested in exploring, where they'd like to do that within the business. With that information, then I go into the business and invite the business to do the first step, which is to interview the student. It has grown from a pilot of 1 student, because I believe in a small pilot, to a group of 66 students last semester and 55 this semester. We have a lot of employers in the community who have stayed with us. They, they are willing to leave their name in the database so that if we go for a year or two without a stu dent interested in a particular career but 1 pops up this semester, I can go right back to that individual. So we're beginning to build, we're beginning to build that support base, and now it is a lot easier than it was.

Offering high-quality work-based learning experiences to large numbers of students has presented numerous obstacles for practitioners. These challenges may seem particularly daunting to new coordinators, especially if they have not had much experience working in business. Getting teachers involved is both critical and very difficult. Rural areas may offer no real high-skill/high-wage opportunities. All of the local partnership coordinators discussed the problem of the time it took them to do a good job placing students in high-quality, work-based learning situations and to train business partners. The following narrative captures the amount of effort and concern it takes to place students in such situations:

That, I, I firmly believe we cannot ask businesses to take students just to, to turn them loose. So we ask the employer to go the first step, which is to interview the student, decide whether it's a good match, decide whether this is a young person that they're willing to invite into their business for the 18 weeks. As a result of that, they have control over who comes into the business. And it also gives them ownership because they selected this young person. Then at that point they also give me feedback on that interview so that I can share it with the student at a later time. The employer and I also sit down and decide what activities the student is going to be involved in, and I place that into an individual plan for the student so that the student, the business, and I, representing the school, understand exactly what we're expecting to happen during the semester and exactly what the student's going to be evaluated on at the appropriate time.

Stakeholder Involvement

Community involvement. From the beginning, practitioners were greeted with assistance and encouragement from community leaders. One view held by several coordinators was that adults participating in local civic organizations (e.g., Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, Lions, or Kiwanis) have a genuine commitment to helping young people in their community. Opening doors to assist the next generation to make more successful transitions to adult roles in their community seemed to be an important part of both their own personal value system and their organizations' philosophy. In their commitment to aid the next generation was a clear recognition that their community's future was clearly at stake. Both urban and rural practitioners agreed that community leaders had already realized (prior to STWOA) that a well-educated citizenry, actively involved in lifelong learning activities, is a critical component in any effort to attract new business and keep high-paying jobs and young people in their communities. As the next comm ent suggests, many leaders in rural areas see participation in school-to-work efforts as an important strategy for maintaining their community. As one coordinator said of leaders in her rural community,

They don't want their towns to shrink anymore and they're trying to do everything they can. I know a comment made--and that's one of thc reasons why we have an engineering camp next year is, "Why can't we keep the engineers in [name of town]? Why do we have to go outside and our students leave and go get engineering training and then something is more enticing in a bigger town than coming back to [name of town)." And we have very few that come back, you know, local students who come back and, and participate in that career locally. And I know that they're trying, I, I think that's one thing that we're going to find our there is, people are wanting to retain their communities and keep them growing.

Parental involvement. Practitioners reported that parents seem at least somewhat interested in participating in partnership planning activities and allowing their children to take advantage of school-to-work opportunities. Parents are concerned about the educational and career planning needs of their children and are pleased with the interest and enthusiasm shown by their children in partnership activities. Several practitioners reported that there have been unanticipated benefits to parental involvement. For example, some students have job shadowed their own parents, and others have listened to their parents describe their careers in class. Apparently, such interactions have, in some cases, led to a better understanding between students and parents. Students have begun to understand more fully what it is their parents do, with all the attendant successes, frustrations, and hopes. Most practitioners described a similar strategy for involving parents in the planning and program implementation process. This is captured in the next narrative:

Parents were involved in the development, but many parents were also business people. As far as the specific work program that I work with, I require that parents come to the orientation with their students in the fall. They are, are also a part of the partnership and sign the agreement among business, school, parent and student. And each party to that contract has certain duties, certain responsibilities. I really just encourage parents to be aware of what their child is involved in and being supportive, encouraging a good attitude

Although parents seemed mostly supportive of partnership efforts, several issues confronted practitioners. A few parents have expressed some concern that their children might be tracked into narrowed occupational futures that limited their career opportunities. Many parents believe strongly that the only way to ensure that their children will have successful economic futures is to have them graduate from a 4-year college. One practitioner was concerned that if he oversold school-to-work programs to parents, then the parents in his community might force their children to participate, thus violating the voluntary nature of the program for students. Also, most practitioners understood that an important part of their job was to advocate for children whose parents did not or could not provide them with adequate developmental opportunities and support. Many parents worked outside the district and in the evenings. This made it more difficult for them to participate in partnership governance or program activities. Finally, parents who were involved were often either teachers, already in the school, or local business leaders.

