Lesson 2 - What drives future pathways?

Introduction

What will I be learning?

You will create a picture of what you are interested in, passionate about and aspiring to now and in the future.
You will explore the various contextual factors which influence an individual’s career choices, aspirations and pathways.

Introduction video

Duration: 4:50

Watch the introduction video in full screen.

Activity 1 - Becoming a self expert

Task

Use your PDHPE workbook to answer the questions and complete the tasks within this activity.

Identify:

- three things that you like to do, whether you’re good at it or not
- three things you know you’re good at, but don’t necessarily enjoy doing
- three reasons why you like the things you like
- three reasons why you enjoy or dislike the things you are already good at.

Consider the following questions to help you work out your reasons. For example:

- Does it satisfy a need for order/ creativity?
- Do you like the feel of working with your hands/ working outdoors?
- Do you like the way it makes you feel?
- Do you enjoy doing good things for people/ animals?
- Do you get a sense of accomplishment in finishing a task?
- Do you like how people react to you when you do something well?

Activity 2 - Case studies

Case study 1 – Lee 28 years old

I have never been particularly interested or passionate about my job or career. After recently changing industries, I still feel very lost. Should I just learn to accept that I am probably never going to find passion in what I do for work or should I keep changing until I find that ‘magic’ job that ticks all the boxes?

Case study 2 – Brodie 17 years old

I am looking at all the early entry course that are offered and none of them seem to really fit what I want to do. Maybe I don’t really know what I want to do, but I think I will apply for early entry to take the stress away from the exams.

Task

Read the case studies above

What advice would you give each person?
What shapes your advice?
What drives a person’s career path?
How do the following factors influence our career path:

desire to build knowledge in a particular area
passion and interest
family pressure or tradition
what we are exposed to?

CC0 Public Domain

Activity 3 - How does passion drive choices and actions?

The Cambridge dictionary defines passion as, “an extreme interest in or wish for doing something, such as a hobby, interest or activity.”

Task 1 - Consider the following questions

What is your soul made up of? What makes you feel alive?
We learn things every day, every minute; what we love, what we hate, what we are good at, what we feel we are terrible at. If we don’t pay attention to these things, then that learning is for nothing. What experiences have you learnt from?
Who inspires you? What is it about them that makes them inspiring?
Who are you uninspired by? What don’t you want to be?

Task 2 - View the Clips

Watch the YouTube clips or read the transcripts of the following clips to build your understanding of how someone’s passion and interests drive their actions.

Video clip transcripts

Piper Stewart is a lifelong learner

Duration: 2:03

Piper Stewart

Piper Stewart is a lifelong learner from Murrumbidgee Regional High School. She created a charitable organisation, Bambigi, that teaches Aboriginal children to swim. She is a high school student who has used her skills to establish a charity and a job opportunity as a swim instructor.

Lifelong Learner - Steph Evans

Duration: 2:11

Steph Evans

Steph Evans is a lifelong learner from Northern Beaches Secondary College: Manly Campus. Steph founded Seas of change at 10 years old to raise awareness for marine conservation, and has been inspiring the next generation of conservation leaders ever since.

Task 3 - Post viewing

What was the passion or interest that drove Piper and Steph to take positive action in their communities?
Do you think that their communities would find their work valuable? Explain your answer.
How do community values impact our choices and actions in relation to employment and careers?
If a community values the work, could this drive a potential career? Explain your answer.
What is something you’re passionate about?
Where does that passion come from? What drives your passion?
Do passions change? What might cause this change?
To what extent should careers be driven by passion? Explain your answer.
How does passion drive our beliefs and actions?
Does chasing our passion increase the chances for positive outcomes? Explain your answer.

Activity 4 - The influence of contextual factors on future decisions

In this lesson, we have explored various factors which are important for future decisions. These factors are also known as contextual factors. These include knowledge or hard skills, soft skills and passion. Other factors include, but are not limited to:

individual – knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs, ability, sex, gender
sociocultural – religion, parents/carers, family, media, culture, peers, language, politics
socioeconomic – education, income, employment
environmental – geographical location, access to health services.

Part of working out what you are good at, what you are passionate about or enjoy and what you want later in life is about being aspirational. It is about identifying purpose in your life and creating a life that is meaningful and allows you to satisfy your needs. Being aspirational means having hope or ambition to achieve something.

Having purpose and meaning in your life helps you to focus on doing the things that make you feel good. When people live with purpose, they have made a decision to take control of their life. This allows for a deeper level of wellbeing rather than just finding simple pleasures, as it gives your life meaning.

Task 4 - What is your sense of purpose?

What do you love doing that is going to ensure you have a fulfilling, happy life?
What are you working towards?
What are your goals in life? What do you aspire to?

Use a T chart to record the factors that impact our ability to achieve our career aspirations.

Column 1: What enables us to achieve our career aspirations?
Column 2: What prevents us achieving our career aspirations (barriers)?

Complete this task in your exercise book or folder, or by using the Google Slides template.

Click on the image to open the template in a new tab.
Click on the 'Use Template' button to create a copy for you to edit.

Activity 5 - Future me

Task

Apply your learning from this lesson to write a letter to 'future you' in 20 years.

In your letter:

provide details of what they are doing for work or employment.
- How are they applying their strengths and skills?
- Have they followed their passion and aspirations?
describe the path they took to get to where they are in terms of study, work opportunities and building their knowledge and skills
tell them how hard they worked and why you’re proud
outline what level of satisfaction they have in their current life.

CC0 Public Domain

Extension: (optional)

Think about your future. You are making decisions about senior subject selection and planning for your future. What do you need to do to create the pathway to your success?

Have you had a look at early entry course?
Have you looked at the UAC guide and the TAFE handbook?
Have you considered school-based apprenticeships or school-based traineeships?
What volunteering options or part time work could you access?

Handing in your work

Don't forget to hand in the work you completed today!

Your teacher will have told you to do one of the following:
- Upload any digital documents you created and any photos you took of your written work to your Learning Management system (MS Teams, Google Classroom for example).
- Email any digital documents you created and any photos you took of your written work to your teacher.

Make sure you keep any hand written work you did in your exercise book or folder as your teacher may need to see these when you are back in class.

Student reflection

Let us know how you feel about this lesson.

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