Examining students’ perspectives on gender bias in their work-integrated learning placements

ABSTRACT

Work-integrated learning (WIL) affords students opportunities to apply skills and knowledge to practical work placements. Students potentially learn professional behaviours appropriate to their chosen industry sector. However, students may also face challenges they may not be prepared to navigate. One of these is gender bias due to assumptions about women and work, particularly within STEM sectors. This article presents findings from a pilot study that explores WIL students’ perspectives on gender bias related to experiences at their internship placements or other jobs. The findings suggest that the potential lack of gender neutrality within organizations such as WIL placements, is nuanced through an underlying bias around thinking about gender, women and work, and demonstrated through institutional structures such as branded recruitment campaigns or the individual micro aggressions of co-workers and supervisors. Further research needs to focus on the impact of gender bias on students’ sense of value within different organizations, and the strategies they employ to navigate bias. In the short-term, all students need tools to help them understand how gender is constructed within organizational processes and how to develop strategies to help them confront gender bias within the organizations in which they work.     

Leniency and halo bias in industry-based assessments of student competencies: a critical,sector-based analysis

Industry placements are popular means to provide students with an opportunity to apply their skills, knowledge and experience in a ‘real world’ setting. Within this context, supervisor feedback allows educators to measure students’ performance beyond academic objectives, by benchmarking it against industry expectations. However, industry assessments appear to be frequently clouded and overwhelmingly positive by nature, which questions the reliability and validity of supervisors’ judgement of competencies. Supervisor bias has been paid much attention within the context of clinical placements, as well as within the domain of social work. However, the concept has been largely ignored within business education, despite the increasing emphasis on – and deep integration of – work-integrated learning in the business curriculum. This paper sets out to address this gap by examining variances in mark distribution and apparent leniency in the context of a final-year, compulsory placement unit, based on observations and data collected over nine semesters (n?=?546). The focus of this study is on gaining an understanding of the reasons behind assessment bias and the pressures placed on industry assessors. The data indicate that different types of placement locations apply dissimilar standards when assessing student performance. The author identifies three statistically different placement types (small business, not-for-profit and professional), which influence the strength and risk of grader bias, hence ultimately the assessment outcome.     

Work placement experience: should I stay or should I go?

The opportunity to experience work placements that complement taught and practical courses in higher education has become a central strand of many undergraduate degree programmes. While there is tacit agreement that such placements are a good thing, in recent years the numbers of students opting for work placements has been declining. This paper uses a mixed method research design to probe the learning outcomes, attitudes and perceptions of undergraduate students who choose not to go on a work placement. Findings highlight some areas of concern that could be considered by institutions of higher education working to enhance good practice in students’ work placement experiences.     

The effect of work placements on the academic performance of Chinese students in UK higher education

The main controversy as a result of the commercialisation of international education markets is that international students especially those from China are unable to perform as well as UK students in UK universities. So far, research has yet to identify the influence of placements on the academic performance of Chinese students from entry to graduation. Using four cohorts of accounting and finance students in a UK university, this present work is the first to find that Chinese students who undertake placements in the third year are seven times more likely to achieve good degrees (2.1 or 1st) than those who opt out of work placements. It is also found that Chinese students who have a high prior academic achievement and better academic results from years 1 and 2 are likely to undertake placements. Finally, the results show that the academic performance of international students is influenced by domicile.     

Developing pre-professional identity in undergraduates through work-integrated learning

Pre-professional identity is a complex phenomenon spanning awareness of and connection with the skills, qualities, behaviours, values and standards of a student’s chosen profession, as well as one’s understanding of professional self in relation to the broader general self. It is an important, yet under-explored, aspect of graduate employability and can influence academic success, well-being and productivity. This study investigates the role of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL), more specifically work placements, in developing pre-professional identity among undergraduates. It uses qualitative data, in the form of structured reflections, gathered over two time periods from 105 business students in a Western Australian university. Findings indicate that work placements can offer a valuable platform for fostering identity construction. Students use the experience to make sense of their intended profession through observing, questioning and interacting with seasoned professionals. Appraising and reflecting on their experience, through learning activities and assessment, are highlighted as important elements of placement design and critical for students to question and make sense of what they observed and learned. Strategies are presented for industry and education practitioners to enhance pre-professional identity development among undergraduates. The study underlines the important role of work placements in preparing students for graduate-level employment, beyond the traditional focus on non-technical skill development and the application of disciplinary knowledge.     

Learning through Meaning Making: Applying Job Crafting in Field Learning

Job crafting makes people’s work rewarding through meaning making. This article discusses the ways in which a field director may use job crafting to address a common challenge in field education. Field placements are based on various institutional expectations; however, many students have preconceived notions of what social work and social work education should be, and they complain that their placements are “not clinical ” enough. Through the application of job crafting, students can reframe their field learning experiences in a meaningful way. Using the case study method, this article demonstrates one way to support MSW students, highlighting common challenges and practices at a large public northeastern university.     

