Enhancing College and Career Readiness Programs for Underserved Adolescents

Supporting college and career readiness among youth who encounter significant academic and life challenges requires innovative strategies to help them envision their futures, leverage their strengths and develop dispositions that promote positive trajectories. For youth development professionals who develop and implement novel programmatic approaches to support the college and career readiness of underserved youth, it is critical to acquire a deeper evidence-based understanding of factors shaping positive career and college pathways as well as to incorporate stakeholder viewpoints in their program design and delivery. In this article, we share key insights from our program development process that can inform the work of program developers, educators and youth services providers who seek to build and enhance career and college readiness programs aimed at underserved youth. We summarize 4 key insights from a narrative review of literature on college and career readiness as well as findings from a set of stakeholders (student, parent and educator) focus groups. We offer our ideas for incorporating these insights alongside stakeholder input into the development and design of college and career readiness activities and programming.


Developing Students' Future Selves via Stories
Two central ideas from the career development literature are important when designing college and career readiness programs for adolescents. The first, drawn from Savickas's theory of career construction, emphasizes the critical role of generating personal stories in career development (Savickas, 2012). According to Savickas, individuals need to create personally constructed stories about who they are and what they want to become. He notes that "Stories constitute a critical element, because in addition to building a self, stories provide the efficient means through which an individual also builds a subjective career, that is, a story about his or her working life" (2012, p. 15). The second core idea is drawn from the literature on Future or Possible Selves (Oyserman et al., 2004). Achieving positive outcomes in both career and college relies on the importance of envisioning possible selves (Nurmi, 1991). Crafting a story helps individuals envision their future careers, linking their present selves to their future or possible selves.
Given the central role of story and its role in constructing individuals' future selves, we recommend engaging students in activities that have them construct their own stories. In contrast to Savickas, we suggest building activities that have students focus not only on stories about their future careers, but their futures more broadly, including future post-secondary educational aspirations. For example, one strategy is to have students generate stories about the experiences that shaped who they are now, known as their present selves (i.e., who they are today), and how their present selves link to their future selves (i.e., how they envision themselves in the future). One way do to this is by having students first discuss, in small groups, their histories and futures. Students can then formalize their discussions in a set of written responses about their life histories and futures that serve as small stories (Savickas, 2012). Through these smaller narratives, students can document personal events that have shaped who they are and aspirations of who they would like to become. These written artifacts allow students to construct and reconstruct their stories whose building blocks include narratives that students create about critical incidents and important figures in their lives (Savickas, 2012). Finally, students can synthesize elements of their discussion and written responses to generate a visual representation of their journey. Through this visual story mapping, students can depict who they want to become and the experiences that they need to engage in to obtain those experiences or to reach their goals.
Given that stories evolve, students should be encouraged to review, revisit and update their visual story maps at a later date. In doing so, they can more deeply reflect upon their maps alongside additional insights they have acquired about their strengths and interests which will inevitably shift over time. As student revisit their maps, an important concept to introduce to and emphasize with adolescents is career adaptability (Savickas, 1997), or the flexibility in skills and dispositions that individuals need to navigate multiple career transitions throughout the course of their career trajectories. This notion of adaptability can be reinforced as students discuss different career and college possibilities.

Expanding Career and College Possibilities
Though stories form a critical foundation for future selves, the narratives that underserved youth create about themselves and their futures may be constrained by images in popular media and textbooks, and expectations they see of themselves. Unfortunately, underserved youth often are exposed to deficit-based narratives of who they are (Pollack, 2012). To overcome these deficit perspectives, students need to expand and transform their sense of what is possible for them in the future (Rossiter, 2009). This requires them to be exposed to the widest range of possible selves in both career and college options.
To accomplish this, we suggest exposing students to a range of career options, including nontraditional careers. For example, students can learn to identify non-traditional careers and then determine whether there are non-traditional jobs that fit within their chosen interest areas.
Career role models are also important, especially those with backgrounds and experiences that align with the students' own backgrounds. Social cognitive career theory suggests that role models can play a pivotal role in promoting career and educational aspirations (Karunanayake & Nauta, 2004). Such models can not only promote positive character development (Johnson et al., 2016), but they can be especially critical for marginalized youth because strong role models can help individuals challenge their own deeply internalized stereotypes as well as act as exemplars for how to successfully navigate systemic discrimination in educational institutions and the workforce (Karunanayake & Nauta, 2004). To expose students to role models, activities can be developed so that students are introduced to and network with community members who share similar backgrounds with the students. For example, we recommend that students have the chance to interact with, hear from and be mentored by more experienced youth who share their backgrounds, especially youth who may have attended and graduated from the same schools and have gone on to pursue career and college opportunities.

