Narratives of Employability:
Effective Guidance in a Higher Education Context
A PROP Funded Research Project
GILL FRIGERIO
HEAD OF CAREERS
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
with Lara Cartwright and Jenny Bimrose
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to HECSU, and particularly Jane Artess, who have generously funded this practitioner research and to colleagues in AGCAS and the wider career guidance community of practice who have engaged in spirited professional debate over the years about the effectiveness of guidance. I would also like to thank the students who participated in this study and offered their experiences for analysis. Thanks also to Lara Cartwright, who worked with me on the fieldwork and Jenny Bimrose of the Institute for Employment Research who provided an external expert view throughout this process. My particular thanks must go to the Careers Consultants at the University of Warwick who have been pivotal to this research, discussing and debating the purpose of guidance and developing and honing their skills collaboratively whilst supporting thousands of students each year. Their skills, professionalism, integrity and dedication are an inspiration.
Contents
1. Introduction / 12. Effective guidance: background and context / 3
3. Methodology / 7
4. Analysis / 10
5. Discussion: making guidance effective
6. Conclusions and next steps / 26
29
References
Appendices:
A - Peer Review Documentation
B - Invitation to participate in the study
C- Interview schedules used in stage 1, 2 and 3
D -Table: Summary of evidence for effectiveness
Section 1: Introduction
Impact assessment of career guidance in Higher Education has never been more important. A growing strategic focus on employability and the need to demonstrate value for money within the public sector, particularly at a time of financial constraint, means Careers Services must prove their worth. This politically sensitive agenda has resulted in different institutions diversifying their approach to careers services, some enhancing central careers services and others absorbing career development within a wider skills development (Watts & Butcher, 2008). A previous HECSU funded practitioner research project (Nijjar, 2009) documents the wide variety of indicators institutional managers use and highlights some of the complexities and tensions involved. For example, first destinations data is widely used as an Employability Performance Indicator but longitudinal studies of graduate career paths have shown that initial role is not a reliable indicator of career path (Elias & Purcell, 2004), Moreover, the multitude of variables at play in determining success in the job market, not least variable economic conditions mean that it is difficult to establish causality between services and outcomes for clients. Usage trends and patterns conflate effectiveness with demand, but do not illuminate the process of how we provide information, advice and guidance to clients nor the outcome(s) of that work. Assessment of client satisfaction becomes embroiled with complexities around the meeting of client expectations, whether ‘reasonable’ or not (Frigerio, 2006). However, Higher Education services are beginning to grapple with viable alternatives or additions to destination data or usage data to evaluate the impact of what we do.
Within this complex scenario, the provision of one-to-one guidance is particularly vulnerable. Even the best resourced careers service cannot offer one to one services to all eligible students, so institutions have taken a variety of approaches to manage demand and resource, including shorter appointments, drop in sessions, shorter booking windows, monitoring of non-attendance and more sophisticated triage.
Around the statutory provision of Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG), a literature has developed around not just the benefits of education and training, but of the economic and other benefits of guidance itself. For example, Bimrose et. al. (2004) conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of guidance over a five year (2003-2008). This study used qualitative methodologies and had, as its primary focus, the ‘user voice’. Throughout this longitudinal research, the perspectives of the clients and/or customers led the investigation. One other distinctive feature of the research methodology was that the practitioners who participated determined what comprised ‘guidance’ interventions for the investigation. The professional contexts in which the original case studies were carried out included: further education; higher education; charitable/voluntary organisations; publicly funded adult guidance organisations; and the workplace. Fifty in-depth case studies were undertaken across these varied organisational contexts in the first year of investigation (2003-2004). These case studies compared: the client’s perceptions of a guidance episode; the practitioner’s perceptions of the same guidance episode; and the perceptions of an ‘expert witness’. They also explored the precise nature of guidance being delivered to consumers of services. There were four main data sources for each case study. These comprised: organisational sources (reports, mission statements, researcher observations, managers, practitioners, publicity leaflets, etc.); digital recordings (of 50 guidance interviews together with typed transcriptions); questionnaires completed by researchers (collecting brief background data on the client, the practitioner and the guidance context); and finally, semi-structured questionnaires completed by individual clients, guidance practitioners and ‘expert witnesses’, which all probed the same features of the guidance interviews.
The research reported here applies an adaptation of the methodology used in the longitudinal study to investigate the value of guidance at Warwick. It is a small scale pilot study, following six first time student service users through our ‘short guidance’ 20 minute interviews to two months later. The pilot nature of this investigation and small sample size means that findings are not necessarily generalisable, but do provide rich and deep insights into the way clients approach and make use of guidance.
Collecting data from a single site does make it specific to the Warwick context and selected findings pertinent to our service development and institutional employability strategy have been presented separately. This report seeks to highlight findings of value sector wide. Section two provides a further analysis of the background for the work and provides information about the Warwick context that may help the reader make sense of the findings. Section three provides a commentary to the methodology used and the impact of practitioner research in this field. In section four we present our findings, including case studies of the 6 clients. The perspectives they brought to the guidance intervention are described as their ‘narratives of employability’. There follows an analysis of the guidance appointment itself and a discussion of how the clients’ use of guidance interacts with their use of other careers provision such as information resources and events. Section five looks at how services can enhance the effectiveness of guidance, given the resources available and the requirement to offer services to clients with a wide range of starting points.
Section 2: Effective Guidance - background and context
The concept of guidance and its effectiveness are complex and can be defined in a number of contrasting, sometimes conflicting, ways. In a review of research into effectiveness, Bimrose et al. (2005) refer to various methods of measurement that have been used. These include changes intrinsic to the individual, such as motivational and attitudinal change or knowledge and skill development; changes to the circumstances of the individual such as entry to education and employment or job search behaviour; or wider measures such as course retention or completion or wider economic or social benefits.
