Research Webinar Series - Student Motivation and CTE Course Selection

Hi everybody. I'm Jason Klein, Senior Director of Learning Partnerships at Northern Illinois University, and we're really excited to have you with us today. We've got Joe Bruno who will introduce himself and his topic in just a moment, but I was privileged enough to actually serve on Joe's dissertation committee, and this is a really important topic, and particularly at this time when we've got multiple pieces of legislation sitting in the General Assembly as we record this that relate to student uh course requirements and options that affect course selection at the high school level in Illinois. Uh and even without those pieces of legislation or other legislation that was passed a few years ago, uh this still remains a really important topic that affects everything from uh parent perceptions of what their children are doing to how students interact with uh teachers and counselors, um to even student kind of peer pressure and peer relations around what they're doing in school. And so, with all that said, we're going to turn it over to Joe. For those of you who are here with us live, there will absolutely be an opportunity for you to ask questions, and you're welcome to either put those in the chat, or you will be able to unmute and ask those questions a little later on. And in the meantime, uh I'm going to turn it over to Joe. Hi everybody. Can everybody hear me? We're good to go before I get 20 minutes in and it's like we can't hear anything you're saying. Uh my name is Joe Bruno. I am the Instructional Supervisor of CTE of Am I allowed to say what school I'm working at right now? Okay, cool. Glenbrook North, which is in Northbrook, Illinois. Uh I Hi Amy. I spent the last 2 years of my life pre- creating this dissertation on student motivation uh in CTE course selection. So, I'm going to go through this process. As Jason said, you can write comments in the chat. You can also just like wave to me or just start talking over me if you have specific questions or if you want to talk about anything. If you have questions about the dissertation, there are some points throughout because this was a professional development that I've done in the past where there's discussion questions. Um we'll see where we're at. I understand that it is 1:00 on a Friday and I don't know if people really want to get into that, but if you do, we can. So, but you can ask questions at any time. So, here it goes. Maybe. Nah. So, I'm going to give a little bit of background, hopefully a few minutes only, of just kind of where I was coming from in terms of the dissertation, and then you kind of need that information in order for all of the research to really make sense. So, my problem of practice is I felt that there was a lack of research on the rationale behind why high school students are choosing the CTE courses that they're picking. I think this is detrimental, obviously, to students, but also to counselors, to teachers, to the local community. So, I wanted to do further research on why. Why are they taking the classes that they take? With that, we'll be talking about how self-efficacy, students' expected outcomes, their own personal goals, and how social influences also play a role or factor into why they're selecting the courses that they are. Why? I've been a CTE teacher for over 10 years. I recognize the importance and the benefits of this department specifically on our students' lives. I feel there's not enough coordinated thought into why is a student taking a course rather than just saying, "Hey, we've we've got to take one." What do they really want? What do they really care about? How are we properly preparing them for a career in college in the future? So, my three research questions are pretty similar, but I'm unique topics. So, how does student self-efficacy factor into CTE course selection? How do social factors influence CTE course selection? And how do students' expected outcomes and personal goals influence CTE course selection? Quick background. I'm assuming if you're here, you probably know what CTE is, but it's providing learners with the skills, knowledge, and confidence they need to thrive in college and career. All students benefit from CTE education. Teaches real-world skills, uh selected career focus. Important to be able to differentiate between CTE participants and CTE concentrators as when we get into who I took part in the focus groups with, um I utilized concentrators. So, a CTE participant is a student that has taken at least one CTE course. A concentrator is a student who's taken two or more courses in the same career-related program. So, if somebody had taken an intro to business class and then an intro to culinary class, they would not count as a concentrator cuz those are different career-related programs. They would still be participants. So, the students that took part in my focus groups were solely concentrators and I'll talk about them more. So, it may have been a bit since you've talked about educational psych, but I do need to cover social cognitive theory to talk about my theoretical framework, so I'll be quick here though. Um Albert Bandura's work in the late '70s talking about how we learn from our social environments. This influences our actions, it influences our motivation, which is exactly what we're talking about in terms of students selecting courses. This all impacts self-efficacy, which I'm going to be talking about a ton. Uh self-efficacy is a person's belief in their ability to perform actions that lead to specific outcomes. So, it's not even whether or not you're actually capable of performing an action, it's whether or not you believe you're capable. I believe