What is Health Careers Resource Consortium (HCRC)?
HCRC is a statewide resource center designed to support teachers and students in health careers education.
What is the purpose of HCRC?
HCRC serves as a professional learning community of dedicated health science teachers committed to increasing student achievement and creating a well-trained health care workforce.
Who does HCRC represent?
The strength of HCRC is reflected in its diverse population of over 500 academic and career and technical educators, middle and high school administrators, guidance counselors, industry professionals, and post-secondary educators involved in planning and expanding the capacity of health science pathways at the secondary, post-secondary and adult levels.
What does HCRC do?
HCRC is custom-tailored for daily use as a professional learning community for health science educators. This website is dedicated to:
* Networking and sharing of curriculum,
* Engaging in meaningful discussions around practice and policy
* Informing teachers about current legislative issues in career technical education
* Giving teachers and students a voice on decisions that affect instruction and learning
History
Since its inception in 1992, the Health Careers Resource Consortium has facilitated health career pathway models through its Health Science Capacity Building Pathway project, a project that has emerged as a career technical education framework for increasing health science capacity in California. HCRC is also concerned with increasing networking practices among secondary and post-secondary educators and the industry sector. The initial vision for HCRC was to function as a one-stop resource center for health science teachers to network and share information. To date, HCRC and its leadership believe that teacher networks continue to be an important aspect of program success in increasing the health care workforce. This vision was reinforced from a 2009 report, Preparing Health Science Teachers for a World in Networking: Increasing Teacher Collegiality and Professionalism Practices (pdf download), which found a strong association between program and school factors and health science teachers’ reported levels of collegiality. In other words, teacher participants who indicated that they had more teachers in their team and program were more likely to report higher levels of collegial support and collective efficacy. Similarly, teachers who reported working more with other educators on interdisciplinary curriculum projects tended to report higher levels of collegial support and collective efficacy.
Core Purpose
To serve as a professional learning community for health science teachers and collectively provide the leadership in creating a well educated and prepared health care workforce
Core Values
Advocacy—HCRC believes that educators and students in health careers education need a strong voice at the state level to support their commitment and contribution to the health care workforce.
Diversity—HCRC seeks and values diversity among its educators and the students served by the Health Science Capacity Building Pathway programs.
Collaboration—HCRC recognizes that it cannot accomplish its purpose without the strong support and partnership of other educational and health care agencies.
Accountability—HCRC supports the concept of accountability and encourages educators to develop means to demonstrate ongoing program and student performance improvement.
Social Networking—HCRC encourages individual or groups of educators to continue their professional development by engaging in ongoing discussions and sharing curriculum best practices with colleagues.
