Abstract Content (up to 300 words recommended)
Abstract: Recent developments in higher education have seen a strong emphasis placed on making graduates ‘job ready’ for their work in the professions (Harvey 2000). A driver of this agenda has been the many mass-scale surveys conducted with business and industry reporting on the abilities and general employability of graduates. An outcome of this work, which in many instances reports only limited levels of preparedness of graduates, has been an increasing reorienting of university pedagogy (Oliver, 2011). This is seen especially in the idea of the ‘skills gap’, which conceives of university education largely in terms of a bridging of ‘the disparity between industry needs and higher education provision’ (Jackson 2013).
These developments formed the background for a study that investigated a skill type that features perennially in debates about generic skills and employability - written communication. ‘Discourse-based interviews’ (Odell, et al. 1983) were conducted with managers and supervisors in a range of professions about the writing abilities of newly employed graduates in their charge. The responses of participants were most interesting, and served, among other things, to challenge some of the emerging ideas about ‘job-readiness’ in current debates. The study draws on the framework of activity theory (Engestrom, 1987), as well as the substantial literature on academic and professional discourses (e.g. Le Maistre & Pare, 2004) to put forward ideas about how the development of students’ written communication abilities is best handled on university programs.
Addressing the theme/s of the Conference (up to 200 words recommended)
The proposed paper, which reports managers’ and supervisors’ experiences of the written communication abilities of newly employed graduates, is centrally related to the overall conference theme: Learning for life and work in a complex world. The paper draws on the study’s findings and also a range of theoretical concerns (Activity theory, Genre theory) to put forward ideas about how the development of students’ written communication abilities is best handled on university programs. The conclusion drawn is that it is unrealistic to imagine that students can be systematically prepared for specific workplace requirements. Instead what’s needed is an approach that enables them to become flexible and adaptable communicators, with the ability to respond readily to diverse and largely unpredictable contexts and demands. In this way the proposed paper is also strongly related to the first sub-theme: Educating graduates to be responsive and adaptable professionals. There is also a tie in with the fourth theme: Navigating uncertainty and complexity.
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