The secondary site-based Career Resource Center has potential as a major vehicle of specialized communication/dissemination re: postsecondary career and college information. The present study was designed to examine the origin and implementation of Career Centers in order to develop an understanding of the factors to be considered in planning and organizing Career Centers in high schools. Investigation will focus not only on lay-out and design models, but also on "information" organization and dissemination. An historical overview of Career Resource Centers, focus on the theories of informational organization and delivery systems' approaches, and research on design models provided the theoretical basis for the study. Data for the study was collected from a questionnaire survey distributed to current Career Resource Center practitioners at secondary schools, from library research, from reports conducted for the school department, from the proceedings of meetings involving community and school officials, and from the personal knowledge and observations of the researcher from her many years of experience with Career Centers. The results indicate that the Career Centers show a reasonable amount of similarity in their organization and dissemination of information and basic lay out design. It was concluded that the different systems of organization, storage or dissemination of information used by the older centers are also used in similar proportions by the other centers, i.e., most show very little difference in approach. The major difference is in the amount of improvements noted by the older as compared to the younger centers. This is consonant with the age of the centers, the fact that they have had more time in which to change and also, in the vast time span, change would be required. The issue of change and the extent of change is open to interpretation. The question of "future plans" remains open for continued research and creative design.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8984 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | McCabe, Mary Virginia |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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