Connecting academic learning with workplace learning

Academic learning and work

The fourth dimension of the Connected Curriculum framework, ‘Students connect academic learning with workplace learning’, shines a light upon a longstanding challenge for universities. The dimension promotes the idea that all programmes of study should give students the chance to connect academic learning explicitly with the areas of knowledge, skills and approaches needed both for professional work and for their future lives in society. They should enable students to become lifelong learners. One focus here is on developing capabilities and personal attributes for life and work in a changing world. Political, economic and technological innovations are constantly shaping and changing work related structures and processes. Another focus is on raising students’ levels of awareness that they are developing a rich range of understandings, skills, values and attributes to take with them into their professional lives, and on enabling them to practise articulating these to others. The third area of focus is on enabling students to engage in critical and constructive dialogue with others about the ethical application of evidence-based knowledge to society; this may include thinking critically about the nature and processes of work itself.

For many, it is self-evident that higher education ‘involves preparing students in ways that will equip them to engage successfully with the world beyond university’ (Spencer, Riddle and Knewstubb 2012, 217). However, a recent study published by the Higher Education Academy (2016), analysing results of the UK Engagement Survey (Neves 2016), suggests that students are not yet convinced that their academic studies are preparing them well for work. This large-scale  survey of undergraduates, developed under licence from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) in the United States, sets out to measure students’ engagement with their studies in relation to a number of themes. Findings show that although most students (88 per cent) say they find their programme challenging and that they engage in critical thinking by applying facts, theories and methods (83 per cent), many fewer report that they have interacted with staff to discuss academic performance (36 per cent) and talk about their career plans (20 percent) (Neves 2016, 12). And while many students report engaging in critical thinking (77 per cent of students in universities established before 1992 and 79 per cent in Post-92 universities), only 55 per cent of students in Pre-92 institutions and 66 per cent in Post-92 institutions report having engaged in research and enquiry. These data suggest that many students do not see themselves as regularly participating in research and enquiry, developing ‘civic skills’ or making preparations for their careers. Neves concludes from the data overall that ‘there are clear opportunities for students to engage more regularly with staff, and their peers, in order to ensure development of a full range of career and civic skills’, and that ‘Career skills in particular are potentially an area for greater investigation and action across the sector, building on the low levels of development reported here’ (Neves 2016, 34).

Interestingly, Neves’ analysis suggests that students who collaborate most with their peers and with staff are also the most likely to report positively on their career skill development, and that there is work for institutions to do in these areas; these are areas addressed across the Connected Curriculum framework, particularly as we turn the spotlight on the fourth dimension. 

The challenge of ‘employability’ 

The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (2010) has argued that universities should pay more attention to developing both curricula and teaching staff in order to improve students’ work-related attributes: 

The prize for securing real improvements in the delivery of employability skills is that we develop more individuals with the skills necessary to get a job that is fulfilling and offers a real platform for progression in work.

In the UK, the term ‘employability’ is often used but it has slippery definitions as Blackmore et al. (2016) demonstrate. Typically, it refers to:

The development of a ‘combination’ or ‘set of achievements’ of skills, knowledge, understanding, and personal attributes that together make a graduate more likely to gain and remain in employment. (Blackmore et al. 2016, 10)

However, the term is also used more broadly, to include the development of skills and dispositions for living:

Within this wider definition, employability is also considered in terms of its societal contribution and benefit to a range of stakeholders beyond the student, such as the workforce, community, and economy. (Blackmore et al. 2016, 10) 

Emphasis in the literature is thus not only on students’ readiness for work – that is, on their being prepared for particular, existing roles – but on developing a range of skills, capabilities and attributes, in tandem with discipline-specific knowledge and skills, which will enable students to ‘manage their own careers and … continue learning throughout their working lives’ (Mason, Williams and Cranmer 2009, 2). 

There have been a number of studies looking at ways of characterising graduate attributes, which overlap of course with discipline specific learning outcomes, and these can be framed in various ways. Knight and Yorke (2006a) cite, for example, a characterisation of four influential components:

• understanding 
• skills (or skilful practices) 
• students’ efficacy beliefs and self-theories
• metacognition; that is, students’ self-awareness in relation to learning and ‘the capacity to reflect on, in and for action’.
  (Knight and Yorke 2006a, 5)

Rees, Forbes and Kubler (2007) devise, building on the UK Quality Assurance Agency’s subject benchmark statements for honours degree subjects (QAA 2016a), a set of profiles for different disciplines, which draw collectively on a broad list of capabilities. These include a wide range of attributes varying from achievement orientation, commercial awareness and image, to analysis, creativity and listening (2007, 141–142).

A number of institutions in the UK have developed their own sets of ‘graduate attributes’, including the University of Glasgow (2016), University of Edinburgh (2016) and University of Sheffield (2016). The University of Edinburgh, for example, distils its attributes into what its graduates are expected to have, and what they are expected to be.

