Cultivating the Art of Judgement in Students

Abstract

In this chapter, we wish to suggest that the capability of judgement is something that is valued by employers and this can be developed by students in their academic studies. Some initial research has already been conducted in this area (e.g. see Hennemann and Liefner 2010; Hinchliffe and Jolly 2011) but this has tended to focus on more generic capabilities that are valued by employers. Here, we wish to focus on one of these capabilities in particular – judgement. We would suggest that employers may well take as read a graduate’s ability to understand complex information and ideas; what they are also interested in (and the work by Hinchliffe and Jolly cited above suggests this in particular) is the ability to take ownership and responsibility in the form of giving recommendations and advice. If this is the case then this presents certain challenges for academic teachers in terms of both the organisation of subject matter and its assessment. In particular, disciplines need to be considered as more than bodies of knowledge that needs to be learnt and understood. Rather, we need to see subject disciplines as inhabiting what has been termed the ‘space of reasons’ (McDowell 1994) in which students learn to contest and justify their knowledge.