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Family Matters . . . in School-to-Work Transition
A Research Update for Policymakers and Educational Leaders
Wendy L. Way
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Marilyn R. Rossman
University of Minnesota
National Center for Research in Vocational Education
California at Berkeley
2030 Addison Street, Suite 500
The Office of Vocational and Adult Education
Department of Education
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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- The Importance of Families
- Changing Families
- Gender Roles
- The Study
- Proactive Families
- Inactive Families
- Authoritarian Families
- Strong Work Values
- Adolescents' Voices
- Policy Recommendations
As never before, the nation is focused on improving the school-to-work
transition for youth and adults. Families play a crucial role in the workplace
readiness of their members. Education leaders and policymakers need to
understand how families contribute to readiness for work, and to explore ways
to enhance and improve families' participation.
Leaders such as the U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley have recognized the
importance of family, characterizing it as "life's first teacher," and
emphasizing its place in nurturing educational success. As Marshall and Tucker
wrote in Thinking for a Living, "it will do the country little good...to
restructure schools unless we make families better learning systems and include
families as integral components of restructured schools." Since the family is
in a position to exert influence both before and after job prep interventions
by schools, it makes sense to improve our understanding of its role.
Yet the family is usually overlooked or downplayed as a contributor to
school-to-work programs. The 1994 School to Work Opportunities Act targets
families, for example, for just two roles: contributors to career exploration
and choice, and partners in designing and administering educational programs.
Despite establishing a national education goal for parental involvement in
schools, Goals 2000: The Educate America Act of 1994 makes no specific
connection between education for work and parental involvement in education.
Why is the family's essential role in enhancing education for work not better
understood? One reason is that Americans are used to isolating family life
from work life. Many of today's adults grew up in the 1950's when the typical
family was comprised of a male breadwinner, children, and a stay-at-home wife
This configuration now represents only about 7% of all U.S. families. Today,
two-thirds of all women work outside the home, including about two-thirds of
all mothers with children and almost half of all mothers with children under a
year old. Clearly, workforce education policy and practice cannot continue to
separate family and work according to a model of the family based in the past.
Society's gender roles have a strong effect. Male experience is often taken to
be the standard, and therefore policy is often designed primarily from the male
viewpoint. In male experience, it's easier to separate work from family. For
instance, it is still more socially acceptable for men to put occupational work
ahead of family work (e.g. staying late at the office or plant; traveling on
business) and for women to put family work ahead of occupational work (e.g.
staying home with a sick child). This male experience standard is frequently
applied in developing educational policy related to work. In addition, several
unexamined assumptions limit the recognition of the family's role. These
Recent research has revealed that these assumptions are by no means
valid across the board. Lessons from Life's First Teacher: The Role of the
Family in Adolescent and Adult Readiness for School-To-Work Transition, a
recent study from the National Center for Research in Vocational Education,
paints a richer picture of the complex family roles in influencing
school-to-work transition readiness.
- the assumption that the family contributes to preparation for work mainly
- the assumption that the only
aspects of family functioning that bear on school-to-work transition are
planned parental involvement in academic work or specific career development
- the assumption that there is little meaningful interaction between
occupational work roles and other life roles such as family.
Readiness for School-to-Work Transition has been analyzed as consisting of
career maturity (vocational identity and career decision) and work
effectiveness skills (past work performance, ability to compete for employment,
and future capacity for advancement in a chosen occupation). NCRVE's study
analyzed how relationships among individual and family background
characteristics, family functioning styles, and individual learning strategies
affect these work readiness indicators.
Policy aimed at enhancing parental involvement in schooling usually targets
parent-to-child interactions about children's career exploration, and
activities like participation in schoolwork. These authors discovered that in
reality, the day-to-day background functioning style of the family has as
direct an impact on the work readiness of students as more obvious
Families which maximize work readiness operate in proactive ways. These
Behaviors like these encourage members to explore their world more
broadly by developing a sense of personal security, developing confidence in
expressing oneself and making one's own decisions, and developing
organizational skills and ways to manage conflict. All these qualities are
essential for work readiness.
- are well-organized, cohesive and expressive
- speak their mind and manage conflict positively
- seek out ways to grow and have fun
- make decisions with reasoned discussion and democratic negotiation.
