How Aptitude Assessments Provide Data-Driven Direction to K-12 Educators and Help Students See Brighter Futures

In this episode of THE Journal Insider podcast, host and editor Kristal Kuykendall talks with YouScience Chief Operating Officer Jeri Larsen about how their Discovery aptitude assessment platform works and why it helps both educators and students. We learn how the assessment insights help students "discover" their aptitudes and then take ownership of their learning and their futures by more closely connecting their schoolwork to their skills and aspirations. NOTE: This episode includes a few minutes of video, where Larsen demonstrates the YouScience Discovery assessment results and platform. Listen and watch on YouTube (https://youtu.be/WrKDxbKMuW8) to see what she is talking about!  WHY THIS MATTERS: An enormous study published in July by student aptitude and career guidance platform YouScience analyzed almost a quarter-million Discovery aptitude assessments taken last year by high-schoolers nationwide. It’s easy to see how this kind of data is deeply relevant to the larger curriculum goals of K–12 schools and also to the individual choices that students are asked to begin making as early as ninth grade, as they choose electives throughout high school. The analysis revealed that students have the innate abilities to excel in today’s in-demand jobs but often lack interest in those fields, either because they’ve not been exposed to such career options or had no idea they possessed aptitudes in those fields. The findings of aptitude assessments are helpful both at the upper levels of curriculum decision-making and at the granular level, in classrooms with students. Educators and guidance counselors can see the gaps in so-called “career exposure” — where students have innate aptitudes but no career interest indicates they may need more information about career possibilities — and they help schools better tailor each student’s courses in high school to the career paths they are both suited for and interested in. Resources Gap Between Students’ Aptitudes and Their Career Interests Focus of New Report YouScience Student Ability Report (July 2022) YouScience Discovery assessments YouTube version with mini-demo of the YouScience platform Music by LemonMusicStudio from Pixabay