Across education, out-of-school-time programming, and workforce development, researchers and practitioners are seeking ways to bolster the career readiness of our nation’s youth, particularly low-income youth. This issue brings together information from a variety of disciplines and fields to help researchers, practitioners, and policymakers understand what we know and need to learn to provide youth with effective, engaging career-related programming. The articles highlight key findings about how youth learn about careers and develop a vocational identity, whether adolescent employment is beneficial for youth, and how to align our various systems to promote positive youth development. Models of career programming from education, afterschool, and workforce development are highlighted, as are strategies for collaborating with businesses. The volume emphasizes the practical implications of research findings, keeping the focus on how to develop evidence-based practices to support career development for youth. This is the 134th volume of New Directions for Youth Development, the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series dedicated to bringing together everyone concerned with helping young people, including scholars, practitioners, and people from different disciplines and professions.

The United States should provide all young people entering the work force with opportunities to develop productive careers. Despite that fact, the nation's schools fail to equip many young people with appropriate skills, the job market often fails to link them to long-term advancement-oriented employment, and their communities often provide few role models of adult employment success. These problems are particularly acute in the nation's inner cities. The following are among the actions that communities, schools, and employers can take to create a more favorable environment and employment in inner cities: provide prenatal/postnatal health care, parenting education, developmentally oriented preschool programs, and health/social services for students and their families; initiate gun and drug control measures; establish higher educational standards; improve teacher quality; increase schools' use of information technology; strengthen school-based management; expand charter schools and public school choice; increase employee recruiting through inner city schools and other community-based sources of job referrals; provide student internships for inner city job seekers; use school transcripts and teacher recommendations when making hiring decisions; and expand "diversity management" initiatives to enhance the retention and productivity of employees from diverse demographic backgrounds; and redesign career ladders to provide workers with initial access at younger ages. (MN)

Career Development and Systems Theory: Connecting Theory and Practice offers practitioners, researchers and students a comprehensive introduction to, and overview of, career theory; introduces the Systems Theory Framework of career development; and demonstrates its considerable contemporary and innovative application to practice. A number of authors have identified the framework as one of a small number of significant innovations in the career development literature. The Systems Theory Framework of career development was developed to provide coherence to the career development field by providing a comprehensive conceptualisation of the many existing theories and concepts relevant to understanding career development. It is not designed to be a theory of career development; rather systems theory is introduced as the basis for an overarching, or metatheoretical, framework within which all concepts of career development, described in the plethora of career theories, can be usefully positioned and utilised in both theory and practice. It has been applied to the career development of children, adolescents and women. Since its first publication, the Systems Theory Framework has been the basis of numerous publications focusing on theoretical application and integration, practice and research, with a growing number of these by authors other than the framework developers. Its application across cultures also has been emphasised. The theoretical and practical unity of the Systems Theory Framework makes this book a worthy addition to the professional libraries of practitioners, researchers and students, new to, or experienced in, the field of career development.

Minority youth unemployment is an enduring economic and social concern. This book evaluates two new initiatives for minority high school students that seek to cultivate marketable job skills. The first is an after-school program that provides experiences similar to apprenticeships, and the second emphasizes new approaches to improving job interview performance. The evaluation research has several distinct strengths. It involves a randomized controlled trial, uncommon in assessments of this issue and age group. Marketable job skills are assessed through a mock job interview developed for this research and administered by experienced human resource professionals. Mixed methods are utilized, with qualitative data shedding light on what actually happens inside the programs, and a developmental science approach situating the findings in terms of adolescent development. Beneficial for policy makers and practitioners as well as scholars, Job Skills and Minority Youth focuses on identifying the most promising tactics and addressing likely implementation issues.