What Grounds Our Work

The learning theory behind BVEF’s approach

BVEF’s work is grounded in the belief that meaningful learning happens through experience and becomes even more powerful when students can connect what they are learning to the world beyond the classroom. Experiential Learning Theory and Career-Connected Learning provide the foundation for how we think about student learning, educator development, and partnerships with industry and community.

Experiential Learning Theory

Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), most closely associated with David Kolb, provides a strong foundation for understanding how learners develop deeper knowledge through experience. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle explains learning as an ongoing process in which individuals engage in a concrete experience, reflect on what occurred, develop new understanding, and apply that understanding through future action. Learning is therefore not limited to receiving information; it is constructed through the interaction of the learner, the subject matter, and the physical and social environment. This process brings together doing, observing, thinking, and trying, allowing learners to connect cognitive, affective, and social dimensions of learning. Reflection is especially important because it transforms an activity into learning by helping individuals interpret their experience, identify patterns, connect new insights to prior knowledge, and make informed decisions about what to do next.

ELT is particularly well suited for Career-Connected Learning. REaL Learning’s Career Connected Learning Continuum gives students opportunities to learn in and through professional contexts rather than simply learn about careers from a distance. By engaging in authentic challenges, using professional tools and practices, collaborating with others, and receiving feedback from educators, mentors, and industry professionals, students develop academic knowledge, durable skills, workplace understanding, and career identity simultaneously. The experiential cycle deepens these experiences by ensuring that students do more than participate: they reflect, make meaning, test new ideas, and transfer their learning to future academic, career, and community settings. In this way, ELT provides both the theoretical grounding and practical structure needed to design Career-Connected Learning that is relevant, rigorous, reflective, and connected to students’ possible future selves.

Career Construction Theory

Career Construction Theory, most closely associated with Mark Savickas, provides a strong foundation for understanding how individuals develop career meaning through their experiences, evolving self-concept, and interpretation of possible future selves. Rather than viewing career development as a single decision or fixed pathway, the theory emphasizes an ongoing process of making meaning from experiences and adapting over time. Four career adaptability capacities are particularly relevant in K–12 education: concern, or the ability to imagine and prepare for the future; control, or a sense of agency in shaping one’s direction; curiosity, or the willingness to explore possible selves and environments; and confidence, or the belief that one can take action and overcome barriers. Together, these capacities help learners reflect on who they are becoming and how their experiences influence the futures they can imagine for themselves.

Career Construction Theory is particularly well suited for Career-Connected Learning because it helps students move beyond simply learning about occupations to making personal meaning from career-related experiences. Through exposure to professionals, authentic challenges, real-world applications, and opportunities for reflection, students can begin to connect their interests, strengths, values, and experiences to future possibilities. Career-Connected Learning creates repeated opportunities for students to explore, reflect, and revise their understanding of themselves in relation to the world of work. In this way, Career Construction Theory supports BVEF’s focus on helping students develop career awareness, agency, adaptability, and a stronger sense of connection between who they are today and who they may become in the future.

Social Cognitive Career Theory

Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) provides a strong foundation for understanding how career interests, choices, and goals are shaped by the interaction of personal beliefs, learning experiences, and environmental conditions. Rooted in social cognitive theory, SCCT emphasizes the role of self-efficacy, or an individual’s belief in their ability to succeed; outcome expectations, or what they believe may result from pursuing a particular path; goals, or the choices they make about what to work toward; and the learning experiences that shape these beliefs over time. The theory also recognizes the importance of supports and barriers within a learner’s environment, acknowledging that access, encouragement, opportunity, and context can influence what individuals believe is possible for them.

Additional Research That Informs Our Work

In addition to Experiential Learning Theory, Career Construction Theory, and Social Cognitive Career Theory, BVEF’s work is also informed by research on identity, access, relationships, learning design, durable skills, and educator practice.

Possible Selves and Career Identity

Possible Selves Theory explains how students’ images of who they may become influence motivation, goal setting, and behavior (Markus & Nurius, 1986). This research reinforces the importance of helping students understand their strengths, identities, interests, and values while connecting present learning to meaningful and attainable future possibilities.

Culturally Responsive Teaching

Zaretta Hammond’s culturally responsive teaching framework (2015) emphasizes that culture, identity, trust, and relationships influence how students process information and engage in rigorous learning. This research supports learning experiences that draw on students’ existing knowledge, build intellectual independence, maintain high expectations, and help learners see themselves represented in professional and future-facing roles.

Universal Design for Learning

CAST’s Universal Design for Learning framework supports the proactive removal of barriers through multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression. This research helps inform the design of authentic challenges, professional interactions, mentorship opportunities, and demonstrations of learning that are accessible, meaningful, and appropriately challenging for diverse learners.