I'm self-efficacious in giving this presentation right now. I might be doing terribly. You might say, "No, you are not good at this." But I feel I am. I am highly self-efficacious in this. So, good differentiator there. There are four main sources of efficacy expectations. We're going to focus or I'm going to focus on the idea of performance accomplishments or mastery experiences. So, students actually taking part in an activity and then recognizing, "Oh, yeah. I I can do this." and building that self-efficacy. There's also vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, physiological and emotional states, and those will all come up a little bit, but mastery experiences is what we're going to hit on a lot. So, from there, Lent, Brown, and Hackett in the '90s created the framework of social cognitive career theory playing off of Bandura's work. And this focuses more on interest in potential academic disciplines, careers, how students Well, how people make choices um in things that are interesting to them, how they succeed in those things. And it focuses on three primary social cognitive functions, and those are self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations or expected outcomes and goal representations or personal goals. So, why are we choosing to do certain things? Are we doing it because we have an expected outcome in mind? I think that I want to attain this career. Um is it I'm just trying to set a goal for myself and I want to intrinsically achieve that thing? Um the reasons behind why we're doing what we do. And then they also added a piece about contextual determinants. So, kind of that external piece of you might be self-efficacious, you might believe that you're capable of doing something, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can do it because there are other supports and barriers that come into play. So, maybe you have a family member who is already an accountant and they give you practice in doing that thing. That acts as a support. Maybe you want to go to college to become a nurse, but you just don't have the money to do it. you're capable, you're self-efficacious, you just that acts as a barrier, too. So, those things will come up. My research design, I conducted focus groups. I had five focus groups, so 24 students total. Focus groups are more social in nature than just conducting one-on-one interviews. Um for a prior project before my dissertation, I did one-on-one interviews with a couple of students and I don't think they really wanted to talk to me. Whereas in the focus groups, they were super vocal and willing to share with one another cuz they're talking to other high school students. Although, I don't think anybody wants to talk to me. Uh they are more useful when attempting to determine what motivates people, and that's what this entire dissertation was about. Why are students motivated to take our courses? They were 45 to 60 minutes. I had junior and senior students who were CTE concentrators. So, they had two classes in the same career-related program. We have three sub-departments at the my school. We have a business department. We have family consumer sciences, so culinary classes, fashion classes, uh and then we also have tech ed, which is woodworking, welding, um uh engineering. So, we had students from all three sub-departments. The school itself is a suburban school in the Midwestern US. 90% of our students enroll in a two- or four-year college. They were selected because of my interest in ways to better sup- uh support student decision-making. Just knowledge for you, 67% white, 22% Asian, 5% Hispanic, 5% two or more, 1% black. And a useful point that we're going to probably we will definitely come back to later is that our student to counselor ratio is 231 to 1. The state average is 494 to 1. So, that's useful to note when we get into social influences and we talk about uh the counselors influence on a student's course selection of just recognizing that ours is 230 to 1 to 1, the state average is 494 to 1, so we'll come back to that. All right, so the themes themselves, after conducting all the research, analyzing the data, I came up with 10 themes about why students are selecting the courses that they're selecting. None These are not ranked in any order, so as I go through it's not like this was the most important thing or this was the least important thing. I tried to to sort them based on the research questions. First theme was the idea of academic and mastery experiences. Yeah, and then of there there's four subthemes, so I'll talk about each of these. For each of these subthemes, I'm going to have a little bit of research or information for you from the focus groups, but then I'm going to end each one with a quote that I feel best encapsulates what the students were getting at there. So rather than hearing me talk, you're going to kind of hear me talk in the voice of a high school student. So applied skill competence supports the work of Usher and Pajares who said that mastery experiences are the most influential source of self-efficacy. So if students are actually taking part in experiences, that raises self-efficacy. If they feel, "Yeah, look, I'm I've done this thing, I've tried this thing, I feel that I'm actually capable of doing this." That raises efficacy. What we heard in the focus groups, students talked frequently about taking part in things like accounting simulations. You walk into accounting, I don't know what a T account is, I have no idea how to do this. Very low self-efficacy, but then they take part in the activity and they're like, "No, I can balance this, this actually makes sense, I can totally do this." Raises their self-efficacy, they feel, "Yep, I'm capable, I