Business/trade union involvement. Practitioners reported that businesses were very eager to work with local partnerships. In fact, no practitioner could think of an example when they had approached a business to involve it in school-to-work activities and had been turned down. Partnerships were making sure that they managed these relationships in an appropriate and reinforcing way (e.g., giving plaques, public recognition, and expressing thanks). Many practitioners hoped that businesses would deliver important messages to students (e.g., about the value of an education, graduating, and behaving in appropriate ways). The following narrative describes some of these messages:

And I also ask them [businesses] to reinforce the fact, like I said before, Mom and Dad say stay in school, school says stay in school, would you please tell them school's important to you? Most of them tell me yea, we can't hire a kid unless he has a high school degree. I said, would you please tell these kids this? And tell them what you expect from them in the way of time and attendance, dress, and so forth so they know what is expected of them, not just you but whoever else is like you out there doing this, so they can hear one more time, from a third party that gives a rip about employees in general, so these kids can have a chance to see it.

Many practitioners were just becoming aware of the many opportunities to work with businesses in their communities. That awareness is conveyed in the next statement that characterized a number of responses:

And, and then [name of partnership] does a whale of a shadowing program, and so we've taken that on the road and two of our communities, who were astonished to find out they could place like 25 high school seniors in different businesses in their own community. They didn't realize that they had that kind of business activity in their hometown.

Teacher involvement. In the STWOA, teachers were positioned to play central roles in community career partnerships. Most practitioners agreed that for partnerships to be successful, teachers needed to be intimately involved in all activities. The messages communicated to teachers from superintendents and principals about teacher involvement were both varied and critical. Practitioners reported meeting some success with certain teachers and not others. Their viewpoint is exemplified in the next narrative:

Quite honestly, the teachers and educators that are innovative and are looking for new ways and are frustrated with old methods are the ones that seem to seek out those kinds of opportunities, I, I'd like to say as a result of the internships, but a lot of those teachers, too, are just, they're just creative teachers.

Practitioners clearly understood that they had much work to do to increase teacher involvement in partnership activities. They reported that some teachers were somewhat philosophically against seeing a part of their job responsibilities as including a concern for student career development and post-high school transitions. However, much of the initial resistance from teachers had centered on the concern that partnership activities were just another add-on duty to their already overburdened schedules. The challenge of having teachers link curriculum, in creative and rigorous ways, to different career paths is both time consuming and complex. Some partnerships were helping teachers to earn continuing education credits if they wrote integrated curriculum after participating in summer externships. Finding ways to free up teacher time and to reward teachers is both challenging and necessary. The following participant's observation speaks to both the potential benefits and the difficulties of getting teachers, especially teachers who have never worked outside of an educational institution, out of the school and into quality externship settings:

I feel that this is a weak area, because I think a lot of educators come directly from school into school, and therefore I feel very strongly that teachers need the opportunity to, in essence, go back to work. We were working in a cooperative group with four or five schools, [name of business] invited them in to build bicycles for the day. It was a real eye-opener, even for those of us in school-to-work. And I would like to repeat some of those concepts and, and I think it, it's going to take a sell job, because teachers are busy and to ask them to prepare a lesson plan and leave them for a substitute and come out of the classroom for a day or two of in-service is going to, they're really going to have to be encouraged to do that. But I think that's the only way they're really going to begin to understand why it is so important for them to be able to share with young people what they're learning today does have a relationship to careers and how they are going to work tomorrow. So we're excited about that possibility.

