Professional Extension: Research and Resources

The research underneath this Learning Outcome comes from two closely connected areas. The first is childhood career-related learning and development: how young people learn about themselves, become aware of possibilities and begin connecting their interests and developing skills with roles in the world around them. The second is self-efficacy: how experiences influence what young people believe they are capable of doing. They meet naturally in this Learning Outcome, but they should not be given equal curricular weight. SP2 asks students to relate their skills and interests to life roles and opportunities. Self-efficacy helps us understand an important part of K2: what happens when a student begins considering, choosing or trying some of those possibilities.

Research Afterburner

Godden, L., et al. (2025). Exploring Possibilities! Journeying Through Career-Related Learning in Grades 4–6. CERIC. This Canadian work is particularly useful because it sits very close to the age and developmental purpose of this Learning Outcome. Career-related learning in Grades 4–6 is framed around exploring self, interests, abilities and possibilities rather than asking children to make premature career choices. That strongly supports the PEWS emphasis on relating what students know about themselves to a widening range of roles and opportunities. The value is not predicting where a child will eventually go. It is helping them see more possibilities and make better connections.

Godden, L., et al. Supporting Career Development in Children: A Literature Review. CERIC. This review provides the broader evidence base behind career-related learning during childhood. Of particular importance here is the understanding that children's ideas about work, roles and what may be possible for them begin developing well before high school. Experiences at home, school and in the community contribute to that developing map. For Grade 6, the implication is not to accelerate career planning but to broaden exposure and help students connect their emerging self-knowledge with possibilities they may not previously have considered. Hartung, P. J., Porfeli, E. J., & Vondracek, F. W. (2005). Child Vocational Development: A Review and Reconsideration. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 66, 385–419. This influential review challenges the idea that career development suddenly begins when adolescents start choosing courses or considering employment. Childhood already contains exploration, interests, developing competencies, expectations and ideas about possible future roles. For this Learning Outcome, that supports a developmental approach in which Grade 6 students explore relationships between themselves and opportunities without being pushed toward occupational commitment. Possibility before prediction is a useful way to carry that research into teaching.

Where Self-Efficacy Enters

The self-efficacy research becomes important once students move from I see how this relates to me toward Could I do something with this? That distinction matters. Self-efficacy does not redefine SP2 and is not another outcome for teachers to assess. It helps explain the confidence, decision-making and challenge language already present in K2. Usher, E. L., & Pajares, F. (2008). Sources of Self-Efficacy in School: Critical Review of the Literature and Future Directions. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 751–796. This is one of the most useful reviews for educators because it examines how self-efficacy develops in school settings rather than treating confidence as a vague personal characteristic. The authors examine mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion and physiological or emotional states as sources students use when judging their capabilities. The review also adds an important caution for teaching: these sources do not operate identically for every learner, task or context. For CD2, the practical message is that experience gives students evidence about capability, but teachers should avoid turning that into the simplistic claim that every challenge automatically builds confidence.

Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., & Hackett, G. (1994). Toward a Unifying Social Cognitive Theory of Career and Academic Interest, Choice, and Performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45, 79–122. Social Cognitive Career Theory provides an important bridge between the two halves of this Learning Outcome. It describes relationships among self-efficacy beliefs, interests, expectations, goals, choices, actions and environmental influences. Teachers do not need to teach the theory to Grade 6 students. Its value is explanatory: noticing an interest does not automatically produce a choice, and seeing an opportunity does not mean a student believes they could participate in it. This helps explain why relating an interest or skill to an opportunity and believing oneself capable of acting within that opportunity are connected but different developmental steps. Lent, R. W., & Brown, S. D. (2019). Social Cognitive Career Theory at 25: Empirical Status of the Interest, Choice, and Performance Models. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 115, 103316. This later review examines the empirical development of Social Cognitive Career Theory over its first 25 years. It reinforces the importance of considering self-efficacy alongside interests and contextual supports and barriers rather than treating personal motivation as if it operates independently of environment. That is particularly useful for the equity boundary in CD2. A student's participation in an opportunity reflects more than interest or confidence; access, support and circumstances matter as well.

