222 research outputs found
Employability for the workers - what does this mean?
Purpose â UK government strategies for higher education (HE) continue to emphasise the promotion and enhancement of students' employability skills and subsequent graduate opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to explore what this means for those HE learners already in work. Design/methodology/approach â The paper presents the findings of a national study on the impact of Foundation degrees (Fds) on students and the workplace, in the light of government's plans for the continuing expansion of HE, and discussions about employability. Findings â The study found that the majority of Fd students cited increased confidence as the main gain from their studies; such confidence was expressed in terms of how students' enhanced knowledge and understandings informed their workplace activities and tasks but these expressions did not necessarily fit neatly into narrow skills' definitions. Also the findings hint at some students facing difficulties in using their enhanced âskillsâ in the workplace. Research limitations/implications â Although based on a relatively small number of Fd programmes, the student voices represent a powerful message of the value of linking studies to their workplace practices and of the multi-dimensional nature of âconfidenceâ based on personal experiences and trajectories. Practical implications â While the term âemployability skillsâ is regularly used in the discourse of graduates' trajectories in to the labour market, more nuanced understandings are needed in relation to HE learners already in the workplace. Originality/value â Given government's expectation that the next phase of expansion of UK HE will embrace an increase in part-time study and work-based learning, the article represents a timely exploration of work-based students' perceptions of the development of employability skills and how they are able to deploy these in the workplace
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Higher education policy initiatives and their implementation - the case of Lifelong Learning Networks in England
This article is about Lifelong Learning Networks in England that are groups of higher education institutions and further education colleges covering a city, area or region. These networks have been established through funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and their policy objective is to improve the coherence, clarity and certainty of progression opportunities for vocational learners into and through higher education. In this article we consider the likelihood of LLNs delivering this policy objective. In doing so, we focus our discussion on the clarity of LLN policy and the wider policy landscape, and the compatibility and relevance of LLN policy with the values, interests and core activities of the institutions that make up the networks
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Vocational ladders or crazy paving? Making your way to higher levels
The report is part of a suite of research projects on apprenticeships under the overall theme of 'making work-based learning work'. The aim of this particular study was to explore the role of level 3 vocational qualifications and work-based learning, including Modern Apprenticeships, as progression routes to higher education and to higher-level knowledge and skills more generally. The study comprised secondary analysis of national datasets, and an exploration of supply, demand and progression patterns in four contrasting employment sectors, focusing on enablers and inhibitors of work-based education and training
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A Review of Work Based Learning in Higher Education
The idea of work based learning in higher education might sound like a contradiction in terms. Work based learning is surely in the the workplace. The senses in which it might also, under certain conditions, be in higher education are explored in this review. There are increasing arrangements whereby people can obtain academic recognition for learning which has taken place outside of educational institutions. In addition to traditional forms of professional education and sandwich courses, one can add a host of relationships between employers and higher education institutions which involve quite fundamental questioning of the roles and responsibilities of each in the continuing education and training of adults. Such developments can be related to broader themes concerning the organisation of knowledge in society, the changing nature of work and career, the learning society and the implications they hold for individual workers, their employers and educational providers.
The Department for Education and Employment sponsored the study to produce a substantial literature review of progress and issues raised in the field of work based learning in higher education. The first part of the book provides a contextual and conceptual backdrop against which more practical aspects of work based learning are then considered in part two. The final part considers strategic issues of implementation for higher education institutions, employers and individuals, before turning to more wide ranging issues of policy
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Interim evaluation of lifelong learning networks
The Open University's Centre for Higher Education Research and Information was commissioned in June 2007 to undertake a formative evaluation of Lifelong Learning Networks (LLNs). Research to inform the interim evaluation has been two-fold:
desk research of LLN documentation and
visits to and interviews with personnel involved in eight LLNs.
