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Hi Calvin/Everyone, I look at the competencies idea and wonder myself. It seems to take a view of *individual* abilities and attributes that are de-contextualised. For example, teamwork. If you work in an environment full of ambitious individually minded people then the idea of teamwork will be very different and differently operable than in a place where mutual respect and support defines the atmosphere. In addition, if we ask different people what these ideas mean we know we'll get different answers because they have different meanings for different people in different settings. Surely that renders the idea of someone ticking a teamwork box as an administrative task that labels people without any depth of understanding. I looked at the list of competencies on your presentation Calvin, and I'm using you as a prototype rather than wishing to in any way personalise it to you, and thought any of them could mean anything to anyone. Or put another way aren't they always changed when grounded in a real context? My argument would be to look away from individual attributes and to look more critically instead at the contexts. They're mutually informative but I feel the balance is 'wrong' or even missing. Best Wishes, Nick On 15 October 2012 21:27, John English <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Dear Calvin > > I would be very interested to find out which 18 key employability skills > you finally decided upon. > > I have been using the 27 employability competences described by Ress, > Forbes and Kubler 2007 as a self evaluation tool to determine a 'baseline' > position for new UG accountancy students. > > These have recently been 'reduced' down to 20 areas this year to try to > streamline the process and hopefully 'improve' the effectiveness of the > evaluation. > > Students are being encouraged via the personal development process, that I > have embedded into a 1st year module, to look beyond their degree > classification before they enter the world of professional employment. > > You may be interested in looking at the conference presentations as yet > unpublished that we have disseminated here in the UK. > > Access is via the following links:- > http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/14782/ > http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/10527/ > http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/8002/ > > > > John > > > > John English MA FHEA > Senior Lecturer and Year One Tutor > Accountancy Dept. Room BS 1/17 > The Business School > University of Huddersfield > Queensgate > Huddersfield > HD1 3DH > > Telephone number 01484 472117 > Fax number 01484 473062 > E-mail address [log in to unmask] > > > ________________________________ > From: List for UK HEI employability developers [ > [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Calvin Smith [ > [log in to unmask]] > Sent: 15 October 2012 20:52 > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: Development of Student Survey - Employability > > Dear Sarah, > > I am currently leading a national project funded by the Office for > Learning and Teaching (formerly the Australian Learning and Teaching > Council) investigating the impact of WIL on student employment-readiness. > We are conducting a suite of studies two of which involve the use of > measures of employability using self-ratings of 18 key employability > skills. Those 18 are a distillation of circa 40 constructs identified in > literature and through a qualitative study of alumni. The distillation > process itself was a worthwhile exercise because it involved making tough > but necessary decisions and compromises around what constructs we included > in the study (and what measures would be best for those constructs) and > what were to be left out - and re-confirmed the suspicion that the idea of > employability is so wide-ranging and in some senses ill-defined (analogous > to the question 'what makes a good citizen' in some ways - just too big and > vague) that it is not a measureable singularity but a rubric and catch-all > term for a multi-dimensional collection of abilities; and that is putting > aside the other concerns that Len Holmes reminds us to have about the idea. > We are about to conduct the first of the studies using the measures we have > selected so I cannot report on the psycholmetrics of that collection, but > I'm happy to discuss further with you in the ensuing weeks. > > You can find out more about the project here: > > http://www.griffith.edu.au/gihe/research/assessing-wil-impact/ > > Kind regards, > Calvin. > > "We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring > will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." > T.S. Eliot > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Calvin Smith, PhD > Griffith Institute for Higher Education > > Griffith University > Mt Gravatt Campus > M10_4.11 > Messines Rd Mt Gravatt, QLD, AUSTRALIA, 4111 > > email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> > www: http://www.griffith.edu.au/gihe/staff/calvin-smith > mob: 0431 850 500 > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Project leader: Assessing the Impact of WIL project: > http://www.griffith.edu.au/gihe/research/assessing-wil-impact/ > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Read about Design-focused evaluation here: > Design-focused evaluation article...< > http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602930701772762> > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > > > On 15 October 2012 23:46, Sara Briscoe <[log in to unmask]<mailto: > [log in to unmask]>> wrote: > Dear Colleagues, > > We are currently looking at developing a student survey relating to > confidence in their own 'employability'. I am well aware of the minefield > surrounding this issue but we do however feel that a stable survey measure > may shed some light on the student 'employablility' jigsaw. We would look > to run such a survey over successive years in order to get a longtitudinal > view. I had some interesting information from UCLan at the Pedagogy for > Employablity one day worskhop run by Ruth last Summer. Is there anyone > else devloping such a measure - or have any thoughts? We are quite happy to > share are developments. > > Look forward to hearing from you! > > Kind regards > > Sara Briscoe > Principal Lecturer ( Student Experience) > Teaching & Learning Fellow > > > ________________________________ > > --- > This transmission is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you > receive it in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and remove it > from your system. If the content of this e-mail does not relate to the > business of the University of Huddersfield, then we do not endorse it and > will accept no liability. > -- -------------------------------------- Nicholas Bowskill, Shared Thinking Consultancy Malton YO17 7BE Shared Thinking - a Community Pedagogy Web Site: http://www.sharedthinking.info