BECOME Education engages students to learn about themselves and the wide world of work. The BECOME program includes teacher-led lessons and a student-facing app showcasing over 50,000 careers. An intensive learning process facilitated by teachers, throughout BECOME students explore their motivations, interests and aspirations, and learn about the many ways people engage with work. Students from age 10 up examine their personal context and assumptions, learn to define aspirations for themselves and are prompted to seek out wide-ranging career ideas. They practice taking agency within an ‘experiment’ based on an idea that excites them right now, learning valuable skills for shaping their future life.
BECOME Education: Career exploration
Abstract
Resource overview
Website: Become Education
Schools use the BECOME program with students from age 10 up. The BECOME lessons and BECOME.ME app may form the base of a careers education program, or it may be a part of a student wellbeing, life design or student futures program. Throughout BECOME, students develop critical thinking skills, personal and social capability, which means it is often integrated into subject areas such as English or Personal Development, Health and Physical Education subject areas - or into Work Studies subject areas. At each year or grade, skills maps identify curriculum outcomes and the BECOME team provides training and planning assistance.
Here is a case study video of the BECOME program in action: https://youtu.be/kkbUwPPeLbE.
Schools commit about 20 hours to the program. This covers the BECOME lessons and app, agency experiment (project) and final showcase event. Teachers facilitate using the BECOME lessons and student web app simultaneously, taking students on an age-appropriate journey to open up their awareness and understanding of their personal motivations, the world of work, stereotypes and influences operating on their aspirations, and how people define success and their own place in the world (in and outside of work). A journal and series of activities helps teachers guide students into the final 'experiment', in which students begin to take agency over their own future. Students define a question about a career idea that excites them right now, develop a plan themselves and find out about this career area through contacting a professional in the field, designing an experience of the field, or undertaking research.
Finally, teachers and school leaders have access to aggregated data about what career areas students are interested in and exploring right now, helping them to design careers programs and activities that extend and engage student interests.
Description of technology
The application used by students is a single page JavaScript application running in common web browsers. It is connected to serverless API that use graph databases for storage.
Version 3.0 of the BECOME.ME app, released on 15 August 2021, melds the occupational definitions of the May 2021 release of the US Occupational Information Network O*Net database (version 25.3), with O*Net version 22.3 and ANZSCO Version 1.3. Presented under a simplified occupation cluster-based taxonomy and further extended by BECOME to provide coverage of topical and kid-popular occupations, the ability now exists to make incremental updates to the system to remain current and relevant to the regions served.
How the resource makes career guidance more effective, efficient and/or equitable for students
Many career education programs focus on the traditional decision time for young people, in their final years of schooling. Yet research, including from the OECD, indicates that student aspirations can be formed very early, well before the teenage years. BECOME helps students from age 10 up visualise their future self, shaping ideas about work and life in a space that is unpressured and safe and that presents a vast and varied universe of careers ideas for their consideration. This early intervention gives students the space to learn and practise the skills they will need to shape their own future; it helps them identify and respond to influence and bias about what jobs they can/should aspire to; it shows them how to step into the lead role as they shape their future.
For older students, this pre-work before subject selection and pathways conversations helps them to explore wider career prospects, be more deliberate about their motivations and aspirations, and articulate their interests and definitions of personal success. This can radically change career discussions as they are engaged and often excited about a future they have designed for themselves. Students are prepared to design a path to the skills and knowledge (training and education) they will need to make their personal aspirations real, yet more aware of the dynamic nature of anyone's life and career pathway.
Challenges or potential barriers to use
Access to internet enabled devices. Digital literacy.
The resource is not free of charge
Schools pay a fee per student, per calendar year for the program.
Support for users
Some schools need brief support with log in, which is provided free of charge. All schools get training and planning support as a part of the subscription.
Further advice for users
Schools that see the greatest result from the BECOME program have integrated it across multiple year levels and as a part of the school's focus on wellbeing and student futures. Using BECOME early, often and integrated across the curriculum also resulted in a significant jump in student perception that school was relevant and connected to their future. BECOME published impact data from schools using the BECOME program from age 10 (year 5) and up for the OECD Disrupted Futures conference 2021 – a recording of the presentation can be found here: https://info.become.education/findoutmore.
Additional details
This resource has been endorsed by Korowa Anglican Girls’ School, in Glen Iris, Victoria, Australia.
Disclaimer: This content is provided by the submitting organisation.