Counselor involvement. School counselors have been heavily involved in many of these school-to-work partnerships. It is important to note that when schools in this state are evaluated for accreditation, one of the areas of evaluation is their level of implementation of a comprehensive school counseling program (e.g., Gysbers & Henderson, 2000). The state's school counseling model specifies that school counselors be actively involved in educational and career planning activities with all students. In many school districts, school counselors were already in position to assume some partnership leadership roles and to reach out to school personnel as knowledgeable consultants. The following narrative illustrated this natural alliance:

We do not expect thcm [teachers] to be guidanec counselors. They are providing the contact with students that the counselors then create for them, our counseling staff creates a, a monthly calendar for advisement and activities that ought to be going on with freshmen and sophomores, juniors and seniors.

Administrator involvement. Practitioners agreed that the success of any community career partnership would be directly related to the level of support received from their school administrators. This clearly varied from partnership to partnership. The partnerships with administrative support had clear advantages in meeting STWOA goals. The following short observation was by a high school principal, who was instrumental in obtaining and implementing the local community's career partnership grant. The supportive and encouraging tone of his voice in this statement led us to speculate on how critical administrative support is for instituting systemic change in a school.

We actually start at the eighth-grade level with a required career preparation course that is a semester-long course that is completed prior to high school. At the high school level, we spent a long time getting our curriculum aligned in such a way that we could clearly talk to students about what it is they should be taking in high school.

Several practitioners described difficulties with administrators that were not the result of administrators' direct opposition to the goals and activities of the partnerships. Obstacles posed by administrators seemed to have more to do with the multiple and sometimes competing demands of different projects of import to the district. For example, the following narrative attests to the dilemma school administrators find themselves in when attempting to set school-level policy in response to sometimes competing state policies. Here, the coordinator's ability to involve teachers in partnership activities was blocked by a superintendent's worry and somewhat exclusive focus on improving students' standardized achievement test scores.

The superintendent put out an order, a decree, at the beginning of the year that everything, and I mean everything, had to relate to standards. So teachers and counselors and administrators were very, very uneasy about teachers leaving a classroom.

Inclusion of All Students

Practitioners spoke assertively about their commitment to develop programs for all students. They understood that an important part of their role was one of advocacy for a diverse range of students and parents. For example, a coordinator of an inner-city partnership, when describing an eighth-grade social studies class studying monetary policy, expressed the importance of all students having the experience that well-paying, prestigious careers are possible. As part of the integration of this class in the school-to-work partnership, the coordinator arranged structured student visits to the nearby Federal Reserve Bank and Small Business Association.

When those students went into that bank and were treated so well, they were treated so professionally and so adult that I saw in those students an attitude change bccause many of our students, while they won't tell you directly, they feel lost and hopeless. They feel that college is something out of their reach. No one in their family has a college education and it is out of their reach and they don't even know what job possibilities exist for them. They know their block, their four-square block. But as these students tourcd the bank and began to realize that this is something they could do for a living, I could see hope opening up on their faces.

Many practitioners were developing individualized strategies to reach the diverse groups of students and parents in their community. Some were beginning the difficult process of finding effective ways to reach out to the diverse and changing demographic groups in their communities--groups that could easily find themselves left out of partnership activities and support services. This is described in the next comment:

I also have a sizeable number down here in my county, of immigrants ... we have a lot ... we work with our migrant center. I ordered 500 brochures the other day in Spanish on school-to-work opportunities ... the children gain English skills rapidly but their parents, who are responsible for looking over their schedules and helping them with their path selection, speak no English at all.

Most practitioners also spoke of hopes, actual plans, or initial attempts to reach out programmatically to special needs students. Their positive and committed attitude toward special needs students is captured in the next narrative:

Just to kind of lead off that, too, we're doing the special needs job-shadowing experience. We're just kind of in the beginning planning stages of it. But we're working with a middle school right now in placing six of their special needs students in kind of like an afternoon job-shadow experience, just in a different career sector so they can actually see what else is out there. Some different, different options for them as well as give employers a chance to see what special needs students can really do.

Developing strategies that effectively meet the needs of diverse groups of students was a significant challenge for these practitioners. One of the issues that they faced was that partnerships needed to recruit students. Partnership activities were completely voluntary options for students. Practitioners saw the consumer-driven nature of this and recognized the need to offer activities that interested and motivated students to participate. However, they recognized that they must embed all activities in a framework of high academic and behavioral standards. As one practitioner said, "[W]e want programs that are hard to get into but easy to get out of." An ideal program combines high student demand with clear expectations for what students are required to do. In addition, partnerships must be willing to stand up to students if their behavior warrants such action. This concern for student behavior is expressed in the next narrative:

And the only criteria you needed to be in that was basically behavior. They weren't doing anything else. They find out if they used criteria like grades, they were losing some of the kids who really needed to be there, so grades really aren't a criteria as much as just behavior in a classroom, you know. They don't want somebody going out that's going to cause trouble in the workplace. And that's their biggest concern.

