Gail Crimmins, Alison L. Black, Janice K. Jones, Sarah Loch and Julianne Impiccini
The authors, seven women–writers–performers–artists–academics, have been working collectively for a year, storying, de-storying and re-storying the experience of our lives. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors, seven women–writers–performers–artists–academics, have been working collectively for a year, storying, de-storying and re-storying the experience of our lives. The authors write to “taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect” (Nin, 1976), to uncover and learn ourselves through writing (Richardson, 1997), to take the “risky” steps of talking to each other about our inner lives (Palmer, 1998). Cognisant of the limitations and masculinities of traditional academic discourses, in form and content, and heavily confined by neoliberal expectations to count and be counted, we write and express the stories of lives the authors did not choose or imagine – lives we are given and live through. Our expression inhabits aesthetic, contemplative and sensory ways of knowing and employs poetry, image, song and story to create a polyvocal account of women’s lives, voices, struggles and learning. The authors share here part of our collective memoir and its development. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is designed as a collective memoir.
Findings
The authors write and express the stories of lives we did not choose or imagine – lives we are given and live through. The expression inhabits aesthetic, contemplative and sensory ways of knowing and employs poetry, image, song and story to create a polyvocal account of women’s lives, voices, struggles and learning. The authors share here part of our collective memoir and its development.
Research limitations/implications
The research focuses on autoethnography and lived experience.
Originality/value
Auto-ethnography/lived experience offers rich insights into the personal and political actions and actors within higher education.
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Peter English, Margarietha Johanna de Villiers Scheepers, David Fleischman, Jacqueline Burgess and Gail Crimmins
Responding to increasing external pressure, universities are developing new strategies to illustrate the impact of their degrees on graduate employability. This paper investigates…
Abstract
Purpose
Responding to increasing external pressure, universities are developing new strategies to illustrate the impact of their degrees on graduate employability. This paper investigates how alumni regard the development of their professional networks during their tertiary education in relation to employability and the associated pedagogical implications.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews with 18 business and arts alumni from a regional university.
Findings
The findings reveal the importance of developing a professional network by cultivating social capital while at university. Alumni identify all forms of work-integrated learning (WIL), connectedness through social media, the role of university staff and volunteering as concrete ways to develop a professional network and enhance employability.
Research limitations/implications
This paper has pedagogical implications to develop graduate employability and WIL. Universities should draw from alumni networks to help develop students' bridging capital through industry-facing WIL projects. Educators should design assessment tasks in which students develop contacts and networking capabilities with alumni and other professionals using various platforms (e.g. social media). In addition, educators should promote the benefits of voluntary work and invite alumni and other industry stakeholders to co-design and co-teach areas of curriculum.
Originality/value
Drawing from the experiences of alumni re-routes the channel of communication from institutions expressing the importance of professional networks in relation to employability, to credible industry alumni confirming this importance. Few previous studies have taken this “outside-in approach” to emphasise and validate the importance of developing professional networks in relation to employability, particularly at regional universities.
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This paper argues that universities can facilitate women graduates' employability by supporting gender equity within their institutions. It presents a rationale and strategy for…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper argues that universities can facilitate women graduates' employability by supporting gender equity within their institutions. It presents a rationale and strategy for addressing the gendered nature of career confidence which negatively impacts women graduates' entry into the workplace – a phenomenon that influences women graduates' career and life trajectories, and all industries' capacity to serve women stakeholders.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors consider existing literature as “words to think with” (Kinsella and Shepherd, 2020), as a feminist methodology to contribute fresh ideas into the discourse arena of graduate employability and as a means to make social change possible (Phelan, 1994).
Findings
The paper presents the feminist viewpoint that a reconfiguration of gender relations in the academy, through deploying gender equity quotas, and professional development activities designed to expose and help mitigate implicit gender bias are required to support women graduates' career confidence and employability.
Research limitations/implications
The paper offers a viewpoint rather than an empirical evidence because of the difficulty in directly assessing a causal relationship between gendered education experience and graduates' self-efficacy and transition from college to work, “due to its longitudinal nature … [and] because cultural beliefs are … difficult to manipulate experimentally” (Sterling et al., 2020, p. 30,306). Also, while gender equity quotas have had some success, they can be disrupted by gendered bias within the workplace. Although the authors recommend a combination intervention of gender equity quotas and professional development to address gender bias, they acknowledge that the intervention is yet to be evaluated.
Practical implications
Universities are tasked with supporting graduate employability, an inherent quality of which is graduate identity. The study offers a practical solution to increasing the number of women leaders within the academy by recommending the introduction of gender equity quotas, supported by professional development designed to develop leaders' gender insight and change agency, and combat all university workers' gender bias. This approach provides more equitable work structures within universities and increases the number and nature of women role models to support women's graduate identity development. Gender equity principles are presented as the key to facilitating women graduates' self-efficacy and work readiness.
Social implications
Strategy designed to enhance women graduates' career confidence is critical because women's lower career confidence tends to inform their lower-level starting positions with lower-level pay, resulting in role and pay gaps that are sustained and magnified throughout the life cycle of their careers. Additionally, interventions to address gender bias in the academy are significant because providing gender equity quotas alongside facilitating women in leadership positions to be/come change agents move beyond what Cockburn (1989, p. 218) defines as supporting a short-term agenda of “equality for individual women … [to supporting a] project of transformation for organizations”.
Originality/value
The novel contribution of this paper is the feminist conceptualisation that gender equity practices, most notably a composite of gender equity quotas and professional development, are located within universities' remit to support graduate employability.
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This article's purpose is to examine the case for the use of the theatre arts in the evaluation of UK City of Culture (UKCC) programmes, specifically headphone verbatim.
Abstract
Purpose
This article's purpose is to examine the case for the use of the theatre arts in the evaluation of UK City of Culture (UKCC) programmes, specifically headphone verbatim.
Design/methodology/approach
Through an analysis of secondary evidence, supported by some primary research, this article analyses past and present evaluation practices surrounding UKCC programmes and the case for headphone verbatim to be included as a method of gathering and distributing research data. The article also observes the challenges in how data may be disseminated through verbatim theatre performance practices, given the limited examples of its use in this context.
Findings
The author argues that the theatre arts can provide a different way of knowing and understanding the impacts of UKCC projects on the host city. Specifically, that headphone verbatim can bring an experiential perspective that is rarely if ever captured by existing UKCC evaluation methods and policymaking in general.
Originality/value
This article details an innovative method of evaluating social impacts associated with UKCC projects.