Behavioral Strategies to Promote Success Among Underserved Youth
Youth will commit sustained effort towards a possible self when there are behavioral strategies and social context supports to help them work on the possible self, when the possible self feels congruent with important social identities, and when difficulty working towards the possible self is normalized Phalet, Andriessen, & Lens, 2004;Yowell, 2002). This is particularly important for youth from certain underserved groups (e.g., youth from low income, rural or minority backgrounds), since these groups are more likely to display divergent aspirational and expected selves, and tend to have fewer academic or occupational possible selves (Oyserman & Fryberg, 2006). Importantly, these behavioral strategies can be operationalized as a set of navigational tools that can serve as a bridge between the stories that students generate about themselves and their futures and the procedural knowledge related to colleges and careers. Core behavioral strategies can include stress management, building resilience and goal setting. Research shows that students benefit from developing emotional regulation skills and learning how to manage stress (Gockel, 2015;Mendelson et al., 2010). Further, other studies have shown that students benefit from developing self-advocacy skills (Anctil et al., 2008;Milsom et al., 2004;Mishna et al., 2011), and self-determination skills (Sinclair et al., 2017).
Regarding social context supports, research shows that students' social environment can shape their views of their possible selves (Clinkinbeard & Murray, 2012). Students' peers, families and teachers can provide crucial supports including positive feedback, validation, and encouragement. Together, these supports can help students build confidence thereby leading them to develop concrete strategies that they can enact to realize their possible selves. Given this, we suggest that college and career readiness programs incorporate activities that promote peer interaction and build community among students. For example, one key strategy that can be woven throughout any new or existing program is offering periodic, brief (10 minutes) and intentional check-in points that allow students to share their experiences with each other in either a large or small group setting. During this check-in time, students can share a dilemma, problem or achievement in their lives and then peers can offer ideas and feedback. One structure we recommend is first asking students who would like to share, then having students state their dilemma or problem in one to two sentences. Then, students decide the type of response they would like from their peers: (a) no response, just listen; (b) help me find options; or (c) advice needed. When paired with content related to generating stories and their future selves, this check-in time can offer students a unique opportunity to reflect on their own journeys of self-discoveries about who they are and what they aspire to become.

Emphasizing Strengths and Assets
Career development literature indicates that vocational decisions are strongly influenced by how people view themselves (Leondari, 2007). During adolescence, youths' career aspirations and beliefs about their abilities predict their occupational attainment in adulthood (Schoon, 2001).
Given the significant role of a person's self-view in career envisioning and attainment, it is important to help underserved adolescents focus on their unique strengths and assets, and to validate their funds of knowledge. Moll and colleagues (1992) define funds of knowledge as: "historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being" (p. 133). González and Moll (2002) demonstrated that when students investigate and document their numerous funds of knowledge, it can help them validate their identities.
To support underserved adolescents in exploring their funds of knowledge and discovering their distinct strengths, it is important for students to build self-awareness and self-understanding, learn to identify and utilize their personal strengths, and practice strategies to communicate these strengths effectively. As previously described, one of the central activities we recommend is having students create a visual map that helps students trace important life events and reflect on accomplishments and life experiences that have contributed to the formation of their identity. Through this activity, not only do students craft an overarching narrative about themselves and their futures, but students also use their funds of knowledge to define their self, which can help them transform their funds of knowledge into funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014). Funds of identity are the "historically accumulated, culturally developed, and socially distributed resources that are essential for a person's self-definition, selfexpression, and self-understanding" (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014, p. 31). By tapping into a students' funds of identity, the construction of their life stories and career maps helps them discover what they value, as well as where they want to go and how to go about getting there.
We also recommend that students be explicitly taught how to leverage their strengths to assist them in securing employment and applying for post-secondary education. For example, to distinguish their strengths, students can participate in a self-discovery activity where they identify positive experiences from their past (things they feel they did well, enjoyed doing, and are proud of). Students can then prioritize these experiences to identify their top positive experiences. Then, students can use a list of strength categories (e.g., helping, communication, educating/instructing, leading/managing, numbers/details, physical/manual, problem solving/research, and creative/artistic) to discern their personal strengths. Next, students practice talking about their identified strengths with the understanding that they need to be able to talk about their strengths in an authentic and compelling way for future job or school interviews.

