The Library
Employability and higher education: contextualising female students' workplace experiences to enhance understanding of employability development
Tools
Gracia, Louise (2009) Employability and higher education: contextualising female students' workplace experiences to enhance understanding of employability development. Journal of Education and Work, Vol.22 (No.4). pp. 301-318. doi:10.1080/13639080903290454 ISSN 1363-9080.
PDF
WRAP_Gracia_Employability.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (300Kb) |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13639080903290454
Abstract
Current political and economic discourses position employability as a responsibility of higher education, which deploys mechanisms such as supervised work experience (SWE) to embed employability skills development into the undergraduate curriculum. However, workplaces are socially constructed complex arenas of embodied knowledge that are gendered. Understanding the usefulness of SWE therefore requires consideration of the contextualised experiences of it, within these complex environments. This study considers higher education's use of SWE as a mechanism of employability skills development through exploration of female students' experiences of accounting SWE, and its subsequent shaping of their views of employment. Findings suggest that women experience numerous, indirect gender-based inequalities within their accounting SWE about which higher education is silent, perpetuating the framing of employability as a set of individual skills and abilities. This may limit the potential of SWE to provide equality of employability development. The study concludes by briefly considering how insights provided by this research could better inform higher education's engagement with SWE within the employability discourse, and contribute to equality of employability development opportunity.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor | ||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Accounting Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School |
||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | College graduates -- Employment -- Great Britain, Wages -- Effect of education on -- Great Britain, Women employees -- Great Britain, Women college students -- Economic conditions, Employability -- Great Britain | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Education and Work | ||||
Publisher: | Routledge | ||||
ISSN: | 1363-9080 | ||||
Official Date: | September 2009 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Volume: | Vol.22 | ||||
Number: | No.4 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 18 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 301-318 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1080/13639080903290454 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year