The Success Paradox by Atherton Graeme

Author:Atherton, Graeme [Atherton, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447316343
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Published: 2017-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

A pedagogy for holistic social mobility

Realising a model of HE that can drive holistic social mobility requires not only a shift in how the university is imagined at the macro level, but also a shift in how it goes about its business at the micro level.

The dominance of the subject discipline as the mode through which HE is delivered does pose questions about the benefits of HE and how they equate to social mobility. There has been much written in recent years on ‘graduateness’ and graduate skills, as well as the alleged mismatch between what graduates can do and what they are expected to do (CBI 2009).

The conundrum of how to inculcate students with generic skills through a model that is predicated on subject-specific skills has not been solved. While online learning has huge potential to instigate change in delivery, it is not clear how it will overcome the subject/skills disjuncture.

There are a number of possible ways to address the disjuncture, although none would guarantee success.

The first step would be to try to ascertain more clearly what skills HE students really need to develop. As in the case of schooling, the subject/skills disjuncture is construed almost entirely as a subset of a bigger HE/employment disjuncture. The idea that HE graduates lack skills is constructed as a lack of skills that employers need (Archer and Davidson 2008).

The BIS report Supporting Graduate Employability (The International Graduate Insight Group Ltd 2011) encapsulates this approach. It frames the discussion around the development of skills and attributes that will enable students in the 21st century to progress and therefore be entirely socially mobile in terms of employability. Even in terms of employability alone, it paints a worrying picture; only a minority of HEIs focus on this area separately. For the majority of those that do, it remains in reality a peripheral concern.

But the desire to fit the 21st-century skills discussion into the employability straightjacket is the real concern. This is never clearer than in its use of the example of Macquarie University’s work in Australia in the employability context. Macquarie is attempting to develop a set of holistic skills in their graduates that go beyond preparing them for work. All students have to take a module in ‘People, Planet and Participation’ over the course of their degree. The module ‘provides opportunities for students and staff to actively contribute to more just, inclusive and sustainable societies through activities with communities locally, in regional Australia and overseas’ (The International Graduate Insight Group Ltd 2011: 36). This is interpreted in the report as a leading-edge example of how Macquarie is developing employability.

As with the secondary system, the danger with employability is that it ‘crowds out’ discussion about whether and how HE can help students to develop skills that may support progression outside the economic sphere, such as the ability to reflect on and formulate life goals, to cope with personal and emotional setbacks or to develop a sense of control over both work and non-work life. Returning to Figure 5.

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