Evaluation

Practitioners were aware that all partnerships were required to evaluate the efficacy of their programs. Practitioners could identify a few outcomes related to student participation in partnership activities (e.g., enhanced motivation for learning or a clearer sense of direction in life); however, no one had a sense of an overall framework that would identify, organize, and link formative and summative outcomes that resulted from partnership efforts. Overall, practitioners did not have a clearly articulated career development model of the student that they could use to focus evaluation efforts. More comprehensive strategies to evaluate partnerships were offered by individuals who had been working in this area for a certain amount of time, but even they were just beginning to grapple with the issue of program evaluation.

Discussion

The transition from high school is a critical developmental challenge, and individuals can benefit greatly from effective career development services (Herr, 2000; School-to-Work Transitions, 1999). Community career partnerships represent a potent, promising, and potentially sustainable means of providing such needed services (Herr, 1995). Pressing national and international conditions suggest that this is a time for career development professionals to build collaborative partnerships (Amundson & Niles, 2000). The STWOA of 1994 represents one effort to establish locally controlled community career partnerships across the United States.

In this article, we have described many of the challenges and opportunities faced by practitioners who have attempted to create and implement a career partnership in their local community. In the beginning phases of partnership formation, practitioners were forced to tolerate a certain amount of ambiguity and anxiety as they developed individualized programs to fit local circumstances. The nonauthoritarian relationship between partnerships and this state's STWOA management team facilitated collaborative processes by which practitioners reached out to community stakeholders. Practitioners had initial success implementing school-based learning activities, enlisting business and trade union participation, working with school counselors, and involving a wide range of students in partnership activities. Community leaders were enthusiastic about expanding career opportunities for their next generation of citizens.

The educational research community has long been concerned with the significant and growing gap between the kinds of cognitive activities that occur in schools and those that arise in challenging workplace settings (e.g., Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989; Lave, 1988; Resnick, 1987). Quality work-based learning experiences may be one strategy to reduce this gap. However, establishing and maintaining quality work-based learning opportunities for a diverse range of students have been and will continue to be a formidable challenge for partnerships (Hershey et al., 1999). Beyond the amount of time it takes to establish, train, monitor, and meet with parents, employers, and students, quality work-based learning opportunities necessarily place significant additional demands on both teachers and employers. Despite a significant amount of research that has consistently found positive relationships between increased academic achievement and time spent by students on relevant career development activities (e.g., see for r eviews Baker & Taylor, 1998; Evans & Burck, 1992), many administrators and teachers believe that time spent on such activities will actually hurt students' academic performance (Hershey et al., 1999; Hoyt, 1994).

If work-based learning opportunities are to be increased, businesses and trade unions must play a greatly expanded role beyond what is required of them to participate in school-based learning activities. This may create additional tension and conflict between educators and business people, because in addition to general differences in culture between schools and businesses, both sides answer to competing demands. Training and exposure to broad aspects of the industry may be a goal for educators. However, as the time demands of quality work-based learning experiences grow, businesses may feel the strain of needing to accomplish a job. For example, these competing demands have led to reports that students in bank teller positions may have their training time in other aspects of bank management limited because the daily demands of the bank's operation press supervisors not to rotate students who are doing a good job (Scribner & Wakelyn, 1998).

In addition, coordinators reported that they want employers and supervisors to give students clear messages about their dress, behavior, and performance. In one sense, some coordinators want business personnel to act in loco parentis and apply the kinds of logical consequences to student behavior that teaches them about the nature of the social order they will join as young adults (Dinkmeyer & McKay, 1989). However, although it is one thing to stop a student from participating in a work-based learning experience when they are dressed in an unsafe manner for the job site (e.g., a partnership coordinator reported how, after being instructed and warned, one young woman still arrived with open-toed sandals for a job that required much safer footwear), it is quite another to allow business personnel to make generalized judgments about a student based on their own idiosyncratic value systems. Practitioners will need to pay close attention to such issues and provide proactive and routine training, monitoring, and su pervision.

