Abstract
Introduction
Children’s ability to identify a future role for themselves within the world is thought to be becoming increasingly important in a rapidly changing, interconnected and globalised world (OECD, 2019, 2020). Educational institutions play an important role in equipping children for future jobs (Department of Education, 2019; FYA, 2018; Houghton, 2019; Ithaca, 2019; Torii, 2018), and schools commonly establish systems of support for young people in their later years of schooling to promote career aspiration, hoping to motivate the achievement of prerequisite skills and qualifications. The Possible Me project described in this paper was aimed at children in their pre-school years, proposing that earlier involvement in thinking about the WoW and their potential role within it might lead to higher engagement and outcomes for children throughout their school careers.
Previous research has demonstrated that by the age of 9, children have already developed an idea of work and established attitudes and aspirations towards careers, however, these remain narrow if children and young people have not participated in diverse WoW experiences (Fletcher et al., 2020). In one study, children who had been engaged in diverse community experiences between the ages of 4 and 8 years old were found to have much more detailed educational and occupational hopes for their futures in adolescence (Hasford et al., 2016). A developing body of research suggests the importance of greater elaboration and detail in children’s aspiration so that children form images of their future selves that are linked to behavioural strategies, such as trying hard at school (Oyserman et al., 2011). Highly elaborated career aspirations are argued to be more likely than vague ideas to motivate children’s persistence in following their career dreams and achieving their goals (Harrison, 2018). However research with Australian secondary school students demonstrates that there is often significant disconnect between stated career aspirations and an understanding of what reaching these aspirations would entail (Gale & Parker, 2015). Despite the difficulties in evidencing the diverse and holistic outcomes that engagement in WoW activities may have, it is widely agreed that developing knowledge and experience of the WoW in the early years of schooling is highly beneficial in supporting young people to gain skills, knowledge, and confidence to navigate complex pathways into uncertain futures (Fletcher et al., 2020).
There is a considerable knowledge gap about the impact of WoW experiences for children in early childhood, although there has been significant interest in WoW in the compulsory schooling sector in Australia (Torii, 2018). It is likely that kindergartens and early learning centres (Cerrito et al., 2018; Yaffe, 2007), as well as parents and families (Oliveira et al., 2020), are powerful agents in socialising children in the desire to work. The Possible Me project aimed to support early childhood educators to generate their own pedagogical knowledge and gain an understanding of the type of experiences and pedagogies that best support and motivate children to develop a sense of what work they could undertake in the future. The conceptual framework for the study built on the work of Cinamon and Yeshayahu (2021) in suggesting knowledge about the WoW offers an important foundation on which to build more complex and sophisticated knowledge and career choices later on. Grounded in twin notions of access to resources and experiences, and mediation of learning by others, our framework conceptualises children’s developing understandings of career possibilities and trajectories toward the WoW as emerging through participation in culturally mediated activities, a finding confirmed by previous studies (Cinamon & Yeshayahu, 2021). Children require both career knowledge, and support to use this knowledge to develop a narrative about themselves connected to the WoW (Cinamon & Yeshayahu, 2021). In the context of this framework, the study investigated a presumed relationship between Intentional Teaching about the WoW, and the heightening of career aspiration and career knowledge amongst children.
Intentional Teaching
Policy commitment in many countries, particularly since the Starting Strong II report (OECD, 2006), has led to increased accountability about learning outcomes, and greater focus on practices such as Intentional Teaching (Kilderry, 2015; Kirkby et al., 2018; Stephen, 2010) within early childhood education. Intentional Teaching, in which educators are very specific about supporting children to reach particular outcomes, has been demonstrated to be important to children’s academic success (e.g., Schweinhart & Weikart, 1998) particularly for young children from social, cultural, linguistic and economically diverse circumstances and in relation to the difference in many children’s lived experience and the skills and knowledge required to participate in contemporary education (Grieshaber et al., 2021).
