Dear colleagues

I am grateful to John (Hilsdon) for his comments about the tone etc with
which messages should be written in order that sensible debate may continue.

In direct response to John Dean's message (which, I presume was intended
for me, rather than 'Mr Dunstone'), as a Chartered Member of the Chartered
Institute of Personnel and Development (with practitioner experience going
back 26 years) and teacher of 'human resource management', I fully
recognise and accept your description of employers' recruitment and
selection practices.
but, But, BUT...
everything you say supports my argument *against* SKATTY and *for* the
practices/ emergent-identity (aka Graduate Identity) approach!!
According to the conventional possessive-instrumentalist model, skills are
deemed to have discrete, objectively real and measurable existence -
students are assessed according to whether or not they *possess* certain
skills (and/or the extent to which they have these). It is assumed that
'take' ie transfer these skills into different contexts where they *use*
them to perform as required/ desired.
But if that conceptualisation were correct, employers would merely have to
look at what grades were awarded for key/ transerable skills etc. As you
point out, John, employers *don''t* - they engage in the time-consuming and
expensive practices he describes.

Look at the issue from the practices/ emergent-identity approach:
Employers require applicants to complete application forms, and respond to
questions (often competency-oriented). In doing so, they engage in
self-presentation (identity claim) which recruiters respond to either (a)
to affirm the identity claim or (b) to disaffirm that claim. The outcome is
likely to depend on the extent to which the applicant has presented their
claim (on the identity as a 'real' graduate ie someone worthy of being
employed in the kind of position etc) in terms which the recruiter views as
valid/ appropriate/ legitimate. These terms would most likely be couched in
the language of skills & attributes. And the whole process would be subject
to the vagaries of recruiters own not-strictly-rational perceptions. And,
and, and, once recruited the graduate would have to sustain the claim on
and affirmation (by others) of the identity.

So .... rather than focusing upon the supposed acquisition of these
purported entities called skills, we should be seeking to help our students
and graduates to articulate their claim on the graduate identity, ie how
they warrant their claim in a manner which is likely to gain affirmation by
recruiters.

In fact, I do think that there is much good work going on that does exactly
this, but perhaps in an oblique way. I'm suggesting that we look to do this
much more directly.

Work placements seem to be effective in promoting employability (although
the empirical evidence is rather thin at present). This is understandable
from the Graduate Identity approach: students are able to engage in
identity and practices rehearsal - or legitimate peripheral participation
in Lave and Wenger's terminology. How can the SKATTY approach explain work
placements?

For me, the clincher is the fact that the employment outcomes for graduates
from new universities such as yours and mine are relatively poorer than for
pre-92 universities. In particular, graduates from minority ethnic groups,
from working class backgrounds, and over the age of 27/ 28 at graduation,
have significantly poorer employment outcomes. How can SKATTY explain this?
Do these graduate lack skills or the right attributes? I assume you would
agree that such an explanation is unacceptable.
The Graduate Identity approach can explain the empirical findings in terms
of the interactional process of claim-affirmation/ disaffirmation.

Your message was mostly about what I am proposing that *employers* should
do. Well, I am sure that colleagues who have read my work will recognise
that my primary target audience is *not* employers. It is *us*, ie staff in
various roles working in HE seeking to help our students to make a
difference in their lives through and from their educational experience and
outcomes. Please make allowance that I haven't yet provided the answer to
'life, the universe and everything' (as Douglas Adams put it). However, in
a report on a small-scale research project undertaken for the Government
Office for London, the first recommendation was:
"Smaller employers should be encouraged to give strong consideration to
employing 'second-job' graduates; such individuals are often seeking to
gain affirmation of their graduate identity, and bring a sense of
wanting-to-achieve to their second job."
(http://www.re-skill.org.uk/gisme/gisme7.htm)
I believe that this applies equally to larger employers. The Graduate
Identity approach, because it is adopts a dynamic model of identity
projects and trajectories through modalities of emergent identity thus is
superior to the static model of the SKATTY approach (the skills &
attributes you have at graduation).

So, John, thanks for providing further support for the practices/ emergent
identity approach (whether you intended this or not!). Yes, I do see this
as a matter of an alternative paradigm. As such it requires suspension of
belief in the assumptions of the SKATTY approach, and looking afresh at the
issues in debate. I do you are willing to do this. We can then move forward.

By the way, I wasn't born an academic and as for being 'pure' ... well!!

regards


Len


----------------------------------
Dr Leonard Holmes
Director, Management Research Centre
London Metropolitan University
Holloway Road
London N7 8DB

email: [log in to unmask]
tel.: +44 (0)20 7133 3032
websites:
        www.re-skill.org.uk
        www.graduate-employability.org.uk
        www.odysseygroup.org.uk