Rationale
Placements & Professional Identity Formation
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Pirie, T., & McNicholas, C. (2015). From placement to academic meltdown: a qualitative study of student experience in the transition from third year work placement back to fourth year academic study, presented at Enhancement and Innovation in Higher Education conference, Glasgow, 2015.
Methodology
Data Collection
The project is divided into two Stages. Stage 1 (September-November 2016) involved an extensive literature review concerning the key concepts (Legitimate Peripheral Participation and Communities of Practice) with particular concern for how they have been conceptualised and applied within higher education settings. Stage 2 (December 2016- May 2017) involved the collection of primary data (vis-à-vis) semi-structured interviews with a purposeful sample of (N=19) undergraduate civil engineering students who had secured an industrial placement during summer 2016. Prior to the interviews each participant was asked to reflect on three examples where they considered that their professional identity had been shaped during placement and to have these in mind to discuss at their interview. The theoretical constructs informing this research were not discussed with the students.
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At the time of writing the transcribed data has only been subjected to a partial and cursory coding by the lead. The coding procedure has followed a deductive-inductive path in taking account of the guided semi-structured interview questions that elicited responses from the students about identity at work and transition to university. A pragmatic decision was taken that certain demographics (age / gender/ year of study) of the sample would not be considered in the data analysis.
Key findings
- Professional Identify formation during placement is enacted through disciplinary narrative and for novice student engineers a professional community provides an authentic legitimate peripheral access to identity formation through language:
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equal, it can help form an identity of a civil engineer. (# 4)
Recommendations
- The Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering should establish a student-academic CoP so as to leverage explicit/ tacit knowledge, and identity formation experiences from students who have undertaken industrial placements.
- If authentic student-academic CoP’s focussed on professional learning are desirable in HE then universities should ensure that a sufficient number of faculty members have gained relevant industrial experience.
Next steps
On completion of the research during Winter 2017 it is envisaged that the analysis of the data will provide some guidance as to the opportunities and barriers related to cultivating an undergraduate student-academic CoP within the department of CEE. Whilst not perhaps evident, such communities are already prevalent in research whereby professors grant LPP to doctoral students (Wenger, 1998). Given that the TEF (and considering HE’s in Scotland are participating or observing) is now operational, the opportunity to rethink undergraduate pedagogy should be seized. Should faculty be unwilling to lead then there is growing evidence of student-led CoP’s (Knaus and Callcott, 2016) that should provide suitable inspiration for students to negotiate their professional identity in both the curricular and co-curricular teaching and learning space.
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Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity, Cambridge: Cambridge university press.
Lessons learned
Agency and Power
The students professional identity formation appears to have flourished where they considered themselves to be legitimate stakeholders in the learning process with agency ‘to become’ a professional civil engineer. On the transition back to university several students made explicit comments about being denied agency.
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The evidence from this research suggests that students had legitimate access to authentic learning experiences during placements but that on transition to university there was a perceived lack of authenticity. Notable exceptions were where students engaged with academics with industry currency or with engineers during co-curricular problem solving workshops (CE4R).
Student involvement
Stage 1 (September- November 2016) Intern- Barney Stark, 4th year BA (Hons) Psychology.
Stage 2 (December 2016- June 2017) Interns- Siyana Hristozova BA (Hons) Business with HRM & Hamza Tariq BA (Hons) Psychology & HRM
Links/Attachments
Murray, M., Hristozova, S., Tariq, H & Stark, B. (2017) Undergraduate Post- Placement Transition to University: Contested Identities within Communities of Practice? QAA 3rd International Enhancement in Higher Education Conference: Inspiring excellence - transforming the student experience, 6-8 June 2017 - Radisson Blu Hotel, Glasgow, UK. http://www.enhancementthemes.ac.uk/docs/paper/5-1-2-undergraduate-post-placement-transition-to-university-a-community-of-practice-.pdf?sfvrsn=4
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