Introduction to the special section

Leesa Wheelahan (Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada)
Gavin Moodie (Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada)

Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning

ISSN: 2042-3896

Article publication date: 10 August 2015

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Citation

Wheelahan, L. and Moodie, G. (2015), "Introduction to the special section", Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, Vol. 5 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/HESWBL-12-2014-0059

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Introduction to the special section

Article Type: Introduction to the special section From: Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, Volume 5, Issue 3.

Higher level vocational skills – part 2: colleges’ distinctive contributions to higher education

This is the second part of a special issue of the journal of Higher Education, Skills and Work-based Learning examining the place of higher level vocational skills offered by colleges. The special edition is the result of a collaboration between the Mixed Economy Group (MEG) of 41 English colleges of further education which offer vocational and higher education and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) Directors Australia, the peak national body representing Australia’s 58 government-owned TAFE institutes that offer vocational and higher education.

The first part of the special edition included a number of papers exploring the contexts and issues arising from higher level vocational skills offered by colleges. This part includes two papers that discuss colleges’ distinctive contributions to higher education: their close links with their community and their consequent emphasis on developing graduates’ employability skills.

In her paper on student perceptions of barriers to networking with employers Elizabeth Caldwell notes that higher education offered by further education colleges has a long tradition of a vocational orientation with strong links to local employers. However, she found that not all students participated as fully as desirable in a program designed to increase students’ interaction with employers and hence their employability. Caldwell finds that this is because many of the students in her study did not have fully the characteristics of the implied graduate: enough time for employability activities, deep engagement with higher education, experience and confidence interacting with employers, and cultural capital.

Caldwell argues that:

[…] the assumptions embodied in the concept of the “implied graduate” form part of the hidden curriculum for undergraduate students, wherever they study. These implicit conventions need to be articulated in the learning outcomes of programmes and employability activities, both in terms of the knowledge and skills that students will acquire but also in terms of the values, attitudes and behaviours that are being developed.

In the second paper, Sue Spence describes a carefully designed project on developing business students’ employability skills though working in partnership with a local business to deliver an undergraduate mentoring program. Many of the students in her group also lacked of self confidence and business experience for which they needed substantial preparation and support. Spence’s evaluation found clear evidence of student engagement in the program and the learning and career development they gained from it. Mentors gained from the program the satisfaction of giving something back and contributing to their mentee’s development. Spence concludes that the program could be improved by embedding mentoring more into the course rather than being optional and giving all students an opportunity to be involved.

The papers in this special issue on the place of higher level vocational skills offered by colleges exemplify reflection on innovative practice in some of the challenges confronted by colleges offering higher education. The first part of the special issue opened with new understandings of the practice of scholarship in colleges. Other papers presented issues which arose in individual colleges but which apply more generally: managing institutions’ and students’ changed identity emerging from their changed role and student engagement and the challenges of distinctive groups of students: Aboriginal students, part-time students and graduate certificate students. The papers in this part of the Special Issue consider colleges’ engagement with their community and development of graduates’ employability skills, distinctive strengths of colleges. As a whole, the special collection reflects colleges’ shared interests across institutions and jurisdictions and the growing strength of their reflective practice (Schön, 1983).

Leesa Wheelahan and Gavin Moodie

Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Reference

Schön, D.A. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action, Temple Smith, London

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