Guest posting to voced-coord list June 16 - 28, 1997

Item 5 of 10: How students benefit

Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 02:49:06 +1100
To: voced-coord@owl.qut.edu.au
From: Richard Sweet
Subject: VocEd: Richard Sweet (guest) - How students benefit

G'day all. Sorry for the silence the last couple of days. I have been partly a busy on-line guest, and partly an off-line on-line guest, as my connection went down for a while yesterday.

First a confession. When we first got involved in workplace learning at the DSF we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, and no idea where it would lead. It has been a voyage of discovery for us and we have been constantly delighted to discover new forms of benefits that it has for students.

Of course it gives students job related skills and knowledge - the sorts of
things that are set down in log books or skill lists - and we certainly
expected that back in 1989 when TRAC first began.

But when we started to follow ex-students up, and to talk to their parents, teachers and employers, we heard additional messages about the powerful impact of workplace learning. The words confidence and self esteem and maturity kept coming up, as did phrases like communication skills. We began to wonder if the content was less important than the process and the context, and have since discovered from the research literature that there is something in this. Richard Teese from Melbourne University and Robin Scharashkin from Hobart have carried out research on Australian programs that also points out that this form of learning is a powerful way to motivate students, particularly those otherwise turned off by schooling, and that it is a powerful way to develop the key competencies and broad employability skills. And recent evidence from Richard Teese says that the longer students are in the workplace, the greater the effects. Which provides strong research support for the ASTF's argument for a minimum of 20 days in the workplace each year.

The evidence also supports rotation - in other words having placements in multiple work sites - as this greatly strengthens the transfer of learning
and the development of an understanding of general principles.

Another important benefit for students is that workplace learning programs give them knowledge of and access to their local labour market, hence increasing the ease with which they can find jobs. This is something else that the research literature - this time from labour economics and sociology - supports. It says that as most people find jobs informally and through contacts, anything that strengthens their networks and contacts will increase their chances of finding jobs. This applies to the part-time jobs that students get as much as to the jobs that they get when they leave school.

And finally (until someone adds something else to the list) workplace
learning programs - when they are run well - give students evidence of
their achievements that helps them when they are looking for jobs. The
evidence that they provide - in the form of skill passports or log books -
is far more immediate and relevant to employer requirements than are school certificates. So perhaps this should also be seen as a benefit for
employers, in that it makes their recruitment task easier.

Richard Sweet
Research Coordinator
Dusseldorp Skills Forum
210 Clarence St
SYDNEY NSW 2000
Tel: (02) 267 9222
Fax: (02) 267 7882
e-mail: richard@dsf.org.au