Intentional Teaching is thus associated with the provision of information and experiences to children that is framed by clear objectives to promote particular vocabularies, skills, and behaviours in children related to specific learning outcomes (Epstein, 2007). Research also demonstrates the importance of purposeful and sustained pedagogical connections with the child’s lived experience as a foundation for ongoing learning (Bennett et al., 2018). Specific practices such as direct teaching, and expanded conversation based on educators’ and children’s engagement in ‘sustained shared thinking’ have been shown in particular to make a significant difference to children’s achievement (Sylva et al., 2004). Intentional Teaching comprises attention to children’s intentions and interests, with curriculum co-constructed (Cherrington, 2018) in ways that support deep-level conversations (Hedges & Cooper, 2018).
Materials and Methods
The project was conducted in collaboration with Latrobe City Council and three early childhood services in the town of Churchill, in central Gippsland in the east of Victoria, Australia. Initially established in the 1960s as a service centre for the local power station and expanded coal mining operations in the area, Churchill has experienced gradual economic decline since the early 1990s. This study was approved by the Federation University Human Ethics Committee (approval no. B18-022) and the Department of Education (2021_004449). Participants gave written consent for their data to be used in the project. To protect participant confidentiality, all identifying information was removed and data were de-identified in accordance with review board guidelines. All names of participants and centres are pseudonyms.
The community, children, and families that attend the three early childhood centres selected for this project experience high levels of unemployment (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021). One lead educator from each centre acted as a co-researcher, planning for and reflecting on the success of WoW activities four times over the course of the research. These conversations were recorded. The lead educators were highly experienced, with between 15 - 25 years child care experience in long day care settings, and qualified with a Bachelor of Teaching (Early Childhood), with 8 – 10 years subsequent teaching experience. There was a change of lead educator in one centre part-way through the research, so that the initial lead educator participated once in the group planning, her replacement participated twice. This centre generated the least amount of data.
Over nine months a range of experiences and activities were planned and completed by the lead educators. Children’s participation in the activities and experiences, as well as their free play in which they revisited planned activities, was captured as data via Go-Pro
As in many other contemporary studies in early childhood education settings (e.g., Burbank et al., 2018; Green, 2016; Harwood & Collier, 2019; Marsh et al., 2019; McLaughlin et al., 2020; Nelson & Hodgins, 2020), the use of clothing-mounted Go-ProTM cameras enabled collection of important data of children’s experiences, offering a higher level of comprehensiveness, insight and reliability in comparison to a fixed-position camera that could potentially be more distant from participant interactions. Previous research has demonstrated that using a GoProTM chest mount enables both educators and researchers “to collect useful information about children’s learning experiences and progress, and identifying teaching practices and strategies that can support them” (McLaughlin et al., 2020, pp. 4-5). Risks to the physical and mental wellbeing of children using the Go-ProTM cameras were managed through child assent being sought verbally at the beginning of and during all research activities. The children were invited to choose if they would like to ‘have a go’ at wearing a clothing-mounted Go-proTM camera during the activity and told that they could take it off and give it to the research assistant or their teacher when they didn’t want to wear it any longer. Children who volunteered to have a go at wearing the Go-ProTM were assisted by a known member of the early childhood centre to put it on, ensuring that the camera was fitted to them in a safe manner, to avoid risk of them being physically hurt. Video recordings were regularly saved and deleted from the cameras by the lead researchers, and stored safely in password-protected data analysis software. Transcriptions of the videos, rather than the videos, in which children were de-identified, were shared as research findings.
Go-Pro
Initial themes were constructed from early and shared analysis of the emerging data, actively generated by the teachers and researchers as part of the process of making meaning from the data (Braun & Clarke, 2022) and then used deductively to verify effective teaching strategies (Kelle, 1995). In addition, all teaching strategies identified within educators’ interactions with children were coded, using the concepts and associated practices within the literature on intentional teaching (such as listening, explaining, modelling, for example) as sensitising concepts. Children’s responses were coded as responses which continued a concept of the WoW, as demonstration of increased motivation to learn about and one day participate in the WoW, or to a lack of response or a negative response. Qualitative validity was explored by gaining educators’ perspectives on the emerging data at each of the educators’ meetings. Children’s aspirations, operationalised as comments in which children referred to ‘wanting to be’ or expressing intent for their own career in the WoW were also recorded and tracked over time, and linked to teachers’ intentional actions to promote WoW exploration. The aim was to confirm which activities and interactions had impact on broadening children’s knowledge of careers and future career possibilities for themselves, drawing on the theorising underpinning the study that broadened knowledge of the WoW is linked to motivation to participate in the WoW.
