Intentional Teaching for the World of Work: Building Children’s Career Aspirations and Knowledge in Early Childhood Education

While opportunities to learn about potential careers in early childhood are often limited to stereotypical role play contexts, a project undertaken in collaboration with three early childhood centres in Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, demonstrated that early childhood settings can play an important role in supporting children to expand their understandings of potential careers in the World of Work [WoW], and help interrupt trajectories of disadvantage and unemployment. For children in this low socioeconomic area, families’ ability to support their educational and career aspirations was sometimes found to be limited by unemployment and a lack of positive educational experiences. Intentional Teaching was identified as an important pedagogy to address children’s lack of knowledge about potential careers and in particular, highlighted the rich potential for drawing attention to the WoW through children’s play interests and incidental conversations.