Stakeholder Perspectives on College and Career Readiness Programming
To further inform the development of college and career readiness programming, we strongly believe that centralizing the voices and experiences of stakeholders, especially the students themselves, is critical. Thus, we conducted a series of focus groups to capture the opinions of students and parents who have been often marginalized from the career planning and development process. We spoke with a purposeful sample of youth, parents, and educators (teachers, school staff or school administrators) recruited from two high schools in California and four high schools in Oregon. We selected these sites because they serve high percentages of underserved students and had expressed interest in participating in a potential pilot implementation of a college and career readiness intervention. Participating youth in our focus groups experienced individual and family risk factors that significantly increased their likelihood of dropping out of school including (a) low school achievement, (b) retention/over age for grade, (c) poor school attendance, (d) pattern of behavior referrals/suspensions, (e) low family socioeconomic status, or (f) identified with a learning or emotional disability (Hammond et al., 2007).
At each school site, we conducted one student focus group, one parent focus group and one educator focus group, for a total of 18 focus groups. Our focus groups included 37 students, 18 parents and 48 educators, for a total N = 103. Average focus group sizes were n = 6 for students, n = 3 for parents, and n = 8 for educators. Appendix B describes key demographic characteristics of our student, parent and educator focus group participants across six schools.
We developed separate focus group protocols for students, parents and educators, and each protocol covered questions in three central areas: (a) barriers and facilitators that impact academic achievement and school engagement for high school youth facing academic challenges or dropout, (b) curricular components and activities that should be included in a college and career readiness program, and (c) potential implementation approaches for a college and career readiness program. Our focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed.
We coded our focus group data using a two-stage approach (Miles et al., 2013). First, we developed a broad set of descriptive codes based on our initial review of the transcripts. Then we used descriptive codes, such as "strategies for college and career readiness" and "barriers to education and career outcomes" to assign concrete labels to individual passages of text. In the second phase of analyses, we used cross-case methods (Miles et al., 2013;Patton, 2014) to further describe and verify our findings. Our focus group findings provide helpful guidance to program developers in two key areas: (a) programmatic content and (b) preferred learning approaches, which are described below.

Perspectives on Programmatic Content
Through our focus groups, students, educators, and parents collectively identified five key topics essential to college and career readiness programming: (a) basic employability or "soft skills," (b) personal strengths, (c) mindfulness activities, (d) developing goals, and (e) career and college readiness skill building.

Basic Employability or "Soft Skills"
First, focus group participants thought that academic skills in isolation were not sufficient for career and college readiness. Instead, young people preparing for the future also need to demonstrate basic employability or "soft skills," often defined as a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character or personality traits, and attitudes that enable people to navigate their environment and interact effectively with other people. One teacher remarked, "My thought is that not only do they have the academic skills but they also have the soft skills and that they're able to get along with others and they have skills to problem solve," while another noted, "One of the most important things for our youth is all the soft skills-how to communicate, how to have relationships, positive relationships with people, how to ask for help when needed." Other important soft skills and traits specifically identified by focus group participants included: advocacy, communication, coping, time management, adaptability, grit, persistence, and hope.