Findings
Key themes from the analysis of transcribed data revealed a lack of knowledge about the WoW for children prior to the project, as well as educators’ generally superficial engagement with children’s interests in the WoW. As the project proceeded, educators’ reflections on the importance of Intentional Teaching about the WoW became prominent, and educators developed a range of different strategies for promoting children’s learning about careers and for inspiring career aspirations. Children’s prior knowledge of the WoW is discussed first.
Children’s Prior Knowledge About the WoW
At the beginning of the study, educators reported children’s relative lack of meaningful knowledge about the WoW. Children described career aspirations for themselves that were often quite stereotypical or fantastical, such as “doctor, nurse, or a unicorn”
Educators noted that children didn’t really know what their parents did for work, which was attributed to parents using very simplistic terms to describe their employment: you know you ask a 4-year-old … what their dad does for a job and they usually do say he goes to work but they have no understanding of what daddy does there. (Savannah, educator, educators’ meeting 9 September 2021). And it was interesting because dad said “hey you know, you know what I do” and he [the child] said “no I don't, you go to work in the ute” and then Dad goes “I fix the power lines”. (Katie, educator, educators’ meeting 9 March 2022).
Educators also reported children’s potential misunderstandings about parental activities and the values that they represented, and had concerns about how these might impact on children’s career choices and educational trajectories. It’s you know “what does your dad do?” and his response is “He sits on the couch”. “Yep what else does he do?” “No he sits on the couch all day and he plays video games.” (Katie, educator, educators’ meeting 9 September 2021).
These early findings led educators to perceive a need to compensate for a lack of home experience or discussion about the WoW. Educators felt strongly that there were social justice issues for children, particularly where their home environment did not provide strong role models or knowledge about the WoW, in terms of barriers to understanding workplace expectations, developing career aspirations, and building the skills necessary to navigate future employment opportunities: We have a lot of children who come from families where they or their parents or their grandparents don't work so providing that there [are] alternatives. (Lena, educator, educators’ meeting 9 March 2022).
These preliminary findings from the children provided useful insights for educators on how they might integrate WoW into the curriculum, which is discussed next.
Practices for Teaching About the WoW
At the outset of the project, educators reflected on the limited coverage of the WoW in their programmes. They admitted that they frequently focused on the same kind of areas, such as “doctors and vets, and firemen and policemen” Cause sometimes you know we do you do fob off with the easy answer about what a fireman does, “yeah they put out fires” (laughter) “off to lunch chop chop” (Lena, educator, educators’ meeting 9 March 2022).
Further, educators felt that they did not explore a range of reasons for work beyond financial necessity, such as for contributing to society, and personal enjoyment and fulfillment. Instead, they focused primarily on earning money as the principal reason for adults’ work, as the following quote illustrates: When they throw their lunchboxes on the floor or they break things, we talk about, we have to work, mum and dad work to buy this… it's the easy route probably to talk about what a job is [for]. (Lena, educator, educators’ meeting 9 March 2022).
Introduction of Intentional Teaching Strategies
I guess really thinking about on those community walks that we are looking at everything that we see, and you know even if it's just the playground next to the kinder, who would work at that playground, there's gardeners, there's painters, there's maintenance men and really then you know doing some kind of questioning with the children and getting them to really think about what it would take to get that place going, what kind of work would happen there. (Savannah, educator, educators’ meeting 9 September 2021).
