The Literacies of Secondary Career and Technical Education Classrooms: A Case Study of the Delaware Pathways Program

Abstract

America’s public secondary educational system has long included vocational education in its curriculum (Castellano, Stringfield, & Stone, 2009; Kantor, 1986; Kantor & Lowe, 2004), but increasingly ties its markers of career and college readiness to the availability of Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses, as research has shown relationships between success in high school CTE courses and income levels after graduation (Aliaga, Kotamraju, & Stone, 2014; Kantor & Lowe, 2004, Edgar, 1988; Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, 2013). Understanding the academic and literacy requirements of these CTE classes is an important step toward student success. This qualitative case study (Stake, 2006) of the Delaware Pathways program identifies the literacies of the participating CTE classrooms, explores how these literacies are conceptualized by program administrators and program documents, and how they are enacted by CTE teachers in classroom settings. In this study, teachers, administrators, and stakeholders were interviewed about the literacies of the CTE classes included in the Delaware Pathways program. These interviews were coded and analyzed alongside federal, national, state, district, and building-level program documents guiding the program. Findings showed the primary types of literacy experiences occurring in these classrooms, the importance of literacy in the Delaware Pathways, the effects of the education and training of CTE teachers, the need for additional special education supports, and the continued challenges of equitable CTE education.