Abstract:

This paper engages with the dialogue from today’s neoliberalist universities who strive to entice students to enrol onto higher education programmes with promises of success in relation to degree qualifications and increased employment opportunities. The first part of the paper analyses the language used and captures statements, looking to attach meaning to those statements and then establishes identity patterns and similarities across a number of institutions that claim to enhance graduate employability. It will look for common use of words such as ‘boost your employability’ (University of Manchester, 2018), ‘skills for life’ (UCL, 2018) or other phrases designed to entice student recruitment and increase numbers. The second part of this paper will present the PEDaLL Model (Adamson, 2015) which was developed as an enabling teaching model that would help to realise the links between the advertising rhetoric and the evidence drawn from the institutional narratives that their programmes actually do enhance student employability.

The development of PEDaLL as a model for teaching in the higher education sector represents Personal, Employability, Discipline and Lifelong Learning. It embeds employability firmly into a discipline specific curriculum, built upon existing and robust pedagogical frameworks, incorporating Technology Enabled Learning (TEL), and can be utilised by today’s academics charged with responsibility for the employability agenda. The model utilises established educational psychology and robust TEL to identify and fulfil the needs of individual learners as students on a degree programme, and in preparation for their ongoing success in relation to employability and career development when they leave university.

The findings explored here explicitly inform institutions of their responsibilites in relation to their students who are targeted as potential ‘customers’ with an expectation of not only gaining a degree, but of also securing graduate employment on completion of their studies. In addition, PEDaLL also provides an implementation solution for improving and enhancing existing Teaching and Learning practices. The research raises awareness of the levels of thinking needed by institutions who are selling education as a commodity to students as customers and potentially failing to deliver the product. It informs them how they can effectively adopt a pedagogical approach (PEDaLL) incorporating TEL measures to improve their performance in relation to future proofing the employability agenda for 21st century graduates.

Keywords:

Pedagogy, Employability, TEL, PEDaLL.