Employability: the next phase

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Employability the next phase

• Mantz Yorke
• Lancaster University
• mantzyorke_at_mantzyorke.plus.com
• SHEEN Conference, Dundee
• 30 November 2007

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• Employability and stakeholders interests
• A personal issue
• which varies according to the persons
  background
• An institutional issue
• A political issue
• Governments human capital perspectives
• Employers needs for a highly skilled workforce
  
• HESA-published performance indicators
• retention, completion, employment
• Widening participation agenda

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• Employability and stakeholders interests
• Are not perfectly aligned
• And hence there can be tension regarding
  emphases
• There is often a misapprehension that
• Employability Employment Rate
• (If the terms are equivalent, then employability
  would
• vary according to the state of the labour market)

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A quotation worth remembering
learning and skills are not just about work
or economic goals. They are also about the
pleasure of learning for its own sake, the
dignity of self-improvement, the achievement of
personal potential and fulfilment, and the
creation of a better society. DfES (2003)
Realising our Potential Individuals, Employers,
Nation Cm 5810, para 4.1
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Skills

• Personal Skills
• Graduate Skills
• Transferable Skills
• Enterprise Skills
• Business Skills
• Core Skills
• Key Skills
• Soft Skills
• Common Skills
• Work-related Skills
• Employability Skills
• Sector Skills

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Skills

• Ad hoc
• Generally lack a theoretical base
• Risk over-specification (as NVQs) and box
  ticking
• Generic skills may be presented, in more
  coarsely
• grained form, as
• Graduate attributes (see Simon Barries recent
  
• work in Australia), or
• - as components of Graduateness (HEQC, 1997)

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Graduateness
HEQC (1997)
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Employability
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ESECTs definition of employability
A set of achievements - skills,
understandings and personal attributes - that
make graduates more likely to gain employment and
be successful in their chosen occupations It
owes a lot to the idea of Capability that
was floated in the 1990s
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Capability
Capable people have confidence in their
ability to take effective and appropriate
action explain what they are seeking to
achieve live and work effectively with
others continue to learn from their
experience ... Capable people not only know
about their specialisms, they also have the
confidence to apply their knowledge and skills
within varied and changing situations and to
continue to develop their specialist knowledge
and skill ... Based on Stephenson (1992)
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USEM attempts to capture the dynamic
interaction implicit in both ESECTs definition
of employability and Stephensons description of
a capable person
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The USEM account Developed in the context of
employability, but relevant to capability and to
learning in general Understanding Skilful
practices (subject-specific and generic) Efficacy
beliefs (and self-theories generally) Metacognitio
n (including reflection)
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S
Skilful practices in context
Effectiveness in the world
E
Personal qualities, including self-theories and
efficacy beliefs
Meta- cognition
Subject under- standing
M
U
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USEM

• Is supported by both theory and empirical
  evidence
• Hence there is an academic justification for
  it
• Correlates with good learning
• Much that goes on in HE is tacitly consistent
  with USEM
• One task is to make the tacit more overt (PDP
  etc)
• There already exists a substantial base on
  which to build
• Is permissive rather than prescriptive, i.e. is
  flexible
• It can accommodate disciplinary differences
• It can accommodate differing kinds of student
• Is not a knee-jerk response to employer demand

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USEM
Draws attention to E and M to a greater extent
than do QAA subject benchmarks Programme
specifications Implicitly raises challenging
questions about The relation between module
and programme Assessment
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Professional competence is complex
The mastery of requirements for effective
functioning, in the varied circumstances of the
real world, and in a range of contexts and
organizations. It involves not only observable
behaviour which can be measured, but also
unobservable attributes including attitudes,
values, judgemental ability and personal
dispositions that is, not only performance, but
capability. Worth Butler et al (1994, pp.226-7)
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Skills are not enough
Graduates are expected to be able to deal with
routine problems and, more importantly,
with the messy problems that the world
throws up.
The implication is that they must be able to
integrate and apply understandings often
collaboratively, and often with incomplete
information
The best result possible, not the best possible
result
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Subject Disciplines
B
A
C
B
The outside world
C
Higher education
A
D
E
etc.
E
etc.
D
Mode 1
Mode 2
After Gibbons et al (1994)
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• Some characteristics of a professional
• Operates autonomously (albeit within limits)
• Often works collaboratively
• Demonstrates trustworthiness
• Applies both academic and practical
  understandings
• but may not articulate all of how this is
  done
• Works integratively, sometimes on non-routine
  problems
• Applies metacognition (reflection
  self-regulation etc)
• Is committed to new learning, often via CPD
• Maintains standing as a professional

