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The purpose of this paper is to explain how employability and entrepreneurship embedded in the practice of professional placements in a large UK Business School, grounded in literature and research concerning the relationship between professional experience and employability. It explores possible further developments of this practice into student entrepreneurship.

The paper outlines the relevant literature and then describes the operation of the scheme in practice. It identifies relevant problems and discusses opportunities for both development and research.

Professional experience is of immense value to both students and the organisations that host them. Despite reluctance on the part of some of these two key stakeholders, it has the potential for further expansion in terms of number of students on placement, their location, their experience and integrating placements with entrepreneurship education.

Organisations may see the benefit of employing students on one year or shorter contracts. Universities not currently offering professional placements within the curriculum to their students may wish to adopt best practice and those that are already involved may wish to consider the optional/compulsory element of the placement experience in order to address the reticence of many students to secure this experience. The paper suggests solutions to the well‐established question “Can entrepreneurship be taught?” by investigating the idea of Enterprise Placements.

The paper helps to explain, in a practical way, the opportunities and problems associated with the implementation of a placement scheme in the context of relevant literature.

Purpose – Mobility of youth in multiple foster care placements contributes to diminished life chances and outcomes. Foster care youth mobility during care results in numerous school changes within one academic year which hinders educational achievement. This qualitative study examines a group of Latino alumni of foster care and their experiences related to housing and education.

Methodology – Interviews with 25 young Latino adults ranging in age from 18 to 22 examined foster care placement, transitions to independence, and experiences after foster care. Researchers used a semi-structured interview guide, and tape-recorded interviews transcribed and coded for emergent themes.

Findings – Results suggest that as youth experience school mobility, social capital aids in promoting positive educational experiences. This research emphasizes the importance of positive social capital for Latino foster care youth and their educational achievement, evidenced in both adult and peer social networks. Few studies have examined Latino foster care youth experiences, and currently there are no studies that address educational experiences of these youth.

The Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act address factors to consider in educating students with and without disabilities together to the maximum extent appropriate. This chapter is designed to examine the origins and evolving interpretations of the LRE concept in special education policy and practice. Discussion traces the evolution of the concept as a legal principle, and reviews its application to educational strategies for students with learning and behavioral disabilities in contemporary schools. In conclusion, the future of the LRE concept is addressed in light of competing policies promoting presumptive inclusive education, and publicly funded school choice programs promoting greater involvement of parents in choosing where their children with and without disabilities should be educated.

Self-employment placements can provide an opportunity to experience the real-life world of the entrepreneur within an educational context but their implementation is rare. Here we describe a full sandwich year placement scheme at the University of Huddersfield – the Enterprise Placement Year (EPY). Details of the EPY are provided including academic requirements, application procedures and the learning opportunities provided. There are a growing number of EPY alumni continuing the development of their business idea or starting up a new business in their final year or after graduation and three examples are provided. In addition to increasing numbers of sustaining businesses, there is evidence of improved academic success with a greater than average percentage of ‘good degrees’ obtained. Regular changes to the delivery of the programme have been made as a result of ongoing evaluation. These are reported here with recommendations for other universities considering offering such a programme and suggestions for future research.

The Real Opportunities project set out to implement a number of the approaches identified through research that can assist transition to adulthood in nine local authority areas in Wales. Supported work experience was delivered by small job coaching teams in each area. The purpose of this paper is to establish the impact of the work experience and employment teams by describing the placements provided, any change in the skills of young people, and the responses to the placements by employers, young people and their families.

Data were collected over 24 months by participating employment services. Questionnaires were administered to employers. Interviews were carried out with a sub-sample of young people (24) participating and a family member (25).

Over a 24-month period 297 young people received supported work experience. In total, 262 young people had an intellectual disability, 35 an autistic spectrum disorder. Up to three placements were delivered to each person, averaging five weeks per placement, with 405 placements in total. In total, 62 per cent of those with two placements had a different category of second work placement to their first. These numbers demonstrated that work experience in community placements is possible with support. Young people improved work skills significantly between first and second placements. Employers reported high satisfaction rates with the young person’s work in a range of key performance areas and company benefits from participation for other staff, company image and customer relations. Interviews with 24 young people and 25 of their family members reported satisfaction with support and placements. Six young people had paid work now, and 33 per cent said they would get a job at some future time. Families reported changes in young person’s outlook but their view of prospects of employment remained pessimistic due to the external environment.

Implications for future research are discussed.

Implications for transition are discussed.

The paper provides new insight into the impact of a large number of supported work experience placements.