Personal Strengths
Second, focus group participants felt students need to not only understand their strengths, but also learn how to use them to develop their goals and future plans. One teacher shared, "I see a lot of kids who learn about their personal strengths, but they never figure out how to actually use their personal strengths to do something."

Mindfulness Activities.
Third, student focus group participants expressed an interest in exploring mindfulness activities, which might include deep breathing exercises, mindful walks, meditation, yoga, etc. One student shared his personal experience with mindfulness, "When I started meditating about a year back, I haven't done it as much as I used to in the last few months, but it changed my personality so much, and I didn't get angry at all." Similarly, teacher focus group participants validated student interest in mindfulness. One teacher shared, "They love it. I did start meditation every morning last semester and there was a lot of buy-in. . . . I think it was extremely helpful and I had a lot of kids very vocal about how grateful they were." Therefore, we recommend program developers consider ways to integrate mindful techniques into daily class activities.

Developing Goals
Fourth, focus group participants indicated students need to learn how to define and set realistic goals. A teacher shared, "You want to be a video game developer. Okay. That's a great goal.
But what are all the little goals, steps that we need to take to get to that one? And is that viable?" To emphasize goal-setting, program developers may want to develop activities that help students construct goals using the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable/attainable, relevant, timely) approach. Furthermore, other participants cautioned that goal-setting alone is not enough. Instead, students need to be supported in developing a clear plan for transitioning into college and/or careers directly after high school. A student explained, "I guess you could say it would be helpful but not exactly setting goals because anybody can set a goal. It's more helping us achieve and helping us think of ways to achieve our goals would be more helpful."

Career and College Readiness Skill Building
Finally, focus group participants felt that college and career readiness also involved being able to demonstrate a number of career-related competencies and skills including both academic and employability skills. Educators and students both emphasized the importance of academic skills such as reading, writing, and study skills and the ability to apply those skills to complete required coursework and credits needed for high school graduation. A teacher reflected, "I think to start with we look for students who are well-rounded and complete a variety of tasks and courses at school. Obviously completing the required courses and the correct amount of credits." Study and organizational skills were also important to students. One noted that to be successful in college and careers, you need "to be able to plan when you're gonna do your homework, when to study and what time you have to go to school, or work." In addition, student participants stressed the need to understand specific transition skills required to apply for both employment and college opportunities. Many students believed that to be ready for post-school opportunities, they needed specific instruction in skills such as writing a resume, applying and interviewing for jobs, and completing the process of applying for financial aid or scholarships to attend college. Considering the prospect of finding employment, one student said, "I think that creating your own resume from stuff you have actually done would be helpful, . . . and then in addition just tips on what to do, like how to get an interview." Since focus group participants highlighted the importance of career and college skill building activities (e.g., career and college exploration, interviewing, resume writing, etc.), programs should offer students opportunities to build critical skills to promote job and college success and embed them within more traditional career and college exploration activities.

Perspectives on Preferred Learning Approaches
Our focus group feedback not only highlighted substantive content that students, teachers and parents preferred in a college and career readiness program, but also highlighted the types of activities and instructional approaches all three groups preferred. For instance, focus group participants universally recommended that experiential learning was highly valuable for college and career exploration, awareness, and visioning. Several parent participants specifically cited career technical education as contributing to successful post-school career opportunities, noting that "Because of that welding class, he is very successful, and it all comes down to that welding class. It was important to him. . . . and then he had somebody in town here give him a chance in their shop." Another family member remembered that their child "went through the automotive program and he was really excellent, and he really loved it and he figured out his brain is wired to do those kinds of things." Other career-related opportunities suggested during focus groups included: field trips to local businesses, college tours, career inventories, career-related clubs, and guest speakers representing various careers. All of these career-related learning activities exposed youth to a range of career pathways and potentially inspired them to expand aspirations. A teacher remembered that, "I think it's important that we have guest speakers who . . . traveled down the same road that they've traveled and become successful. There's been a couple times when we had college students who have been in juvenile hall or even been in prison and have come back and spoken with our students and they've said, 'Wow, if they can do it, I can do it.'" Focus group participants identified career-related learning along with guidance and support from trusted adults as key elements that can shape and influence career and college readiness for underserved youth. As one educator remarked, "Anytime you offer them something that has a road out of high school that's realistic and something they can understand, and get their teeth sunk into, so to speak, they're very interested in that." A parent also focused on future options for her son despite previous struggles and challenges in school. "And that's why I have such high hopes. . . . He's still capable of having his own version of success and being a productive member of society and everything leading up to this point has taught him to the contrary." Hence, we recommend that programs consider incorporating interactive student-centered learning approaches, including guest speakers, field trips to businesses and work sites, a college or university campus visit, a college student panel, and mock interviews.