can do this." They talked about mock trials in business law classes, lesson planning in early childhood classes of actually building their own lessons, presenting them. Yeah, I can do this. Uh baking a cake without a teacher's help, uh sewing costumes without teacher's help. All of these things that you walk in, I don't know how to use this machine, in a couple of weeks, yeah, I can actually use this machine. I feel good about it. And a quote here, I felt confident when I was able to sew an entire shirt without needing my teacher's help. That just made me realize that I'm really capable of creating things. And to have a high school student voice this idea that like, yeah, I'm capable of doing this, I think is pretty powerful. So, applied skill competence came up a lot. CTE course design had, I think it was in the top five most comments, the way that CTE courses are designed compared to what we would think as a typical core course. Sorry, I was checking the chat. Thanks, Amy. I love hearing it, too. So, CTE courses are more hands-on. There's more project-based learning, and it led to higher engagement and higher self-efficacy. Students were more active in class. They liked to learn to collaborate in groups. They loved experiencing what professional work is really like. And one of the quotes, with CTE classes, it's really nice to have a really hands-on, you're doing activities constantly class, because it keeps you interested in experiencing new things in the class, and it makes it more exciting. So, just the way that our courses are designed are keeping them engaged, building that self-efficacy of being interested in material. Early success and persistence came up. Students who had early success and were persistent were more likely to continue taking further courses in a pathway. Uh at our school, we do offer stacked coursework. So, we do have, for example, a student taking a fashion design one class would be working alongside students that are taking fashion design two and three. And that stacked coursework acted as a vicarious experience for those students um of seeing, "Hey, I know what they're doing in fashion two and three. I'm self-efficacious enough to recognize that I'm capable of doing those things, too. And those projects seem pretty cool. I want to do those." So, they were more likely to take more courses when seeing what other students were doing. And as you relate it back to kind of your own schools or your own programs, even if you're not offering stacked coursework, like think about what can you do to show off those higher-level projects to students so that they see, "Oh, yeah, based on what I'm doing in one, I could do the stuff in two or three or later courses in the pathway." Confidence in the pathway was low in the first course, but early mastery experiences show them that, "Yep, I'm capable." So, I'd say now my confidence is pretty high, but that's because I took four levels of the same course. I feel like when I was starting out, it was definitely low. So, they continue to take it. They like taking the courses. Uh in terms of self-efficacy, students talked about prior extracurricular activities and experiences they had there. So, experience with material covered in these courses in their own personal lives offered them the ability to build their confidence and learn new skills. Students talked about how they've already started their own like lawn mowing business. So, when they went and took a business class, they already had that experience. They already felt self-efficacious in it. They felt more engaged with the course content. They'd worked as teachers' assistants at local grade schools, so they wanted to take the early childhood courses. And then transferring those experiences made them feel ahead of their peers, built that self-efficacy, they felt truly capable of completing what whatever was expected of them. So, "When I took entrepreneurship, I just felt like I was really ahead of the game cuz I'd already started my own business. I already had a lot of prior knowledge about it. A lot of the activities we did in the course were similar to stuff that I've done in real life." And we'll see that come back again, too, right? How do we tie it into things that they're interested in or things that they know? Second theme was interest-driven confidence. So, how interested they were in the material. Students inter- I mean, I'm not telling you anything that you don't know, but students' interest in course content played a significant role in CTE course selection. They their confidence grew when they were doing things that they were interested in doing. They voiced the idea that they put more effort into these courses because they actually cared about them. They weren't being forced to take them. They chose the elective. Uh they were more likely to pay attention. They were more likely to do work outside of school if called upon to do it because they actually cared about what they were doing. This led to higher confidence, led to led to a greater self-efficacy, and it encouraged students to pursue more careers in CTE-related fields. Couple quotes. I enjoy what I do, so then I put more effort into it, so then I in turn get more confident overall with it. I was confident because I was learning things I was really genuinely interested in. Great. That's awesome. The theme that had the theme the something that had the most comments of all was the idea of comparison to core classes. Students had higher confidence and greater interest in their CTE courses. Uh these are key components of self-efficacy and career interest. Students felt CTE courses were easier. Uh and I think this would be super interesting if anyone is interested in pursuing their