Employer understanding of Work-Integrated Learning and the challenges of engaging in work placement opportunities

This study examines employer understanding of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL), reasons for participation and the challenges and barriers posed during the WIL process. This is important given the drive to grow WIL, augmented by the National Strategy for WIL, and the significant benefits it holds in preparing students for their transition to employment. The study was undertaken by the four publicly funded Western Australian universities, in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia, and is focused on work placements among business students. Findings indicate employers had very little understanding of WIL offerings at the four Business Schools. While employers generally believed that student work placements are useful for their industry sectors, a number of issues impacted on their engagement in WIL. These included identifying suitable projects and tasks for students to complete; sourcing suitable students; concerns with student performance and capacity to mentor/supervise. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research tools were used with data gathered by an employer survey (N?=?112) and focus group sessions (N?=?17). The study recommends a number of ways to alleviate barriers and challenges to improve the WIL experience for all stakeholders and ensure the sustained growth of WIL in the higher education sector.     

Meeting the Capstone Challenge in Postgraduate Food Science Education

Project work and work placements can help prepare tertiary food science students for the workplace. Programs in the curriculum should support the development of transferable skills such as communication, problem‐solving, and planning. This paper describes a case study of a new capstone project for Masters of Food Science students based on a work integrated learning model. Students were engaged to develop a HACCP plan for a cheesemaker. They interacted with a peer group, academics, and with professionals from the food industry. Two iterations of the project were completed. Staff and student feedback from the first iteration informed modifications in the subsequent iteration. Industry partners and an authentic work task were key components of the project. The model could apply to a broad range of programs that require a capstone project in the curriculum.     

Is choosing to go on placement a gamble? Perspectives from bioscience undergraduates

In the biosciences, a professional placement experience in academia or industry is intended to contribute to a student’s personal and professional training. While there is a general acknowledgement that a placement experience is beneficial for students, recent years have seen a decline in the number of students choosing to go on placements. Using a mixed‐method research design, this paper explores the attitudes that influence the bioscience students’ decisions on whether or not to undertake a year in a professional placement. Other questions considered in this study were whether placements influence student attitudes towards learning and if students achieve a better degree classification and better employment because of placement. Perspectives from academic staff and employers were compared with student perspectives on the added value of undertaking an extended placement during a period of study at university. While our findings reaffirm some of the perceived advantages of a professional placement in terms of learning and employability, it identifies important factors that influence student decisions not to undertake placements, revealing interesting questions on the placement perspectives between the student, academic tutor and employer.     

Work‐experience and schools: factors influencing the participation of industry

The growth of work‐experience as part of the school curriculum in such schemes as TVEI, has led to a growing body of literature concerned with the educational, social and political consequences of this trend. However, one aspect of analysis has been neglected by those working in this area. There has been a marked lack of investigation into factors which affect the supply of work placements to schools. Behind this lies an assumption that the participation of industry with schools is a straightforward and easy to accomplish process.

By focusing on some of the approaches exhibited by firms towards the provison of work‐experience, this paper seeks to make problematic the supply of work placements by industry in a market economy. I shall suggest that eductionalists and policy makers may have cause to be concerned not only with the quantity of placements which might be available to them in the future, but with the educational quality of these placements.     

Becoming employable students and ‘ideal’ creative workers: exclusion and inequality in higher education work placements

In this paper we explore how the ‘employable’ student and ‘ideal’ future creative worker is prefigured, constructed and experienced through higher education work placements in the creative sector, based on a recent small-scale qualitative study. Drawing on interview data with students, staff and employers, we identify the discourses and practices through which students are produced and produce themselves as neoliberal subjects. We are particularly concerned with which students are excluded in this process. We show how normative evaluations of what makes a ‘successful’ and ‘employable’ student and ‘ideal’ creative worker are implicitly classed, raced and gendered. We argue that work placements operate as a key domain in which inequalities within both higher education and the graduate labour market are (re)produced and sustained. The paper offers some thoughts about how these inequalities might be addressed.     

A Case Study of Student Teachers' Science Placements

The role of placements in the development of the education/industry partnership is considered with particular reference to initial teacher education. A detailed study of a placement scheme run by an ITE institution and Teacher Placement Organisers (TPO) is described and analysed to highlight issues regarding the nature and process of students' learning from placements. In the context of science and technology it is suggested that modifications to the content of subjects are necessary if students are successfully to investigate the workplace using their subject understanding. However, there are dangers that learning might become narrowly vocational and it is argued that in the evaluation of learning it is necessary to consider the use of inquiry skills in relation to the subject‐specific context if educational concerns are to be safe‐guarded.     

Social Work and Criminal Justice: Are We Meeting in the Field?

