“Career education is considered one of many quality indicators of WIL … providing both occupational and work-readiness preparation”, say Young, Hermon, Cardilini and Binek (2022: 445). “It is part of an important strategy to embed work-integrated learning (WIL) into undergraduate degree programs within Australian universities to enhance employability outcomes”, they say and remark that “there is clear evidence that employability enhancements are most effective if course-wide employability-related learning outcomes are valued, planned for, and delivered”.
Young et al. (2022: 445) report in a third of three articles about “investigating the renewal of a foundational work-integrated learning (WIL) subject”. They report on their action-research project approach, “how shifts in thinking and practice arose”. In the case study they describe how “the methodological approach to the project was fundamental to the curriculum review and renewal for a single subject (one of the intended outcomes of the project) and unexpectedly, a formal re-thinking of embedded WIL approaches to undergraduate programs”. They demonstrate changes associated with three inquiry domains, namely (p. 446):
- Domain 1, the ‘what domain’, explored what needed to be re-designed, in particular, the pedagogical rationale and approach for revising an existing WIL unit to focus on career education curriculum preparation
- Domain 2, the ‘experience domain’ examined student self-perceptions of shifting employability understandings, and then how the notion of ‘learning gains’ led to a strategic push relating to the scaffolding of career education curricula across the Faculty
- Domain 3, the ‘how domain’, is investigated here for the way in which changes relate not only to subject matter enhancement, but also to professional capacity building, and surfacing of wider-reaching programmatic considerations to WIL
Important to note that they found that “WIL affects whole-of-program and even Faculty-wide culture shifts to scaffolded WIL approaches” — “a vertical and horizontal scaffolding of Faculty-wide WIL curriculum enhancement began” and “the project outcomes demonstrate how a vision for a core STEM-centric foundation career education subject led to broader educational reform relating to student employability”.
Young, K., Hermon, K., Cardilini, A. & Binek, C. (2022). Action-research approach: Building capacity and enhancing work-integrated learning curricula. International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning, 23(4), 445-461. Electronically accessible from https://www.ijwil.org/files/IJWIL_23_4_445_461.pdf
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