Chapter 1
The Learning Graduate
Lorraine Anderson
Introduction: A Skilful Start
The âivory towerâ image of higher education has become an increasingly inaccurate one over the years. What was once unattainable and perhaps incomprehensible to many has now become a mainstream path for growing numbers of school leavers and for significant numbers of âmatureâ students, aiming to either engage with an opportunity which may have been unavailable to them when younger, to expand or further develop their skills or to gain a qualification now anticipated by their employer in an increasingly professionalised workplace. In some cases, it may simply be an opportunity to learn and to grow personally, although the financial implications of a university education mean that this may now account for a relatively small number of individuals. It is to be hoped, nonetheless, that every student who engages with a university education has learning as a key ambition.
The reasons behind individual engagement with higher education are doubtless complex, multifarious and perhaps indistinct and quite muddled for some. A blend of personal interest, societal expectation, career ambition, peer or parental pressure, limited alternative options; all will doubtless contribute to some extent. Increasingly, however, sociopolitical drivers play a role in this process. Some aspects of this will be overt and others covert. Much of the destruction of the ivory tower in the UK, however, has been the result of government intervention into the processes of higher education. In 1997, Dearingâs report of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (NCIHE) in the UK made a number of recommendations for the direction of higher education over the next 20 years, including an emphasis on widening participation and an increased focus on student learning. The report noted that â[w]hile traditional but still-relevant values must be safeguarded, higher education will need to continue to adapt to the needs of a rapidly changing world and to new challengesâ (Dearing, 1997: 11). This blend of social and economic drivers has continued to be reflected in subsequent UK governmental investigations, including the Leitch Review of Skills, which was published in 2006 (Leitch, 2006). The focus of this sector-wide report was on the skills that would be required to enhance the global competitiveness of the UK, looking to 2020. The outcome of Leitch was that if the country was to remain competitive there needed to be a significant increase in skills of all levels across the working age population.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this driver has not gone away. As more and more learners swell the ranks in universities across the globe, a means to develop, capture and harness those skills in a way that is distinctive from vocational courses of further education and palatable to the sensibilities of higher education, has been developed under the umbrella concept of âgraduate attributesâ. The skills agenda continues its close association with graduate attributes, as seen in the report of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, The Future of Work: Jobs and Skills in 2030 (UKCES, 2014), which identifies a future focus on the development of
key skills and attributes that will be at a premium ⌠including resilience, adaptability, resourcefulness, enterprise, cognitive skills (such as problem solving), and the core business skills for project based employment.
A further example is provided by the requirements of the developing Teaching Excellence Framework in the UK, with its focus on âinstitutional accountability in ensuring graduates leave university with the necessary skillsâ (Phoenix Editorial, 2016). The years roll on into the future but the story remains the same, with the concept of âgraduate attributesâ viewed as a key vehicle to enable the effective translation of academic study into skills and employability.
Institutional Influences on Graduate Attributes
The continuing link between graduate attributes and employability can therefore be seen to have been the result of the skills agenda and continuing governmental initiatives and drivers. Yet, despite this sector-wide approach, close links with employers and the current or anticipated demands of the workplace, no accepted set of core graduate attributes has emerged; although several skills make a regular appearance in discussions about graduate attributes, such as teamwork or proficiency with communication and & information technologies (C&IT). It could be argued that the rapidly changing environment of the twenty-first-century global workplace makes it too challenging to identify a âcore setâ of attributes as such an exercise inevitably comes with an element of inbuilt redundancy. Nonetheless, efforts continue to try to capture and develop a definitive list, at both the macro and the micro level. Looking first at a macro, or global, perspective, Salazar-Xirinachs (2015) highlights two such approaches in his discussion on the perceived skills gap: the Assessment & Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S) project and the work in this area of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Based at the University of Melbourne, the ATC21S project identified ten skills, set within the following four categories: ways of thinking, ways of working, tools for working and ways of living in the world. The WEF, meanwhile, took a more expansive view, identifying 16 skills in three categories: foundational literacies, competences and character qualities (Soffel, 2016). At the micro-level, universities pursue the identification of institutionally-linked graduate attributes with alacrity. Indeed, the direction that the development of graduate attributes has taken as the concept has continued to evolve, has increasingly been one that reflects an individual universityâs philosophy, ethos and ultimately institutional ownership, as opposed to the development of an agreed set of universal attributes that any graduate, from any university, might be expected to possess.
This development was acknowledged by the Australian National Graduate Attributes Project (National GAP, 2007â08) which identified graduate attributes as âthe set of core outcomes a university community agrees all its graduates will develop during their studies [our emphasis]â; and this is a trend that has continued over the last ten years. A consideration of a range of current examples can help illuminate this development. At the time of writing, the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has seven institutional graduate attributes:
Citizenship
Knowledge
Learning
Skills
Creativity
Communication
Teamwork
(HKBU, 2016a)
These headline categories are expanded upon at undergraduate, taught postgraduate and research postgraduate/professional doctoral levels. HKBU took deliberate steps to establish institutional ownership of their graduate attributes, generating community engagement with the concept through a variety of means, including an institution-wide competition for staff and students to develop ideas for creative ways to help the university community remember the attributes. They now have a Graduate Attributes Ambassadorsâ Scheme to recruit students âto support and organize a wide range of events and activities to promote the 7 Graduate Attributes within and outside the HKBU communityâ (HKBU, 2016b).
