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The capabilities that count for early professional success in Pharmacy: A case study of graduates, employer and course teaching team perspectives
No full textThis study gathered and analysed the perceptions of graduates, employers, and the course team regarding graduate capabilities required for early professional success in pharmacy and the extent to which these capabilities are demonstrated in new graduates. The Graduate Employability Indicator (GEI) surveys were administered online to gather stakeholders’ perceptions about the Bachelor of Pharmacy offered at a large Australian university. The GEI asks graduates the extent to which their course experience contributed to achievement of the capabilities, and asks employers and course teams about the extent to which new graduates demonstrated the capabilities. This study also assessed the incentives and disincentives of the course team for assisting to develop work-related skills, attributes and personal qualities. In total, 95 graduates, 109 employers and 42 members of the course team participated in the survey. The findings indicated that graduates preferred earlier professional placement in the course. Employers identified communication and professional skills as the most useful capabilities for new graduates. Members of the course team identified benefits to the students, industry and university as the main incentives for developing graduate employability. Both employers and course team members perceived the use of technology demonstrated by the graduates as important, however the graduates perceived this as much less important compared to other capabilities This study provided an evidence-based approach to engage the course team in curriculum renewal for the Bachelor of Pharmacy program. Data collected using the GEI tool provided valuable information for reshaping the curriculum structure
Editorial
Get PDFWelcome to Volume 9 of the Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability.
The results of the 2017 Employer Satisfaction Survey (ESS), which reported the views of over 4,000 employers about the attributes of recent graduates from Australian higher education institutions, indicate that overall 84 per cent of these employers were satisfied with the graduates who worked for them. Furthermore 93 per cent of supervisors reported that the qualification prepared the graduate ‘very well’ or ‘well’ for their current employment. This suggests a good correlation between the skills and knowledge acquired by higher education graduates during their studies and the requirements of their jobs after graduation.
Interestingly, in the same report,25 per cent of the graduates indicated that they thought their degree was less important to their employment than their supervisors did. But herein lies the issue: we must remember that Degree A does not necessarily lead to Career A. A university course –particularly at undergraduate level –is often a grounding in a discipline which, most, importantly, enables students to think, learn and communicate in more sophisticated ways. In many universities, about half the commencing cohort enter less vocationally defined degree courses. Regardless, many change direction during their undergraduate degrees, as they find the right ‘next step’ for them.
Reports like these sometimes lead us to the perception that the value of such a degree experience is lower. Indeed, sometimes in the mainstream media, we hear about ‘useless degrees’. Education is a good thing, no degree is useless in itself, but we can see why some think this way if they are under the impression that a degree is a first step on a clearly defined career pathway. There are boundless reports reminding us that the world of work is changing rapidly, and so educational pathways into finding meaningful work are also likely to be changing.
Nevertheless, this is a reminder that there is still work to be done in making more explicit to students where these graduate skills and competencies are incorporated into courses, units, teaching and learning experiences and assessment tasks–and the various ways in which they might assemble the evidence to future employers in various fields as to how they might flourish in a particular area of work
WRITING FOR CHANGE: THE CASE FOR NARRATIVE PERSUASION TECHNIQUES
Get PDFNarrative persuasion refers to the process by which people alter their attitudes and beliefs to match that of information provided in a narrative. Studies on the narrative tools contributing to attitude and belief change in the reader have produced results that provide direction for writers seeking to influence and inform the public. In this paper, I explore the narrative persuasion techniques used in two examples of Australian contemporary young adult texts designed to foster empathy for a marginalised group. These fictional works include Boy Overboard (Gleitzman 2002) and The Bone Sparrow (Fraillon 2016), both of which criticise Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. The results of this research have informed the creative work for my PhD thesis, Boundless Plains, which focuses on the issue of Australia’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, with an emphasis on boat arrivals
When ‘Acts of God’ Strike: Faith responses and leadership in natural disasters in Vanuatu
Get PDFThe research presented here is part of a larger doctoral project that explores the interplay between faith, leadership and disasters in Vanuatu. This paper relates to a preliminary piece of research, designed to ascertain what particular new knowledge, within the broadly-defined area of faith, disasters, and Melanesia, would be most practically useful to humanitarian practitioners in the region. To do this, interviews were undertaken with ten humanitarian practitioners from faith-based organisations, with experience responding to disasters in Melanesia. The findings from this research were then analysed with the aim of shaping the further direction of the doctoral project, in order that the research might be of relevance to those engaged in practice. A summary of this analysis is presented here
Gender Diversity as the Antidote to ‘Groupthink’ on Corporate Boards
Get PDFGender diversity on corporate boards has become a point of emphasis, to the exclusion of all other forms of diversity. This paper analyses whether board gender diversity might help boards overcome groupthink (i.e. the failure of board members to consider alternatives to the dominant view when making decisions). This is a significant question because the board is reponsible for governance of the company and groupthink is often cited as a hurdle to effectively performing this role. Thus, the paper first examines the role of the board, board decision-making processes and the problem of groupthink, and subsequently, the potential of gender diversity to overcome groupthink. It concludes that gender diversity on corporate boards might help overcome groupthink so long as the women directors are also independent and bear ‘outsider’ status. However, other forms of diversity like race, education, tenure, professional background etcetera might offer the same benefits and thus should not be overlooked
