Defining the Importance of Employability Skills in Career/Technical Education

Abstract

This study was designed to determine the degree to which Alabama business/marketing educators perceive the Alabama Career/Technical Curriculum Core course objectives are important in designing instruction to teach employability skills. A survey was developed and distributed to Alabama secondary business/marketing educators. Each educator was asked to assess the degree of perceived importance of including 25 objectives in designing instruction of employability skills. Additionally, these educators were asked to indicate if the following six factors impacted the incorporation of employability skills into classroom activities: (a) flexibility of course delivery method, (b) availability of community resources, (c) availability of Department of Education prepared lesson plans for implementing objectives, (d) difficulty of integrating project-based lesson plans into business/marketing coursework, (e) inability to interact with managers and company executives to identify what skills are important in the “real” world, and (f) lack of availability of professional development activities. Twenty-nine percent (29%) of the sample (n=452) of business/marketing educators returned useable surveys for analysis. Of the respondents, 70.8% indicated that they perceived all of the 25 objectives were important in designing instruction of employability skills. None of the six factors related to the incorporation of the course objectives achieved statistical significance at the .05 level. No significant differences (p < .05) were reported between/among the perceived degree of importance levels and (a) school location, (b) class of professional educator certificate, (c) years of work experience (other than teaching), and (d) current teaching method used to teach the course objectives. These results suggest that the perceived level of importance of employability skills transcends location, professional educator certification, work experience, and teaching methods.