22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
Work-placements in Higher Education: How do Mature Students Experience them?
Gisela Oliveira
De Montfort University, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Oliveira, Gisela
In a recent research report that investigated the offering of work experience and placements in higher education institutions in the UK, it became clear that the last decade has seen a diversification of types of work experience options offered to students, and an expansion throughout the sector (Atfield et al., 2021). In the particular field of education, workplace experience is now an integral element of many degrees, both in the UK and beyond (Holman and Richardson, 2020).
This expansion and focus on creating opportunities for students to take a short-term placement, a full year sandwich placement or a simulated placement experience (Atfield et al., 2021) follows the longstanding narrative in employability related literature of the widespread benefits of placements (inter alia, Dalrymple et al., 2021). Indeed, literature has highlighted benefits in the development of generic skills and personal attributes (Wilton, 2012), transferable skills (Jackson, 2016), and the better access to work communities, their tools (Stanley, 2013), language and culture (Gracia, 2010). Literature has also suggested that placement experiences allow students to improved academic results (Kettis et al., 2013) and explore career choices (Mello et al., 2021). Overall, research seems almost unanimous in the positive impact that placements will have for undergraduates’ studies and future transition into work.
However, one limitation in the literature just presented is the focus on undergraduates that are using placements as their first experience in the world of work. Such limitation has also been highlighted by Lavender (2020) in relation to employability definitions, and the overall focus on a skills-centered approach which is also visible in the literature on the benefits of placements (e.g., Wilton, 2012; Jackson, 2016).
The clear issue in this argument is that mature students, defined by the Office for Students (2018, p.1) as “those aged 21 or over at the time of starting their course”, often enter higher education with previous professional experience, and therefore might not require or benefit from an introduction to a workplace. For example, in a recent study with Australian undergraduates, Jackson and Tomlinson (2022) reported that mature students felt they had better career networks than other students. These findings highlight the international scope of the issue and seem to reinforce the argument that placements and overall work experiences might have a different value for mature students.
Embedded into a wider study on second year students’ experiences of a short-term placement within an Education Studies BA in the UK, questions on the impact to mature students soon emerged. Although the following research questions directed the wider research project, this presentation will share the findings from research question 1, with a specific focus on mature students.
- How do students experience the transition between university and the workplace in their short-term placements?
- What are the perceived benefits and challenges experienced by the students in the transition between university and the workplace, in short-term work-placements?
- How do students contextualize their placement experiences regarding notions of employability?
- To what extent do students develop a professional identity in their short-term placements?
- To what extent do students frame their placements as mediational transitions (i.e. “as if” experiences)?
- What are students’ experiences of the placement module as a mediator in the transition between university and a workplace?
- To what extent do the module’s activities support or constraint students’ transitions between university and the workplace?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe presentation is based on an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) involving students attending an optional, second-year placement module in the BA Education Studies, in a UK University, during the academic year of 2021/22.
As the module started, there were 51 students enrolled, but only 36 (71%) agreed to participate in the study. Of these, 31 were female students (89%) and 4 were male (11%). It is also relevant to note that there were 6 participants (17%) that were considered mature students. The 36 participants were in a variety of placement settings, from schools to charities, engaging in a range of formal to informal educational practices. Still, the majority of students did have a placement in either a primary or secondary school.
The data set for the study includes a mix of workshop activities completed in class (e.g., mind-maps, lists, drawings), voluntary writing tasks completed by the students in their own time, placement logs of hours worked and tasks completed, a reflective report, and semi-structured interviews. The data set per student reflects their overall engagement with the module and the activities proposed both in class and in the placement, and it is therefore varied. For example, Nadia’s data set included workshop activities, written tasks, placement logs, a reflective report and an interview, while Henry’s data set was much more reduced, including only a few workshop activities, since he did not complete the module.
Regarding the semi-structured interviews, all students were invited to take part (N=36), but only 7 students (19%) replied to the invite and were interviewed during the Summer after the module was completed. Overall, the interviews lasted around 30 minutes and, for students’ convenience were conducted online, via MS Teams.
In total, the study includes 355 data items; 7 semi-structured interviews, 18 written tasks, 34 placement logs, 35 reflective reports, and 261 workshop activities.