‘Sorry, I Don’t Speak Bear’ Voice, Agency, and the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Disney-Pixar’s Brave
Get PDFThis paper draws on Kristeva’s theories on abjection, studies on motherhood, and children’s literature scholarship to better understand the relationship between Merida, the adolescent protagonist, and her mother, Elinor, in the Disney-Pixar film Brave. At first glance, it seems as though Merida has a strong voice, and by standing up to her parents and refusing to go through with the betrothal they have arranged, it does seem as if she has agency and an established subject position as a headstrong tomboy. During the course of the film, however, Merida feels the need to silence her mother (by turning the latter into a bear) in order to be heard. Although Elinor is a bear for almost half the film, I argue that the maturity and subjectivity of the adolescent protagonist as daughter and princess come not just from a sense of agency, but also as a result of the bond she shares with her mother, a feature often missing from Disney princess films. I begin by examining the queen’s transformation into a bear (which is at once masculine, sexual, monstrous, and abject), and what that entails for both Merida and Elinor. Given that teen transformations traditionally reflect anxieties about becoming “the wrong kind of adult,” I am interested in examining the underlying reasons behind the adult mother’s transformation (Waller 2009, p. 44). Finally, I analyze the process of female community building, both with regard to speech (and consequently, silencing), and the rituals of feeding and eating
'I Am In No Way This’: Troll Hunters and Pragmatic Digital Self-Reference
Get PDFIf personae are masks used to communicate a certain character in performance, what happens in rapid unmaskings, especially as they occur in digital space? That question is central to the phenomenon of “troll-hunting”. Employing both journalistic and algorithmic tools, troll hunters unmask the offline identity of purveyors of digital hate speech, child pornography, illegal commerce and sometimes just puckish behaviour. Digital citizens have concerned themselves with the efficacy, privacy and ethics of such hunting, but have not as frequently explored another area: the narrative distance between a digital persona and a perceived “real” person behind that persona. Such distances can range from some version of the sentiment, "I am in no way this kind of person" to a comfortable coupling between online-offline selves, even during public shaming. Using textual analysis, I critically examine statements made by those whose digital troll persona were unmasked. I pay special attention to the word ‘I’ and the dissonance in offline-online personae, long discussed by academics, but also becoming an increasingly practical concern
“Get Off My Internets”: How Anti-Fans Deconstruct Lifestyle Bloggers’ Authenticity Work
Get PDFThis paper examines the nature of authenticity labour in personal lifestyle blogging through a case study of travel bloggers. Specifically, it looks at how participants in the blogging anti-fan community Get Off My Internets (GOMI) identify and deconstruct lifestyle bloggers’ efforts to perform an ‘authentic’ persona. Within the broader context of online micro-celebrity, self-branding, and persona, I examine authenticity as a kind of labour that is necessary for lifestyle blogging ‘success,’ where success is measured by metrics like heavy website traffic and brand sponsorships. Lifestyle bloggers perform authenticity partly by narrating the process of cultivating personal authenticity through the ongoing process of selfimprovement towards an idealized goal. This personal authenticity is based on existentialist notions of ‘being true’ to one’s essential nature and personal commitments. In the GOMI community, bloggers’ representations of the inner life are frequently viewed with suspicion, and interpreted as ‘staged,’ and therefore inauthentic, performances of authenticity. Bloggers are also expected to demonstrate a commitment to ethical authenticity, and, subsequently, attempts to monetize their content through sponsorships and affiliate links are viewed with suspicion. Lastly, authenticity work in lifestyle blogging involves emphasizing one’s ordinariness alongside one’s extraordinariness, resulting in what I call ‘aspirational extra/ordinariness.’ By observing trends in how travel bloggers perform authenticity and how anti-fans deconstruct these performances, it becomes apparent that critical publics identify inauthenticity in moments where the constructedness or performedness of authenticity is most apparent, indicating that while micro-celebrities rely on authenticity labour for their popularity, this very labour can detract from a persona’s perceived authenticity when it becomes obvious to publics
Developing generic skills for students via extra-curricular activities in Vietnamese universities: Practices and influential factors
Get PDFDeveloping generic skills (GS) for students has become central in many higher education curricula lately. However, there is still a lack of studies regarding how these skills are developed for students, especially those in developing countries. Drawing from a PhD study, this article reports the contribution of extra-curricular activities in developing GS for students in Vietnamese universities and analyses factors influencing the effectiveness of developing GS for students via these activities. A content analysis of relevant documents and 69 interviews with university leaders, academics and organisers of the Youth union and its associates (YUA) showed that extra-curricular activities were involved as an integral component of a university’s strategy for training students in GS. This was due to a lack of curriculum autonomy, which restricted most Vietnamese universities from adding skills subjects into the curriculum, and the YUA also had a long-standing tradition of developing non-discipline-specific skills for students. The YUA were found to successfully develop GS for students via extra-curricular activities; however, their operation was influenced by university leadership, student participation, external stakeholders’ support, and the leadership of the YUA. The article argues that extra-curricular activities were conducive to developing GS for students; therefore, they should be included in student skills development programs in higher education.