Redefining 'Employability' as something to be achieved: utilising Tronto's conceptual framework of care to refocus the debate.Purpose -This paper contributes to a broader understanding of the complexity in relationships of power and responsibility in employability in Higher Education contexts and posits a conceptual framework for employability as a process, something to be achieved.Design/methodology/approach -This conceptual paper arises from experience of and research into placement practices and draws upon Joan Tronto's feminist epistemology (1993, 2012) to argue for a critical understanding of employability.Findings -There is little in the literature that discusses employability as a process involving moral and political work. The conceptual framework offers a process of five phases to provide a foundation for understanding employability that moves beyond a focus on skills and attributes.Research limitations/implications -The conceptual framework enables all employability professionals, including researchers, to think beyond skills and attributes for employment to explore the implications of the relations that shape the need for employability within and outside their sphere. Practical implications -Developing a conceptual framework enables employability professionals to evaluate their practices and evaluate: if practices are inclusive or excluding; the implications of power and responsibility; and, the tensions arising because of the diverse nature of need in employability work.Originality/value -This paper posits a conceptual framework for understanding the process of employability work as something to be achieved.
Employability is an organising narrative within the global, neoliberal economic discourse, with relevance across different educational contexts. Most attention is paid to attaining the knowledge and skills relevant to gain employment and competitive advantage. This is particularly concerning in university programmes that develop professionals who work with children.Placements are a common approach to embedding employability within university curricula. This article explores student placements in primary school settings in the north of England. Analysis considers students' engagement with their own learning and with the children who are essential to that learning, who may be marginalised as a feature of it.Keywords: Childhood, Employability, Higher Education, Placements.Placement, the opportunity to learn alongside children and young people in their homes, schools, nurseries/kindergartens, and other settings, is a long-standing feature of university vocational education programmes. More recently the neoliberal 'employability' discourse has come to be a significant organising feature of university education (Tomlinson, 2012) and an aspect of global economic relations (Hill, 2002;Olssen and Peters, 2005). Consequently, increasing numbers of university programmes offer students a placement. Significantly, the employability discourse is focussed on the needs of the market and ignores wider political and moral concerns, including children and young people's needs, in the socially mediated relationship between politics, power and people's experience of the employability agenda (Reid, 2016).
Reducing the risk of Sudden and Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI) is a priority for infant health care services across the globe. Medical knowledge of risk factors for SUDI are well understood and have been part of public health messaging in the UK since the 1990s. These include the ‘back to sleep’ campaign that focused on newborn sleep position, not over wrapping the infant and to avoid passive smoke. Whilst progress has been made in reducing SUDI deaths worldwide, there are some infants who remain at high risk. This article adopts a sociomaterial lens to address the potential for material-based interventions to support messages to be tailored in culturally appropriate ways that do not negate parenting knowledge and practices. We focus on the proliferation of the ‘baby box’ as an example of material appropriation and consider the risks and the potentials for this object as a participant in parenting practices.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.