Empower all students to envision a future in STEM! These best practices help educators do successful, personalized, career discovery exploration with students with disabilities.
STEM Careers Are for Everyone
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects continued growth in STEM jobs. Filling those jobs means reaching students at pivotal ages and empowering them to see themselves with a future in STEM. With career exploration tools and activities like the Career Discovery Tool, educators can demystify and unlock STEM career pathways for students, helping prepare them for exciting STEM-based career opportunities.
When exploring STEM careers with students with disabilities, it is important to personalize the process, keeping in mind diverse learning styles and accommodations that address students’ unique needs and strengths.
Best Practices for Inclusive Career Exploration
The following tips and best practices can help improve accessibility and inclusivity and lead to positive, meaningful results when exploring STEM careers with students with disabilities or varied learning styles.
- Start with self-discovery: Tools that help students recognize and identify their strengths and interests can provide an individualized starting point for talking about career paths. Interest and personality assessments, exercises that promote self-reflection, and one-on-one conversations can identify topics that students are passionate about and highlight skills and areas in which they excel.
- Try the Career Discovery Tool. The Career Discovery Tool uses students’ individual answers to questions about their interests as a framework for presenting personalized STEM career information. This personalized tool uses students’ unique interests to guide career path exploration. Educators who used the Career Discovery Tool with students indicated that the ability to see which careers were interesting to students helped guide conversations and even influenced the type of projects they brought into the class.
- Don’t make assumptions. Don’t make assumptions about which careers will be of interest to students or about what students may be capable of. Use preliminary tools and reflection to learn about students’ interests and then finetune assignments and conversations for personalized career exploration.
- Provide accommodations: Take steps to ensure that any materials or resources used in career exploration are accessible, inclusive, and meet any necessary individual accommodations. This may include providing audio or visual supports, simplifying language or content, modeling assignment steps, or providing additional time or support for completing tasks. Consider the following strategies:
- Model the use of tools and resources. For example, use the Career Discovery Tool in front of the class to demonstrate the steps students will take. After taking the survey, walk through one of your own recommended careers to highlight where different types of information appear. Tip: Make sure to point out (and click) navigational tools like arrows that show new information in the carousels, hyperlinked symbols that open to reveal additional information, “more” links, and the button to “play” the audio for narrated segments.
- Use audio support for those with difficulty reading, those who learn best by listening, or to support students who are unmotivated to read the information. (Tip! Look for the “Listen to this section” label to activate the text to speech functionality in the Career Discovery Tool.)
- Use student “buddy” pairs. Pairing students, each working at individual computers, can help provide immediate support and feedback if there are questions about using a tool or completing steps of an assignment.
- Hold one-on-one or small group sessions. It may be necessary to work separately with a student or small group of students who are having difficulty navigating a tool or assignment so that you can monitor progress and provide individual guidance.
- Focus on transferable skills: Introduce students to the idea of “transferable skills” (like problem solving, communication, attention to detail, and time management) and help them identify the skills they have (or need to build). Understanding how these skills can be applied to different career paths can build confidence and motivate new learning. This also helps students better assess how their skills fit in with certain career overviews and requirements.
- Identify transferable skills for careers of interest. Each career profile in the Career Discovery Tool highlights transferable skills used in the career in a section titled “Do you have the skills and characteristics of a [career].” For any career of interest, students can see which skills are listed and think about how those skills align with their own strengths.
- Review core tasks for careers of interest. What does someone in a specific job actually do? The “Core Tasks” section of each career profile in the Career Discovery Tool highlights tasks and responsibilities that may be typical for someone in that career. These details, coupled with the skills and characteristics, can help students better understand what a job entails and whether it sounds like something they would enjoy. (Tip! Remind students to use the arrows to show all of the Core Tasks!)
- Encourage hands-on exploration: Whenever possible, look for opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience related to different careers. This might include doing projects and activities that relate to specific careers, planning visits to local companies, arranging job shadowing or internships, or doing volunteer work. These experiences help students gain a better understanding of the tasks associated with specific careers and can reinforce their interest and inspire them to build and practice relevant skills.
- Do a related experiment. Careers recommended by the Career Discovery Tool are linked to projects and STEM activities that can help students “try out” an area of science related to a career of interest. Even without doing the experiment, students may find it helpful to explore highlighted projects (e.g., read the background information, review the steps of the experiment, and watch videos, where available) to get a better sense of an area of science.
- Help students plan for a future in STEM: You want to encourage students to be excited about future STEM opportunities, but you also want to help them understand the steps they need to take to prepare for a STEM career.
- Understand what is required. In a section called “Steps to Getting There,” the Career Discovery Tool outlines classes students should take in high school. Students can also see what the degree requirements are for careers of interest. (Note: There are sometimes multiple careers in the same field of science that have different educational requirements. It is important to help students recognize the various career pathways and educational requirements.)
- Foster mentorship: When possible, encourage students to connect with mentors who can offer valuable insight into different industries and advice on how to succeed in preparing for a particular career. When students are able to connect with someone in a STEM field of interest, they can benefit from hearing more about an individual’s firsthand experience in a specific field or job.
- Make use of career interviews. The “On the Job” section of a career profile in the Career Discovery Tool includes videos and interviews with individuals to help students gain perspective from those working in that career.
- Celebrate diversity: Remember that students with disabilities bring unique perspectives, experiences, and strengths to career exploration. Many STEM fields rely on creative thinking, troubleshooting, problem solving, and teamwork. Empower students to see that collaboration from a diverse range of thinkers enriches and advances STEM processes. Let your students know that you have high expectations for them! Your belief in their skills and abilities helps support their own developing confidence in their future in STEM.
The Career Discovery Tool
In addition to providing summary information, salary forecasting, and educational requirements, the Career Discovery Tool enables personalized career exploration. The Career Discovery Tool helps students discover and compare STEM career paths that match their interests.
Try the Career Discovery Tool today to see how it works. A multi-part lesson plan is available for guided discovery in the classroom. See the Discover STEM Careers lesson plan, which is part of a larger Career Discovery lesson.
Other Career Exploration Resources and Success Stories