Graduates have: 

• curiosity for learning that makes a positive difference; 
• courage to expand and fulfil their potential; 
• passion to engage locally and globally.

Graduates are: 

• creative problem solvers and researchers; 
• critical and reflective thinkers; 
• effective and influential contributors; 
• skilled communicators.

These broad-brush characterisations of dispositions and skills can stimulate thinking about curriculum development and also about the importance of exploring with students the kinds of attributes they are already developing as they study their chosen discipline(s). However, it is at programme and module level that these attributes are developed. What options are available to programme leaders and teams? We look next at how programme design can be maximised to empower students to prepare for their future working lives.

Practical approaches for curriculum design

If we are to take up the challenge of maximising students’ opportunities to take ownership of their futures, we need to consider the ways in which programmes can be designed to do this. A number of publications offer useful advice for institutions on how to review curricula to embed skills for employment (see, for example, Cole and Tibby 2013; Knight and Yorke 2006a and 2006b; Smith 2012). The UK Higher Education Academy (2016) has also produced a set of studies highlighting principles for embedding employability into curricula.

However, a number of the design features and pedagogies inherent in the Connected Curriculum framework already lend themselves to enhancing students’ opportunities for developing work-related attributes. We revisit those briefly here, and look at additional ways in which learning opportunities can be built into the curriculum that will enable students to graduate with confidence.

Our emphasis so far has been upon research-based and inquiry based pedagogies and also on addressing the structure of taught programmes to create (or enhance) a connected throughline of activity that allows students to develop over time. We have begun to look, too, at the role played by student assessments in shaping their learning experiences and in enabling them to express their new learning to others (see further, Chapter 7). These features all engage students actively in the development of a wide range of transferable skills as an intrinsic part of their learning and assessment activities. 

Tynjälä, Välimaa and Sarja (2003) find that institutions are already narrowing the gap between the kinds of learning students experience in their studies and that experienced in the workplace. Learning in the workplace is typically less formal, more collaborative and more specifically situated in a given ‘real world’ context, whereas academic learning has traditionally focused on broad principles. However, ‘pedagogical models such as problem-based learning, project learning and collaborative learning have characteristics that simulate authentic situations in working life or may be even based on them’ (2003, 152). 

What different ways are there of enabling students to make explicit and productive connections between their academic learning and workplace learning during their programmes of study? They are many and varied, and institutions and departments are best equipped to make their own choices about what will be effective within the context of particular programmes. 

Blackmore et al. (2016, 20) distinguish between ‘bolt-on studies’, defined as ‘activities that sit outside of specific academic modules, but still relate to the curriculum’, and activities embedded into the curriculum itself. Bolt-on studies include ‘extra-curricular opportunities, workshops, or optional courses [which are] not a part of the essential credit-bearing modules in a degree programme’. Optional opportunities beyond the curriculum have the benefit of giving a wider range of choices and freedoms than a planned curriculum can typically manage. They may have challenges, though, with respect to equality of opportunity: students whose ‘spare’ time is taken up with duties such as caring or paid work are less likely to be able to benefit from them. 

Embedding work-related learning activities in the curriculum, and enabling students to analyse and articulate these, can take a wide range of forms. Some are illustrated in Table 6.1. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but the range is indicative of the many and varied ways  in which students are already developing their work-related knowledge and skills, and of where they might have additional opportunities extended to them. 

The ways in which departments and programme leaders select from – and add to – these options will depend on many contextual factors. Useful practices for most programmes, however, include: 

• Designing some student learning activities that mirror the ‘messy’ ways in which learning takes place in the workplace. Asking students to address challenges as they arise during their studies by using their own initiative to investigate solutions, by tracking down and tapping into relevant expertise (whether inhouse or external) and by collaborating effectively with their peers are examples of activities that will prepare them for the typically unstructured learning demands of the workplace. 
• Requiring students explicitly to analyse and articulate their learning, both in core disciplinary areas and more widely, and its relevance to the workplace at intervals through their study. Attention needs to be paid to how and when students will be asked explicitly to analyse and articulate their developing skills, values and attributes. Developing these attributes unknowingly does not help students to articulate connections they have made between academic and work related learning (Knight and Yorke 2006b), and this is an important aspect of this dimension of the Connected Curriculum framework. 
• Building in a core portfolio and/or summative task, for example through a series of Connections modules and/or a capstone module (see Chapter 3), in which students describe clearly the skills and attributes they have developed, in ways which are meaningful to the student personally and authentically linked to subject knowledge. 
• Ensuring that some assessments are addressed to diverse audiences and so develop a wide range of digital and communication skills. This theme will be addressed further in the next chapter.

Critiquing the connection between academic learning and workplace learning

While many scholars have been supportive of closer connections between academic and work-related learning, others have raised doubts about the growing attention given to ‘employability’. They critique some of the underpinning assumptions associated with this emphasis, questioning the employment focus both in terms of its alleged benefits to students as individuals and the potential impact on society more widely.

