In the last blog we looked at how students and staff might use the Bristol Skills Profile and how our approach to developing students’ skills has progressed from not just the needs of the job market but to broaden out into the qualities and sense of self students might develop during their time at the university. In today’s post I’d like to reflect in more detail on the ways in which the Bristol Skills Profile can help prepare our students for the competitive graduate employment market and what this might mean for our teaching.
During the Bristol Skills Profile launch we heard was from James Darley, who has 25 years of experience working in graduate recruitment. He urged us to think about the future our students face in a highly competitive graduate jobs market: increasing automation of the recruitment process; a growing trend towards direct recruitment from schools; the mismatch between students’ and employers’ expectations; and that 98% of graduate applications get rejected. He provided an insight into the intricate and often labyrinthine recruitment processes students will encounter after graduation.
For me, James’ account spoke of the growing sense of change, complexity and uncertainty our students will face when they graduate. In his 2004 article ‘Learning for an unknown future’ Ronald Barnett suggests that authenticity – what a student understands of themselves and their relationship with the world around them – will be vital for how they address these challenges. And that Higher Education can help students develop this authentic being. He argues that a student’s experience at university has the capacity to affect them on a deep personal level that goes further than what they learn about their subject: ‘the formation of authentic being turns us towards neither knowledge nor skills as central categories but rather to certain kinds of human qualities’ (p259). He goes on to list such qualities as thoughtfulness, humility, criticality, receptiveness and resilience, all of which are present in some form in the Bristol Skills Profile. But the skills profile looks to ground these ‘qualities’ in language that is more accessible for our students. For example, resilience becomes ‘recover from difficulties and setbacks’ and receptiveness is in part expressed through a student’s capacity to ‘recognise and value the views and differences of others’.
As for how we affect our students in this way, Barnett argues that it’s about our capacity to take risks in both the teaching of our discipline, and in how we build relationships with our students that go beyond the traditional hierarchical relationships of expert/ novice, teacher/ student. By exposing students to the dilemmas, uncertainties and limitations of our discipline and by going into areas where we might not know the answers to the kinds of questions they might ask, we create a shared space in which our attempts to find the answers together gives students the opportunity to find out something not just about the subject but about themselves. And as was suggested earlier in Nicole’s presentation the Bristol Skills Profile gives students a tool to help them reflect on these complex and often nuanced experiences and articulate the value of what they are learning, what they are doing and what they are becoming.
On the nuts and bolts of this pedagogical approach, what Barnett refers to as a ‘pedagogy for uncertainty’, he is less specific. He does reference the work of bell hooks and Martha Nussbaum, but I am reminded of the more recent work by Kathleen Quinlan (2016) on cultivating relationships with students and, closer to home, Christophe Fricker’s excellent BILT blog series on resonance pedagogy. Quinlan provides clear practical guidance on what we can do to help students build relationships with us and each other as well as how we can help them build their relationship with themselves and their subject. Christophe reflects on his own experiences of building resonant relationships with his students that are also rooted in the openness and authenticity central to the Bristol Skills Profile as well as the Knowing, Acting and Being model.
We could also turn to the Bristol Futures Curriculum Framework as another text influenced by Barnett and Coates’ ideas. The Curriculum Framework encourages us to ‘create space for experimentation, risk-taking, fun, and openness to making mistakes and taking wrong turns’ and for students to ‘build relationships which develop empathy, valuing provisional ideas and enabling students to operate without all the facts.’ It gives us a plan, and the permission, to think differently about the ways our teaching can affect not just our students’ learning but the kind of person they might become.
So, as we step into a new term, we might reflect on not just these different perspectives on students’ skills development, but more broadly what is meant by ‘skills development’ in your teaching? It might be about enabling your students to develop the abilities that are essential to success in your discipline or perhaps you’re already thinking about how your discipline provides a means by which you can expose your students to the kinds of activities they will be expected to do in the world beyond your classroom, lecture theatre or lab. Or your focus might be on inspiring your students with what you love about your subject and are inspired by. These are all important things we need to do for our students, and none of them are mutually exclusive. But are there also moments when we might be able to take a risk and give some space for something less certain than skills or knowledge to develop, maybe a moment where we stop and give a bit of ourselves and not just our subject, a moment where we allow ourselves and our students to open up, and see what happens?
References
Barnett, R. (2004). Learning for an unknown future. Higher Education Research and Development. 23:3, 247 – 260.
Barnett, R. and Coates, K. (2004). Engaging the Curriculum in Higher Education. Maidenhead. McGraw-Hill.
Quinlan, K. (2016). How emotion matters in four key relationships in teaching and learning in higher education. College Teaching, 64:3, 101-111.
