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1 Learning and empLoyabiLity Career studies handbook: career development learning in practice Phil McCash 2 Learning and empLoyabiLity titles currently available in this series: Employability and higher education: what it is – what it is not – mantz yorke Employability: judging and communicating achievements – peter Knight and mantz yorke Embedding employability into the curriculum – mantz yorke and peter Knight Entrepreneurship and higher education: an employability perspective – neil moreland Employability and work-based learning – brenda Little and eSeCt colleagues Pedagogy for employability – the pedagogy for employability group Work-related learning in higher education – neil moreland Employability for research postgraduates – Janet metcalfe and alexandra gray Employability and part-time students – brenda Little Ethics and employability – Simon robinson Career development learning and employability – a. g. Watts Personal development planning and employability Embedding employability in the context of widening participation – Liz thomas and robert Jones the series editor is professor mantz yorke. the employability publications advisory board reviews all Higher education academy employability publications, and comprises professor mantz yorke (Chair), professor Lee Harvey (Sheffield Hallam University), Brenda Little (CHERI), Professor Kate Purcell (University of Warwick), Jane Artess (Graduate Prospects), Barbara Graham (University of Strathclyde), rob Ward (Centre for recording achievement) and Val butcher from the Higher education academy. Professor Peter Knight (Open University) was a member of the Board until his untimely death in april 2007. Copy-editing has been undertaken by Dr Donald Millar (formerly of the University of Leeds) and peter thomas. the Learning and employability series is being extended by the Higher education academy and will reflect changing challenges and priorities in the relationship between higher education and the many work opportunities likely to need – or benefit from – graduate or postgraduate abilities. the views expressed in this series are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the academy. Career studies handbook 1 the Higher education academy – January 2008 1 Contents How to use this handbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 general introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 preview of key points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 introducing Career Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 exploring Career Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Designing courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Vignettes: Career Studies in practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 biography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 “ people … may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? they may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, i think.” — Dorothea to mr Casaubon in Middlemarch (eliot 1965 [1871-2]: 108-9) 2 Career studies handbook the Higher education academy – January 20082 How to use this handbook it has been suggested that there is a responsibility on curriculum designers to help students develop “a sense of acting and being in the wider world” (barnett and Coate 2005: 58). in this publication, it will be argued that the emergence of Career Studies as a transdisciplinary field provides an opportunity to realise this objective in educational terms. the handbook is intended as a guide for course designers responsible for the development of undergraduate and postgraduate courses at programme and modular level. it is designed to assist in the development of learning outcomes appropriate to subject areas and student groups. it contains an introduction to Career Studies, a guide to course design, and practical examples of Career Studies teaching (the vignettes). the introduction explains briefly the transdisciplinary nature of Career Studies and aids articulation between this and the home discipline. a fuller exploration of Career Studies then follows. the section on course design is split into the following subsections: general points for course designers • developing a “career-informed curriculum” (Horn 2008: 1) • addressing common weaknesses. • it is designed to be read in conjunction with the 11 vignettes. the appendices contain: a list of subjects connected with Career Studies • a selection of key quotations • a summary of practice-based approaches to Career Studies • a guide to professional development. • the handbook is also intended as a guide for all staff connected with career- and employability-related learning, including lecturers, module designers, careers advisers, work experience coordinators, counsellors, employability officers, personal development planning (PDP) professionals, directors of teaching and learning, and senior institutional managers with responsibility for teaching and learning. it is further intended to assist staff in modernising and reviewing the content of any existing career education, career counselling, employability, enterprise, work experience, and personal development programmes. Career studies handbook 3 the Higher education academy – January 2008 3 general introduction two previous titles in the Higher education academy’s Learning and Employability series have set a challenging agenda for work on employability and career development learning in the higher education curriculum (yorke and Knight 2006; Watts 2006). yorke and Knight (2006) argue for a transdisciplinary approach informed by a model of employability termed USEM (understanding, skills, efficacy and metacognition). employability, they suggest, connects with a “multiplicity of discourses” including: home subject of study, individual and social psychology, communication studies, organisational sociology, management, finance, and indeed further disciplines (p21). Curriculum-based approaches should therefore embrace some or all of the following: transdisciplinary content • home subject understanding • self-theories and beliefs • theories of learning • the integration of theory with practice. • Watts (2006) argues that career development learning should have a stronger