I see my name has been mentioned, so unashamedly put in my two-pennyworth …
The problem with the competencies/ skills/ attributes approach, as I have argued, is fundamentally (sic) at the level of conceptualisation and theorisation.
Just exactly what are these phenomena? Referring to them as ‘constructs’ is very problematic, as there is (as far as I am aware) no evidence that any method for reliable ‘measurement’ has been developed.
Nick is, I suggest, **part** way there in suggesting that we need to consider context: we need to consider **persons** in context. That may be done through
the two key concepts of practices and identity (conceived of in interactional terms: claim/ disclaim and ascription).
The **language** in which individual persons seek to (a) warrant that their actions are appropriate for a graduate employee and (b) warrant their claim on the
identity of a graduate **is** important – and the dominant mode of language in manifested in the language of skills/ competencies/ attributes. But we should not mistake such terms as **denoting**, referring to, some real, existent phenomena that are
amenable to the forms of measurement that seems to be the ever-elusive holy grail of employability research and practice.
Len
From: List for UK HEI employability developers [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Calvin Smith
Sent: 16 October 2012 11:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Development of Student Survey - Employability
I never take things like this personally. I think this is just like the "problem" of the graduate attributes...at once both seemingly so deeply embedded in contextual application that they seemingly can't be transferred / transferable skills
and yet simultaneously pretty obviously transferable (imagine if this weren't true and the opposite were true instead: we'd only be able to write sat at desks in our first-grade classrooms!). From a deep phenomenological perspective it is probably right to
say that transfer is impossible since each time you do an act it is done in a specific situation and circumstance. On the other hand, ask someone, anyone, about some skill area, and they will have a sense of whether they are any good at that skill area. Yes
true, to make that assessment they will think back to contexts of application in which they performed well or badly (or "averagely" :-) ). But what else does any of us have as our reference points? Am I a good parent? Do I drive well? Am I good at chess? All
relative to the contexts in which I developed or deploy those skills. Yet we self appraise on that basis all the time. (I am putting aside here self- serving and delusional, unjustified self-praise).
So the question I ask here is not "is it conceivable in a decontextualised way?" But rather "is it researchable?". (And I must think that it is...). Can people be relied upon to give some report of their sense of their own abilities in
these areas and might that sense be roughly valid (if not precise), and might that appraisal change over time with the experience of using that skill in various contexts or in the same context on different occasions? I think so...
Nick, I saw your earlier post on the sessions where you proposed to get students together to explore and talk about their skills/capabilities and their application contexts and I think that is very valuable for raising self-awareness of
capability, and the limits of claims about the generalisability of those skill acquisitions. That is a great idea. I'd like to see the results of an experiment in which two groups of students were given a set of measures of employability skills, then one group
went through an activity like the one you propose and then both groups do the measures again. I predict there will be some increase in the experimental group from awareness raising alone. But then such an experiment does rely on that measurement approach,
and I understand that you and others may find it untenable.
It is a terrific example don't you think of the problem of "common sense" defining the world...I have some sympathies with the deeper concerns raised by yourself and e.g. Len Holmes; but there is a pragmatic side to this too, that demands
an attempt at an answer...
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Griffith Institute for Higher Education (GIHE)
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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.
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]>
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
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