Many practitioners spoke of difficulties recruiting a broader spectrum of parents to participate in partnership activities. Many parents who have been recruited are more appropriately understood as participants of "convenience." They are likely to be teachers who are already working in the school district, business leaders who have the opportunity to participate, or parents who are already involved volunteering in the school. Reaching parents who work outside the district, who work at inconvenient times, or who are alienated from the school is a critical challenge for partnerships. Parents who do participate are likely to report having a positive experience; some of them spend more time speaking to teachers about their children's learning needs and help their children to have a better understanding of the adult world and the hopes that they have for their children's futures.

Although qualitative methodologies offer career professionals unique and fruitful research strategies (Blustein et al., 1997; Lee et al., 1999), they are clearly not without limitations. Error and bias can skew findings at each step in the research process. As described in the Methods section, our research team took considerable precautions to prevent this from happening. These focus groups provided a forum where practitioners were able to freely express a wide range of both positive and negative opinions about the creation and implementation of community career partnerships. In this article, we attempted to accurately and clearly describe practitioners' concerns and issues.

Conclusion

Community career partnerships, tailored to the unique needs of local communities that engage key stakeholders in meaningful ways, can be of great assistance to young people as they transition into the post-high school years. Key features of this legislation are not likely to be sustained after funding ends (Hershey et al., 1999). However, more general career exploration and career planning activities will survive and possibly be expanded (Hershey et al., 1999). Now would be an opportune time for career development theorists and practitioners to form partnerships that could both shape and develop new state and federal workforce education/development policies. Such alliances would surely benefit career development practice, theory, and public policy.

Appendix A

Common Program Elements for Community Career Partnerships

1.Community Involvement

2.School-Based Learning

* Career counseling--structured experiences, development of a student plan

* Coherent sequence of courses toward post--high school transition

* Ongoing assessment and feedback provided to students

3. Work-Based Learning

* Broad range of competencies taught (e.g., technical and social)

* Broad exposure to workings of and rotation through the business

* Learning has clear expectations and goals specified

* Frequent and consistent assessment and feedback to students

* Active involvement of employers in student experiences

* Active involvement of teachers in student experiences

* Mentoring and guidance provided to all students

* Regular monitoring of students and mentor training

* High academic standards set for student experiences

* Learning objectives integrated into students' core and elective curricula

4. Connecting Activities

* Use student career plan to select work-based learning opportunities

* Connect programs to preexisting local, state, and federal programs

* Ensure that each student has school site mentor to act as liaison

* Link students to related and appropriate community services

* Involve a wide variety of choices and employers

* Ensure communication between student and stakeholders

5. Parental Involvement

6. Business/Trade Union Involvement

7. Teacher Involvement

8. School Counselor Involvement

* Counselors implement comprehensive guidance program model

* Career guidance classroom curriculum units

* Individualized student educational and career planning activities

* Advisement, assessment, counseling, placement, and follow-up services

9. Administrator Involvement

10. Inclusion of All Students

11. Student Input

12. Focus on High-Skill/High-Wage Careers

13. Program Evaluation

Appendix B

Categories Generated From Grounded Theory Analysis

1. Getting started implementing one's partnership

2. Career planning activities attempted

* School-based learning activities

* Work-based learning activities

3. Involving and engaging stakeholders

* Community involvement

* Parental involvement

* Business/trade union involvement

* Teacher involvement

* School counselor involvement

* School administrator involvement

4. Inclusion of all students and eliciting input from students

5. The need for and struggle to evaluate partnership impact for students

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Richard T. Lapan, College of Education, University of Missouri--Columbia; Helena P. Osana and Bradley Tucker, Department of Education, Concordia University; John F. Kosciulek, Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education, Michigan State University. The authors thank Missouri's Community Careers State Management Team (Doug Sutton, Pam Spires, Robert Ruble, Donna Schulte, and Michelle Corcoran) for their support and cooperation and also thank Norman Gysbers, Susie Cox, and Jay Scribner for their thoughtful reviews and suggestions. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Richard T. Lapan, 16 Hill Hall, University of Missouri--Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211 (e-mail: [e-mail]).