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The AED/NIWL study's findings underscore a number of areas in which further research is needed in order to further clarify the impact of school-to-work reform on students, the impact on employers, the relative effectiveness of various reform strategies, the development of systems for school-to-work, and the implications for financing school-to-work systems. We are much more able now, than we were several years ago, as a result of this study and others, to recommend more focused areas for future research.
We recommend several avenues for exploring the impact of school-to-work reform on students. First, additional long-term follow-up studies of student outcomes are needed, to learn more about the relative effectiveness of various approaches and to help system administrators strengthen local initiatives. Most of the sites visited by the AED/NIWL research team had not conducted valid, long-term studies of student outcomes. The ideal study would examine students six months, eighteen months, three years, five years, and ten years after graduation, seeking information about their employment status, pursuit of postsecondary education, income level, independent living, and evidence of connection between their school-to-work experience and these outcomes.
Secondly, we recommend studies that consider student outcomes in youth development terms--such psychological and social characteristics as motivation, self-determination, responsibility for oneself and others. Adults and students often reported to the AED/NIWL research team dramatic instances of such change among students. It is important to attempt to measure more systematically the extent and depth of such impacts. The anecdotal reports of impacts offer tantalizing hope that school-to-work reform could redress fundamental issues hindering schooling that at first glance have little to do with occupational preparation.
Thirdly, we recommend cognitive studies of the impact on students of "contextual learning": educational settings in which students learn in real-world contexts, a basic aspect of school-to-work learning. These studies should compare and contrast the impact of different approaches: academies and student enterprises, for example. This research could add importantly to our knowledge base, both about contextual learning and about effective school-to-work strategies.
A fourth area suggested for research would be intensive case studies of students in workplaces over time. The AED/NIWL case study structure did not allow for more than brief workplace observations, and we are unaware of any long-term studies of this nature. This approach would enable practitioners and policy makers to learn more about the relative effectiveness of different strategies for integrating learning into workplaces, more about the types of skills transmitted, more about the quality and clarity of assessment practices, and more about how students and their workplace supervisors perceive these experiences.
A fifth area recommended for further research concerns access and equity of STW programs: studies of student tracking, equal educational and occupational opportunity, and sex role and racial stereotyping. The AED/NIWL study found few sites that had made equity a special concern. The issue of whether STW programs are "tracking" students according to gender, race, or educational achievement--either deliberately or through student self-selection--is an important area for research. At the very least we will need to look at the nature of tracking between academic and career programs under the new STW system, and whether tracking occurs within specific career programs. We should study whether skills standards have an impact on equity and access.
We also recommend a sixth area of research: analysis of the costs and benefits to students of working, both in terms of the impact of working while in school and perceptions of students who work. The debate concerning the pros and cons of combining work with schooling has continued for at least a decade. As work becomes an acceptable, even required aspect of the educational process for larger groups of students, including those planning to go to college, we should do studies that examine the impact of work on schooling (grades, attendance, test scores), social relationships, extracurricular and other activities, and use of alcohol and drugs. We should consider whether students, teachers, parents, and employers perceive working in different ways if it is sanctioned by the school.
We also suggest research to examine how employers and postsecondary institutions perceive the impact of school-to-work experiences on students who arrive at their doors as workers or college students. These studies will be important simply to discover how important partners in the school-to-work effort perceive the results of these initiatives, but also as a source of comparison data with other outcome studies. For example, the studies could ask both employers and postsecondary staff to compare graduates of school-to-work programs with nonparticipants, along a spectrum of characteristics.
Another area in which we recommend further case study research would be pedagogical and curricular changes, and their impact on student learning at different grade levels. Intensive case studies would enable researchers to focus on direct relationships between specific interventions and specific learning or developmental changes in students.
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[Table A: Site Selection Criteria]