Building on Strengths While Addressing Barriers: Career Interventions in Rural Appalachian Communities

Abstract

This article describes a model for developing culturally-sensitive career education programs, framed from an ecological contextual understanding (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). This framework allows career practitioners to build on cultural strengths and values to meet the career education needs of diverse communities. To illustrate the application of this model, we describe the cultural context of rural Appalachia and offer theoretically-framed ideas of how to meet the population’s career education needs.

Assessing Postsecondary Barriers for Rural Appalachian High School Students

“…Eleventh and twelfth graders are given the option to participate in a STEMM summer camp program and leadership program as well. More information about the program can be found in Gibbons, Hardin, Taylor, Brown, and Graham (2019) and Gibbons, Brown, et al (2019). Only the results from the Barriers Scale are reported for the purposes of this article.…”

Community‐Engaged Research and Evaluation in Counseling: Building Partnerships and Applying Program Evaluation

“…Researchers should start by reading what is known about an issue or population around which they would like to develop partnership (e.g., racial disparities in access to mental health care, career development in rural communities) and exploring how that issue manifests in their community, including possible ways in which their community's experience diverges from the published research. Next, researchers should consider the cultural strengths, values, challenges, resources, and service gaps of the target group within local context (Gibbons et al, 2019). Researchers can do this by talking with community members, reading prior research, and observing interactions.…”

“…Researchers should consider the context of prior relationships to ensure they led to prior positive outcomes and strengths-based relationships (Strier, 2014). For example, Gibbons et al (2019) began with outreach to a colleague who was connected to a community development agency in rural Appalachia. They identified a need for adult career education services and a potential foundation funder.…”

Career Education: Concluding Remarks

“…However, we assume that there will be a trend toward increased use of cutting-edge technology in career education, as was already described by several researchers (e.g., Gati, Kleiman, Saka, & Zakai, 2003; Herman, 2010; Nota, Santilli, & Soresi, 2016). Such trends present both opportunities and challenges, as Gibbons et al (2019) discussed in their paper. In particular, whereas the use of ICT has the potential to increase access to career education services, it also has the potential to increase existing social gaps.…”