Reaching out to the community and deliberately seeking new experiences for children also enabled educators to highlight unusual careers. One educator explored the role of a ‘hydrologist’ with children, after watching a television clip on local flooding by a hydrologist
Educators became aware of a rich potential for drawing attention to the WoW through children’s play interests and through informal and incidental conversations with children. They recognised the opportunities for discussing careers in everyday play activities, such as introducing vocabulary and ideas about mining and excavation while digging in the sandpit (
Co-constructing Role Play Scenarios with Children
Educators planned role play areas to extend children’s more stereotypical knowledge of the workers at a workplace, such as a hospital. This involved co-construction, with educators often letting children take the lead in order to assess their current knowledge, and then engaging in shared reflection and direct teaching about the careers, tools, equipment, actions, and activities involved. There was a deliberate attempt by the educators to extend children’s thinking about what the different roles might involve, using techniques such as questioning and provocations to scaffold a deeper understanding, as this example demonstrates: Rather than just going “oh you see a doctor at at the hospital”, we were talking about hospital waste because all the band-aids were on the floor and they said “well the doctors don't pick those up” and we're like “no they probably wouldn't”. And then they go “well the nurses don't pick those up either” so then we went on to what other roles there might be. (Katie, educator, educators’ meeting 9 March 2022).
Educator’s Involvement in Play
Go-ProTM data showed that educators’ involvement in play strengthened the quality of play primarily through educators’ intentional acts of scaffolding. Educators offered new ideas and language, as in these examples: Do you think you might be the captain who steers the ship? Might you be the worker, who keeps the, is it an engineer that keeps the engine running? (Katie, educator, careers’ day observation 11 May 2022).
Educators noted the wealth of complexity that could be introduced with a little intentionality on their part: So we just highlighted those little options of “ok we need to take her for an x-ray, or is it a CAT scan we need, or is it an MRI?” Adding those little things now, I'm more conscious of [them] in the children's play (Katie, educator, educators’ meeting 9 March 2022).
Following and Building on Children’s Interests
Educators deliberately supported children in researching job roles associated with their interests (e.g. gardening), and in reframing and formulating children’s interests and passions into potential career choices: We have ipads in the kinders, so we’ve been doing lots of research, so like if they say they want to chop down trees then looking that up, looking up some video clips and finding out what the word is and do they want to be an arborist or do they want to be a you know, a woodchopper in the Melbourne Show (Savannah, educator, educators’ meeting 9 September 2021).
There was also a strong intention on the part of the educators to relate children’s more fantastical ambitions to the reality of the WoW and draw these children into a deeper exploration of the WoW through their interests. One of the girls we just couldn't sway, she wanted to be a fairy and so we talked about how can you actually do that as a job, um and she came to the conclusion that to be a fairy when you're a grown up you could put on fairy parties because she had been to a fairy party (Katie, educator, educators’ meeting 9 September 2021).
However, while the strategy of building on children’s existing career interests was highly successful for many children, it may have disadvantaged the children who were not forthcoming in expressing a career ambition. This may have led to some children receiving more intentional scaffolding of their ideas than others.
Communicating High Expectations
Educators held and continually demonstrated their high expectations for what children could achieve in the WoW. One child in particular was encouraged in her ambition to be Prime Minister. All educators consistently positioned children as capable of complex careers requiring high levels of knowledge and skill, as in the following example in which the educator deliberately substituted the child’s name for that of the scientist character: [There is] a book called ‘ADA TWIST – SCIENTIST’ … maybe we should rename it as ‘Alexa XXXXX [child’s name] – Scientist’ (Katie, educator, boat play reflection 18 February 2022).
One of the key phrases that was repeated often in one of the early childhood settings, and that encapsulated educators’ high expectations, was the idea of children being capable of “changing the world”: “We asked the children at graduation … what were they going to do to change the world?”
Discussing Learning Trajectories for Career Choices
Early reviews of the data indicated that, although high expectations for children were in place and there was greater extension of the range of possible career choices, children didn’t necessarily understand how they might reach their specific career choices. As theorised in the research literature, a detailed understanding of the learning trajectories required for different careers might be important for higher levels of motivation for reaching career goals, and educators began investigating how to explore this with children.