presence in the employability curriculum and that much of the employability literature has neglected conceptual work on career development. He suggests that the popularity of career development learning within higher education can be linked to the narrowness of the skills and employability discourse. there is a need to develop ”an academic discipline in which research can be conducted” (p26), and restructure career services along academic lines. this will require staff connected with careers, employability and personal development to develop: “greater pedagogic knowledge and skills than they have usually had in the past” • “a stronger grounding in career development theory, not only as a basis • for their own professional practice but also as a body of knowledge for them to teach as part of the students’ career development learning” “academic empathy” (pp27–8). • Finally, he suggests that “the intellectual foundations of career development learning … need to be strengthened” (p29). These comments find parallels in the work of bowman et al. (2005), Horn (2007), and Kneale (2007). In analysing the employability and career progression of UK Masters degree students, bowman et al. (2005) express dissatisfaction with the ”folk theory” of linear, matching careers and stress the need for “a more 4 Career studies handbook the Higher education academy – January 20084 sophisticated theoretical base” (p110), ”critical understanding of the labour market” (p107), and the reconceptualisation of learning and career “as an on-going process of learning to become” (p97). Horn (2007), following perry’s work on the intellectual and moral development of students in higher education, argues that career education should be conceptualised “as a new branch or extension of the higher education curriculum” (p30). Career education should therefore concentrate on educational content, ”learner development” and ”critical thinking” (p33). Similarly, Kneale (2007) argues strongly that the assessment of career education should be as challenging and academically demanding as any other subject within a degree. She identifies a need for tough career education assessments and “careers learning packages with academically solid content” (p37). every undergraduate student, Kneale suggests, should undertake “one piece of career-related research and assessment in the context of their discipline” (p38). in this handbook it is argued that a Career Studies approach to employability and career development learning meets these challenging expectations. Specifically, the use of the term “Career Studies” indicates a conceptualisation of career education as a subject of study in higher education. a subject within which the following are embraced: transdisciplinarity • the teaching and research of career ideas, concepts and beliefs • high quality academic content, learning outcomes and assessment • innovation in approaches to teaching and learning. • in particular, by developing a subject-based approach to career education, this handbook will respond robustly to Watts’ (2006: 29) exhortation to strengthen the intellectual basis of career development learning. Career studies handbook 5 the Higher education academy – January 2008 5 preview of key points Career Studies provides a comprehensive means for operationalising • in educational terms the challenging career development learning and employability agenda set out in the Learning and Employability series. Career Studies is a transdisciplinary subject and is expanding, both in • terms of teaching and research activity. Units of formal study range from full degree courses to individual • modules, papers, and lectures within courses. there are also extra- curricular examples. Career Studies explicitly frames career education as a subject within • which teaching, research and research-based practice take place. the teaching of Career Studies as a transdisciplinary theme entails the • development of learning outcomes appropriate to home subject disciplines. the evaluation of Career Studies teaching can involve a range of • methods with a particular focus on the assessment of intellectual, cultural and moral development. 6 Career studies handbook the Higher education academy – January 20086 introducing Career Studies in its broadest sense, Career Studies addresses aspects of how we live and what it is to be human. It is a transdisciplinary field of socio-cultural enquiry that focuses on life purposes and meanings and the more prosaic matters of achieving those ends. in practical terms it provides a space in the curriculum for students to consider the ideas and beliefs of self and others concerning career, labour markets and employability. Career Studies is expanding as a subject, both in terms of teaching and research activity. Credit-bearing course provision has doubled in the last ten years and it is now taught in at least 41% of UK higher education institutions (Heis) with further institutions actively planning to introduce it (Foskett and Johnston 2006: 19–20). the extent of current research activity is illustrated by the fact that 21,000 academic articles were published between 2001 and 2005 featuring the keyword “career” (gunz and peiperl 2007: 5). Career Studies is a term that encompasses several forms of learning commonly encountered within higher education including: career education, career development learning, career management skills, work-based learning, personal development planning, entrepreneurship, career learning and employability learning. Career Studies also takes place within degree programmes either as a subsidiary theme or a central focus. the formulation ”Career Studies” explicitly frames career education as a subject within which teaching, learning, research and research-based practice take place (mignot 2000; mcCash 2007). In order to consider links with specific subject areas, it is important for course designers to be aware that Career Studies is a transdisciplinary subject. it has traditionally been linked with the fields of psychology, sociology, education, and organisational studies. However, several commentators have highlighted this transdisciplinary element and extended it to encompass links with anthropology, economics, political science, history, geography and