The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse defines education as services to support educational attainment, such as GED support, adult basic education, or postsecondary education. Education interventions typically combine education with case management and other services that help people identify, apply to, or complete training for job opportunities that make use of their new educational abilities or credentials.
The Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse defines the career pathways framework as a series of secondary, postsecondary, and/or adult education and training services that progressively lead to higher credentials and more advanced employment opportunities, with supports designed to help clients progress through these steps. It includes connections to employment opportunities through partnerships with employers, employer engagement, and paid work experiences.
Occupational and sectoral training are training programs designed to prepare clients for professional opportunities within a specific occupation, such as truck driving or welding, or sector, such as health care or manufacturing. This Evidence Snapshot summarizes what rigorous research tells us about 23 interventions that used occupational and sectoral training as an approach to providing services to clients and the interventions’ impacts on earnings, employment, the receipt of public benefits, and education and training.
Case management is a service delivery approach in which staff meet with clients to provide direct, personalized one-on-one support to improve a comprehensive set of outcomes related to employment, education, housing, health, and public benefit receipt. This Evidence Snapshot summarizes what rigorous research tells us about 21 interventions that used case management as their primary service and the interventions’ impacts on earnings, employment, the receipt of public benefits, and education and training.
The Pathways Clearinghouse created a list of potential services and uses that list across the website and products. Some services are nested within other services. For example, occupational or sectoral training is nested within training, because it represents a type of training. The higher-level category of training includes other types of training, in addition to occupational or sectoral training.
The Pathways Clearinghouse maintains a list of services that we use to characterize interventions and conduct analyses. This list is located on the website within Find Interventions that Work, under the filter “Select services the intervention should provide.” The list nests some of the services underneath other services, to show services that are part of a broader service category. A version of the list is also included in the Protocol for the Pathways to Work Evidence Clearinghouse: Methods and Standards.
Work experience and work-based learning are two related strategies for helping people with low incomes improve employment and earnings outcomes. Work experience and work-based learning could include paid or unpaid work or learning experiences in a work setting, such as internships or community service jobs. Because interventions providing work experience are a subset of work and work-based learning interventions, this Evidence Snapshot summarizes the evidence on both of these types of interventions.
Employment retention services interventions offer a combination of services intended to help maintain employment and promote career advancement among people, often those with low incomes, who already have a job. This Evidence Snapshot summarizes what rigorous research tells us about nine interventions that used employment retention services as their primary service and the interventions’ impacts on earnings, employment, the receipt of public benefits, and education and training.