own dissertation. Figuring out uh are CTE courses actually easier or are students just more self-efficacious in them because they're interested in them? Uh they feel confident in their own work, and then thus it feels like this work is actually easier. They're more engaged, or are the classes just easier? I don't think so, but uh they understood the applicability of their CTE course content to their own lives. It was a lot easier to tie it in than they spoke about in a lot of their other courses. In my CTE courses, I'm not as scared to make a mistake as I would be in a math class or a science class. I honestly just feel more confident to raise my hand, especially because it's something I'm more interested than than like a math or science class. I just think there's more of a sense of community in these classes, especially with group work. So, uh that theme came up again and again and again of comparing it to what they're doing in their core classes, uh the interest that they showed in these classes and how much they cared about them. Um I think a student being willing to say I'm not as scared to make a mistake in a CTE class is also pretty amazing. Students talked about how they wanted to build essential skills. We'll talk later about the extrinsic portion of it, but they also talked about it intrinsically. Essential skills are kind of those workplace skills that we're talking about that we feel that students need uh to perform in the future. Um some people go calling them soft skills or whatever you want to call them, but we're going to use essential skills. I don't want to upset Jason, and that's what I've used in the paper. So, these are essential skills. Um they talked about how they wanted to just build interest in cooking, in sewing, in becoming better public speakers, not because they felt that it was going to benefit them as a career in the future. It was just something that they just wanted to learn how to do. So, it wasn't grade related. It wasn't even career related. It's just like, I want to learn how to sew. That is a useful skill that I think I'm going to maybe use for myself in the future. I just want to know how to do that. I'm trying to push myself to explore areas that I'm more that I'm not confident in. The biggest factor that pushed me to do CTE courses is my interest in building skills that the course provides. >> [snorts] >> I'll offer these up if anyone wants to talk and not hear me talk for a couple of minutes, but again, I'm not expecting it. Um but as we cover all of that thing all of that content related to the first research question, how does self-efficacy play a role? Um where in your curriculum do you students get early low-stakes opportunities for success that motivate persistence? So, how are we tying that into our curriculum? Uh how do current course structures and schedules actually allow for repeated mastery experiences? So, I don't know if anybody wants to talk or if you want to just jot those down and kind of think about them yourselves just for your own programs, but Turn this off. Okay, I'm going to move past it. Next research question was focused on the idea of social influence. When I conducted my focus groups, before any focus group actually started, I gave um a sheet of paper to each student and I asked them to rank these five things in terms of um most influential to least influential social influence when determining what CTE courses you enroll in. And then later in the focus groups, about 75% of the way in, the group came together and we did this ranking activity again. And I said, "Now that we're all talking with one another, let's try ranking these again. We do not have to come to consensus. You guys can disagree on certain things, but let's see how we feel together." Uh they every group, all five, came to consensus pretty easily. Um and then I analyzed that data compared to individual versus the group. The only thing if I if I did my dissertation again, the only thing that I really did not like is the idea that I needed to add another category down here because there could have been other influences that I just didn't know about. I don't know if maybe kids just watch Tik Tok all day and they're like, "That's how I pick classes. Somebody on Tik Tok told me to." Uh so I needed to have that piece. Or maybe they have outside college counselors or anything else that I just didn't know about uh beyond obviously schoolmates, teachers, school counselors, family members. Um but that ranked last because the kids had no idea what I was getting at. So that was number five. But anybody want to take a shot at what the fourth least or yeah, fourth most influential, I guess, uh social influence was? The next thing that kids cared about least in terms of selecting their courses. Friends, peers, teachers, the school, the community in general, school counselors, or family members? You can even type a number into the chat if you don't want to voice your opinions. Oh, there we actually got some numbers. Teachers. Amy four Oh, actually different Amy for the win. Yes, it was school counselors as number four. And we will talk about that in depth in a little bit, but counselors came in number four. Kids did not care about their opinions at all. Number three, I will tell you and then maybe I'll let you vote for the final two. Three was teachers, school, the community. Two and one. Anyone want to guess at what the most important social influence was? Most important. Schoolmates. Schoolmates. Thanks, Don. Schoolmates. Schoolmates was number two, actually. Yeah. I was very surprised that family came in first in terms of social influence. So, I will talk about each of these. Nice job, Derek. Derek guessed family. I wouldn't have guessed