This guide is part of the Higher Education Academy Learning and Employability Guide series 1. The Learning and Employability series is primarily intended for staff in higher education institutions who are considering the enhancement of student employability.
This is a guide to the pedagogy of employability and is divided into two distinct sections. Part 1 Analysis and strategic considerations and Part 2 Supporting the development of employability:
Part 1 takes the stance that there is no undue tension between a concern with good learning in a subject and an interest in promoting employability. However reconciling the two means carefully considering the ways in which we teach and students learn and our assessment practices. There is sufficient research to indicate that our stance need not compromise a commitment to promote subject understanding and practices.
Part 2 focuses on what the individual teacher – or perhaps a team of teachers16 – can do at a relatively local curricular level to foster employability. Two themes suffuse this Part: first that employability correlates highly with good learning; second that good learning is most likely when students are engaged by challenging tasks rather than being relatively passive recipients of curriculum material. An implication is that a programme of pedagogy for employability will use a variety of learning and teaching approaches – a range appropriate to the broad set of learning outcomes that the programme specification contains.