Social workers are needed but infrequently involved with criminal justice systems. One way to increase the number of social workers in the criminal justice system is by exposing students to work in these settings. This study examined the number, types, and utilization of criminal justice field placements in MSW programs by surveying field education directors. On average, 7.73% of field placements were in criminal justice settings. When asked about barriers to criminal justice placements, the most frequently identified challenge was a lack of MSW supervisors. Implications for future research and education are discussed.     

Learning about the world of work: Co-opting school students’ paid work experiences

This paper proposes co-opting high school students’ paid part-time work experiences to develop their critical understanding of the world of work, beyond their schooling through post-school pathways. It argues that unlike work experience program or work placements organised through schools, students’ paid part-time employment provides authentic workplace experiences that have the potential to inform students deeply and critically about the world of work. These experiences include the reciprocal obligations that arise from paid employment and, as such, provide a rich base for high school students to explore the world of work, relationships in the workplace, what constitutes more and less valued work and how work is organised and rewarded. The co-opting of students’ work experiences for school-based activities may provide a useful base to explore the world of work both for those students who are employed part-time and those not employed in part-time work, but able to learn from their peers’ experiences. To assist achieving these goals some pedagogic tools are required to effectively describe, analyse and illuminate these experiences in classroom settings. A way of describing and critically appraising this paid work is proposed through individual and collective consideration of the activities and interactions that constitute students’ paid work experience. Given the difficulty of organising workplace placements and work experience programs, and the potentially richer outcomes, co-opting students’ paid work experiences presents a viable and worthwhile resource available in most classrooms for learning more about the world of work.     

Why Faculty–Student Interaction Matters in the First Year Experience

Increasing expectations are being placed on higher education institutions to ensure the economic relevance of research and knowledge creation as well as developing the skill needs of workers in modern knowledge‐based societies. In the UK, workplace learning has long been a feature of higher education in certain subject areas, and in the late 1990s the idea of work experience for all students re‐emerged as a significant issue. Various studies have considered the relationship between work placement experiences during higher education and students' subsequent transition into employment after graduation, but there has been less recent research exploring how the placement experience translates into academic development. This article presents some of the findings of a study on the effects, as perceived by undergraduates themselves, of work experience placements on aspects of learning as well as employability. The majority of placement students indicate personal and intellectual development and report increased levels of confidence and enhanced motivation towards study. However, national data show a continuing decline in the numbers of UK students taking up placements, and the study suggests that more general moves towards flexibility within undergraduate programmes may be contributing to this decline.     

Work‐experience as a Contradictory Practice

Radical educationalists have analysed work‐experience as an activity which provides poor quality and unreflected experiences for school students and serves to ‘mystify capitalist relations of production’. Using data gathered from a case‐study which examines the experiences of a group of students who had recently returned from a week in a place of work, this paper suggests that such a view may be misleading. Furthermore, the experiences of students in this study suggests that work placements may constitute the site of an activity through which the validity of capitalist social relations of production and the labour process may be challenged.     

Bridging Education and Practice With a Competency-Based Learning Contract

ABSTRACT

Field work programs have a substantial responsibility for providing support and gatekeeping functions while ensuring an educational experience that allows students to master the nine holistic, multidimensional social work accreditation competencies. With additional emphasis on field as a “signature pedagogy,” field directors are tasked with finding placements that can support these explicit competencies. Through the utilization of a learning contract that combines the Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards competencies (including component behaviors) students and supervisors can begin to discuss their joint progress on meeting each of these prior to the final evaluation. This process will ensure that students have demonstrated the necessary outcomes to become a generalist social work practitioner.     

Placement as part of higher education

Many students in Britain, especially those training for the professions, do parts of their courses in the form of placements in the field. Most such placements are compulsory. During placements students are the joint concern of their tutors on the campus and their mentors in the field. The placements on the different courses seem dramatically different. For example, some placements are in primary schools, some in hospital wards, some in factory pharmacies and some in electrical power stations. This study shows, however, that despite such obvious differences in the placement settings, student feelings about placement can be remarkably similar. For staff whose courses include placement there are issues which they could usefully discuss in common.     

MSW Students’ Motivations for Taking an International Social Work Elective Course

This article presents motivating factors for taking an international social work course for a sample of graduate students in the United States. Literature on international education, including courses and international field placements, provides a framework for the study. Qualitative themes showed that students were motivated primarily as a result of prior international experience, or the desire for such, as well as a wish to understand the phenomena of globalization. Findings point to the need for offering more courses in international social work and globalization.     

Students as global citizens: strategies for mobilizing studies abroad

Universities globally are increasingly seeking to improve the international mobility of their students. There are several latent benefits that accrue to a university whose students and staff actively participate in international exchange programs. Essentially this can lead to an increase in the university's international reputation, opportunities for benchmarking against best practices, capacity to develop international relationships, diversity of student population with all the benefits that accrue from diversity, and access to potential recruitment markets. In this paper we review extant literature to elicit the range of practical factors that play a role in the decision of students to study abroad. We also discuss results from a recent survey among Australian students that revealed their preferences for international work placements.