Lent, R. W., & Brown, S. D. (2006). On Conceptualizing and Assessing Social Cognitive Constructs in Career Research: A Measurement Guide. Journal of Career Assessment, 14(1), 12–35. This is primarily a professional rather than classroom resource, but it sharpens an important distinction in the Teacher Guide: self-efficacy should be understood with appropriate specificity. “I am confident” is far less informative than confidence about performing a particular action under particular circumstances. That supports the CD2 approach of asking confidence to do what? rather than labelling a child globally as confident or lacking confidence.

Opportunity and Context Matter Too

The research becomes distorted if self-efficacy is separated from opportunity. Students build beliefs about what they might be able to do partly from the experiences available to them, and those experiences are not evenly distributed. Family networks, geography, finances, accessibility, school and community offerings, cultural expectations, media exposure and stereotypes all influence which roles students encounter and which opportunities they get to explore. A student with limited exposure may therefore have less evidence from which to judge a possibility. Absence of experience should never be interpreted automatically as absence of interest, ability or potential. This is one reason the curriculum verb relate is so important from an evaluation perspective. A student can demonstrate sophisticated understanding of how an interest or skill relates to a role or opportunity without ever having access to that opportunity. Trying something may produce valuable new self-knowledge and contribute to self-efficacy, but access to the experience cannot become a hidden assessment requirement.

Exceptional Resources Worth Opening

CERIC | Exploring Possibilities! Journeying Through Career-Related Learning in Grades 4–6 This is the closest practical Canadian resource to the developmental territory of CD2. It is worth opening for examples of how career-related learning with younger students can remain exploratory, connected to self-knowledge and broad in its treatment of possibilities without becoming premature career selection. CERIC | Career Development in Children resources Useful for teachers or resource developers who want to understand why this work begins before secondary school. The strongest contribution is developmental framing: childhood experiences, interests, relationships and exposure already contribute to how young people understand possibilities. Alberta ALIS | Self-Knowledge and Career Exploration Resources ALIS materials are generally designed for learners making more advanced career decisions than Grade 6 students, so they should not simply be transferred downward. Their broader sequence of knowing yourself, exploring possibilities, making decisions and taking action is nevertheless useful professional background. For CD2, we deliberately stop much earlier and keep the emphasis on exploration and relationships rather than pathway selection. Usher & Pajares | Sources of Self-Efficacy in School For a teacher or resource developer wanting one deeper academic reading on the confidence component of K2, this is the place to start. It provides considerably more precision than generic discussions of confidence and explains why experience, observation, feedback and students' interpretations of their own responses all matter.

Final Teaching Perspective

There is a tempting version of this Learning Outcome in which students list their interests, match them to several jobs and finish by being told to believe in themselves. The research points toward something much more useful. Grade 6 students are developing a map of themselves and of the world around them. SP2 asks them to begin connecting those maps. I enjoy this. I am learning to do this. Where else might those things matter? Why? That is relate, and it remains the central learning and evaluation destination. The aim is not greater certainty about a future occupation. It is greater capacity to recognize meaningful connections and a broader awareness of where those connections might lead. K2 then gives students a way to begin acting around those possibilities. They make decisions. They consider challenges. Sometimes they try something. Experience may tell them that they enjoyed it, disliked it, need more practice, handled more than expected or want to explore something different. Self-efficacy helps teachers understand part of what is happening during that process. Confidence is not simply poured into a student before action. Beliefs about capability develop through experience, observation, credible support and the way students interpret what happened.

But that mechanism must stay in its proper place. A student does not need access to an opportunity in order to understand its relationship to an interest or skill. They do not need high confidence to demonstrate SP2. They do not need to try something simply because they identified a connection. Exploration strengthens the learning; relating demonstrates the SP. If students leave this Learning Outcome thinking, I don't have to know what I want to become. I am getting better at noticing what interests me, recognizing the skills I am building and seeing where those things might matter. If I choose to explore one of those possibilities, the experience may teach me something else about myself, then the curriculum has travelled considerably further than an interest-to-career matching exercise.

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