DoDEA: Back to School Message From DoDDS-Pacific

Professional/Technical

Introduction Resources Standards Courses

Professional Technical Studies

Career Explorer - The Education and Career-Planning Guide for DoDEA Students

PTS INTRODUCTION:

The DoDEA Professional Technical Studies (PTS) Program offers career-related courses to middle and high school students. The PTS curriculum is organized around Career Clusters that identify pathways from secondary school to two- and four-year colleges, and the workplace. Career Clusters and Pathways represent a nationwide effort to help schools ensure that students get the knowledge and skills they need for multiple career choices by matching what is taught in the classroom to business and industry standards.

Professional Technical Studies works because it's practical as well as academic. PTS provides students with relevant contexts for learning. It's about the real world. It's about learning by doing. The PTS Career Practicum is the capstone experience.

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DoDEA CAREER CLUSTERS AND PATHWAYS (new window)

Career Clusters:

Architecture and Construction: Students explore career fields that include designing, managing, building, and maintaining the built environment.
Arts, AV/Technology, and Communication: Students explore career fields that include creating, exhibiting, performing, and publishing multimedia content.
Business, Management, and Administration: Students explore career fields that include organizing, directing, and evaluating functions essential to productive business operations.
Government and Public Administration: Students explore career fields that include executing government functions at the local, state, and federal level. ROTC is the only Pathway offered within this Cluster.
Health Sciences: Students explore career fields that include providing diagnostic and therapeutic services, health informatics, support services, and biotechnology.
Hospitality and Tourism: Students explore career fields that include managing restaurants and other food services, lodging, attractions, recreation events, and travel-related services.
Human Services: Students explore career fields that include providing for families and serving human needs. Personal Care Services is the only Pathway offered within this Cluster.
Manufacturing: Students explore career fields that include processing materials into intermediate or final products.
Information Technology: Students explore career fields that include designing, supporting, and managing hardware, software, multimedia, and systems integration.
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM): Students explore career fields that include performing scientific research and professional technical services in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics: Students explore career fields that include managing movement of people, materials, and goods by road, pipeline, air, rail, and water.

PTS INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN:

Standards-based Education (SBE) is a philosophy in which standards- guide instructional decisions at the classroom level. The focus of instruction is on student learning and expectations for learning are the same for all students. Assessment is used to guide and, when necessary, modify instruction. The final qualifier of effectiveness of instruction is whether the instruction resulted in increased student learning. There is a paradigm shift from "Teacher...to Student", from, "How well did I teach?" to "What did my students learn?" When planning for instruction, DoDEA PTS teachers should ask themselves five essential questions.

Instructional Design Essential Questions:

What do students need to learn?
What is the best way(s) to assess student's knowledge of content?
How should data be analyzed?
How should teaching and learning be designed?
How should materials and resources be evaluated and selected?

Checklist for Teacher Understanding:

I understand and can articulate in advance of teaching the achievement targets my students are expected to reach.
I can transform these targets into effective assessments that yield accurate information.
I inform my students regularly about those targets in terms they can understand.
My students can describe what targets they are to achieve and what comes next in their learning.

ASSESSMENT:

Assessment provides a method for collecting ongoing data about student learning. Assessment does not always equal "grading". Effective assessment takes place before instruction begins (pre-assessment), during instruction (formative assessment), and after instruction is completed (summative assessment).

"Good teaching is inseparable from good assessing" Grant Wiggins

Formative Assessment Essential Questions:

How will I find out how students are progressing?
How often will I need to check their progress?
How will I record the data?
What will I do as a result of the information I receive?
Do I need to refine summative assessment and rubrics?

Summative Assessment Essential Questions:

What evidence of student learning will I see?
Which assessment option(s) will be used?
How much information will I need to determine students' proficiency?
What should be the next step(s)?
How will students who struggle be supported?

PTS Scenario-based Instruction and Assessment:

In PTS curriculum development, the use of assessment scenarios is an extension of problem-based learning that functions as the context for the delivery of the PTS Standards. Scenario-based instruction provides an authentic, real-world, work situation which places skills and knowledge in the context where a solution must be demonstrated and a problem must be solved. Scenarios draw on technical, academic, intellectual, creativity, critical thinking, and workplace employability skills. The problems posed are from real-world situations in business and industry, communities and other settings.

Effective Scenarios provide realistic work situations with pre-established criteria that measure an individual's achievement of PTS standards. They require students to transfer knowledge and skills learned in the school to real life work situations. Well-designed scenarios place students in a simulated job role and setting.

Effective Scenario Development:

Requires demonstration of achievement of PTS standards
Contains sufficient information to assess the intended outcome (includes sufficient detail for students to construct a good answer)
Addresses important subject matter that requires serious thought
Contains a challenging problem
Reflects authentic workplace or other real life situations
Integrates academic content and technical skill, integrating standards
Is action oriented, interesting and motivating
Is clearly written and understandable
Includes assessment items
Includes an assessment rubric
Is appropriate for use in a variety of settings/locations