Re-thinking graduate attributes: From skills and employability to

education

Anna JonesCentre for Research in Lifelong

Learning and Caledonian Academy

What are graduate attributes?

• University statement of aspirations and distinctiveness

• Guide for curriculum design and teaching and assessment practice

• Guide for students in articulating their capabilities and learning experience

Employability

• Assumption that higher education should take (some) responsibility for employability

‘Education and training [should] enable people in an advanced society to compete with the best in the world. (Dearing Report, NCIHE 1997:para 1.11)

• But questions about the role of higher education in developing economic capital (Morley 2001), whether education can develop employability (Atkins 1999)

• Definitions– employment destinations, personal achievements/potential, lifelong learning

The contested nature of attributes

• ‘theoretically threadbare’• Definitions• Transferability• Employability• One size fits all• Multiple stakeholders• Application

Some dubious assumptions

• Determinate• Definable• Measurable• Transferable

Situated nature of attributes

• Notions of trans or super disciplinary skills is problematic

• Disciplinary epistemology and departmental/institutional culture shape understandings of attributes

• Meaningful teaching and learning of attributes is contextual and situated

Application

• Academic resistance to meaningless, decontextualised ‘tick-box’ approach

• Attributes as defined out of, taught and assessed within the disciplinary/interdisciplinary contexts

• Are specifiable outcomes are desirable - or rather preparing students for the uncertainties of the ‘real’ world

• How do we present complexity so that students can face the unforeseen?

Newman (1920: 92-3)‘A habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of

which the attributes are freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation and wisdom... This then I would assign as the special fruit of the education furnished at a University’

Moving Forward

Attributes in the formal and informal curriculum• Examine attributes in the

disciplines/interdisciplines – how they are defined and taught, how this can be enhanced. Communities of practice (Wenger 1998) TLR’s (Trowler & Cooper 2002)

• Examine co-curricula attribute development and how the university can facilitate this

• Specifics of skills sit within disciplinary epistemology – the means it gives us, ideas it enables us to think critically about

• Attributes are more ontological – the disposition or willingness to think, challenge, dig beneath the surface

• Thus ‘graduateness’ can be both embedded in disciplinary systems and transcend them

From skills and employability to education

• Move away from ‘spin’ or ‘quality’• Use attributes as a way of sharpening the focus on

education – what it means, what the university values, how it can facilitate this – both in the formal and co curriculum

• Employment market in a state of constant flux• Education for a whole person – personal,

professional, social

• Move away from the ‘thin morality’ of competitive individualism to the ‘thick morality’ of citizenship and the common good (Apple 2001).