Educators discussed the learning trajectories required for different career aspirations by building on children’s existing knowledge about the educational pathways taken by their parents. For example, during a role play of shops, one educator took an opportunity to introduce concepts of career planning. The educator moved into ‘wondering’ what the children would need before they could start work. The children identified finishing kinder, then going to school, and perhaps going to university as career preparation. A conversation captured between two children revealed children grappling with understanding the different routes into a career: Child A: “I am building a house because I am a builder and that’s my job”. Child B: “I have a job” A: “What is it”? B: “I’m a race car driver” A: “Oh wow, did you go to school to be a race car driver”. B: “No, I just learnt how to do it” A: “You have to go to school to learn” B: “I’m going to school next year after Christmas” A: “No if you want a job you have to go to school to learn how to do a job” B: “Oh like big school for big people” A: “Yes, but Sarah said you can also learn how to do a job at work too” B: “Maybe I can do that when I learn to be a race car driver” (
This educator carefully drew out children’s knowledge about their parents’ pathways to their particular careers. One of the children at Fantail Childcare explained that his dad had to have lots of practice fixing pipes before he was a plumber. As several fathers worked as plumbers this enabled an extended conversation exploring the different types of work possible, drawing on the parents’ work (installing air conditioners, fixing guttering, fixing sinks and taps)
However, in the other two early childhood settings, very few children were able to connect their aspiration to learning institutions for their chosen careers. In these settings, educators continued to provide this information: “Ms Katie thinks you’ve got to go to university to learn to be a paramedic.”
Project Events
One centre designed a project conclusion in the form of a ‘Careers dress-up day’ which drew together opportunities to reflect on the WoW. The dress up day was somewhat successful, particularly in generating discussion and enthusiasm at home for planning for the WoW. Jamie has always said going to be a firefighter but [Mum] said he had to go and get a new helmet for his turn out there. So yeah they were really active and engaged with it. (Katie, educator, interview 20 May 2022).
However, equating a dress-up, which was constrained by the availability of costumes, with career aspiration was problematic. Despite support from the educators, many parents found the demands of finding a dress-up somewhat stressful. Practical issues with the limited range of dress-ups which could be bought at K-mart dictated children’s choice for dress-up on the day. I don't know whether the parents just gone: Careers. Need a dress-up. Here it is. I don't think they've necessarily connected with the child (Katie, educator, interview 20 May 2022).
Outcomes for Children
Alongside considerable learning for educators, there were positive outcomes for many children in terms of learning about careers. In particular, children developed confidence in expressing their aspirations for and involvement in the WoW. I’ll go to school to learn how to be a builder and then I can build houses like my dad. (Child, Fantail Childcare, documentation 04 April 2022) I’m going to be a ‘i-on-tist’ (scientist) (Alexa, child, Clover, group time discussion 18 February 2022). I want to be ....a moon walker…I wanna be an astronaut. (Child D, Clover, group time Go-ProTM footage November 2021). I'll be in the government. (Child C, Clover, group time November 2021).
Parents too reported excitement and enthusiasm for their children’s career aspirations: David's mum is super excited, because if David decides to be a brick layer, he will be the third generation of bricklayers. (Katie, educator, interview 20 May 2022).
There were even examples which showed that the discussion of careers had been extended to all family members. As one parent explained: Danielle says she wants to be an animal doctor, she's always said she wants to be an animal doctor, and I believe she can. Yep she absolutely can. And [her mum] said her sixteen year old son with a disability wants to be a judge. (Katie, educator, interview 20 May 2022).
In a series of interviews one early childhood setting initiated with children at the conclusion of the project, most children interviewed demonstrated an increased sophistication of knowledge and vocabulary for talking about their career aspirations. These were children for whom educators had initiated many incidental conversations and planned play activities, demonstrating the effectiveness of the teaching approach. In contrast, children who had remained on the periphery of activities, and had been less vocal in terms of expressing play interests about possible career aspirations, had made much less progress, and their aspirations remained simplistic and unelaborated.
Discussion
This study highlights important considerations for children’s participation in WoW experiences in early childhood, revealing some of the challenges and potentials available for children and educators within one low socioeconomic area in Gippsland, Victoria. The first important finding concerns the lack of knowledge initially demonstrated by children about the WoW and in many cases their unfamiliarity with what familiar adults did in their work. Aspirations for careers were often simplistic, as children did not have an awareness of, nor the vocabulary to describe, a range of career possibilities. Educators were highly concerned and motivated to find ways to interrupt negative discourses about the WoW and career preparation, seeing a lack of equity in children’s experiences and understanding of the WoW as a social justice issue, deepening the barriers to equitable educational and work experiences in later life.
