Becoming a graduate: the benefits of the Graduate Identity Approach

1. Becoming a graduate: the benefits of the Graduate Identity Approach Leonard Holmes Roehampton University

2. Right action, wrong reason? Example 1 • London in mid-C19: cholera epidemics • 1858: ‘The Great Stink’ • Cause: miasma, foul air • Action:Bazalgette’s sewers BUT • Alternative explanation: germ theory

3. 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]

4. 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 don’t, don’t? • Assumption: better explanation leads to better practices

5. 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)

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

7. 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

8. Identity • Interactionist, processual view • ‘Identifying’, ‘identification’ • Relational, constructionist approach rather than essentialist, entitative • We don’t ‘have’ an identity, but self-identify and are identified by others as a ‘kind of person’ • Situated, multiple, fragile

9. Claim-affirmation model

10. 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’

11. 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)

12. 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?