A significant body of literature that looks at measuring the impact of careers services has as its focus quantitative measures and economic benefits, both for the individual and the economy as a whole (Bysshe et al, 2002; Killeen et al, 1992). Stakeholder interests for those funding and undertaking research into the impact of guidance can vary from a reduction in the benefits bill, support for lifelong learning or fostering social inclusion. Timescales for evaluating effectiveness also vary, from an immediate focus such as making an effective immediate transition to longer term outcomes for the individual or the economy. Methodologically, the emphasis in statutory Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) has been on tracking what actually happens to clients (Hughes, 2004) and their position in relation to the labour market, rather than on attitudes, behaviours and capabilities.
In contrast to such tightly defined notions of effectiveness, the longitudinal case study looks at the effectiveness of guidance from the point of view of what the client themselves defines as useful. (Bimrose et al., 2004; Bimrose et al., 2005; Bimrose et al., 2006; Bimrose & Barnes, 2007; Bimrose et al., 2008 ). This leads to a requirement to gather data from clients themselves, using qualitative methodologies to get beyond measuring satisfaction and look at how and why the guidance was effective, over time.
The challenge in assessing the impact of guidance stems in part from the difficulty in isolating the effect of the guidance in a sea of variables: for example, other sources of support that person draws upon, obstacles and barriers they may face and fluctuations in the labour market. Theoretical approaches to career development and models of guidance in use also have an impact upon the ways in which guidance can be seen to be effective. Indeed, what we are trying to impact is itself disputed. Policy makers typically operate with the assumption that matching is at the heart of careers guidance. For example, a key feature of the new adult careers service recommended by the recent Leitch review of skills, is a free ‘Skills Health Check’ (HM Government, 2007, p.31). This will represent a free entitlement and ‘would identify an individual’s skill needs and strengths,’ so that careers advisers can ‘ensure that people are advised on the most effective action…to tackle their needs and develop their career’ (HM Government, 2007, p.110). Many other researchers see it as an inherently messy process, deeply personal and contingent and linked to the wider process of identity formation (e.g. Watkins & Savickas, 1990). This complexity would be endorsed by the experience of many practitioners, including PROP funded research into careers support for students from lower socio-economic groups (e.g. Hepworth & Greenbank, 2008).
The IER research has identified a number of factors that occur within guidance to render it useful to clients including: providing challenge and direction; giving access to relevant resources, expert knowledge and networks, bringing about positive changes and providing support and safety, tangible development of a future plan and an increase in motivation, self-confidence and awareness. (Bimrose et al, 2005, Barnes et al, 2006).
2.1 Existing work at Warwick
At the time of this research the Careers Centre at the University of Warwick offered a range of provision to our students, from on- and off- line information, a vacancies database and access to employers and accredited career development learning, with one to one guidance with a careers consultant our most resource intensive and heavily demanded service. The research reported here focuses on the activity we spend most time on: the 20 minute ‘short guidance’ activity, although we do also offer 40 minute guidance consultation for those referred for longer appointments.
In my management role at Warwick I have been pursuing a programme of work around evaluating, demonstrating and enhancing the effectiveness of our one-to-one guidance work, in response to:
· the need for structured professional development for an enlarged team of practitioners from diverse backgrounds,
§ significant unmet demand for guidance
§ the need to demonstrate impact of activities against University strategy to argue the case for departmental funding.
Since conducting the fieldwork for this research, the Careers Centre has become part of a wider Centre for Student Careers and Skills, bringing together personal, academic and career development in one unit. This context, as well as changes to funding streams for skills development work, leads the whole centre to have a real concern for demonstrating impact.
Initial discussions over summer 2005 considered methodologies for evaluation that would encourage reflection on practice and support peer learning as well as gathering data from students before and at various time points after their experiences of guidance. A pre-research phase involved focus groups with students who had used our one to one guidance were conducted, so as to include client voices in our discussions about methodology at an early stage.
In designing a suitable process we have also given detailed consideration to how we all approach guidance and what we define as good practice. Alongside the plan to review effectiveness and the focus groups, professional development activities designed to increase the team’s confidence in their practice and normalise both individual and collective reflection on it, have been carried out. This prepared the ground for this more in depth study, matching data on effectiveness with the actual guidance interaction. This professional development activity in itself has required much discussion about our view of what effective guidance looks like and an unpicking of the assumptions about effective guidance on which our internal guidance systems are based. A peer review policy was agreed and implemented in 2006, and peer review activities have taken place annually since (Frigerio, 2008).
The discussions led to a consensus emerging about a goal directed model of guidance, designed to foster independence. This model is manifest not just in the way we conduct individual guidance interviews but, arguably even more critically, within the overall service and the positioning of guidance therein. Strategically, the service seeks to foster skills of lifelong career management so that Warwick graduates will build successful and fulfilling careers (Teaching and Learning Strategy, 2008). Practically, the context of a high demand from students for one to one interventions, outstripping supply for at least half the academic year, with a one to one discussion being the first stage of the transition planning process. These strategic and practical factors compel us to operate in a way that encourages students to take self-directed action. Whilst no attempt was made to force all consultants to work in a uniform way, a documented approach was agreed and used to record peer review observations. This is included as Appendix A.
The twin processes of focus groups plus peer review helped us to define effectiveness in our context as clients:
• being listened to by the adviser and feeling supported in their career planning
• developing further one or more career management skills, be it self-awareness, information handling, decision making, confidence, motivation or proactivity