One critique relates to the idea that academia should be a creative space in which scholars, both faculty members and students, can explore knowledge and understandings that may have no obvious relationship with the workplace. Sometimes encapsulated in the phrase ‘knowledge for knowledge’s sake’, this position sees knowledge as intrinsically improving our quality of life. It alludes to the personal fulfilment associated with following one’s own interests and building up one’s ability to learn, without any immediate instrumental purpose. This notion was dismissed as elitist ‘piffle’ by Ferdinand von Prondzynski, Principal of Robert Gordon University, in a recent THE article (THE 2013). However, there are echoes here of the cherished ‘Haldane principle’ in research, which holds that governments should not, via any funding arrangement, be able to ‘exert undue influence’ on the research undertaken (Boden and Nedeva 2010, 39). Does academic freedom, including the freedom to explore non-commercial, non-applied areas of knowledge, become threatened by calls to ensure that students are learning work related knowledge and skills? 

Further tensions in academia have arisen, in the UK at least, with respect to the relationship between funding and ‘employability metrics’. The latter are built into the government’s Teaching Excellence Framework (QAA 2016b), in which levels of graduate employment are included in the criteria for institutional assessment. Imperatives relating to employment and contributing to a successful economy are thus caught up in academic critiques of forms of ‘new managerialism’ (Deem, Hillyard and Reed 2007), which find their expression in quality management regimes and audit cultures (Apple 2005; Morley 2003). 

There is even a sense for some scholars that:

employability discourses may be adversely affecting pedagogies and curricula, to the disbenefit of students, institutions, employers, social justice and civil society. (Boden and Nedeva 2010, 37)

Boden and Nedeva argue that, where in the past universities have regarded graduate employment as an aspect of institutions’ relationships with the labour market in which they have ‘enjoyed a significant degree of discretion’, employability is now ‘a performative function of universities, shaped and directed by the state, which is seeking to supplant labour markets’. Their analysis reminds us that what is at stake as we address academic learning-workplace connections is the role of universities today: 

the issue of the relationship between higher education and working life is … the question structuring the relationship between higher education and society. (Tynjälä, Välimaa and Sarja 2003, 149) 

Revisiting the principles of the Connected Curriculum initiative may, for some, help to resolve tensions between academic freedoms and preparing students for the world of work. While it may be possible to hold and promote a conception of education as developing both individuals and societies through active, critical enquiry, whereby knowledge is extended and refined through peer dialogue for the global common good, it is not obvious that there are any necessary tensions between academia and developing students’ opportunities for employment. Need there be a conflict between developing oneself in the round as a critical, curious, creative, engaged individual and developing one’s ability to work successfully in society and contribute to the good of society more broadly? Where ‘employability’ becomes reified, for example in any imposition of fixed lists of attributes for assessment or in narrowly conceived pedagogic imperatives, or where it becomes tied up with political imperatives, clearly there are potential issues for disciplines and their practices, and scholars will rightly engage critically with these issues. However, developing self-aware students through enabling them to engage regularly in active, critical research and enquiry has the potential to empower them not only to develop their own capabilities and values but also to critique society, including the role played by work in local and global communities. 

In many institutions, academics continue to exercise significant amounts of freedom to interpret challenges to ‘connect with the workplace’ in ways which complement their disciplinary cultures and departmental values. Institutional initiatives may prompt programme teams to review their curriculum design in the light of workplace-related themes, but few dictate specific requirements in this area. The latter approach could be very counter-productive; requiring academics, who have developed high-level critical thinking skills, to work with an imposed set of fixed requirements would be a risky strategy. 

The Connected Curriculum framework assumes that there need be no contradiction between developing students intellectually as critical citizens and preparing them for the workplace. In the spirit of forwarding shared understandings through the meetings of different knowledge horizons, collaborating with employers’ groups and other relevant stakeholders can be very productive. Connected Curriculum principles also assume that research-based curriculum design can develop intellectual inquiry and practical, applied knowledge simultaneously, particularly if the programme, even if modular in construction, is designed as a coherent whole (Chapter 4).

Vignettes of practice

The first illustrative vignette in this chapter comprises two accounts, written by students on the interdisciplinary UCL Bachelor of Arts and Sciences (BASc) programme, of their experiences of taking up summer internships. The second describes a non-assessed compulsory course for all taught masters students at the European Institute, LSE, and the third outlines ways in which internationally recruited students at the UCL Institute of Education are empowered to become effective and reflective teacher-researchers. The fourth describes how Masters students at the University of Sheffield benefited from volunteering to support excluded and isolated people, and the final vignette describes work-shadowing and observations at the UCL Institute of Neurology. Activities such as these, which are currently set up as being extra-curricular could also, in principle, form part of the assessed curriculum.

References

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