A sense of institutional ownership that is more often than not community-generated is evident in many sets of institutional graduate attributes but their content across the sector can be quite diverse, despite the fact that they have employability as a unifying driver behind their generation. An in-built tension between government agendas and institutional objectives may lie at the root of this discrepancy. While governments aim to raise the skills of students and graduates across the sector in order to drive optimum employability, the need to recruit increasing numbers of students in a burgeoning marketplace of higher education âproductsâ means that universities are driven by the need to develop an identifiable and valuable academic âbrandâ in order to top the league tables and to attract students. We can see this approach in action in the close association of institutional graduate attributes with the university itself, as opposed to generic benefits of graduate status for employability or wider society. One Scottish institution, the University of Glasgow, has developed a set of graduate attributes which for them defines âthe Glasgow graduateâ (University of Glasgow, 2016a). The development of the Glasgow attributes was informed by consultation with a range of stakeholders, including students, staff and employers. These ten attributes form a matrix within three dimensions: academic, personal and transferable, and the operationalisation of these attributes within each dimension is clearly spelled out for students. Despite the inclusion of the three dimensions, only one of which pertains to the academic domain, Glasgowâs philosophy on, and orientation to, their set of graduate attributes is directly connected to the idea of developing the academic role as opposed to a generic skill set. Guidance to students on graduate attributes points out that subject specialism is âa particularly important attribute because it underlies all of [the] other generic graduate abilitiesâ and that âthe more you develop your academic identity, the less generic your other attributes will beâ (University of Glasgow, 2016b).
While governments attempt to impose unifying stamps on universities across the sector as part of higher educationâs role as a significant economic player, institutions strive for differentiation. This is an understandable response, as although there has been a global acceptance of both the existence of a âskills gapâ and the concept across the higher education sector of graduate attributes as an approach to address this gap, the result could be the homogenisation of the global graduate. If all students develop the same skills and attributes, regardless of the institution of learning that they attend, then what is it that differentiates one institution from another in terms of its graduates? Why attend one university in preference over another? The creation of a core set of skills resulting in an institutional set of graduate attributes, can be seen to be driven as much by the need of institutions to stamp their ownership on their graduates as products of their own institutional philosophy, as it is by any employer-driven or governmental agenda. The institutionâs market niche is therefore also simultaneously assured. What impact is this having on learners at all levels: in their studies, preparation for the workplace, and identities as global citizens?
The Learning Graduate: Demonstrating Graduate Attributes at Undergraduate Level and Beyond
Our understanding, therefore, of the concept of graduate attributes is as much driven by institutional ownership and the need for differentiation in a crowded higher education marketplace as by employability demands. This has implications not only for the role of graduate attributes at undergraduate level but also for the continuing learner journey in postgraduate study or continuing professional development (CPD) courses. Where is the learner in this developing story? What does the demonstration of those attributes look like at an individual level and what are the most effective vehicles for their development, both at undergraduate and in higher or further study? In order to be meaningful and achievable, graduate attributes need to be addressed appropriately within a studentâs learning journey. Increasingly, as with a good deal of skills-based development opportunities, the most appropriate approach is often viewed as being embedded within the curriculum; however, this does not come without its own challenges.
Work on developing a curriculum-based approach has taken place across the sector at strategic, operational and student-facing levels. An influential example at the sector level is provided by the Quality Assurance Agency Scotland (QAAS) Enhancement Themes, notably âResearch-Teaching LinkagesââGraduate Attributesâ (QAAS, 2006â08) and âGraduates for the 21st Centuryâ (QAAS, 2008â11), part of the enhancement-led approach to developing quality teaching and learning across the Scottish sector, was instrumental in almost every Scottish higher education institution (HEI) developing its own set of graduate attributes. At an institutional level the University of the Western Cape in South Africa provides an example where it saw its âown understanding of the nature and purposes of higher educationâ play a central role in the development of their graduate attributes, which subsequently translated into a Graduate Attributes Charter âthat guides the University in developing the knowledge, skills and competencies of graduatesâ (University of the Western Cape). A student-facing approach is demonstrated by the University of Greenwich, in England, which has developed a guide âfor students, by studentsâ, to engage their learners in what it means to be a âGreenwich Graduateâ. The Greenwich Graduate Student Network also âworks with students and staff running workshops on request and developing resourcesâ (University of Greenwich).
The development of graduate attributes using disciplinary learning as a vehicle can take either an embedded or integrated approach within the curriculum, or a âbolt-onâ approach to the core content where generic courses or modules are taken by students to supplement and complement their subject-based studies. The jury remains out as to which of these two methods is the more efficacious. An embedded approach should see graduate attributes aligned with intended learning outcomes which should mean that the student is unable to avoid the learning. However, it can also mean that learners do not âseeâ the graduate attributes or fully comprehend their value; and this can have implications for learner engagement with the concept. Highlighting skills and attributes through the ...
