Graduate Attributes, Learning and Employability


Book Description

In these complex and challenging times, students, teachers and employers are all interested in the development of generic abilities as these typically make the difference between good and indifferent employees, successful and unsuccessful learners. This book explains why generic capacities have become so important and argues that the process of acquiring them is both lifelong and developmental.




Work-Based Learning


Book Description

Work-Based Learning




Education for Employability (Volume 1)


Book Description

Universities are expected to produce employable graduates. In Education for Employability, experts explore critical questions in the employability agenda: Who sets the standards and expectations of employability? How do students monitor their own employability? How can universities design whole curricula and university environments that promote employability? What teaching and learning strategies facilitate the development of employability? Responsibility for developing and sustaining employability lies with a broad coalition of the individual students, the university, alumni, the professions and industry and is accomplished through the intended curriculum as well as co-curricular, extra-curricular and supra-curricular activities, events and learning opportunities.




Graduate Employability Across Contexts


Book Description

This book explores stakeholders’ perspectives, their practices, and engagement with enacting the employability agenda in the context of a rapidly changing world. It explains the need for developing graduate employability under socioeconomic, cultural, and political pressure exposed to the higher education sector. Largely framed within Bourdieu’s concepts of social field, habitus, and capital, it explores international stakeholders’ perspectives and experiences with graduate employability agenda in different contexts, which serves as a point of reference for the adoption of such initiatives. Based on empirical evidence, the authors develop a new graduate employability framework seeing it as a lifelong process, denote the relationships between types of employability capital, and shed light on the consequences of different strategies to translate employability capital to employment and career outcomes. Overall, this book generates both theoretical and practical insights which help to advance employability programs, better prepare the future workforce, and anticipate turbulence in the labour markets.




Employability in Context


Book Description

This book explores the issue of graduate employability in regional Vietnam. It provides a critical discussion of not only the demands of the labour market but also the practices and challenges in the development of graduate employability and career capacity building at the national, institutional and individual levels. It discusses graduate employability in Vietnam by analysing government and institutional policies and taking into account the perspectives and experiences of three key stakeholders: employers, graduates and universities. The book highlights the development of ‘employability in context’ for graduates in regional Vietnam to be able to adapt to the specific social, cultural and demographic conditions of the region and tackle new employment challenges.




Building Soft Skills for Employability


Book Description

This book is among the first of its kind to comprehensively examine the implementation of soft skills in universities in the developing country, Vietnam. The context is unique as the implementation is taking place within the distinctive socio-economic, cultural and political characteristics of the country, amidst several simultaneously-executed educational reforms. Tran lays down the foundation for discussion by providing readers with a comprehensive review of how soft skills implementation has come into existence in higher education across the globe, before diving into the implementation of soft skills in Vietnamese universities. He goes on to highlight the interesting differences in the conceptualization of soft skills between Vietnamese universities and those in the West. The book depicts and compares how university leaders and managers tackle contextual factors, submit to constraints enforced by political forces, and how they use institutional advantages available for implementation. It goes further to examine how personal and contextual factors affect teachers’ and students’ engagement with the implementation, and highlights the role of work-integrated learning and extra-curricular activities in developing soft skills for students. Finally, the book investigates the contribution of external stakeholders, such as alumni, employers, skills experts, and local authorities, to the implementation and obstacles that prevent their participation. This book will be a valuable reference for the implementation of soft skills in higher education around the world.




EBOOK: Assessment, Learning And Employability


Book Description

What is assessed gets attention: what is not assessed does not. When higher education is expected to promote complex achievements in subject disciplines and in terms of 'employability', problems arise: how are such achievements to be assessed? In the first part of the book, it is argued that existing grading practices cannot cope with the expectations laid upon them, while the potential of formative assessment for the support of learning is not fully realised. The authors argue that improving the effectiveness of assessment depends on a well-grounded appreciation of what assessment is, and what may and may not be expected of it. The second part covers summative judgements for high-stakes purposes. Using established measurement theory, a view is developed of the conditions under which affordable, useful, valid and reliable summative judgements can be made. One conclusion is that many complex achievements resist high-stakes assessment, which directs attention to low-stakes, essentially formative, alternatives. Assessment for learning and employability demands more than module-level changes to assessment methods. The final part discusses how institutions need to respond in policy terms to the challenges that have been posed. The book concludes with a discussion of how institutions can respond in policy terms to the challenges that have been posed. Assessment, Learning and Employability has wide and practical relevance - to teachers, module and programme leaders, higher education managers and quality enhancement specialists.




The Principles of Educational Leadership & Management


Book Description

Fully revised and thoroughly updated, this Second Edition of this classic book brings together many leading international authors on educational leadership, with brand new chapters from leaders in the field – Ken Leithwood, Paul Begley, Allan Walker and Alma Harris. Providing an overview of essential topics within the field, this book adopts an international perspective and offers conceptual and empirical insights.




Promoting, Assessing, Recognizing and Certifying Lifelong Learning


Book Description

This book offers an international perspective on the growing interest worldwide in lifelong learning, particularly as it relates to learning beyond compulsory education and initial occupational preparation: across working life. Much of this interest is driven by key social and economic imperatives associated with the changing requirements of work and working life, the transformation of many occupations and lengthening working lives. The concerns in lifelong learning are also associated with individuals being able to engage in learning about cultural and social topics and practices that they had not so far. It is important to understand how this learning can be assessed, recognized and certified. Many in workforces across the world learn much of the knowledge that is required to maintain their employability through that work. Yet, that learning and that competency remains without recognition and certification while this could be particularly helpful for individuals seeking to sustain their employability or to extend their work into new occupations or workplaces. The first section of this book sets out the overall project and outlines the key concepts and issues. It illustrates why there is a need for promoting and recognizing lifelong learning and explains some of the terminology, concepts and key considerations. The second section informs about a range of policies and practices that are currently being deployed or have been deployed across a range of countries within Europe, Scandinavia and Asia. The last section comprises of contributions emphasizing the ways in which the assessment of workers learning takes place in different occupational contexts and different cultural contexts. The final chapter outlines how a systemic approach to recognizing lifelong learning might progress for a country which is promoting a continuing education and training system largely outside of tertiary education institutions.




Graduate Employability in Context


Book Description

This book explores the highly significant and contested area of graduate employability and employment which is paid so much attention by those in the media and policy-makers. This is driven largely by concerns over the wider economic impact and value of graduates as increasing numbers complete their studies in higher education. At a time when graduates are seen as key to economic success, the critical question remains as to how their employability plays out in a changing labour market. This book brings together innovative approaches and research to present an extensive survey of the field. It provides insight on what is a complex and often elusive social and economic problem, ranging from how graduate employability is constructed as an economic and policy agenda to explorations of how graduates manage the transition from higher education to paid employment and finally to suggest future directions for curricula, policy and research.