Approach to Early Childhood Career Advising: Using an Asset-Based Framework for Career Exploration With Educators

• In Event: Parallel Spaces of Belonging: Building Education Spaces Free of Racism and Sexism for Early Childhood Educators

Abstract

Purpose.
The proposed conceptual framework will discuss themes that support creating a trusting space and sense of belonging between early childhood educators (ECE) and career advisors (CA) to support their career exploration navigating higher education (HE). Career advising and counseling has a long tradition in HE that has its initial roots as providing career supports for traditional students, who are often high school graduates moving into college full-time, White students, upper-class, male, and students who are under 25 years of age (Cook, 2009). The ECE workforce is more likely comprised of adults who already work in the field and need to return to college to obtain the needed credentials and degrees to be qualified to teach in their early childhood classrooms (personal communication NY What Works for Children, 2023). As educators seek out career advancement, HE needs to be responsive to the needs and assets of non-traditional students (NAL)(e.g. adults older than 25 years of age).
Theoretical Framework.
The proposed conceptual framework for early childhood career advising is grounded in Yosso’s asset-based theory of the Community Cultural Wealth Model (CCWM) (Yosso, 2005). This model is informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT), which sees communities of color as having cultural assets that need to be capitalized and lifts six forms of cultural capital (e.g. aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistant capital).
Mode of Inquiry.
Approaches to career advisement do not center issues of power, positionality and agency that occur within an interaction between advisor and student. For ECE, especially NAL and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color) students, experiences with HE settings may evoke feelings of inadequacy and loss of belonging (Kaplan, 2018). I propose some initial considerations for co-developing a conceptual framework for early childhood career advisement that center educator’s assets and expertise as vital in the co-creation process of developing a career journey. Auto-ethnographic case study notes will be used to highlight common themes and experiences ECE mentioned during the advising space.
Point of View.
Eliciting ECE’s cultural wealth during the advisement session is an approach to career advisement that shifts the power dynamic and allows for shared authority in the co-creation of a student’s education journey. Developing a conceptual framework to guide how career advisors approach the advisement space is needed to support the ECE workforce. This approach can inform the advisement space to encourage educators, especially BIPOC and marginalized students to elicit often overlooked and undervalued lived experiences and skills that position them to possess the knowledge and cultural competency to pursue educational opportunities to push their career mobility.
Scholarly Significance.
Historically, career-advising approaches have focused on a top down prescriptive way of advising ECE or a student-centered approach that has its roots in White-middle class students, which have often devalued and deprioritized cultural wealth as assets (Stephenson, 2018). This approach shifts the power dynamic and creates a shared authority through an inquiry stance to learn about who the educator is and how they can imagine their educational goals.

Author

• Cristina M. Medellin, Bank Street College of Education