A second finding related to children’s lack of knowledge and understanding about the ways in which to prepare for the WoW. In the setting where many parents worked in professional roles, children were more familiar with the concepts of further education and vocational training as pathways to career choices, raising the possibility that it was family experience of these educational pathways that afforded them an advantage in understanding these concepts. The finding that some children do not have a clear idea of the relation between their current and future educational activity and the WoW is significant in terms of raising motivation for participation in school (Harrison, 2018; Torii, 2018), and suggests the significance of educators’ interventions to ensure that all children are supported in these understandings, regardless of home experiences and understandings. It highlights the importance of early childhood educators explicitly supporting connections between children’s play, their educational trajectories, and future career possibilities.
As the project raised educators’ awareness of the importance of including aspects of the WoW in their curricular programmes and helped them to think more deeply about what Intentional Teaching might involve in their settings (Cherrington, 2018), educators identified successful strategies for building children’s knowledge of and positive identities in relation to the WoW. Importantly, the outcomes of this project demonstrate that raising children’s knowledge and awareness of the WoW need not represent an additional workload burden for early childhood educators (Fletcher et al., 2020). The favoured strategy here was educators’ intentional but incidental teaching, which involved making the most of teachable moments (Bruner, 1996) which developed children’s knowledge, as well as their dispositions to think and talk about careers. In contrast to the success of incidental conversations and co-constructed role plays and provocations related to children’s expressed interests, planned activities were only successful when they meaningfully extended on children’s interests. Future research should focus on confirming the efficacy of these strategies.
However, building on children’s existing interests may have led to some children having more knowledge scaffolded than others. Some children, particularly those on the periphery of planned activities, did not gain as much knowledge or confidence. It is possible that these children acquired some understandings through onlooker play (Parten, 1932), but as Wohlwend (2017) argues,
The project emphasised the significance of educators being highly intentional to frame children as powerful, agentic future citizens (Scott et al., 2020) and to strengthen their identities as contributors to the WoW. It also introduced families to the importance of career aspirations for young children as a motivator for educational success. Where educators were effective in engaging parents, children were able to gain much greater knowledge about the WoW than their peers. The relationship of parental knowledge and support to the differences in learning outcomes for children in this project suggests that the development of home-school collaborations in supporting children’s career aspirations and learning about the WoW is another important area for further research.
Limitations
This study was a small-scale exploratory study and its findings may not be transferable across contexts. Disruptions to practice in one centre led them to withdraw from the project, narrowing the scale of the research. The views of the lead educators in the two settings that continued may have determined data collection and dominated interpretations. It is entirely possible that in other contexts, differing approaches to supporting children’s learning about the WoW may have also been successful. As current understanding of the career knowledge development of children under seven is incomplete (Cinamon & Yeshayahu, 2021), there is limited evidence with which to corroborate our findings. Further research across a broader range of institutions and educators is needed to confirm and expand on the initial findings presented here, and to build the knowledge base on children’s career knowledge and motivational practices for learning about and participating in the WoW in early childhood.
Conclusion
This study reports a lack of knowledge about the WoW and its connection to educational activity for many children attending early childhood settings in one low socioeconomic area of Victoria, as well as limited and often stereotypical opportunities to explore content and play experiences related to the WoW. This may impact negatively on children’s motivation and achievement in school-based learning, which was conceptualized by educators as a social justice issue. Addressing this disparity in early childhood education settings may improve equity for children in families where adults lack employment or have experienced little success in education and are therefore ill-equipped to engage in conversations about and motivate children’s future aspirations in the WoW. When educators became intentional in raising children’s awareness of the WoW, children developed increased knowledge, and their identity as competent, capable learners and powerful, agentic future citizens and contributors to the WoW was strengthened. Exploration of the WoW enabled educators to understand and tap into children’s family contexts and strengths to enhance individualized learning. Further research is recommended to explore the purposes, potentials, and outcomes of Intentional Teaching about the WoW in early childhood education, and in particular, ways in which educators might connect children’s play and learning about the WoW to planned educational trajectories, to ensure all children are empowered to participate in exploring aspirations, and to effectively engage parents and families into children’s learning about and aspirations for careers.
Footnotes
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