2023/24 Special Issue: The graduate employability practitioner: What works to develop career, teaching capability and organisational capacity?
The Editorial Board of the Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability are pleased to announce the Special Issue for 2023/24 -
The graduate employability practitioner: What works to develop career, teaching capability and organisational capacity?
Governments, employers and students increasingly see higher education as a pivotal pathway towards a highly skilled workforce. However, including graduate employability as a purpose of higher education is disputed, and driven mainly by the conflation of graduate employability with graduate employment outcomes (Sin et al., 2019). Teaching and learning staff significantly engage with curricular and co-curricular activities that support graduate employability development. Healy et al. (2021) note that despite its strategic priority, graduate employability is an emerging professional field with diverse practices, including teaching and learning.
However, it is sometimes unclear who within the university is responsible for designing, embedding and supporting students' graduate employability. The graduate employability workforce includes academic and professional staff within work-integrated learning units, career development, experienced practitioners new to academia, sometimes known as 'pracademics', and academic staff who support students in applying their disciplinary knowledge to the world of work. Graduate employability is a unique corner of teaching and learning where student success is reliant on the work of academic and professional staff being necessarily entangled (Roberts, 2018).
While new roles, such as pracademics, have emerged within contemporary higher education, the traditional expectations of academia have not entirely disappeared (Ylijoki & Henriksson, 2017). For those teaching in the administratively demanding graduate employability area, meeting the traditional university success metrics required for career progression, such as research publications and grants, strong student evaluation scores, and leadership roles, can be challenging. Pracademics must span two worlds – their discipline, profession, and academia, demonstrating legitimacy in both (Hollweck et al., 2022). Similarly, professional staff working collaboratively with academics in this 'third space' must continuously reconcile their professional identities and gain new skills, particularly within research, to effectively demonstrate their vital contribution (Veles & Carter, 2016).
While staff grapple with their professional identities within graduate employability, so do institutions. How do universities stay true to the transformational goals of higher education while producing a highly skilled workforce? This special issue invites submissions that explore the experiences of graduate employability practitioners as they seek to develop their practice and careers within contemporary higher education.
The Special Issue Editors are:
- Dr Lauren Hansen, SFHEA, Senior Lecturer – Learning Futures, Deakin University
- Assoc Prof Barbie Panther, SFHEA, Director – Teaching Capability, Deakin University
- Prof Jamie Mustard, Pro Vice-Chancellor – Graduate Employment, Deakin University
- Dr Bonnie Amelia Dean, SFHEA, Head of Academic Development & Recognition, University of Wollongong
- Assoc Prof Deanne Gannaway, SFHEA, Academic Lead – Professional Learning, Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, University of Queensland
- Dr Michael Healy, National Manager, Career Education for myfuture.edu.au