School-business partnerships: A case study in an urban area

Advancing technology demands workers who are equipped with the higher-order cognitive skills of analysis and problem-solving. Opportunities for upward mobility are increasingly reserved for those who possess the ability to learn how to learn. Recent studies have shown, however, many of our students do not master these higher-order skills, and they graduate unprepared to meet the challenges of the changing workplace. Although traditional vocational education attempts to prepare students for work, high school shops are devoid of the vitality of real-life worksites. If vocational students became interns in their field, they would have the opportunity to serve as apprentices in the types of real-world problem-solving and decision-making systems they will enter as adult citizens. In order to create this environment for hands-on experiences, I initiated a school/business collaboration between the Culinary Arts Department of a large, urban vocational/technical high school and a large food services organization and reported the outcome of my efforts in the form of a case study. Throughout the process of establishing the partnership, I kept detailed fieldnotes and journals, which later provided the basis for analysis and assessment of the collaborative experience. Through interviews with student interns, the director of food services in the partner corporation, the culinary arts teacher, and the coordinator of cooperative education, I have attempted to examine the school/business partnership program from several viewpoints. Student interns reported their experience in the corporation made them feel independent and mature. Their supervisor noted employees enjoyed taking the students under their wings. The Culinary Arts teacher and co-op coordinator agreed the partnership program cultivated essential life skills in student participants. Analysis of the project from the perspective of Dewey, Rousseau, or Pestalozzi, leads to the conclusion that apprenticeship-type programs, through their experiential nature, can contribute to the development of the kinds of cognitive and personal skills sought by employers in the 1990s. Although school/business partnerships cannot be regarded as cure-alls for the problems in our schools, they can provide young people with opportunities to develop values and skills through meaningful activities in internship or apprenticeship programs. For a summary of the lessons I have learned from this particular partnership, please see the first page of the appendix