enhancing employability: strategy and practice mantz yorke esect and liverpool john moores...

28
Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Upload: collin-holt

Post on 26-Dec-2015

219 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Enhancing employability:strategy and practice

Mantz Yorke

ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Page 2: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

ESECT interpretation

A set of achievements skills, understandingsand personal attributes that make graduatesmore likely to gain employment and be successfulin their chosen occupations, which benefitsthemselves, the workforce, the communityand the economy

Employability

Page 3: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

• Is not ‘employment’ (too vulnerable to labour market vicissitudes)

• Is probabilistic, helping the student to increase the chances of success

• Is made up of a number of characteristics and capabilities

Employability

Page 4: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

U Understanding of subject and broader situations

S Skilful practices in subject, employment and life

E Efficacy beliefs and personal qualities

M Metacognition

USEM

Page 5: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Employability;broader personal effectiveness

Subjectunder-standing

Meta-cognition

Skilfulpracticesin context

Personalqualities, includingself-theoriesand efficacybeliefs

E

S

U M

USEM

Page 6: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Efficacy beliefs and personal qualities

• Importance of motivation to learn and achieve (but the desire to ‘perform’ may be sub-optimal)

• Capacity to learn from misfortune, error, criticism

• Belief in the ‘developability’ of intelligence etc

• Belief that one can ‘make a difference’

• Importance of emotions in learning…

• … and in working with others

• Academic and practical intelligence success

Page 7: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Academic and practical intelligence

In politics, being clever is never enough. Long ago, Lord Longford reminded guests at a Commons dinner that one of Harold Wilson’s cabinets had contained eight Oxbridge Firsts, six of whom had held fellowships.

“That”, said Tony Crosland (who enjoyed both distinctions), “explains why we made such a bloody mess of everything”.

Roy Hattersley’s Endpiece ‘Mandelson should shut up for a while’

in The Guardian 12 May 2003, p.18

Page 8: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Child……Young adult………………………………….Senior

IQ

Practical intelligence

Page 9: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Skilful practices in context

In the context of the subject discipline, and also in workplaces and more general life-situations: e.g.

… the ability to leave your office and go and face people in the community, not knowing how those people will be in terms of their social situation, their mental health and also how they’re going to perceive you and deal with that social work jargon… [It] only comes with practical experience […] you don’t need a social work qualification …to be able to think about how people function under stress, under difficult situations

Experienced social worker (Knight & Yorke 2004, p.61)

Page 10: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Understanding

Lower Higher

Higher

Lower

Skilfulpractices

in context

+ ++

-- -

Applying U and S

Page 11: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Applying U and S

Very many successful lawyers … are not all that bright. Some of our best judges do not shine intellectually. Becoming a good lawyer requires a mixture of talents, of which the intelligence revealed by the proposed [university entry] tests is only one. Equally, many bright people have proved to be rubbish lawyers.

Marcel Berlins, on the proposal by 8 top universities to devise an entry examination to complement A-level

The Guardian G2, 10 February 2004, p.17

Page 12: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Metacognition

• Possession of general strategies for learning, thinking and problem-solving

• Capacity to differentiate between tasks, recognising that variation in difficulty is likely to require different cognitive strategies

• Awareness of how one tackles tasks and learns

• Self-regulation

Page 13: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

U and S are important; so are E and M

Foci

• Working on the student’s ‘self-system’ [E]• Supporting the development of metacognition [M]

Approach

• Emphasising formative assessment

(Overlap with earlier presentation on formative assessment

in the QAA Enhancement Themes series)

Page 14: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Meta-analyses: effect sizes on learning

Effect sizeSelf-system (Marzano 1998) 0.74

Metacognition (Marzano 1998) 0.72

Formative assessment (Black & Wiliam 1998) 0.70

‘The gains in achievement [are] among the largest ever reported for educational interventions.’

Black and Wiliam (1998, p.61)

Page 15: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Weaknesses (Subject Review)

In 49 per cent of cases, marking systems could be improved particularly in respect of feedback to students.This sometimes lacked a critical edge, gave few helpful comments and failed to indicate to students ways in which improvement could be made.