Proactive families also help children develop learning skills which are useful
in their school careers. In order to learn well, individuals need personal
characteristics such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; self-efficacy; and
critical thinking. And work readiness itself depends on these learning
Families which are more inactive have a poor effect on school-to-work
transition. These families seem unable to function well either because they
cannot set guidelines, or because they don't pursue interests that involve
places and persons outside the family, or because they use a
laissez-faire rather than proactive approach to family matters. Such
habitual ways of functioning make it more difficult for adolescents to develop
self-knowledge and to differentiate their own goals from their parents'
Authoritarian families seem to encourage students to indicate plans to continue
with education beyond high school, perhaps as a response to family pressure.
However, these families make no contribution to school-to-work transition
readiness, defined as career maturity and work effectiveness skills.
The study also found that strong work values in a parent's family of origin
improve school-to-work readiness in both youth and adults. These values may
Some of the ways families influence work readiness are clear-cut. Parents can:
- Be your own person; don't be overly dependent.
- Accept differences among people.
- Be helpful to others.
- Be responsible for your own actions.
- Choose work where there's opportunity for advancement.
- Match personal interests and skills to the job requirements.
- Find work that gives the chance to do something personally fulfilling.
As discussed, the day-to-day functioning style of the family is also a
powerful influence. Qualities such as support, interest, and openness can give
kids a tremendous boost. One adolescent reported: My parents are behind me
no matter what I do. It's basically whatever I've decided. Just when I need
to talk to them, they're always there. If I need their help, like with a
decision, I'll ask them like, what they think, and then from there like I can
decide what I should do.
- help children financially by paying for schooling
- convey expectations. One teenage student describes his parents as "always
pushin' me to be better. I guess than what they had. They always said you
know, you need
to go to college and get a career you know, to be something."
- communicate words to live by
- provide career information and networking contacts.
Other behaviors can be experienced as pushing or controlling. Another
"It got to that point where they were pushin' me just a little too hard and a
little too fast. Change is hard...for awhile there I was really, you know,
reconsidering, am I doing this for them or am I doing this for me."
In other experiences, the family serves as a context for interpreting realities
associated with work. This occurs through:
"My mom was very determined to get into what she wanted to do, which
was the airline. It was kinda neat to watch her, you know, struggle to get
where she wanted. And she ended up getting what she wanted. And that kinda
helped me. If you try hard enough for long enough, you'll get it."
- workplace stories
- anxiety about children's future
- modeled work behaviors.
Today's educational reform initiatives are largely focused on improving work
skills. Work skills which will upgrade socioeconomic status are not, however,
a magic gateway to bright occupational futures. An individual's success is
mediated by the family and how it functions. Therefore, initiatives designed
to aid school-to-work transition must pay more heed to involving and
strengthening the family.
In order to improve the parental role in work readiness, policy needs to work
on linking home and school by nurturing parent involvement in education. But
since the day-to-day functioning of families has a powerful effect on the
school-to-work transition readiness of students, policy must also consider
strategies to help parents become more proactive in their day-to-day
functioning at home, as well as ways to insure that families help establish
good work values.
Today's unparalleled discussions regarding educational reform provide an ideal
context for giving more attention to linkages between family and work
readiness. The time seems appropriate to extend these discussions into the
arena of workforce education policy and practice.
The summary information contained in this update has been extracted from other
manuscripts developed by the project directors, Wendy L. Way, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, and Marilyn Martin Rossman, University of Minnesota-St.
For further reading on how parents can help nurture work readiness, see the
Way, W.L. and Rossman, M.M. (1994). The interrelation of work and family: A
missing piece of the vocational education research agenda. Journal of
Vocational Education Research, 19(2), 1-24.
Way, W.L. and Rossman, M.M. (1995). Lessons from life's first teacher: The
role of the family in adolescent and adult readiness for school-to-work
transition. Berkeley, CA: National Center for Research in Vocational
Way, W.L. (1991). Frameworks for examining work-family relationships. In G.
Felstehausen and J. B. Schultz (eds.), Work and family: Educational
implications (pp. 1-23). Peoria, IL: Glencoe Division,
Way, W.L. (1994). Family, work, and human development: An approach to
developing curricula. In F. M. Smith & C.O. Hausafus (Eds.), The
Education of Early Adolescents (pp 119-129). Peoria, IL: Glencoe
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