Editorial

Citation

Helyer, R. (2016), "Editorial", Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, Vol. 6 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/HESWBL-06-2016-0044

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, Volume 6, Issue 3.

Welcome to Issue 3, Volume 6 of Higher Education Skills and Work-based Learning, the official journal of the University Vocational Awards Council. I hope that you enjoy the issue’s mix of research, case studies and conceptual work. The issue opens with Inga Wernersson and Monica Orwehag’s paper “Scholarly skills as everyday practice – implications for education”. Sharing expertise from Sweden the authors demonstrate that scholarly skills, such as research and critical thinking, constitute important parts of all higher education (HE) programmes there, they then go on to share the findings of an exploratory study into a group of teachers, nurses and engineers who are using such skills and knowledge in everyday occupational practice. The findings include interviewees connecting research methods training to everyday work practice, as well as other examples of systematic, reflective and critical elements of education later featuring in their occupational context.

The second paper, “The professional and personal values and their revelation through professional doctorates” a conceptual paper by Paul Gibbs and Kate Maguire continues the practitioner theme by discussing the relationship between individual practitioners’ personal values and their developing professional agentic values. It considers how the former might be in tension with prescribed forms of practice associated with licence to practice. Underpinning values from this have a functionality that may be at odds with personal values. Becoming a professional is a career-long commitment, with values being challenged by practice; the paper explores this through a Heideggerian reading of transdisciplinarity.

Following from this Cheryl Brook and Marjorie Corbridge, in their qualitative research study, “Work-based learning in a UK business school context: artefacts, contracts, learning and challenges” continue to interrogate potential differences between knowledge and understanding of work, and perceptions of the actual practice of work. This is done here by highlighting some of the issues involved in ensuring that final-year undergraduate students have a meaningful work-based learning (WBL) experience as part of their business degree, the conclusions originate from discussions between the authors about different attitudes to ideas and the actual practice of WBL in business schools. The study includes an examination of artefacts produced for assessment, along with student and employer views.

“Work-based skills development: a context- engaged approach”, a case study by Alison Felce, Sandra Perks and David Roberts further examines WBL, with a particular emphasis on partnership, between HE, further education and a private business organisation. The study explains how learning was researched, designed and introduced to meet identified skills needs throughout the organisation and emphasises the practicalities of the management approach adopted together with the benefits achieved through partnership working. A key success of the collaboration is seen to be the recruitment of a “Training Centre Facilitator” (TCF) who was co-managed by the company and the University. Located within the company, the TCF was able to understand both company and learner requirements and subsequently proposed context-engaged solutions, meeting the needs of the individuals and the organisation.

Retaining the focus on WBL, Tina Overton and Tomasz Lemanski offer a case study focused on, “The development of a mapping tool for work-based learning activities”, in which they describe a new mapping tool that can be used to help in the design and evaluation of work-based elements within learning programmes or to evaluate whole programmes. The tool is based on a matrix which enables users to map four variables: university-centred delivery, employer-centred delivery and learners’ outcomes in terms of knowledge and skills, and provides a useful approach to evaluating the outcomes for WBL activities. The mapping tool provides tutors with a useful and easy-to-use way in which to visualise the nature of their WBL activities.

Oluyomi Pitan’s research paper, “Employability development opportunities (EDOs) as measures of students” enhanced employability’ connects employability opportunities within university students’ programmes of study, to their eventual employability outcomes, in the real workplace. Data, collected from a 29-question questionnaire, completed by 600 final-year university students in Nigeria, is analysed, with results indicating that at Nigerian universities students are engaging with all the EDOs to a moderate extent. Findings furthermore show that there is a significant positive relationship between EDOs and students’ enhanced employability. In considering the relative contribution of each of the EDOs to students’ enhanced employability, the author found real-world activities to make the highest contribution, whilst extracurricular activities are claimed to have no significant relationship with students’ enhanced employability.

This issue finishes with a conceptual paper from Jonathan Garnett, “Work Based Learning: a critical challenge to the subject discipline structures and practices of higher education”, that suggests that while HE level WBL can enhance the performance of organisations and individuals it is also inherently challenging to, and challenged by, the hegemony of subject disciplines and disciplinary-based university structures. In order to achieve outcomes which are of significance to work and the workplace WBL, by necessity, prioritises knowledge that is unsystematic, socially-constructed and action focused, and as a consequence contests the supremacy of the role of the University in curriculum design, delivery and validation of knowledge. This paper suggests that this means that work based knowledge can be viewed as transdisciplinary rather than conforming to traditional subject disciplines.

I hope you enjoy this issue and agree that the work here offers both fascinating connections and differences across the global HE work-related spectrum. The next issue of HESWBL is a special issue focused on Higher and Degree Apprenticeships and promises to share innovative practice from the cutting edge of this high profile, new and evolving agenda.