This article describes the rationale, development, delivery, and evaluation strategy of a pilot career intervention program for immigrant Latina/o high school students: Advocating for Latina/o Achievement in School. This innovative intervention aims to prevent dropout and to promote academic success and college and career readiness through a combination of academic support and enhancing critical consciousness. Shorter term goals include increasing school-related self-efficacy expectations, school connectedness, school engagement, and critical consciousness. We describe the theoretical and empirical basis for the intervention components, and how they attend to dimensions of immigrant Latina/o students’ career development. We describe program logistics, outcomes, strengths, challenges, and lessons learned from delivering the intervention. We highlight unique features of the program and suggest its relevance to career education efforts in other school and national contexts in which immigrant students face racism and inequities.

A growing body of evidence supports critical consciousness as a developmental asset for young people, including its benefits for educational and vocational outcomes. National dynamics and policies in the U.S., such as restricting immigration and asylum, have raised the salience of critical consciousness as a protective factor for the career development of Latinx immigrant youth. In this manuscript, we first review the nature and benefits of critical consciousness for Latinx immigrant youth. We then highlight how college and career readiness (CCR) and the components of critical consciousness (CC) can be simultaneously fostered among Latinx immigrant high school students, drawing upon our own work in the context of an afterschool program. We introduce a framework to illustrate this integration, and describe a series of intervention activities and processes designed to simultaneously build CC and CCR. Finally, we provide recommendations and describe caveats and challenges to developing classroom-based career education curricula that integrate CCR and CC.

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of Career Information System (CIS) on ninth-grade student’s vocational skills self-efficacy, outcome expectations, work hope, and career decision-making difficulties. CIS is a computer-based career intervention designed to help users become more knowledgeable about themselves and occupational options with career planning support. At the midpoint of fall semester, intervention participants ( n = 194) were assessed before and after a CIS intervention administered during their health class, while ninth-grade students who were not in the health class ( n = 191) served as a nonrandomized control group. Relative to control participants, intervention participants had higher work hope and lower career decision-making difficulties associated with inconsistent information and lack of information. The effects of the intervention did not vary as a function of gender or socioeconomic status. Findings contribute to the scant literature assessing the effects of computer-based career interventions for high school students.