The purpose of this chapter is to describe a study that identified the school variables that seem to have the greatest impact on placement of students in high incidence special education programs (i.e., special programs for students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders, specific learning disabilities, and educable mental handicaps). School records of 42 students who were identified when they were in primary school as at risk for learning, emotional, and behavioral disorders were examined retrospectively over three grades (i.e., grades 3 and 4, grades 5 and 6, and grades 7 and 8). Of these, 21 students had been placed in high incidence special education programs, and 21 had not been placed. Low achievement and academic performance and a high number of negative comments by their teachers were the two most salient variables associated with placement. Implications for prevention/intervention efforts and effective service delivery options are discussed.

In the UK, concern frequently has been voiced that young people lack appropriate employability skills. One way to address this is to provide work based placements. In general, previous research findings have indicated that young people find such placements useful because of help with career choice and relevant skills. However, most studies are retrospective and involve sixth form or degree students. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous research by collecting information before and after the placements.

This investigation involved questionnaires with nearly 300 14-15 year-old students who provided a pre- and post-placement self-reports about their employability skills and their work-experience hosts provided ratings of employability skills at the end of the placement.

There was a significant increase in student ratings of their employability skills from before to after the placement, and although the employers gave slightly lower ratings of some employability skills than the students, the two sets of ratings were reasonably close. In addition, the students had high expectations of the usefulness of the placements and these expectations were fulfilled as reported in the post-placement questionnaire.

These positive findings, extend the knowledge of the effects of work based placements, by focussing on the opinion of the young people themselves, using a pre- to post-placement design, by validating student self-reports with host employer ratings, and by focussing on a younger than usual age group.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study centred on steps taken at a Business School in a UK university, to improve local work placement provision, respond to student demand and engage more productively with local businesses. It is situated against renewed focus on universities’ engagement with local economies and the graduate labour market context as demonstrated by the government’s Industrial Strategy (BEIS, 2017) and the OfS (2018) business plan. It aims to emphasise how moving the focus back from graduates to placement students could offer a useful collaborative opportunity for local businesses to articulate what they want from future employees.

The paper follows a mixed methods approach, drawing upon a case study on a new intervention piloted in the Business School as well as qualitative research gathered from questionnaires and interviews with students. Responses to questionnaires and interviews were analysed thematically in the Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) tradition.

The paper highlights the lack of literature on local placements and also demonstrates findings which echo existing research on typical barriers and drivers to placements in general. It offers original outcomes such as how for some students local placements offer a convenience value but for others they are part of committing to living and working locally after graduation.

The small-scale nature of the study means that only indicative findings are presented. Further research is necessary for a more detailed examination of its implications.

Recommendations are made for a systematic approach to developing, or establishing for the first time, university–employer relationships in order to future-proof local placement opportunities.

The paper fills a gap in the literature on local placements and also provides a fresh approach to how universities and employers might work together to identify local skills gaps and increase the provision of local placements. It also offers ways in students’ often negatively framed reasons for not undertaking a placement can be mitigated through engaging with the local context.

An adapted version of lesson study (peer micro-teaching lesson study (PMLS)) was used in a one-year initial teacher education (ITE) programme for prospective secondary school teachers of geography, history, citizenship and social science in England. The purpose of this paper is to support student-teachers through an opportunity to share knowledge, skills and practice from their first teaching placements.

In cross-curricular groups (of three or four), the student-teachers co-designed lessons that focused on developing thinking skills when teaching advanced-level content. Two “research lessons” were designed following the use of an initial questionnaire. Feedback from student-teachers was sought through a post-PMLS questionnaire. Participants’ discussions were recorded between the two “research lessons” to capture references to subject knowledge (SK), placement experiences and exploratory talk.

Principal findings to emerge from the project were: cross-curricular PMLS helped to support student-teachers’ development between their two school environments. The collaborative process allowed them to build on their first school experiences by sharing and reflecting on their placements, learning from each other’s pedagogical practice and by improving SK both within and outside of their own specialism.

The work is the first known use of PMLS in ITE in the UK, demonstrating that it can be used as a bridge between the first and second school placements. It elaborates a cross-curricular collaborative vision for the use of modified forms of LS in the preparation of new teachers in programmes that are now largely school-led.

The field experience placement is an integral part of teacher education programmes. It is ostensibly meant to provide a place for teacher candidates to enact pedagogical theory gained during coursework under the supervision of an experienced host teacher. In reality, the field placement is a source of considerable tension for teacher candidates, as they struggle to reconcile their prior assumptions about teaching and learning and their prior identities as students with the demands of school culture that requires teachers and students to act in particular ways. The field experience is emotional work that has a considerable impact on the development of new teachers’ identities. In this chapter I will focus on how two new teachers learn during the field experience placement, with a particular emphasis on the roles of emotion and the development of professional identity in learning to teach. Cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT) will provide a useful lens to interpret some of the challenges of learning to teach during the field placement.