Interview data was fully transcribed and similarly to the other data items, data is now being coded and analyzed thematically (Braun and Clarke, 2006). The thematic analysis is following the recursive process proposed by Braun and Clarke (2022), which has been useful to manage both the textual and visual data produced by the students.
Finally, the study followed BERA’s (2018) guidelines and was approved by the FREC committee at De Montfort University.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe presentation aims to discuss the experiences of mature students on a short-term placement module called Preparing for Professional Practice. Early in the delivery of the module, it was clear that mature students had a specific outlook on the module, a different approach to the placement and, for one particular student, the sentiment of not seeing their experiences reflected in the wider “employability” agenda and literature. Therefore, the presentation draws on the insights provided by these students to question current narratives around the value and benefits of work placement experiences and explore their suitability to the specific context of mature students.
Framing this topic within a landscape of the promotion of widening participation and lifelong learning, it seems pertinent to address the experiences of mature students with short-term placements and explore their potential impact beyond the context of this particular module, of education as a subject, and of the UK as the context. The nature of discussion will be exploratory in the sense that it aims to raise new questions and explore new avenues for research.
ReferencesAtfield, G.; Hunt, W. and Luchinskaya, D. (2021). Employability programmes and work placements in higher education: a review of published evidence on employability programmes and work placements in UK higher education. Department for Education.
Carter, J. (2021) Work placements, Internships & Applied Social Research. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Dalrymple, R., Macrae, A., Pal, M. and Shipman, S. (2021) Employability: a review of the literature 2016-2021. London: Higher Education Academy.
Gracia, L. (2010) ‘Accounting Students' Expectations and Transition Experiences of Supervised Work Experience’, Accounting Education, 19, pp. 51- 64.
Holman, K. and Richardson, T. (2020) ‘Perceptions of placement experiences of Early Childhood Studies students: the fluency of knowledge and skills’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/0309877X.2020.1762170.
Jackson, D, (2016) ‘Modelling graduate skill transfer from university to the workplace’, Journal of Education and Work, 29 (2): 199-231.
Jackson, D. and Tomlinson, M. (2022) ‘The relative importance of work experience, extra-curricular and university-based activities on student employability’, Higher Education Research & Development, 41(4), pp. 1119-1135, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2021.1901663
Kettis, Å., Ring, L., Gustavsson, M. and Wallman, A. (2013) ‘Placements: an underused vehicle for quality enhancement in higher education?’, Quality in Higher Education, 19, pp. 28-40.
Lavender, K. (2020) ‘Mature students’ experiences of undertaking higher
education in English vocational institutions: employability and academic capital’, International
Journal of Training Research, 18(2), pp. 141-154, DOI: 10.1080/14480220.2020.1830836.
Mello, L, Varga‐Atkins, T and Edwards, S (2021) ‘A structured reflective process supports student awareness of employability skills development in a science placement module’, FEBS Open Bio, 11 (6), pp. 1524-1536.
Office for Students (2018) Mature and part-time students. Report by the Office for Students, pp. 1–11 https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/3da8f27a-333f-49e7-acb3-841feda54135/topic-briefing_mature-students.pdf
Stake R. (1995) The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Stanley, T. (2013) ‘Bridging the Gap between Tertiary Education and Work: Situated Learning in Accountancy’, Issues in Accounting Education, 28, pp. 779-799.
Wilton, N. (2012). ‘The impact of work placements on skills development and career outcomes for business and management graduates’, Studies in Higher Education, 37(5), pp. 603-620.
22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
Information Deficits at Study Entry as an Indicator for Career Maturity
Divan Mouton, Bernhard Ertl
Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany
Presenting Author: Ertl, Bernhard
Planning one’s own career is one of the major decisions in life and deciding for a study subject narrows the options for future professions dramatically. While some students have clear career prospects already during high school, others are quite uncertain and rather tend to explore possible pathways. However, Gottfredson (2005) describes that students quickly realize that it is not possible, nor necessary, to explore a broad range of career choices. According to her theory, most occupational aspirations are effortlessly eliminated as unacceptable options while a small set of preferred occupations are carefully weighed but, eventually, all but one will be abandoned. The decision to end the search for alternatives and begin focusing on the establishment of a career is a sign of career maturity according to Super’s (1963) career development theory. Students who do not bring their career exploration to a timely end, particularly during university, are more likely to show a lower commitment to their academic careers and a higher likelihood of dropping out (Perry, Cabrera & Vogt, 1999).
