Supply, demand and a failure of understanding: addressing the culture clash between archaeologists' expectations for training and employment in ‘academia’ versus ‘practice’

Communities of Knowledge: Teaching and Learning in Maritime Archaeology

“…He states that in the current climate education is seen purely as an instrumentalist procedure, that is, something that delivers knowledge, information and skills which have a distinctive, easily definable, measurable and quantifiable character, which can be assessed in a direct way, and more importantly, have a specific market value Given Clark's (1973) argument, this is clearly problematic. Calls by commercial units and industry analysts (Aitchison 2004) for students to emerge with more 'ticks in boxes' for easily definable skills plays into this view of education. This in turn now places a pressure on universities to provide it.…”

“…Over the past 20 years there has been considerable debate in archaeology more generally; with a particular focus on the whether the needs of the commercial sector are being met (or should be met) by academic institutions (Aitchison 2004;Austin 1987;Bradley 1993;Cobb 2004;Colley 2004;Dowson 2005;Hamilakis 2004). Austin (1987) and Aitchison (2004) both raise concerns that the commercial sector needs to carry out additional training for graduates and post-graduates to enable them to operate effectively as employees. The difficulty here is that the call for more commercially au-fait graduates and post-graduates becomes the centre point around which later discussions of curriculum revision are based.…”

Creating and Supporting a Harassment- and Assault-Free Field School

“…Since the inception of archaeological education, institutions of higher education have stressed the need for students to acquire practical skills in field methodologies by requiring students to complete a field school to receive a bachelor's degree in anthropology with a specialization in archaeology (Aitchison 2004; Baxter 2009; Gifford and Morris 1985). This practice continues to this day.…”

Personal, Political, Pedagogic: Challenging the Binary Bind in Archaeological Teaching, Learning and Fieldwork

“…Whilst a major focus of the literature has been about how we train archaeologists and the relationship between academics and professionals in this process ( e.g. Aitchison 2004 ; Colley 2004 ; Dowson 2004 ; Everill 2015 ; Everill et al 2015 ; Bradley et al 2015 ; Flatman 2015 ), much of this literature has also provided an important source for examining diversity issues. At the heart of this literature has been a movement away from instrumentalist forms of teaching (passive student, active teacher), to approaches which recentre the student as active, and the processes of teaching and learning as politically situated and thus subjects for critical analysis in their own right (Hamilakis 2004 ).…”