Becoming a graduate: the benefits of the Graduate Identity Approach

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Becoming a graduate the benefits of the Graduate
Identity Approach

• Leonard Holmes
• Roehampton University

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Right action, wrong reason? Example 1

• London in mid-C19 cholera epidemics
• 1858 The Great Stink
• Cause miasma, foul air
• ActionBazalgettes sewers
• BUT
• Alternative explanation germ theory

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Right action, wrong reason? Example 2

• Why do certain materials burn?
• Explanation they contain phlogiston, which is
  released in combustion
• 1774 Joseph Priestly heated mercuric oxide to
  obtain dephlogisticated air
• BUT
• 1777 Lavoisier argued that combustion is a
  process whereby combustible material combined
  with oxygen
• Phlogiston theory now discredited
• Rocket science

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Example 3?Graduate employability

• Plenty of examples of practices intended to
  enhance employment prospects of individuals in
  post-graduation lives
• Some probably work well, some less well
• Some probably work well/ less well, whilst being
  well-resourced
• BUT
• Why how do those that do work, work, and those
  that dont, dont?
• Assumption better explanation leads to better
  practices

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Explaining employability Competing perspectives

• Employability is
• Possession (skills and attributes)
• what you have
• Positional (cultural capital, habitus)
• who you are by virtue of birth and upbringing
• Processual
• what you do interaction with gatekeepers to
  employment
• (Holmes, forthcoming)

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Possessive approach

• Skills and attributes are acquired, possessed,
  used (transferable)
• Possessive-instrumentalism
• BUT
• flawed
• Conceptually
• Theoretically
• Evidentially
• Practically

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Processual perspective Graduate Identity
Approach

• Student/ graduate presents self to gatekeepers as
  the kind of person whom they would wish to
  employ
• How they present self affects perceptions of
  gatekeepers (recruiters)
• Gatekeepers base decision on ascriptions this
  is or is not the kind of person we want

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Identity

• Interactionist, processual view
• Identifying, identification
• Relational, constructionist approach rather than
  essentialist, entitative
• We dont have an identity, but self-identify
  and are identified by others as a kind of
  person
• Situated, multiple, fragile

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Claim-affirmation model
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Warranting claims and ascriptions

• Individuals express claim on identity in
  particular ways (verbal and non-verbal)
• These act as warrants for claim
• Others (gatekeepers) warrant decisions (hire/
  not-hire) in terms of ascriptions of identity
• Outcomes depend on accordance of warranting
• Language of skills and attributes acts as
  first-rate warrant

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Rehearsal

• of aspired-to identity
• of practices appropriate to identity
• of warranting
• through
• in-class activity
• assessment activity
• cross-programme, integrating, activity
• experience (placement, internship,
  extra-curricular, etc)

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Using Graduate Identity approach

• In what ways can students in your institution (or
  on your module, unit, course, programme) rehearse
• identity
• practices
• warranting
• in relation to future employment?
• In what ways can your institution provide
  guidance etc for graduates who experience
  difficulties in gaining appropriate employment?