The phenomenon of unsuccessful career exploration is reflected by the substantial number of university students who claim to have false study expectations as a major reason for their decision to end their studies, along with other major reasons such as a lack of study interest and a desire for doing practical work (Heublein et al., 2010; Heublein et al., 2017; Mouton, Zhang & Ertl, 2020). This phenomenon is cited by Klein and Stocké (2016) as indirect evidence of information deficits at the beginning of studies amongst German students. Information deficits have been recognized as a factor that leads to early dropout in the higher education for more than two decades (Schindler, 1997). From a broader European perspective, policy makers have recognized the importance of supporting young adolescents’ career exploration by providing career guidance interventions for students at-risk of dropping out, for example in Ireland and other Scandinavian countries (OECD/European Communities, 2004, p. 18).
However, the findings concerning information deficit’s effects on study outcomes are inconsistent (Klein & Stocké, 2016). Here it should be noted that “information deficit” is used interchangeably with “level of informedness” (Heine et al., 2010; Heublein et al., 2017; Bluthmann, Thiel & Wolfgramm, 2011). Amongst the few studies that investigated informedness, Heublein et al (2010) found no clear differences between the percentage of poorly informed dropouts as compared to graduates who were poorly informed. Conversely, Blüthmann et al. (2011) presented a structural equation model with multiple significant but indirect pathways between informedness and the intention to dropout, such as study conditions, individual study difficulties and interest in their study choice.
To better understand information deficits after the start of university, this study seeks to develop a new operationalization for this construct by grouping students based on their level of informedness and evaluate this operationalization through the career maturity perspective (Super, 1963). This study also aims to find construct validity for informedness groups as an indicator for information deficit. Finally, this study aims to investigate the differences in the level of informedness amongst various study fields and gender.
To address this, our study aims at investigating various theoretically-derived indicators of information deficit and informedness to assist in producing a construct validity for the newly generated informedness groups. This will then be analyzed in through the lens of career maturity. Two research questions will provide context for our analysis of the informedness groups.
Research question 1: How far can the measure of informedness groups be validated by theoretically-derived indicators of information deficit?
Research question 2: Are there differences between genders and study subjects’ areas on their levels of informedness?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe sample of 12143 German university starters from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; SC5:14.0.0; see Blossfeld et al., 2011) consisted of 62.4% females, with a mean age of 28.2 years (SD = 4.9 years).
Generating Informedness Groups.
The Useful Information Sources Questionnaire (USIQ; Heine et al., 2010), administered approximately one year after the start of studies (in wave 2), consists of 15 information sources. Each source was premised with the question “How helpful was the information you received from the people/media/institution listed below for your study decision and planning?” and scored on a scale of 1 (“not helpful at all”) to 4 (“very helpful”), as well as missing response labelled “not used/not offered”. Students are assigned to informedness groups based on their highest ranked usefulness on any USIQ information source, i.e. at least one “very helpful” source means they are including in the Well-Informed group (76.4%), at least one source “rather helpful” in the Fairly-Informed group (22.8%), while all others were assigned to the Poorly-Informed group (.9%).
False Study Expectation.
The Reason for Dropout Questionnaire (Heublein et al., 2010) is rated on a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 “plays no role at all” to 6 “plays a very important role”. The focus of this study is on the false study expectation item as a reason for dropout.
Intention for Dropout.
Intention for Dropout questionnaire is measured by five items (Cronbach’s = .85) from (Trautwein et al., 2007). All items are rated on a four-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 “does not apply at all” to 4 “applies completely”, based on how strongly students have the intention to dropout such as “I have often thought about quitting my studies”.
Study Outcome: Failed vs. Successfully finished.
Study episodes, containing information where initial studies were either successfully finished or failed, are used to evaluate study outcomes. Several study episodes without a defined status were considered as panel attrition and not included in the analyses. Similarly, a small number of students (<1%) articulated that they abandoned their studies and were therefore not included in the analyses. If more than one study episode started at study entry, a student was considered as successfully finished if any of the episodes were finished successfully.
