Radical shifts

[Developing Employability]

Radical shifts forum topic for HERDSA17

[Dawn Bennett]

Good Practice in Relation to Education for Employability

An Education for Employability Curriculum

Involves adopting an approach to employability education that demonstrates:

• Inclusiveness, ethics and respect
• Embeddedness and integration of employability – across the curricula (including embedding employability into WIL, experiential learning, capstones, student assessment, co-curricular activities)
• Explicitly talking with students, staff and industry about employability and how it works in the curriculum
• Clarity of language and purpose around employability
• Evaluation of employability aspects of curricula
• Being expansive and collaborative (i.e. going beyond the core discipline to allow and provide for broader links with other disciplines, industry partners and communities of practice)
• Including both generic and discipline-relevant aspects of learning for employability
• Quality standards
• Scaffolding of learning/development
• Focussing on learning for both life and work

Note: these components of employability curricula reflect what it means to be employable and what we hope our graduates gain (or improve) from their education

Achieving Education for Employability

This requires, and is enhanced by:

• Cross university buy in
• Planning, policies and guidelines
• Champions and leadership encouragement
• Support and resourcing (including people, funding and infrastructure)
• Scalability, feasibility and sustainability
• Rewards and recognition

Terms that could be used
Employability
Career development learning
Learning for life and work
Contributing to a growth (not fixed) mindset
21st Century Capabilities

Follow up actions to be pursued by the group
1. Friday – report to HERDSA
2. Provide into to ALTF political initiatives
3. Share through websites (e.g. EPEN http://www.epen.edu.au
4. Ongoing work of the Good Practices for Employability discussion group

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