Social Capital Theory

Social capital theory explains how relationships and networks provide access to information, resources, encouragement, sponsorship, and opportunity. This research supports BVEF’s emphasis on early and recurring connections with professionals, mentors, alumni, and community partners so that students can build meaningful networks and expand their understanding of what is possible. Research on economic connectedness further reinforces the importance of genuine relationships across social and economic networks, rather than exposure alone (Chetty et al., 2022). This supports designing Career-Connected and Work-Based Learning experiences that prioritize mentorship and relationship-building alongside career exploration.

Durable Skills Research

America Succeeds’ research supports BVEF’s focus on communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, leadership, and related durable skills. Its analysis of more than 82 million job postings found broad employer demand for these competencies across industries and occupations (America Succeeds, 2021). Updated research indicates that demand for durable skills remains strong, including within highly technical fields (America Succeeds, 2025). This reinforces the importance of giving students repeated opportunities to practice, receive feedback on, reflect upon, and demonstrate these skills through authentic learning experiences.

Indigenous and Community-Centered Perspectives

Blackfoot and other First Nations perspectives offer an important relational and community-centered lens for thinking about learning and development. Ravilochan’s synthesis of the work of Blackfoot scholars Ryan Heavy Head and Narcisse Blood, and First Nations scholar Cindy Blackstock, describes a worldview in which individual growth is connected to belonging, place, reciprocal responsibility, community actualization, and the intergenerational transfer of knowledge (Ravilochan, 2021).

This perspective reinforces BVEF’s understanding that students do not develop identities or future possibilities in isolation. Families, educators, mentors, employers, and communities all contribute to the environments and relationships that support learning and growth.

Employing the Future Research

Dr. Erin Conley’s Employing the Future research provides a practitioner-research foundation connecting experiential learning, educator externships, Work-Based Learning, and classroom transformation.

The study examines educators as active learners in professional settings and explores how concrete experience, reflection, collaboration, and workplace socialization influence what teachers value and how they translate those experiences into learning for students. This research informs BVEF’s attention not only to whether meaningful experiences occur, but also to how relationships, reflection, professional settings, and ongoing support contribute to deeper learning and changes in instructional practice.

References

America Succeeds. (2021). The high demand for durable skills. America Succeeds.

America Succeeds. (2025). Durable by design: An update on the high demand for durable skills. America Succeeds.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall, Inc.

CAST. (2024). Universal design for learning guidelines version 3.0. CAST.

Chetty, R., Jackson, M. O., Kuchler, T., Stroebel, J., Hendren, N., Fluegge, R. B., Gong, S., Gonzalez, F., Grondin, A., Jacob, M., Johnston, D., Koenen, M., Laguna Muggenburg, E., Mudekereza, F., Rutter, T., & Thor, N. (2022). Social capital II: Determinants of economic connectedness. Nature, 608 (7921), 122–134.

Conley, E. (2022). Employing the future. Doctoral dissertation, Northeastern University.

Hammond, Z. L. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Corwin.

Kolb, D., & Kolb, A. (2009). The learning way: Meta-cognitive aspects of experiential learning. Simulation and Gaming, 40(3), 297-327.

Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2017). Eight important things to know about the experiential learning cycle. Learning from Experience.

Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., & Hackett, G. (1994). Toward a unifying social cognitive theory of career and academic interest, choice, and performance. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45(1), 79–122.

Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954–969.

Ravilochan, T. (2021, June 18). The Blackfoot wisdom that inspired Maslow’s hierarchy. Resilience. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-06-18/the-blackfoot-wisdom-that-inspired-maslows-hierarchy/

Savickas, M. L. (2005). The theory and practice of career construction. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work (pp. 42–70). John Wiley & Sons.

Seibert, S. E., Kraimer, M. L., & Liden, R. C. (2001). A social capital theory of career success. Academy of Management Journal, 44(2), 219–237.

Tsounis, A. & Xanthopoulou, D. (2026) Social Capital Theory: A review. In S. Papagiannidis (Ed), TheoryHub Book.

SCCT is particularly relevant to Career-Connected Learning because students’ aspirations are shaped not only by their interests, but also by the experiences they have access to and the confidence they develop through those experiences. Meaningful exposure to careers, interactions with industry professionals, authentic learning experiences, mentorship, feedback, and opportunities to practice real-world skills can strengthen students’ self-efficacy and expand their understanding of possible pathways. At the same time, attention to supports and barriers helps educators and partners recognize where students may need additional access, encouragement, or experience. In this way, SCCT supports BVEF’s work to broaden students’ exposure to possibilities, strengthen agency and confidence, and create learning experiences that help more students see a meaningful future for themselves.