it. Familial influence was the most influential social factor when determining what CTE courses students enrolled in. Individually, 14 of the 24 students ranked family as most important. Five of the 24 ranked it as second most important. So, about 80% had them in the top two. As a group, all five groups ranked family most important. Again, as I'm talking about this stuff, like you kind of think in the back of your mind, like how are we engaging families uh in our schools or in our course recommendations or how are we getting them involved? Because this is showing that they are important when students are signing up for the courses that they're selecting. So, parental recommendation was a sub theme. Parents were encouraging students to pursue their goals related to their futures. They were supportive of not only their college and career plans, but also just their interests more generally. One student said, "I think the biggest influence was my parents freshman year. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. They said they would actually This would actually be a really useful class for my future. They know me." So, having that relationship, these people know who I am. They know what I might be interested in. How can we leverage that as we have students enroll in courses? Sibling recommendation came up a lot, too. Older siblings' endorsements and oppositions steered enrollment. Uh they acted as a form of just proximal social capital and contextual supports. So, stu Younger students relied on their older siblings' advice, and they trusted their own judgment on on areas of strength, but also negative things, too. So, you should take this class cuz of this teacher, or I just know that you're interested in this area, so you should do this, which I think is actually Yeah. My older brother told me that I would really enjoy the childhood education classes because he knew that I liked working with kids. It was kind of his influence that he even knew about the classes that made me want to join. This student specified that like her older brother didn't even take any of the childhood education classes. Um he took other stuff. He was a different type of student, I guess, but uh he knew that they existed. He knew his sister, and he said, "Hey, you should probably take those." So, sibling recommendation comes into play. Students brought up uh familial experience in the field and how that played a role in their course selection. Familial role models led students to enroll in similar CTE courses. So, they talked about parents, grandparents, uncles, cousins, how they had a certain uh job or a career. Negative experiences also guided them in what they didn't want to pursue. So, one student said, "My mom's an accountant, so I knew I didn't want to do that because she seems very bored." Sorry for anyone who's interested in accounting out there. Um but just showing that it isn't necessarily all positive. They were also hearing other negative things too or recognizing even though that could be the greatest thing in the world from what they're seeing and experiencing, I don't want to do that. Both my dad and my grandpa have extensive business knowledge. If I do have any questions, there are plenty of people I could talk to in that field. That I'm sorry. That was really one of the major things that drove me to take these courses. School made influence. Uh It's important to differentiate friends and peers here uh cuz a lot of times they're used interchangeably, but they are different things. So, when we talk about friend recommendations, that's typically an individual with whom uh student shares like a personal, mutual, some sort of meaningful relationship. So, a little bit closer than a peer who is someone who's just grouped with a student based on like shared characteristics. So, they're just in the same grade, um same social status, they play the same sport. Uh, so when we talk about friend recommendations, this was the second most important social factor. Half of the students ranked it number two. Um, three ranked it one. Uh, I'm sorry, in the top two. Three ranked it one, nine ranked it two. As a group, four of the five ranked this as the second most important. They talked about how their friends shared their own experiences in CTE and gave them suggestions. You get to hear about their experience, you can share your experience. I'd heard such great reports from all of my friends, they loved the class, so I ended up taking it sophomore year. I feel like my friends can be really influential. This idea was, uh, also a surprise to me because we know that as students move beyond kind of middle school age into high school age, they kind of start shifting away from peer or from uh, family familiar recommendations into peers, right? Talking about friends and peers. So, I thought for sure this would be higher. Uh, my friend told me I should take this, I should take this. But, all of the conversations were no, we're so resorting back to families first. We do listen to what our friends have to say. Peer recommendations, broader network, upper classmen in classes, just their general classmates, friends of siblings. Uh, they acted as vicarious experiences. So, just hearing their experience was helpful to gain more honest or clear information. The idea of a sense of community in CTE came up frequently. Relationships with peers and teachers in CTE courses had an impact on why students selected these courses. It built student confidence, it built student self-efficacy. Students in the focus groups talked about how CTE courses fostered a more welcoming environment. They felt more comfortable engaging with their classmates and the course content. They enjoyed working with students