Session Outline

The personal tutor, whose support and guidance impacts so clearly upon student learning and engagement, is less of a presence in the field of employability. For all the slides or suggestions that promote the Careers Centre, the one-to-one or small group focuses on immediate issues of study and engagement. Justifiably so, before the final year (Calcagno, 2017), we hesitate to introduce the additional competencies/skills involved or life-long journey of employment whilst still working on immediate issues of belonging and engagement. Any student low in initial “Social/Human capital” (Clarke 2018) could re-interpret a call for further skills here as a perceived judgement of inadequacy.

But studies (Jackson: 2024, Fish 2025) and our own perceptions, suggest that incorporating employability into curriculum related activities is associated with better engagement and academic outcomes: of potential benefit in its own right before the student graduates. In this session therefore we are asking how our students might benefit from localized careers activity within structured pastoral care, one-to-one and small group tutorial activities. We have two case-studies which explore alternative aspects of personal tutoring:

1) Applying group/individual tutorial discussion to replace whole class activity in teaching careers readiness to students in Fashion studies.

2) Applying individual tutorials incorporating ‘career readiness’ to contact and return non-engaging students to their studies. A social cognitive career theory approach (SCCT) using the Interest model will be used here.

In each case we are undertaking a structured approach with a targeted group of students and monitoring their activities and responses to evaluate the impact of the juxtaposition of pastoral advice with careers material. Our activities are directed towards shorter term behavioural outcomes within study and engagement and constructed with an awareness of the keen apprehension attaching to the life-long journey. We want to use this session to open up a conversation between the growing attention directed towards career goals at every level of HE provision, and the personal tutor’s activity in supporting students here.

Learning Outcomes

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