ABSTRACT
One of the main goals of Higher Education is to make students employable. Employability is known as skills, knowledge, and personal attributes a person should possess to become employed. In this article, we use the processual perspective on employability, which emphasizes identity formation. We argue that employability includes the student's ability to imagine their future work and employment possibilities and see themselves as part of a computer science profession. We use sociocultural theory as an analytical framework and have found the concept of imagination to be fruitful in shedding light on how first-year students imagine their future job. Through eight qualitative interviews with first-year cybersecurity students, we found that students had difficulties imagining their future dream job. We find that the students had not developed a computer science identity, even though the study program has some focus on identity formation through teaching discipline relevant courses from the first semester. In addition, companies visit the school and present their interests, and finally, some of the courses offer real-world scenarios for the students to engage in. The study implies that it is important that the study program pays particular attention to identity formation for the students and that enough time is spent on giving the students information about future employment possibilities.
- ACM Computing Curricula Task Force (Ed.). 2013. Computer Science Curricula 2013: Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Science. ACM, Inc. Google ScholarDigital Library
- T.M. Amabile. 1996. Creativity in Context. Westview Press Inc, Boulder, Colorado.Google Scholar
- E Bostrøm, H R Garder, M Næss, Ø Syversen, and P.C. Veien. 2018. Hva arbeider tidligere IT-studenter ved høgskolen i østfold med, og hvor relevant har utdanningen deres vært for nåværende jobbsituasjon?. In Proceedings from the annual NOKOBIT conference, Vol. 26. Svalbard, 14. https://ojs.bibsys.no/index.php/Nokobit/article/view/553Google Scholar
- John Dewey. 1934. Art as Experience. Perigee Books, New York.Google Scholar
- John Dewey. 1997. How we think. Dover Publications, Inc, Mineola, New York.Google Scholar
- John Dewey. 2008. Democracy And Education. Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, MT.Google Scholar
- Mel Fugate, Angelo J Kinicki, and Blake E Ashforth. 2004. Employability: A psycho-social construct, its dimensions, and applications. Journal of Vocational Behavior 65, 1 (Aug. 2004), 14--38. Google ScholarCross Ref
- J. Amos Hatch. 2002. Doing Qualitative Research in Education Settings. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY. Google-Books-ID: yWlGAAAAQBAJ.Google Scholar
- Leonard Holmes. 2013. Competing perspectives on graduate employability: possession, position or process? Studies in Higher Education 38, 4 (May 2013), 538--554. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Denise Jackson. 2016. Re-conceptualising graduate employability: the importance of pre-professional identity. Higher Education Research & Development 35, 5 (Sept. 2016), 925--939. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Amanpreet Kapoor and Christina Gardner-McCune. 2018. Understanding Professional Identities and Goals of Computer Science Undergraduate Students. In Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE '18. ACM Press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 191--196. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Amanpreet Kapoor and Christina Gardner-McCune. 2019. Understanding CS Undergraduate Students' Professional Identity through the lens of their Professional Development. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education - ITiCSE '19. ACM Press, Aberdeen, Scotland Uk, 9--15. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Richard Kearney. 1988. The Wake of Imagination: Ideas of Creativity in Western Culture. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.Google Scholar
- Joe Khatena. 1979. The Nuture of Imagery in the Visual and Performing Arts. Gifted Child Quarterly 23, 4 (Dec. 1979), 735--747. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Päivi Kinnunen, Matthew Butler, Michael Morgan, Aletta Nylen, Anne-Kathrin Peters, Jane Sinclair, Sara Kalvala, and Erkki Pesonen. 2018. Understanding initial undergraduate expectations and identity in computing studies. European Journal of Engineering Education 43, 2 (March 2018), 201--218. Google ScholarCross Ref
- T Krüger. 2002. Imaginasjon - slikbegrepet fremtrer i Platons Staten, Roussaus og Deweys Democracy and Education. In Musikpædagogiske refleksioner: Festskrift til Frede V. Nielsens, S. E. Holgersen (Ed.). Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitets Forlag, København.Google Scholar
- Steinar Kvale and Svend Brinkmann. 2009. Det kvalitative forskningsintervju (2 ed.). Gyldendal akademisk. Google-Books-ID: bZGvwsP1BRwC.Google Scholar
- Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
- Gunhild M. Lundberg, Andre Gaustad, and Birgit R. Krogstie. 2018. The employer perspective on employability. In 2018 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON). IEEE, Tenerife, 909--917. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Kyriaki Matsouka and Dimitrios M. Mihail. 2016. Graduates' employability: What do graduates and employers think? Industry and Higher Education 30, 5 (Oct. 2016), 321--326. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Tristan McCowan. 2015. Should universities promote employability? Theory and Research in Education 13, 3 (Nov. 2015), 267--285. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Official Norwegian Report. 2019. Fremtidige kompetansebehov II - utfordringer for kompetansepolitikken. Technical Report. https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/216ef613554042ccae0c127a6b3b3ac8/no/pdfs/nou201920190002000dddpdfs.pdfGoogle Scholar
- Sarah L. Rodriguez and Kathleen Lehman. 2018. Developing the next generation of diverse computer scientists: the need for enhanced, intersectional computing identity theory. Computer Science Education 27, 3--4 (2018), 229--247. Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2018.1457899. Google ScholarCross Ref
- David Silverman. 2013. Doing Qualitative Research (4ed.). Sage.Google Scholar
- Johannes G.L. Thijssen, Beatrice I.J.M. Van der Heijden, and Tonette S. Rocco. 2008. Toward the Employability---Link Model: Current Employment Transition to Future Employment Perspectives. Human Resource Development Review 7, 2 (June 2008), 165--183. Google ScholarCross Ref
- L. S. Vygotsky. 1930. Imagination and Creativity in Childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 42, 1 (1930), 7--07.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Etienne Wenger. 1999. Communities of Practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
- Etienne Wenger. 2010. Conceptual Tools for CoPs as Social Learning Systems: Boundaries, Identity, Trajectories and Participation. In Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice (1 ed.). Springer London, United Kingdom, 125--144.Google Scholar
- Mantz Yorke. 2006. Employability in higher education: what it is - what it is not. Vol. 1. Higher Education Academy, York.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- First year students' imagination of future employment: identity as an important employability aspect
Recommendations
Employability Through Imagination, Alignment, and Engagement - Students’ Prospects and Change During Their First Year in Computing Education
Koli Calling '20: Proceedings of the 20th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education ResearchEmployability can be defined as a part of one’s identity formation, or pre-professional identity formation. In this paper, we have interviewed six computing students at the beginning of their first semester and in the middle of their second semester, ...
To Ease the Transition to Employment: Employability in Higher IT Education
Koli Calling '19: Proceedings of the 19th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education ResearchThis Ph.D. project will re-conceptualize the term employability through the framework of Communities of Practice. The re-conceptualization gives implications of how higher IT education could facilitate employability, not only in terms of skills, ...
A Practice-Based Approach to Developing First-Year Higher Education Students' Digital Literacy: A Case Study in a Developing Country
This paper contributes to the conceptualisation of digital literacy as a social practice. While previous studies have focused on student digital skills and digital practices in well-resourced environments, there is a research gap concerning digital ...
Comments