other subjects: “ Career behaviour, depending on how it is defined in structural or developmental terms, is of interest to many disciplines.” (Herr 1990: 16) — “ [Career Studies is] a perspective on social enquiry, its central concept being the effect on people of the passage of time. as such, it does not so much relate to other disciplines as pervade them. it is as possible to be a psychologist interested in careers as it is…to be a sociologist, a social psychologist, an anthropologist, an economist, a political scientist, a historian, or a geographer.” (italics in original). (peiperl and gunz 2007: 40) — Career studies handbook 7 the Higher education academy – January 2008 7 these transdisciplinary, time-based and pervasive elements are important and defining features of Career Studies: “ Unlike many social science concepts, the concept of the career is not the property of any one theoretical or disciplinary view... We believe that exploring this diversity will help us uncover new theoretical questions as well as new answers.” (arthur — et al. 1989: 7) “ What is the nature of a good life, a good career? phrased practically, how should one live?... As fundamental as this question is to the field of career guidance, it is simply not asked seriously, and worse, it is not recognized as fundamental. Were it taken seriously, we would be studying aristotle, Kierkegaard, and others who have tried to answer it.” (Cochran 1990: 83) — in the quotations above, arthur et al. and Cochran encourage us to take a fully transdisciplinary approach to Career Studies. although there are obvious links with sociology, psychology, education and organisational studies, these disciplines are no longer seen as exclusively foundational. Career Studies potentially links to all disciplines and has perhaps most to learn from, and contribute to, those disciplines where it has been least recognised until recently. an extensive list of subject links is included in appendix 1. two examples illustrating the pervasive and transdisciplinary qualities of Career Studies are provided below. one focuses on cultural, the other on scientific and technical subjects. 1. Cultural Horn (2008) suggests that a ”career-informed curriculum” (p.1) could involve cultural aspects of career including ”investigating differences in employment and recruitment practices, and differences in meanings attributed to work and careers in different cultures, societies and historical periods” (p.5). possible topics could include: “are individuals are free to make career choices, and to what extent are choices influenced by the society and the economy? how have attitudes to ”careers” and to the role of work changed over time? is the term ”career” neutral, or does it have different implications depending on one’s gender, ethnic background, social class, education or prior achievements? how are career and work depicted in different media, e.g. popular culture, literature, film and television?” (pp.5-6). 8 Career studies handbook the Higher education academy – January 20088 She suggests that related disciplines are likely to include ”sociology, cultural studies, other social sciences, arts and humanities programmes where they consider culture (e.g. cultural history, cultural aspects of literature, media studies, feminist or postcolonial approaches)” (p.6). 2. Scientific and technical in contrasting ways, a number of recent commentators have stressed the relationship between learning, identity and career (Lave and Wenger 1991; becher and trowler 2001; bowman et al. 2005). in studying mathematics, for instance, one learns to become a mathematician. it is in this important sense that all degree courses, including “pure” disciplines in the sciences and arts, are vocational. through formal and informal learning within and around a subject of study, students become disciplined into a particular way of thinking and acting (and in turn shape the discipline). From this metacognitive learning perspective, becoming and being a mathematician, engineer or chemist, occur within a degree course just as it does in a graduate job. Further examples of this are provided in the section headed Course Design. many of the vignettes described in a later section illustrate such transdisciplinary dimensions. Five vignettes make links with a range of cultural subjects including identity, etymology and word history, development studies, anthropology, psychoanalytic theory, developmental psychology, literary theory, american studies, and religious studies (1, 2b, 4, 6, 9). Two of the vignettes illustrate links with scientific or technical subjects including forensic science, building services and visual arts (8, 10). Career studies handbook 9 the Higher education academy – January 2008 9 exploring Career Studies no attempt is made here to essay a fully transdisciplinary account of Career Studies. Such a project is still in development (at the University of reading and elsewhere) and there are substantial though still incomplete accounts available (meaning of Working international research team 1987; moore et al. 2007). this section is designed to expand on the preceding introduction and to provide the interested reader with additional pointers. it can be read in conjunction with the vignettes, and the selected quotations in appendix 3. the etymology and word history of “career” are varied and its current meanings are relatively recent and still debated. its origin is linked to the Latin terms carrus (wagon) and via carraria (carriageway), and is therefore cognate with car, cargo, carpenter, carriage, cart, and chariot(eer) (although not caravan or careen). For most of its life within the english language, “career” has referred to a course or racetrack and, by extension, a rapid movement; the term could be applied to an object, an animal or a person. it was only in the early nineteenth century that an additional connection with occupation was made (oxford english Dictionary 2002). Some of the quotations in appendix 3 illustrate the ways in which career can now be variously taken to mean a whole life or just a part of life, to refer to work or a wider range of roles. the terms “career diplomat”, “career woman”, “portfolio career”, “life-career”, “career change”, “careerist” and “career criminal” nea