Competences Capabilities Capitals their relationship to graduate employability

Competences, Capabilities & Capitals: their relationship to graduate employability Michael Tomlinson University of Southampton Education School

Overview of presentation • Discuss wider context of graduate employability and its challenges for HE and careers • Consider some dominant approaches to graduate employability • Explore rationale and basis for a graduate capitals model – Resources and readiness

Context of graduate employability • Challenging graduate labour market – wage returns but…. differentiated, increasing under-employment (e. g. Future Track Survey, 2013; ONS, 2012) • Labour market barriers…formal and perceptual – Role of ‘subjective’ factors (i. e. self-perceived employability, career orientations) • Distinction between employment and ‘employability’

Challenges for higher education • HE as driver for economic growth (within a loosely -coupled relationship) – Policy subtext of adaptive, career-driven, self-optimising graduate • The student-consumer in the managed market – Managing student expectations, shifting demands – Value = value for money, value of return, value for time – Massificaiton, diversity, social mobility challenges (see Brown & Carasso, 2013; Tomlinson, 2016; Williams, 2012)

Challenges for higher education • White Paper challenges (TEF, DHLE) – Metrics drivers and positional markets – Employability frameworks & need for creative responses…. & research base • Russell Group HEIs in healthy market position, choice reputation but…. – Early career planning increasingly necessary – Reimaging career planning as self/personal development – False dichotomy between academic and employmentfocused orientations

Employability and the university experience • University as a field of multiple practices & development opportunities – Multiple interactions (peers, disciplinary communities, ECAs, career services, employers) • Declining value of formal ‘hard’ credentials • Economy of experience / narratives of employability – Bringing together hard and soft currencies

Problematic definition Commonly used: “a set of achievements - skills, understandings and personal attributes - that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy. ” (Yorke, 2006) BUT pre-empts the very issue in question: what skills, and understanding? ; how do they help people gain employment? ; how do they lead to successful employment outcomes?

Challenging questions HE and employability relationship • Normative questions – What can HEIs do to better enhance graduates’ employability? (performative, effective) – What key skills do graduates require? (functional) • Critical (equally legitimate) – What specifically is higher education meant to be producing and to what effect? – Do graduates’ relative outcomes reflect a continuum of employability? – What is the role of employers and HRD practice? – What other factors shapes and influences graduates’ successful transitions to working life?

Graduate competences Sometimes associated with ‘skills’ approaches • Supply-side orientation – Graduate-based ‘attributes’ approaches – Employability = degree qualification + skills, competences and attributes • Competency-orientated educational provision – VET ‘learning outcomes’ & occupational fit – Problem-based learning – Embedded ‘skills’

Dimensions of competences • Conceptual distinctions – ‘entity’/possessive vs relational, situated – Competence vs competencies – Technical vs behavioural • Importance of context (Eraut, 2007; Lindberg & Rantatdaldo, 2015) – Occupational selection & socialisation – Appraisal of performance by other – Balance

The Limits of Competence revisited • Multiple lists and frameworks – No agreed methodology for identification – Questionable conceptualisation / Lack of explanatory power – Semantics e. g. Ryle (1954) technical and nontechnical discourse; Wittgenstein – language games • Education – workplace division – Behaviouristic underpinnings (e. g. VET check-list of ‘learning outcomes’) – HE purpose – conflation of higher learning and training (Barnett, 1994; Ainley, 2016) • ‘

Capabilities and employability • Employability and opportunity for choice and value (Sen, 1992; 1999; Nussbaum, 2000; 2011) – Internal and combined capability – Freedom and well-being • Key capabilities (employment related) – Agency and self-empowerment (includes decision-making) – Judgement formation and practical reason – Emphasis on intrinsic value and goals (understand the value of employment, freedom to choose between options) – Broader framing of university process & curricula • Critical challenges – conversion from potential to realised capability

Capitals - definition • Resources which empower individuals – Higher levels of capitals stronger level of career readiness and resourcefulness greater confidence and goal-orientations • Acquired and built upon through educational, life and work-experiences • Forms of capital are often inter-related and feed into other forms • Need to be continually enriched during and beyond graduation

Challenges • Differentially-acquired amongst graduates but can still be enhanced • Emphasis also on agency, not just structure – Family and socio-economic background vs. affordances of higher education experience Graduates’ relationship to job market is subjectively mediated – Impacts on level of engagement with employability management, goal-mapping

The graduate capital model 15

Human capital • Human capital is the knowledge and skills graduates acquire which is a core foundation to their labour market prospects • Technical knowledge (potential occupational links) • Skills and competences (codified and tacit) • Career-building skills and knowledge

Social capital • Social capital is the sum of social relationships and networks that help mobilise human capital and bring graduates closer to the labour market and its opportunity structures • Bridging and bonding (Portes, 1998) • Weak and strong ties (Granovetter, 1985) • Formation of positive ‘communities of practice’ (peers, colleagues, employment associations) • Impacts include knowledge, insight, ‘trust’, confidence

Cultural capital • Cultural capital is the formation of culturallyvalued knowledge, dispositions and behaviours that are aligned to the workplaces graduates seek to enter • Southampton & Warwick graduates largely rich in this (socio-cultural & educational profile, reputational capital of HE) • Dynamics of ‘social fit’ – – Embodied cultural capital Importance of cultural sensitivity and awareness Understanding organisational values, practices Self-presentation (can this be trained? )

Identity capital • Identity capital is the level of personal investment people make towards the development of careers and employability • Emerging identity, pre-professional identity formation • Related to life experiences, personal narrative – ECAs and work experience important for identity-building • Presentation and performance of one’s employability (e. g. manicuring CVs, distinctive profile management)

Identity & Cultural Capital interplay • Necessary conditions: • Individual must present self to prospective employer as ‘suitable’ for employment AND • Employer must view graduate as suitable for employment • Identities are warranted and affirmed by others • Holmes (2001; 2013)

Psychological capital • Psychological capital is the psycho-social resources which enable graduates to adapt and respond positively to inevitable career challenges • • Self-efficacy / openness to experience / mind-sets Flexibility (contingencies) Resilience Career adaptability and related learning

Orientation to market (ends) Careerist Strong identity capital (work expression of self) Emerging flexibility, contingency Active Ritualist Ambivalence Managing expectations & goals Perceptions of capital deficit Passive (means) Strong identity capital (away from employment) Weak identity capital Resistance or alternative employment spaces Fractured employability management Rebel Retreatist Psychological distancing Non-market orientation

Capital pre-employment outcomes • Examples • Be aware and draw upon of formal knowledge and skills and present to employers (human) • Knowledge of one’s target industry, trends, demands (human • Know key gatekeepers in the industry (social) • Making oneself visible to employer networks (social) • Awareness and sensitivity to the target work cultures (cultural) • Have emerging career goals & aspirations (identity) • Be able to reflect on and capitalise on experience and achievements (identity) • Manage expectations towards career challenge, uncertainty and risk (psychological)

Implications & challenges for HE stakeholders: the adaptable and ready graduate • Time dimensions (developmental and renewal of capitals) • Career learning and practice – exploiting HE’s landscape of practice • Translating discourse of capitals to students – Critical reflection, enhancing career identity, selfbelief, resilience management • Employer engagement, networks and work experience opportunity (esp. for marginalised students) • Academic community engagement (a different vocabulary)

Future directions • Enhance research base • Future empirical directions (e. g. ‘Learning Gain’) • Relationship between capitals and other issues – – Different subject disciplinary developments Impacts of work experience / internships Mediating factors in capital formations Student self-diagnostics

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