from different grade levels. Um, rather than just having a class full of all freshmen or all sophomores, they actually enjoyed working with upper and lower level students. CTE classes, in my opinion, are a lot more like a community and welcoming cuz you're always working together. I feel like I'm more comfortable talking to anyone or my friends or my teacher. I just feel a lot more comfortable and then that makes me feel more confident. >> [snorts] >> Counselor influence. All right. I debated whether or not even having positive comments as a sub-theme because only two of 24 students spoke positively about their guidance counselors. Um they talked about how they were comfortable asking them for advice. Uh their counselors had prior knowledge about student work experiences and then they used those to help them make informed course decisions. Um so the students that spoke about it they said, "Yeah, this this was beneficial. This helped me make my decision." I [snorts] believe my counselor is great. I can ask him questions and he'll give me an honest answer about my schedule and how a course fits into my career path. But even so, two of 24 making positive comments about counselors is probably not great. Negative comments. 18 of 24 students made negative comments about their counselors. 14 of the 24 ranked them either four or five in rank of influence on the courses that they chose. They talked a lot about how there was only minimal logistics-only guidance. They had no real relationship with a student. Students didn't believe that their counselors acted in their best interest. They felt that counselors prioritized college prep over CTE course selection. They talked a lot about CTE just checking a box, just saying I know that I have to take one of these to graduate. So once you take that one, we don't talk about it anymore. Uh I should have prefaced it that like the counselors at our school are wonderful and the students even recognize that fact. They're like it's not them, they're just super busy. They're just doing so much all of the time. So it's not even a matter of that, but if we go back to the information from the beginning, we have like what was it? Two 43? I could go back a couple of slides compared to the state average, we're in a much better spot and we can't even pull it off. So how can other schools that have four and 500 to one really take the time to build relationships with students? But they are verbalizing here that they don't have relationships and I feel that's a part of their job. That's why that's what they do. They enroll them in courses and what kids are interested in what kids want to do in the future. So what systemically has to change um in order for students to be enrolled in courses that they are saying that they want to take? Counselors were not necessarily contextual barriers. These were CTE concentrators. They were still taking CTE courses, rather they just had no influence. They just didn't listen to what they had to say if they talked to them at all. As long as you complete one CTE course, you're set. They don't really encourage you to take any more or explore any more areas. My counselor doesn't even know my name. I'm not going to trust them with what classes I should take if they don't know my name. >> [snorts] >> Teacher influence was a little bit more positive. They talked about the idea of the importance of relationships, which again I'm probably not telling you anything new. Relationship building is very important in schools. They ranked three out of five in terms of um students hearing from teachers and then selecting courses. They played a direct role in self-confidence, self-efficacy. They felt more supported. They would then take advice from those teachers of other courses that they should possibly take. Students talked about how they selected additional courses again just because they wanted to have the same teacher. So, uh, the quote might be later, but a few came A few mentioned like, "I wasn't even that interested in the class, but like I just wanted to be with that teacher." I think I do a lot better in my class because I have a relationship with my teacher. If I don't have a good relationship with my teacher, I'm not going to feel comfortable asking them questions or going in in my own time to see them. Uh, regarding taking a second course in a pathway, the teacher was very supportive and I wanted to experience that more. So. Less about the course itself was just this teacher was supportive and I want to experience that sense of support. So, really building those relationships, getting them to enroll in our courses. The quality of teacher came up. So, students' decision to enroll in CTE courses was influenced both by real and perceived qualities of teachers, both positive and negative. This teacher's good, this teacher's bad. Uh, I want to take it because of this reason. I don't want to take it because of this reason. Their interest and engagement in the content was shaped by the particular teacher. So, if the teacher was passionate, if they were enthusiastic about their content, they were more interested in the material. If they were able to relate the content to students' lives, they were more interested in the material. I think somebody else could also do a dissertation about this idea. I think a lot of a lot of CTE teachers are second career teachers. Um, we are passionate about our content. We Not to say that other teachers aren't, right? But, uh, we chose this as a second career. We really want to do this thing. We're passionate. We want to teach other people about it. Uh, and that showed up in students saying that the more passionate and enthusiastic they are, I care more about that, too. So. I think a