Critical ‘employability’ within the realms of sociology – a movement toward ‘social justice’

Dr Richard Gee: Nottingham Trent University, UK

Email: Ricky.gee@ntu.ac.uk

Click to download Critical ‘employability’ within the realms of sociology – a movement toward ‘social justice’ (.pptx) 

Abstract

The 20th century saw the introduction of Career Education and Guidance (CEG), a range of activities to aid young people’s transition from education, predominantly the school, to the world of work.  Since the turn of 21st century CEG has continually been dissolved into the vista of ‘employability’ which is institutionally positioned at the interface between higher education and the labour market, mirroring the elongation of education and youth within late modern society.  Historically  much of the theory shaping CEG has come from the discipline of psychology, overly concentrating on the development of the individual at the cost of societal considerations.  This has occurred in concert with the continual marketisation of education via neoliberal policy since the late 20th century.  Such a setting encouraged the embracement of 'trait and factor' as well as developmental theories to shape institutional endeavour, encapsulated within Watts and Laws (1977) influential ‘Decisions, Opportunity, Transition and Self-Awareness’ (DOTS) paradigm. DOTS has come under critique within the career development field in particular by McCash’s (2006) career studies approach that reconfigures the student from individual ‘mover’ into the position of ‘career researcher’, where the student is to connect career development theory with their home discipline of study. This chapter highlights a pedagogical case study that utilised a form of this career studies approach within the undergraduate sociology curriculum within a post 1992 university in England.  This case study illustrates how students were enabled to inform their own career development with a combination of career development theory as well as critical theory, to provide a form of critical career studies, a broader pedagogy than the narrow vista of employability.  Doing so students were able to assess how their own social positionality influences career trajectory as well as theoretically informing career navigation.  By such a lens student were also able to consider how career development could aid movements toward ‘social justice’ both on a personal and collective basis.  This paper argues that many of the parameters of this form of critical pedagogy should not be solely confined to the sociology curriculum, as all students are embedded within social structures, predominantly shaped by class, gender and ethnicity.  The argument here is that there are many lessons to learn from this case study that may be transferred to other curricular across the academy.  This paper will provide insight into these lessons by looking at student extracts and evaluations of the module that indicate strongly that a form of critical pedagogy has been gained and utilised to develop career. 

References

Law, B. & Watts, A.G. (1977). Schools, Careers and Community. London: Church Information Office.

McCash, P. (2006), “We’re all career researchers now: breaking open career education and DOTS”, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 430-49.