Guidance for Youth Development Professionals
In synthesizing themes from our literature review and focus groups, we offer three key recommendations for how youth development practitioners can use our findings to guide and inform practice.
First, in addition to helping youth develop the "hard" skills of college and career planning (e.g., filling out applications and preparing required materials), programs should provide rich and varied opportunities for students to develop and practice behaviors integral in helping underserved youth build their confidence. For instance, themes from both the literature review and focus groups centered on the notion of helping youth develop personal strengths, and providing opportunities for them to practice strategies to communicate these strengths effectively in work and post-secondary educational settings. Not only were strengths relevant, but also the behaviors and dispositions important to navigating their career and college experiences-especially the soft skills including social and communication skills necessary to interact effectively with people.
Second, as we found through our focus groups, practitioners themselves alongside parents felt that helping students set goals is important when engaging them in thinking about careers and college. Practically, as we suggest, introducing students to how to develop goals using a SMART approach is one way to do this. Beyond the importance of goal-setting in and of itself, when considered with our literature review findings on future selves, we recommend that goal-setting attached to career and college aspirations should also be interwoven through a series of activities by which students construct meaningful stories of who they are and who they want to become; importantly, these stories of their future or possible selves, can be informed by sets of written activities that are then formalized onto visual maps. Further, when helping youth establish career and college goals, it is critical to first expose them to as many different possibilities of what they can aspire to become that are congruent with their own social identities.
Finally, any college and career readiness program needs to be supported by active learning strategies that are student-centered. As we found in our focus groups, not only are active approaches preferred over passive or direct instruction methods, but our review of the literature highlighted the importance of leveraging students' funds of knowledge-or the culturally relevant knowledge and assets they bring into the learning environments. Using active learning methods (e.g., experiential learning) combined with their funds of knowledge can help deepen their engagement in activities and programs aimed at promoting college and career readiness.

Conclusion
Providing robust college and career readiness programming-informed by the literature and stakeholder perspectives-can offer youth novel opportunities to develop a clearer sense of future opportunities for their success. By introducing underserved youth to content (e.g. career and college options) and providing opportunities to practice new skills and behaviors (e.g., communication, problem solving, coping skills), we hope that students who have been traditionally underserved in college and career planning efforts can fulfill their college and career aspirations. Our study identified several topics that may not be present in traditional college and career readiness programming (e.g., exposure to a broad range of possible selves, constructing personal stories, mindfulness, leveraging personal strengths, grit, adaptability, etc.), which we believe all students, and particularly underserved students, would benefit from explicit instruction in. Our study further recognized innovative strategies teachers can use to facilitate learning opportunities (e.g., experiential learning, interactive activities, etc.). Finally, more broadly, the themes we have gleaned from both the literature alongside stakeholder perspectives reviewed in this article can raise critical awareness among key stakeholders, including youth program developers, of the skills, attitudes and knowledge that underserved youth need as they plan and prepare for their careers and post-secondary educational pathways.  In the first study survey data were collected from a sample of 315 seventh-grade students.

Literature Search Results: Studies Related to College and Career Readiness
In the second study, survey data were collected from a different sample of 220 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders.  Oyserman, 2007Oyserman, , 2009    were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 9 were missing or more than one race).