Comprehensive Career Guidance Programs for Secondary Schools.

A handbook titled "The Educator's Handbook for Secondary Career Guidance Programs", and designed to aid the educator-counselor in formulating and implementing a workable secondary school career guidance program, was field tested in four secondary school settings in order to assess the effectiveness of the model. The handbook contained seven program components based upon a review of the literature, exemplary career guidance programs, and consultant assistance. These components are needs assessment, program organization and management, program activities for teachers and counselors, career information resource centers, community resources, counseling, placement, followup, and evaluation. A series of workshops were conducted at each of the four selected sites in New Hampshire to educate the staff in the program approach to career guidance and to familiarize them with the seven components of the model. Of the four secondary schools, three indicated that the needs assessment component was most needed and useful to them. There was general consensus that the primary benefit of the handbook was to force school guidance staff and the associated educational community to think of their guidance efforts as a program rather than a series of unrelated or random activities. As a result of the field test, the rewritten handbook was made available to each of the junior and senior high schools in New Hampshire. (TA)