Work Placements - a Survival Guide for Students

Citation

(2005), "Work Placements - a Survival Guide for Students", Education + Training, Vol. 47 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2005.00447aae.002

Work Placements - a Survival Guide for Students

Work Placements - a Survival Guide for Students

Christine FanthomePalgrave2004ISBN 1403934347</p

There is much to recommend this latest addition to the Palgrave Study Guide series. This said I am left with a nagging concern about its ultimate value. There is no question that it contains a lot of good advice. There can be no longer any doubt that the work placement offers a learning site of enormous potential. The author underpins her guidelines to students with valuable points in relation to reflective practice. The potential of learning logs etc. reflective essays are included together with illustration and example. Some interesting case study material is presented. These highlight how mismatched expectations can so easily arise yet re-affirm the potential mutual benefit to student and employer of such activity.

Although Fanthome does not treat the issue as non-problematic, the book does I feel fail to fully “problematise” the issue. Is equipping students to “survive” a work placement simply a case of identifying a set of particular skills and encouraging their acquisition. If it were this simple I guess a book such as this is as good as anything. But isn’t it equally a case of addressing the extent to which such skills are capable of having some independent existence outside of any particular situation ? And isn’t it about how such skills are likely to be mediated, significantly I would suggest, by aspects of identity (student, graduate, young person, employee etc.). In other words, for a student to “survive” or indeed “flourish” in a work placement is likely to be far more complex than checklist of do’s and don’ts, however thoughtfully constructed. Of course, it might be argued that it is unrealistic to expect a book which is overtly a study “guide” to treat the issue in anything other than the approach adopted here. But, on the other hand, do we not risk perpetuating the myth that all we need to do is pack a few more skills into the student’s “toolbag” and everything will be fine and dandy.

Perhaps my biggest concern is will it be read? My experience suggests that despite increasing emphasis within the further and higher education curricula to attempt to “teach” personal development, reflective proactive etc. most student fail to genuinely engage with such processes until they are in work. Although written explicitly for students possibly the book has most value as a contribution to the debate as to whether, and if so how best, the curriculum might appropriately engage students in aspects of career, professional practice and identity and reflective practice.