teacher's high expectations as far as work goes will drive students to work harder and feel better about their work and in turn be more passionate about the class. I'm going to skip discussion questions. But if you I'll share the presentation too. You can kind of stew on that yourselves. All right, the last research question talked about students' expected outcomes and personal goals, kind of what they were hoping to take away from these courses and how that played a role in the courses they selected. The seventh theme was just general exploration of the future. Students talked a lot about just general likes and dislikes. They took a CTE course cuz they were exploring their interests. They're exploring their passions. It was also an avenue for identifying areas that didn't align with their preferences. I'm recognizing in high school, is this a thing that I actually want to do um in the future. I'm just trying to figure it out. I'm trying to figure out things that I like and dislike. Talked about planning next steps, diversifying their experiences, assessing, what am I actually good at? What am I confident in? Students said, "I was honestly just interested to see if that would be a future pathway I wanted to take. I feel like the more classes you take in your field, you start to figure out what you want to do, but more importantly, what you don't want to do." I think high school, that is a great time to figure that out. That is why we're here, I believe. Like, what what is it that Let's try a couple of different things, figure out what we're engaged in, what we're interested in, what we might be passionate about doing in the future. Students mentioned CTE courses acting as a base or a foundation for the future. So, they learn things that would be beneficial to their future selves. Coming back to those essential employability skills. Uh their interests for what they want to do potentially in college. Just taking part in occupationally relevant work experiences, building onto what they think they might be doing in the future. Acting as a stepping stone. Originally, I took the courses out of curiosity, but now I'm signing up for more experiences and more courses based on wanting to improve my skills and gain more experience for college and for my future career. So, just trying it, figuring out. Now, it's a base or a foundation for what I want to do in the future. College prep came up. A few student 13 of 24 students spoke about purposely enrolling in CTE courses because of the expected benefits they would derive from the courses related to their college apps. They believed that taking CTE courses aligned with their intended major would be viewed favorably by college admissions counselors. I wish every student felt that way. That would be a dream to me. Um they felt they would improve their odds of acceptance instead of taking 400 AP classes. If I were to be a freshman again, I would only take business-related classes and I would show colleges that I'm really dedicated to this topic instead of taking a variety of different classes. >> [snorts] >> Dual credit came up. So, eight of the 24 students cited the opportunity to earn college credit as a reason they enrolled in CTE courses. This was an expected outcome that factored into their course selection. I am taking this course because I am expecting that I'm going to gain something from it. Whether it's college credit or it's going to be beneficial to me in the career that I want to go into. This wasn't a primary motivation, but it did contribute. They recognized it would strengthen their college apps. Earning college credit bypasses that intro course sometimes, so they were at least cognizant of it. There was a question about the main goal in taking CTE classes. A student said, "Originally, it was probably just the dual credit for me. I would see it as a benefit for college. Like, if I needed to take that class, and maybe I already have that credit, that's awesome." A lot of the conversations, a lot of the head nodding that took place, um was like, "Yeah, the dual credit was was helpful. Um that wasn't maybe the primary reason that I took it, but it it didn't hurt." Yeah. Two themes left here. Obviously, we were going to talk about career prep. This is CTE. Students talked about career alignment. They enrolled in courses that match their intended career. I know I want to go into business. I know I want to go into education, into design, into engineering. Taking multiple courses in a pathway helped them to confirm their interest in that career, and it allowed them to gain additional experience. I've known I wanted to be a teacher since second grade, so these classes just confirmed that that's what I want to do. These classes influenced me and made me realize this is something I'm good at, something I really enjoy doing, and I want to continue that after high school. So, having the experiences, yep, this is what I want to do in the future. And then we talked about course utility and essential skills intrinsically of like, I just want to learn to bake a cake. But students also talked very frequently about the idea of extrinsically, I'm gaining something from this. So, 15 of the 24 talked about how taking CTE courses helped them to develop essential workplace skills that they felt were going to be valuable for their futures. Transferable, workplace ready, such as collaboration, learning to be better leaders, to get better at public speaking for the thing that they want to do in the future, to learn to problem solve, all things that they they spoke about in the focus groups. These classes help you learn to communicate with other people that might be different from you. They teach you how to work with others. A big thing