QAA (2001, para 28: Subject overview report, Education)

See also QAA (2004) • Learning from Subject Review • Learning from higher education in further education colleges in England

Page 16: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Weaknesses (Foundation Degrees)

Students of about one-half of the programmes

experience some variation in the quality of written

formative feedback. It is not always clear to students

how their assessed work could be improved.

In five cases review teams highlight this as a

serious problem.

QAA (2003, para 56: Review of 33 Foundation Degrees)

Page 17: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

The virtue of small steps …

I found having large blocks of work without

assessment difficult – you don’t know if you are

grasping it or not until exam time!

Assignments weekly would be better from my

point of view.

[Female in her 30s, pursuing a science-based FD programme]

Page 18: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

The virtue of small steps …

The less individuals believe in themselves, the more

they need explicit, proximal, and frequent feedback

of progress that provides repeated affirmations

of their growing capabilities.

Bandura (1997, p.217)

Page 19: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

… and of supportive feedback

Students observed that feedback was given in

such a way that they did not feel it was rejecting

or discouraging . . .

[and] that feedback procedures assisted them in

forming accurate perceptions of their abilities and

establishing internal standards with which to evaluate

their own work

Mentkowski and Associates (2000, p.82)

Page 20: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Encouraging M via formative assessment

Probably the mainapproach in HE

Where circumstancespermit

Via peer assessmentactivities

Over coffee or inthe bar

Problems if assessoris mentor, supervisor

In work-basedsituations

Only if an assessmentrequirement

Where student is acting self-critically

From Formal Informal

Teachers

Peers

Others

Self

Page 21: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

What can be done?

• Institutional strategy, involving academics, careers services and others

• Departmental/programme initiatives

• Actions by individuals

drawing on

• Resources available from ESECT, HE Academy, etc

Page 22: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Institutional strategy

• Declare a commitment to employability (and mean it)

• Make the academic case for employability, not just assert the necessity

• Make clear what the commitment means for teaching, learning, assessment, career development

• Operate the EU principle of subsidiarity

• Someone senior needs to act enthusiastically as a champion …

• … and work constructively with others, such as educational development units, careers services

Page 23: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Departmental/programme actions

• Audit curricula• Emphasise a culture of (active) learning• Engage colleagues in designing and providing appropriate learning opportunities for students …• … recognising that, especially in today’s HE, there is a need for activities with a social dimension …• … and remembering that there are many resources ‘out there’ which might be useful• Take formative assessment very seriously indeed• Use the potential of PDP• ‘Tune’, or redesign more radically, curricula

Page 24: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Individuals’ actions

• Be aware of the influences that may sustain/inhibit the development of employability in students

• Use, adapting where appropriate, available resources: avoid reinventing wheels

• Look for learning opportunities that offer possible synergy between subject studies and employability

• Make formative assessment effective (This means getting students to respond, which might need some imagination in approach)

• Stress the employability-relevance in learning tasks

Page 25: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Resources from ESECT and elsewhere

• Auditing/mapping/analytical tools

• Tools intended to help in ‘tuning’ curricula

• Case studies

• Quizzes and card-sorts

• Questionnaires (e.g. self-efficacy; employability experience)

• Compilation of resources related to employability

• Documents available via the HE Academy (e.g. L&E)

• Books covering aspects of employability

Page 26: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

Employability Experience Questionnaire

Focus U S E M Other

Self-awareness

Pedagogy

Work-based learning

Careers

Page 27: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

EEQ – sample items

This year’s work requires me to be more independent than last year’s did

What I have learned in the workplace has helped me in my academic studies

I can provide an employer with evidence of my general skills

I expect that I will be effective in a graduate-level job

My programme of study has involved me in planning my career development

I find it hard to assess my strengths and weaknesses as a competitor in the graduate labour market

Page 28: Enhancing employability: strategy and practice Mantz Yorke ESECT and Liverpool John Moores University

www.ltsn.ac.uk/ESECT