Institutional Arrangements and Student Engagement Supporting Post-practicum Interventions

Abstract

The wide-scale introduction of work integrated education and specific approaches, such as post-practicum activities, impact significantly on many embedded and ritualised institutional arrangements. Some activities relate to curriculum structures and commonly accepted practices, and others to partnerships with workplaces. Educational provision in universities has traditionally been associated with achieving the institutional educational aspirations and goals. In recent times this has been increasingly questioned, suggesting greater emphasis on meeting the current and future needs of students and the expectations of graduate employers. Despite public statements about student-focused education and the emergence of scholarship on individualised learning, the focus and everyday expectations within universities themselves remain primarily focused upon practices that serve the purposes, processes and reputation of the educational institutions. While graduate employment statistics are an important concern of universities, along with the inclusion and central role of work-based and practice-located experiences within higher education that are intended to contribute to and enhance graduate employability, their implementation has proved to challenge the canons underpinning traditional university educational practices. These disruptions are due, in no small part, to the reliance on commonly accepted rituals and norms that shape educational policy and curriculum practices.

The purpose of this chapter is to consider the kind of institutional arrangements that can present barriers to, or offer best support for, the provision of experiences in these two different kinds of physical and social settings (i.e., workplaces and educational institutions) in the interests of achieving worthwhile educational outcomes. The implications for higher education provisions are central to the exploration of such enabling and prohibitive factors. They extend to what constitutes curriculum, and how experiences for students should be conceptualised, organised, and ordered. Such discussion also opens up deliberations on what constitutes the purposes of higher education and how these can best be realised through institutional considerations that include what provisions are organised through education and other settings, such as workplaces. These issues are discussed and elaborated in this chapter.