The report's main conclusion was that LLNs are making progress in terms of encouraging institutions to offer curricula and put in place procedures that, in the fullness of time, could make a significant difference to the coherence, clarity and certainty of progression opportunities for vocational learners. However, it went on to say that it is too soon to be able to make substantive and well-evidenced statements about LLNs' overall progress on meeting this overarching objective of the LLN initiative
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Graduate competences and relationships with the labour market: the UK case
The paper compares the early employment experiences of graduates from the shorter UK bachelors degree with those from the somewhat longer masters programmes to be found in continental Europe. The UK graduates appear to be less prepared for entry to employment and to find their degrees to be less appropriate to that employment. However, many of the differences between UK and other European graduates in the labour market have largely disappeared five years after graduation. And there are many similarities in the perceptions of graduates from different countries about the competences required by employers. The paper sets these differences and similarities within the context of the different higher education and labour market traditions of the UK and the rest of Europe and raises questions about the consequences of greater labour mobility across Europe and the Bologna harmonisation of qualification structures
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The REFLEX study: exploring graduates' views on the relationship between higher education and employment
Some of the main findings from a survey of nationally representative samples of graduates 5 years after graduation, in 13 European countries, are presented. Differences between UK and other European graduates' views on the relationship between higher education and employment are presented and reasons underlying such differences are explored
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Conceptions of excellence in teaching and learning and implications for future policy and practice
Within a diverse and expanding system of higher education (HE), such as in the UK, discourse on teaching and student learning highlights tensions between different notions of excellence. For example, excellence as a positional good for students, an aspirational target for continuous quality enhancement, a form of reputational advantage for HE institutions or a means of achieving governmental economic and social goals. Concepts of excellence such as these also operate differently at the level of the individual, the academic unit, the institution and an HE system. Discussion about excellence usually focuses on teaching, and there is much less attention given to excellence in student learning, or even studentsâ perceptions of excellent teaching. The emphasis tends to be on process and form rather than content; so, what is being taught and learned has become increasingly obscured by concerns over whether teaching and learning are performed excellently.
In the literature on pedagogy, there is a large body of writing that employs psychologised understandings of teaching and learning processes and which focuses on micro-level transactions between teachers and students. Though there is some conflicting evidence surrounding the idea of a hierarchy of approaches to learning and teaching â surface, deep and strategic â there seems to be consensus that excellence in pedagogy is associated with more sophisticated conceptions of learning and even, perhaps, of knowledge and its construction. However, it is clear that the dynamics of the relationship between teaching and learning are mediated by studentsâ perceptions of their environment and by their own motivations to study: excellence in student learning may or may not require excellent teaching.
Concepts of teaching excellence are linked to two other notions, viz. the scholarship of teaching and the expert teacher, with some suggestion that excellence should be an attribute of any professional teacher â perhaps confusing excellence with notions of good (enough) teaching or even âfitness for purposeâ. Much has also been written about institutional mechanisms for recognising and rewarding excellent teaching and the need for these to reflect an institutionâs values, missions and culture.
A recurring critical theme within the literature contends that the current focus on teaching (and to a lesser extent learning) excellence is symptomatic of a ubiquitous contemporary desire to measure HE performance by means of standardised criteria and quasi-scientific practices. Reinforced by the marketisation of HE and the repositioning of students as consumers, commercial publishers draw on these performance measures to compile institutional rankings, which construct broader notions of âexcellenceâ and âworld classâ qualities in particular ways. These aggregations of available data appear to be biased towards research reputation and academic prestige, and reduce teaching âexcellenceâ to the numerical ratios between students and academic faculty, and learning to the results of student satisfaction surveys. The biases in favour of particular notions of âexcellenceâ are even more apparent in the increasingly influential world rankings of institutions: with Western, English language and âbig scienceâ values predominating.
This paper draws on two recent research studies undertaken by the UK Open Universityâs Centre for Higher Education Research and Information: a review of literature on teaching and learning to elicit conceptions of excellence; and research on league tables (rankings) and their impacts on HE institutions in England. It looks at how the term âexcellenceâ is used in the context of teaching and the student learning experience in: policy documents, research literatures, guidance material and the publicity surrounding commercially published institutional rankings. It examines the key concepts underlying such usage and considers the implications of these for future policies for developing and promoting excellence in a diverse system as it moves beyond mass to universal HE
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Age differences in graduate employment across Europe
The report is based on the results of a major international study of graduate employment some five years after graduation. The report examines differences between European and UK graduates' patterns of employment and characteristics of their current work when age differences are taken into account. Overall UK graduates were both younger and older at entry to higher education compared with Europe as a whole. Such differences, when aligned with the longer duration of courses elsewhere in Europe, results in UK graduates being much younger on graduation than European graduates generally.
Regardless of age on graduation, UK graduates were more likely to have been faced with changes in their workplaces; were much more likely to supervise staff; and to have responsibility for assessing others' work. In fact, many of the overall similarities and differences in employment experiences of UK and European graduates reported in other reports in this series remained, even when age on graduation was taken into account
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The meaning of HE in developing professional identities: some reflections on workbased foundation degrees and skill utilisation
In a climate of financial constraint there is increasing pressure on HE to justify its draw on the public purse. Viewing HE as investment in raising the skill level of the workforce raises the question of the effectiveness of that investment and understanding effective skill utilisation is therefore critical. In this paper, the authors argue that the relationship between experience, education and skill utilisation is more complex than notions of skill acquisition suggest and skill utilisation depends not on the âpossessionâ of skills but on the dynamic interaction through social practices between individual factors and the social context. Drawing on empirical work in the context of partâtime Foundation Degrees the authors report on how HE can be instrumental in shaping and transforming identities at work and argue for the need to research the role of HE in mediating social practices in the workplace to support skill utilisation
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