MACMILLAN Teaching and Learning Employability Skills in Career and Technical Education: Industry, Educator, and Student Perspectives (Palgrave Studies in Urban Education)

This book examines how industry-desired employability skills―or “soft skills”―are taught and learned in high school career and technical education (CTE) engineering and engineering technology programs. Identifying, recruiting, and keeping workers with strong personal and interpersonal skills is a constant challenge for STEM employers who need to hire young workers to replace an aging technical workforce. To answer the call, teachers interviewed explained that they maintain regimented daily classroom routines that include individual and small group hands-on activities and projects. In turn, their students explain learning personal responsibility, work ethic, teamwork, leadership, conflict management, and social skills in the classroom. Narratives from the workforce and classroom interweave to put employability skills frameworks into action. Review “The examination of employability skills and the way that subsequent chapters break this concept down into concrete practices is especially helpful in understanding how we as educators can be building soft skills into our students' learning and into our teaching in a more thoughtful, intentional way.”―Elizabeth Leblanc, Director of Instruction, Taos Academy Charter School, USA, and Co-Founder/CEO, Institute for Teaching and Leading (i4tl), USA “Before reading this book, I wasn’t aware of the high school programs available that taught critical thinking, teamwork, and problem solving techniques that could be applied to the manufacturing/service trade industry. Our recruiting team will be partnering up with similar programs in our city to build a strong bench of employees. As the aging technical workforce retires, the next generation will have to fill both existing as well as newly created jobs.”―Linh Tran, President and CEO, Advanced Commercial Contractors, USA From the Back Cover This book examines how industry-desired employability skills―or “soft skills”―are taught and learned in high school career and technical education (CTE) engineering and engineering technology programs. Identifying, recruiting, and keeping workers with strong personal and interpersonal skills is a constant challenge for STEM employers who need to hire young workers to replace an aging technical workforce. To answer the call, teachers interviewed explained that they maintain regimented daily classroom routines that include individual and small group hands-on activities and projects. In turn, their students explain learning personal responsibility, work ethic, teamwork, leadership, conflict management, and social skills in the classroom. Narratives from the workforce and classroom interweave to put employability skills frameworks into action. About the Author Will Tyson is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida, USA. His research examines interpersonal and structural influences on science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) educational and career pathways out of high schools, community colleges, and four-year universities. He specializes in mixed methods research.