I really wanted to work on with these classes was teamwork and problem solving. So, I'm taking them because I want to get better at this thing. And then the last theme is the idea of affective states or CTE acting as a form of stress relief throughout the school day. Half of the students emphasized the affective advantages of taking a CTE course. So, they were thinking about when they were signing up for courses, I want to take a CTE course because of the stress relief that it provides from my more academically rigorous courses. Uh it acted as sustained motivation. It acted to sustain motivation and engagement. They had less joy in CTE classes. They were less anxious about CTE classes. They had the awareness of how enrolling in this course would lead to less overall stress throughout the school day. Talked about all the work you do is in class and that it was nice to have a brain break during the day where I'm doing something I really enjoy doing. The word brain break came up a couple of times throughout the focus groups of I'm just going to take a break from all these more rigorous courses and just do something that I actually want to do. I feel the CTE classes are a good break in the day because they are classes where you do value you do learn valuable things, but they're not as rigorous as our other classes. As a CTE educator, it might be hard to hear that and to like no, like our classes are as rigorous as these other courses and you might want to kind of back away from from that cuz I feel that our courses are just as valuable, but half of the students brought up specifically they're enrolling in these classes because it's not as anxiety inducing as hearing a math teacher talk to me for 90 minutes or whatever it is. Um I won't talk about those either. So, to wrap up just recommendations that I had based on my dissertation research for teachers, make sure you're really prioritizing relationship building in classes. Take time to reinforce verbal persuasion. Encourage students to help build their confidence and their self-efficacy. Make sure we're delivering high-quality rigorous program of study. Students were enrolling with expected outcomes and goals in mind. They do want to prepare for their futures, so make sure that we are making sure that we are preparing them properly. Shouldn't be a blow-off class. Incorporate mastery experiences early and incorporate them often. So, as soon as we can start building experiences for them in the classroom to recognize, "Yeah, I am totally capable of doing this thing." Do it. Do it frequently. Make a concerted effort to highlight vicarious models in class. If that involves bringing in guest speakers, having student mentors, having outside mentors, partnering with families, having upperclassmen mentor lowerclassmen, anything to show off the things that we're already doing in our classes and showing, "Hey, if this person can do this, I can also do this." Or that's of interest to me. Uh create a classroom environment where mistakes are a part of learning. That helps to reduce stress. It encourages persistence. We want our classes to be immersive. We want them to be fun, but we don't want to compromise that rigor. And then from an administrator or leader's perspective, counselors need additional training on the benefits of CTE coursework and its impact on self-efficacy in career and college plans. The ability to This enhances their ability to steer students towards courses that are in their best interest, which I think is what school in general is all about. We need to reduce the structural barriers to CTE course enrollment. Students are saying they want to take these classes, but scheduling constraints are preventing them from enrolling in additional courses that they want to take. So, how can we go about reducing those barriers so they can take them? And then work with various stakeholders to better promote CTE coursework. And if that's talking with middle middle school counterparts to really spark that interest earlier, so then they have those experiences and then they get excited about doing it in high school and college or career beyond. Any sort of family engagement initiatives, taking part in weekend workshops, having information sessions, getting the courses out to the families because they are clearly a social influence on what students are selecting, what courses students are selecting. And then engaging community organizations. This helps to expand mastery experiences. I'm talking about like internship courses or just going to a local Rotary and seeing what's going on, but building those connections to get students engaged in the content. And that was a lot of talking. Thank you all for sticking through it. If you have questions, feel free. So, first of all, thank you, Joe. Obviously, one of the things that's really important for all of us is that there are these takeaways for teachers, for administrators, thinking about the counseling piece, thinking about what we're doing with families, right? There's a There's a lot to unpack here from this one study and a lot to consider and reflect upon. So, Joe, we we thank you for undertaking this work and as you said there for those that are interested in in pursuing their own additional research, there's some real opportunities here to use this as a jumping off point in a few different directions, excuse me, for additional research. If you do have any questions, please feel free to jump in with those. We'd be happy to answer those and either way, we're we're thrilled to have you here. Or if anyone wants to try the focus groups at their school, I can share that information with you and we can I mean, the more data the better, but it was a super interesting experience.