Integrating academic skills and employability - revisiting the learning journal

Authors

  • Mario Menz University of West London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14297/jpaap.v8i1.393

Keywords:

Academic skills, employability, student development, curriculum development, educational innovation

Abstract

Across the world, universities are more numerous today than at any other time in history, yet at the same time there is unparalleled confusion about their purpose and scepticism about their value. Based on an extensive literature review, a survey of the academic landscape and discussions with academics as well as employers, this reflective piece highlights the importance of academic skills development on student’s success at university and illustrates the link between academic skills, employability and professional success.The article was prompted by the current discussion around universities’ struggle to provide students with the necessary skills to succeed after graduation. The article argues that the differentiation between academic skills on the one hand and employability skills on the other is no longer relevant or appropriate in the 21stcentury knowledge economy and invites universities to enhance their curriculum with additional, mandatory skills development modules. It provides an innovative suggestion on how to link academic skills and employability in curriculum development based on the existing academic literature around the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as well as research into employability skills.The importance of academic skills on students’ professional success can never be overstated. The article offers an innovative approach to linkingacademic skills, employability and professional success. It adds fuel to the discussion around employability from the perspective of industry practitioners.

References

Austin, E.J., Parker, J.D.A., Petrides, K.V. and Saklofske, D.H. (2010). Emotional Intelligence. In: Boyle, G.J (ed.) and Matthews, G. (ed.); The SAGE Handbook of Personality Theory and Assessment: Personality Theories and Models. Sage, Los Angeles, pp. 576-596.
Bain, J. D., Ballantyne, R., Mills, C., & Lester, N. C. (2002). Reflecting on practice: Student teachers’ perspectives, Post Pressed, Flaxton.
Biggs, J. and Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Open University Press, Maidenhead.
Blom, A. and Saeki, A. (2016). Employability and Skill Set of Newly Graduated Engineers in India, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 5640.
Bond, R. and Paterson, L. (2005). Coming down from the Ivory Tower? Academics' Civic and Economic Engagement with the Community. Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 31, No 3, pp. 331-351.
Bovill, C, Bulley, C.J. and Morss, K. (2011). “Engaging and empowering first-year students through curriculum design: perspectives from the literature”, Teaching in Higher Education, Vol.16 No. 2, pp. 197-209.
Brandt, C. (2008). Read, Research and Write: Academic Skills for ESL Students in Higher Education, Sage, London.
Cane, P. (2010). The Hart-Fuller debate in the Twenty-First century: 50 years on., Hart Publishing, Oxford.
Baik, Chi and Greig, J. (2009). Improving the academic outcomes of undergraduate ESL students: the case for discipline‐based academic skills programs, Higher Education Research & Development, Vol.28 No 4, pp.401-416.
Chadha, D. and Toner, J. (2017). Focusing in on employability: using content analysis to explore the employability discourse in UK and USA universities, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp.1-26.
CMI (2018a). “21st Century Leaders: Building employability through higher education”, Retrieved from https://www.managers.org.uk/~/media/Files/Reports/insights/research/21st_ Century_Leaders_CMI_Feb2018.pdf.
CMI (2018b). “Reflection”, Retrieved from https://www.managers.org.uk/individuals/existing-members/cpd/cpd-good-practice/reflection.
Collini, S. (2012). What are University’s For?, Penguin, London.
Complete University Guide (2018), “University League Tables 2019”, Retrieved from https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings.
Cottrell, S. (2013). The study skills handbook, 4th ed., Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Eraut, M. (1994). Developing Professional Knowledge and Competence, London: Falmer Press.
EHAH (2016). “Employability”, Retrieved from http://www.ehea.info/pid34423/employability.html.
Fallows, S. and Steven, C. (2000). Building employability skills into the higher education curriculum: a university‐wide initiative, Education + Training, Vol. 42 No 2, pp.75-83.
Gosling, D, (2009) Supporting student learning. In: Fry, H. (ed), Ketteridge, S. (ed.) and Marshall. S. (ed). A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 3rd ed. pp 113-131. London: Routledge.
Halman, V. (2016). ‘Is a postgraduate degree necessary to get a job?’, Times Higher Education, 21 January. Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/postgraduate-degree-necessary-get-job.
Harvey, L., Geall, V., and Moon, S. (1997). Graduates’ Work: Implications of Organizational Change for the Development of Student Attributes, Industry and Higher Education, Vol. 11 No 5, pp. 287–296.
Holmes, K. (2017). What Employers Want: The employability skills handbook, Trotman, Bath.
Kitching, H. J. and Hulme, J. (2013). Bridging the gap: Facilitating students’ transition from pre-tertiary to university psychology education, Psychology Teaching Review, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 15-30.
McGuire, L., Lay, J., and Peters, J. (2009). Pedagogy of reflective writing in professional education, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 93–107.
Moon, J.A. (2006). Learning Journals: A handbook for reflective practice and professional development, 2nd ed., Routledge, London.
Oliver, R. (2008). Engaging First Year Students Using a Web-Supported Inquiry-Based Learning Setting, Higher Education, Vol. 55 No. 3, pp. 285-301.
Osborne, N. and Grant-Smith, D. (2017). Resisting the 'employability' doctrine through anarchist pedagogies & prefiguration, Australian Universities' Review, Vol. 59 No 2, pp. 59-69.
Parker, J.D.A., Summerfeldt, L.J., Hogan, M.J., Majeski, S.A. (2004). Emotional intelligence and academic success: examining the transition from high school to university, Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 36 No1, pp.163-172.
Poladashvili T. (2018). Student’s perspectives towards to Bologna Process and Employability (Case Study of Bulgaria), Economic Archive / Narodnostopanski Arhiv, Vol. 6 No 2, pp. 70-88.
Pryjmachuk, S., Gill, A., Wood, P., Olleveant, N. and Keeley, P. (2012). Evaluation of an online study skills course, Active Learning in Higher Education, Vol.13 No. 2, pp. 155-168.
Roberts, R. (2016). “The search for truth: what are universities for?”, Retrieved from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/search-truth-what-are-universities.
Royce Sadler, D. (2009) Transforming Holistic Assessment and Grading into a Vehicle for Complex Learning. In: Joughin, G. (ed). Assessment, Learning and Judgement in Higher Education. Berlin: Springer. pp. 45-64.
Sodha, S. (2018). Is your university degree barely worth the paper it’s written on? Discuss. The Guardian, 16 March. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/16/university-degree-measure-benefits-tuition-fees.
Tse, T. and Esposito, M. (2014) Academia is disconnected from the real world, Financial Times, 31 March. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/4f5fc7a2-7861-11e3-831c-00144feabdc0.

Downloads

Published

2020-09-01

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 1 (2020)

Section

Reflective Analysis Papers

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice has made best effort to ensure accuracy of the contents of this journal, however makes no claims to the authenticity and completeness of the articles published. Authors are responsible for ensuring copyright clearance for any images, tables etc which are supplied from an outside source.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.