Analysis
False Study Expectation and Intention for Dropout are analyzed using one-way analyses of variance, while Study Outcome is reported using a chi square analysis.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis paper began with the aim to investigate the information deficit phenomenon at study entry (Klein & Stocké, 2016) as an indicator for a possible lack of career maturity amongst university starters. This study repurposed the USIQ (Heine et al., 2010) to operationalize information deficits by constructing groups to rank students’ level of informedness.
Three distinct yet proportionally lobe-sided groups were constructed. The Well-Informed group represent the majority to the sample. Amongst the two lesser informed groups, more than a fifth of the sample were Fairly Informed, while less than one percent of the students were Poorly Informed.
In RQ1, a network of theoretically relevant indicators of information deficits available within NEPS, were used to ascertain whether the informedness groups had predictive construct validity. This study found that students who do not find any source of information they used as optimally useful (i.e. Poorly and Fairly Informed groups) both showed significantly poorer trends on important indicators of information deficit, as compared to their better-informed counterparts (i.e. Well-Informed group). In relation to RQ2, informedness groups presented no significant differences between genders, while the Economics and Engineering study fields were significantly less associated with the Fairly Informed group.
This gain in knowledge from the informedness groups could come from two artefacts of the construction method: (1) The differentiation of those who are comprehensively informed and those who are sub-optimally informed; (2) The disaggregation of informedness into a list of types of information sources used, which prompts students to refine their reflection about their level of informedness from various sources as opposed to informedness about different aspects of their studies.
The construction of these groups allows for the possibility to further the study of levels of informedness, and by extension information deficits, in relation to applicable models (see Marciniak et al., 2020).
ReferencesBlüthmann, I., Thiel, F., & Wolfgramm, C. (2011). Abbruchtendenzen in den Bachelorstudiengängen. Individuelle Schwierigkeiten oder mangelhafte Studienbedingungen? Journal Für Wissenschaft Und Bildung, 20(1), 110–126.
Gottfredson, L. S. (2005). Applying Gottfredson’s theory of circumscription and compromise in career guidance and counseling. In S. D. Brown & R. W. Lent (Eds.), Career Development and Counseling. Putting Theory and Research to Work (pp. 71–100). John Wiley & Sons.
Heine, C., Willich, J., & Schneider, H. (2010). Informationsverhalten und Entscheidungsfindung bei der Studien- und Berufswahl: Studienberechtigte 2008 ein halbes Jahr vor dem Erwerb der Hochschulreife. Hochschule-Informations-System: Forum Hochschule. (1).
Heublein, U., Hutzsch, C., Schreiber, J., Sommer, D., & Besuch, G. (2010). Ursachen des Studienabbruchs in Bachelor- und in herkömmlichen Studiengängen: Ergebnisse einer bundesweiten Befragung von Exmatrikulierten des Studienjahres 2007/08. Hochschule-Informations-System: Forum Hochschule. (2).
Klein, D., & Stocké, V. (2016). Studienabbruchquoten als Evaluationskriterium und Steuerungsinstrument der Qualitatssicherung im Hochschulbereich. In D. Großmann & T. Wolbring (Eds.), Evaluation von Studium und Lehre (pp. 323–366). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
Marciniak, J., Johnston, C. S., Steiner, R. S., & Hirschi, A. (2020). Career preparedness among adolescents: A review of key components and directions for future research. Journal of Career Development, 089484532094395. doi.org/10.1177/0894845320943951
OECD/European Communities (2004). Career guidance: A handbook for policy makers. Paris, France: OECD Publications.
Perry, S. R., Cabrera, A. F., & Vogt, W. P. (1999). Career maturity and college student persistence. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory &Practice, 1(1), 41–58. https://doi.org/10.2190/13EA-M98P-RCJX-EX8X
Schindler, G. (1997). "Frühe" und "späte" Studienabbrecher. Bayerisches Staatsinstitut Für Hochschulforschung Und Hochschulplanung.
Super, D. E. (1963). Vocational development in adolescence and early adulthood: Tasks and behaviors. Career development: Self-concept theory, 79-95.
Trautwein, U., Jonkmann, K., Gresch, C., Lüdtke, O., Neumann, M., Klusmann, U., & Baumert, J. (2007). Transformation des Sekundarschulsystems und akademische Karrieren (TOSCA).: Dokumentation der eingesetzten Items und Skalen, Welle 3. Unpublished manuscript, Berlin, Germany.
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