Introduction

Many underserved adolescents, defined as those with inequitable access to educational resources, face limited access to interventions that develop their college and career know-how. In our study, we implemented and evaluated a pilot college and career readiness curriculum intervention called Paths to the Future for All (P2F4A). P2F4A takes a developmental approach to college and career development, weaving together the procedural know-how of college and career planning with a broader focus on building social-emotional skills that support positive trajectories towards the future. We evaluated pre-post changes in adolescents’ career-related and social-emotional outcomes alongside views of their personal growth.

Methods

We used a purposeful sample of five schools in the Western region of the United States and recruited a sample of adolescents (N = 61; M_age = 16.3 years; 57.4% female) who experienced challenging academic and life circumstances to participate in P2F4A. We conducted pre-post surveys as well as focus groups and interviews with adolescents.

Results

We detected significant (p < .05) pre-post gains in adolescents’ knowledge of P2F4A curricular content and selected coping skills, such as relaxing and solving family problems. Our focus groups and interviews revealed that P2F4A helped adolescents build stronger interpersonal relationships with peers and the content was directly applicable to real life.

Conclusion

Our new findings suggest that college and career readiness curriculum interventions—if appropriately developed for and targeted to underserved adolescents—have strong potential to build underserved adolescents’ foundational skills that they can apply towards realizing their future college and career aspirations.

中文翻译：

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促进服务不足青少年的大学和职业准备：混合方法试点研究

介绍

许多服务不足的青少年（被定义为无法公平获得教育资源的青少年）在获得干预措施以发展他们的大学和职业技能方面的机会有限。在我们的研究中，我们实施并评估了一项名为“全民未来之路”(P2F4A) 的试点大学和职业准备课程干预措施。P2F4A 对大学和职业发展采取发展性方法，将大学和职业规划的程序知识与更广泛的重点放在培养支持未来积极轨迹的社会情感技能上。我们评估了青少年职业相关和社会情感结果的前后变化以及他们对个人成长的看法。

方法

我们使用了美国西部地区五所学校的有目的的样本，并招募了一个 经历过学术和生活挑战的青少年样本（N  = 61；M_年龄= 16.3 岁；57.4% 女性）参与 P2F4A。我们进行了事前调查以及焦点小组和青少年访谈。

结果

我们检测到 青少年对 P2F4A 课程内容和选择的应对技巧（例如放松和解决家庭问题）的了解有显着的 ( p < .05) 前后增益。我们的焦点小组和访谈显示，P2F4A 帮助青少年与同龄人建立更牢固的人际关系，并且内容直接适用于现实生活。

结论

我们的新发现表明，大学和职业准备课程干预——如果为服务不足的青少年适当开发并针对他们——具有强大的潜力来培养服务不足的青少年的基本技能，他们可以将这些技能应用于实现他们未来的大学和职业抱负。