A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

102 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
departments varies within and between universities but they are likely to be invisible to
students unless their role is promoted by departments and valued by tutors. Ideally,
careers colleagues have a place on faculty and department teaching committees to enable
seamless communication and raise everyone’s awareness of emerging employability
agendas and opportunities. Knight and Yorke (2004: 20–21) tabulate in detail the concerns
which surround the notion that employability is a challenge to academic values and their
text explores a variety of answers to this challenge.
Employability, like any other academic process, needs to persuade people to act
through evidence. What, for example, is the proportion of graduates each year that moves
to graduate jobs or postgraduate education? University league tables of graduate
destinations and retention numbers motivate some of the stakeholders. Knowing who has
these data is helpful, and posting it in student handbooks may be useful in promoting the
department and discipline.
Maximising discipline relevance is powerful. Some academics promote connections
to students between their discipline and its application in the ‘real world’, through a
genuine interest in students’ plans postgraduation and involving students in applied
research activities. Graduates provide excellent role models in the classroom, explaining
where their degree activities are relevant at work. There are also opportunities to include
research-led module assignments for assessment. Examples to enhance disciplinary
understanding could include researching the employment market for the discipline,
entrepreneurship among recent graduates, and the range of national and international
work-placement opportunities.
EMPLOYABILITY AND YOUR DISCIPLINE
Where employability is critical is in recruitment and retention. Raising awareness of the
employability aspects of a particular discipline should be advantageous. The Student
Employability Profiles (Higher Education Academy, 2006; Forbes and Kubler, 2006) give
detailed information on the employability attributes and abilities for graduates of every
discipline. Using this information at all stages, from recruitment to final-year careers
advisory tutorials, gives students the information and appropriate language for
describing the skills and attributes they have acquired through the degree, but perhaps
this is not recognisable as making them employable.
For example, with linguistics students unsure of their position, ask them to discuss the
following points selected at random from their profile.
Students with linguistics degrees can:
• assess contrasting theories and explanations, including those of other disciplines,
think hard about difficult issues, and be confident in trying to understand new
systems;
• critically judge and evaluate evidence, especially in relation to the use of language in
social, professional and other occupational contexts, translation and interpretation;