Looking beyond supervised placements

Managing the demands of work-integrated intense higher education, by Stephen Billett. A growing concern for many universities is meeting the increasing demand to locate, organise and sustain their students’ workplace experiences for programs with work-integrated learning components. As one senior administrator recently put it: “how are we going to find placements for 1500 undergraduate business students?” Because of the established practice of providing supervised placements within nursing and education faculties, these kinds of experiences are often seen as the norm. Yet the wholesale enactment of such arrangements is unlikely to be sustainable in the short, let alone the long term. Also, even in these faculties the duration of students’ workplace experiences are sometimes constrained by the costs of these placements. It is also far from clear whether the investment in these placements delivers an adequate educational return. Of course, supervised placements are required in some situations, including the care of children and the sick. But these placements are not always necessary or appropriate for all work-related educational purposes across the range of disciplines. Hence, we need to consider alternatives to these kinds of placements, except when they are warranted on educational or other grounds. Certainly, if the educational purposes are to engage students in authentic instances of practice to build occupational specific understandings, and hone and refine procedures and values required for specific occupations, then placements and engagement in actual work activities will be necessary. Even then some experiences may be organised requiring lower levels of supervision. For instance, medical or nursing students might initially gain clinical experience in aged care facilities, where work intensity and patient acuity are lower than in a busy hospital ward, and hence the need for close supervision is eased. However, if the educational purposes for work experiences are to develop further students’ understanding of what they are learning in their university courses, options other than supervised placements might be more advisable. These options include using students’ paid part-time work, opportunities to observe and reflect on instances of practice, engaging in authentic practice independently, and voluntary activities. Most Australian higher education students engage in paid part-time employment that offer a range of educational possibilities. If the educational purpose is to understand and critically appraise work activities or practices per se, then paid part-time work stand, as experiences through which students can consider, critically appraise, reflect upon and compare their paid work activities. The business students referred to above could identify and reflect upon the practices and outcomes of management, supervision, marketing, and human resource management activities in their workplaces. Students can also use instances from their work to understand the world of work, and applied considerations of text, language, communication, etc. One advantage of using part-time work for these purposes is to avoid time-poor students having to engage unnecessarily in unpaid work experiences, which come at a cost to their ability to work part-time. Instances of authentic practice can also be accessed without engaging in employment situations. For example, justice administration, journalism and law students can access salient educational experiences by observing court proceedings to learn about their processes and outcomes, albeit for quite different educational purposes. For law students, observing court proceedings has a range of potential pedagogic purposes and learning outcomes. These observations and subsequent reflection can assist these students understand their role in court processes by understanding court goals and processes. These students can use particular cases to appraise their merits, observe the use of law, and identify alternate strategies or approaches for those cases. Through observing different kinds of courtrooms they can also learn about particular court processes and requirements, and how they differ. Journalism students can learn about reporting courtroom events without negotiating a placement. These students might prepare a story and submit that to a media outlet for publication or broadcast, which again does not require gaining a placement in a media organisation. Accessing these experiences can be organised by students themselves. Analogous examples here include medical students observing autopsies to understand the processes involved, without having to secure placements in either hospital or forensic mortuaries. In all, these examples utilise opportunity to observe authentic instances of practice and, importantly, to reflect upon them to develop understandings and procedural capacities. Students can also engage with voluntary agencies or in ways that provide them with authentic work experiences. Much of the activities above need not necessarily be organised by university placement offices, as students themselves or their lecturers might be best placed for securing these experiences. In some circumstances, it will be important for students to organise these experiences for themselves. For instance, for students in music, creative arts and applied theatre, learning how to organise performances is a key feature of their work. Hence, students organising performances is aligned to the knowledge they need to learn. In sum, it is probably untenable and unrealistic to attempt to locate, organise and sustain supervised work placements for all university courses. Yet we need to go beyond viewing placements as the preferred option to secure work experiences. Depending upon the educational purpose, a range of alternatives exist that providing access to and engagement in authentic work activities, as indicated above. Regardless of the kind of experiences provided or organised, for students it is essential for reflections and discussions on those experiences to be built into the university curriculum. The concern here is to find viable bases for the provision and integration of experiences outside the university setting that are educationally worthwhile and sustainable. The suggestions here attempt to begin a broader conversation about identifying, organising and utilising experiences of work for particular educational purposes. In all, key premises for advancing the provision of work experiences are to: identify the educational purpose of the experience; consider the range of ways that this experience can be provided; consider which option offer optimum capacity to provide these experiences for students; and organise such arrangements either through placements, by the students themselves or through a teacher-led process. Stephen Billett is professor of adult vocational education at Griffith University and an ALTC national teaching fellow.