Student employability enhancement through fieldwork: purposefully integrated or a beneficial side effect?

Abstract

Fieldwork provides opportunities for students to develop employability-enhancing transferable skills as well as technical, discipline-specific skills and disciplinary knowledge. However, the extent to which staff purposely plan transferable skills outcomes of field courses, and, therefore, whether they are communicated to students is unknown. We investigated whether staff intentionally plan transferable skills development opportunities into fieldwork by interviewing academic staff responsible for planning and leading residential field courses at a UK university. We also conducted a thematic analysis of associated module specifications and teaching materials to understand whether transferable skills were signposted to colleagues and students. Our findings show that although most staff recognise that their field courses help students to develop transferable skills, staff awareness of skills and professional development outcomes is narrowly focused on technical skills and discipline-related careers. Furthermore, those transferable skills outcomes that staff are aware of are not fully translated into module specifications and infrequently signposted to students via teaching materials. These findings suggest that transferable skills form a hidden curriculum of fieldwork. To maximise the employability benefits of fieldwork, we recommend that all skills should be signposted to students both during field course teaching and also via the associated teaching materials.