Enhancing Student Education Transitions and Employability

From Theory to Practice

Thanh Pham, Behnam Soltani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000385069
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology

This book explores student education transition and employability negotiation experiences in various contexts. It explores determinants of student transitions at three levels including macro, meso and micro but focuses on exploring affordances, constraints and strategies at the micro level. The framework underpinning the explorations at the micro level covers a range of different forms of capital including human, culture, social, identity, psychological and agentic.

The book is unique in three ways. First, it consists of chapters about critical discussion, empirical research and practical guidance about student transition experiences. The critical discussion and empirical research chapters explore and obtain insights about the complexity of student transitions and develop conceptual frameworks that guide the development of applicable practices. The book is, therefore, a useful resource for policy makers, institutions, academics, professionals and students. Second, it provides insights about how student transitions are determined by a range of factors at different levels. These insights extend discussions about student transitions in the current literature which have mainly explored impacts of policies, institutional programmes and human capital. Finally, it is international in focus because it draws on research with different cohorts of students and graduates in different contexts. Insights provided in the book are, therefore, rich, diverse and comparative.

1

An overview of student transition experiences and the significance of ‘capitals’

Thanh Pham

Introduction

Transitions are critical periods in students’ lives and have become very diverse. After completing the schooling programme, students are provided with a range of possible destinations including tertiary education, vocational education, various pathways to prepare for university, employment, or even disengagement from both work and education (Barabasch & Lakes, 2005; Billett, Johnson, Thomas, Sim & Hay, 2012; McMillan & Marks, 2003). A large volume of research has reported that to prepare students for transitions effectively, there need to be collective efforts of various stakeholders including governments, policy-makers, schools, universities, teachers, employers, parents and community (e.g. Down, Smyth & Robinson, 2018; McLeod & Yates, 2006; Tomlinson, 2017; Wille, Tracey, Feys and De Fruyt (2014). For instance, Billett et al. (2012) analysed policies in a range of countries in relation to students’ transitions and discussed differences in these policies as well as how they impacted students’ transition experiences. Down et al. (2018) examined how school leavers transited to employment, vocational and tertiary education with a focus on unpacking influential factors at the institutional and individual levels on students’ transitions. From the governmental and institutional perspective, policy-makers and schools in many countries have initiated programmes that divide students into different types based on their academic performances (Connell, 1993; Silfver, Sjoberg & Bagger, 2016; Teese & Polesel, 2003). Those students with strong academic abilities are prepared to enter university and those students with less academic abilities are guided to attend vocational programmes and courses.

To prepare students for their transitions to the workforce, institutions have paid significant attention to embedding activities that aim to enhance students’ employability skills (Barrie, 2007; Healy, Hammer & Mcllveen, 2020; Saito & Pham, 2018; Williams, Dodd, Steele & Randall, 2016). These activities could be grouped in three types. The first is work-integrated learning (WIL) which refers to workplace-based activities such as internships, placements and fieldworks. These programmes accumulate hand-on working experiences both domestically and internationally (Dollinger & Brown, 2019; Universities Australia, 2019; Jackson & Bridgstock, 2020). Students could enhance both disciplinary knowledge and professional skills when participating in WIL (Jackson & Bridgstock, 2020; Pham, Saito, Bao & Chowdhury, 2018). The second is the skills-based approach which aims to embed graduate attributes, which are often referred to ‘soft skills’ or ‘work-ready skills’, in teaching and learning programmes (Barrie, 2007; Pham & Saito, 2019a; Tran, Jasvir, Pham & Medica, 2020). Finally, universities have also held co-curricular activities, such as leadership and award programmes, volunteering hubs, and student clubs, to support students to build professional skills (Jackson & Bridgstock, 2020).

The role of students in managing their transitions has been found as a crucially important factor determining their transition outcomes (Down et al., 2018; Tomlinson, 2017; Pham, Tomlinson & Thompson, 2019). To be able to familiarise themselves and cope with a range of new contextual factors including working and studying regulations at the new setting, expectations of new teachers, supervisors and employers, living conditions of the new place and culture of new networks, students and graduates need to be able to develop and utilise a range of knowledge, skills and resources. For instance, Ball (2003) and Lehmann (2007a, 2007b) claimed that students’ transition experiences were determined by their performance in high school, the support they managed to secure from families and communities, and the clarity and achievability of the post-school goals they (or their families or others) have established for themselves. Pham and Jackson (2020a, 2020b), Pham (2020) and Tomlinson (2017) have emphasised the need for graduates to develop essential forms of capital including human, cultural, identity, social, psychological and agentic to prepare their transition to the labour market. Recently, globalisation, technological disruptions, restructuring, delayering and downsizing, casualisation, lack of job security and harsh working conditions have created scarcity of full-time work, an increase in casualisation of the workforce, prevalence of short-term work and self-employment, as well as rising job and occupation mobility (Kosugi, 2017; Oliver, 2015). The capacity and resources that individuals develop and utilise to sustain employability have, therefore, become crucially important (Pham & Jackson, 2020a).