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Stages in professional development Dreyfus
Dreyfus (2005)

• Novice Rule-following (one-by-one)
• Advanced beginner
• Competence
• Proficiency
• Expertise Professional judgement
• (integrative)

One medical study showed experts as performing
less well than relative novices on a checklist
for diagnosis
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(No Transcript)
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• Some issues in the (summative)
• assessment of performance in
• Academic contexts
• Workplace contexts

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Educational objectives and their assessment
Type of objective Problem Solution Assessment In
structional Specified Specified Prescriptive Prob
lem-solving Specified Open Expressive
Open Open Responsive NB Some alleged
problem-solving is essentially puzzle-solving,
where there is a right answer. This should
be located in Row 1.
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• Problems set in academe
• are quite often characterised by
• being deliberately formulated
• being well-defined
• the availability of most if not all relevant
  information
• having a right answer
• and one method of reaching it
• being of limited intrinsic interest
• their detachment from ordinary experience
• Based on Hedlund and Sternberg (2000, p.137)
• Disciplines vary, of course, in the extent to
  which
• these apply

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The taxonomy for learning, teaching and
assessment (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001, as
viewed by Knight, 2007)
The cognitive dimension

1 Remember
2 Understand
3 Apply
4 Analyze
5 Evaluate
6 Create
The knowledge dimension
Factual (U)
Conceptual (U)
Procedural (U,S)
Metacognitive (U,S,M)
Academic emphases?
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• Problems in the world of work
• are often characterised by
• happenstance
• messiness
• incompleteness of information
• multidisciplinarity
• engagement of others
• and possibly
• the pragmatic necessity to satisfice
• (i.e. to obtain a good enough rather than a
  perfect outcome)
• Success in some aspects of performance is
  mandatory
• (e.g. public health, safety)

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The taxonomy for learning, teaching and
assessment (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001, as
viewed by Knight, 2007)
The cognitive dimension

1 Remember
2 Understand
3 Apply
4 Analyze
5 Evaluate
6 Create
The knowledge dimension
Factual (U)
Conceptual (U)
Procedural (U,S)
Metacognitive (U,S,M)
Employment emphases?
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Wicked competences
Achievements that cannot be neatly
pre-specified, take time to develop and resist
measurement-based approaches to assessment
Knight (2007 2)
ESECTs definition implicitly acknowledges
complex achievement
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Complexity
Many employability achievements are complex, and
are best demonstrated in authentic or
quasi-authentic settings
(T)reating (required competences) as separate
bundles of knowledge and skills for
assessment purposes fails to recognize that
complex professional actions require more than
several different areas of knowledge and skills.
They all have to be integrated together in
larger, more complex chunks of behaviour.
Eraut 2004 804
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Challenges - 1

• Ensuring coverage of all employability aims,
• particularly in a modular scheme
• Some issues
• Students selection of academic routes
• Over-assessment of some aims (e.g.
  presentations)
• Non-assessment (or student avoidance) of
  others

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Challenges - 2

• Assessing employability achievements
• As separate skills
• Standardisation?
• Likely to run into the gravel-trap of
  excess detail (e.g. NVQ)
• Holistically
• Context-related, individualised
• Judgement, rather than measurement

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USEM and assessment
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S
Skilful practices in context
Effectiveness in the world
E
Personal qualities, including self-theories and
efficacy beliefs
Meta- cognition
Subject under- standing
Assessable, variably inferential
M
U
Highly inferential
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Challenges - 3

• Awkwardness of fit
• With programme structures
• Some employability achievements are
  slow-growing crops
• They may take a programmes length (and
  more) to be
• developed, and it is inappropriate to
  assess them within
• individual modules
• So how can they be assessed across the
  whole programme?
• With institutional assessment schemes and the
• honours degree classification