Although a large volume of research has been conducted to examine students’ transitions, researchers have paid insufficient attention to how students use their capitals – the kind of resources, knowledge, skills and capacities that students and graduates possess, to negotiate their transitional experiences. This line of research is important in today’s uncertain world, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. To navigate these uncertainties, individuals need to take more responsibilities in strategising their capitals and resources in the most optimal way.

This book covers a broad range of case studies and deploys various empirical, theoretical and methodological perspectives to examine and discuss students’ transition experiences. The overarching aim of the book is to examine determinants of students’ transitions including from school to tertiary education and from tertiary to the labour market at different levels including macro, meso and micro. Determinants at the macro level include governmental policies about education, training, visa and transitions and cultural values and traditions that impact how people perceive education, gender, ethnics and different socioeconomic status groups. Determinants at the meso level are curricular and extra-curricular programmes that schools and universities have implemented to prepare students for transitions as well as supports that parents, siblings, peers and teachers give students during their transitional phases. At the micro level, the book examines a range of capitals which include knowledge, skills and personal qualities that students and graduates develop and utilise during their schooling and education-to-work transitions. Examining the role of students and graduates’ capitals in their transitions at the micro level is also the main focus of the book.

The book is unique in several ways. First, it fills a gap in the current literature about the role of students’ and graduates’ capitals in transitions. As discussed above, much attention has been paid to how governmental policies and institutional programmes have prepared students for transitions but little has been known about what kind of knowledge, skills and personal qualities that students need to develop and strategise to enhance their transitions. In this book, in addition to discussing human capital which includes technical knowledge and professional skills that schools and institutions have mainly focused on in their teaching and learning programmes, the chapters discuss a range of essential capitals including social, cultural, identity, psychological and agentic in relation to transitions. Concepts about capital were originally found in the seminal work of Bourdieu (1986) in which he argued that economic, social and cultural capital carries particular weight in educational success. Many other researchers have built on and expanded Bourdieu’ theory revealing that students needed to enrich various forms of capital during their transitional phases including socio ties (e.g. Ball & Vincent, 1998; Ellison, Steinfield & Lampe, 2007; Pham, 2014; Watt & Badger, 2009), cultural capital (e.g. Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh & Whitt, 2005; Heath, Fuller & Johnston, 2010; Snee & Devine, 2014), psychological capacities (Anderson, Delfabbro, Dollard, Metzer, Trainor & Winefield, 2005; Bramston & Patrick, 2007; Stallman, 2010) and agentic capital (Holland, Reynolds & Weller, 2007; Snee & Devine, 2014). Although Bourdieu did not offer a clear account of how these forms of capital determined education-to-work transition success, subsequent related research highlighted the significance of capitals in graduate employability (Fugate, Kinicki & Ashforth, 2004; Jackson, 2016; Pham et al., 2019; Pham & Jackson, 2020a; Tholen, 2015; Tomlinson, 2017). Similar to what Snee and Devine (2014) found about the role of agency in students’ schooling transitions, Pham and Jackson (2020a) evidenced that to obtain optimal education-to-work transition outcomes, graduates need to develop ‘agentic capital’ – that is the capacity to develop strategies to use various forms of capital effectively and strategically depending on one’s ethnic background, areas of expertise, career plans, contexts, and personal qualities. More specifically, the authors defined ‘agentic capital’ as the capacity to interlink various forms of capital, highlight strengths, cover weaknesses, and visualise one’s short- and long-term goals of career development.

Second, the book is international in focus because it draws on research from Australia, New Zealand and Asian countries. The students and graduates discussed in the book are ethnically, socioeconomically and disciplinarily diverse. They include local and international students at both schooling and university levels and follow both general and vocational pathways. These students and graduates had a range of transition trajectories and experiences. The book discusses how resources are stratified according to programmes, disciplines, class, ethnicity, transition stages and other social divisions. This discussion aims to unpack the dynamics of how capitals work. A number of researchers have argued for the need to enhance students’ capitals during their transitions (Clarke, 2017; Fugate, Kinicki & Ashforth, 2004; Jackson, 2016; Holmes, 2013; Pham et al., 2019; Pham & Jackson, 2020a; Tholen, Brown, Power & Allouch, 2013; Tomlinson, 2017). However, very little has been known about how forms of capital work. For instance, lots of evidence has been found about the importance of social networks in graduates’ education-to-work transitions (e.g. Ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• 1. An overview of student transition experiences and the significance of ‘capitals’
• PART I: School to tertiary education transitions
• PART II: Education to work transitions
• PART III: Recommendations to develop practical resources for different stakeholders
• Index