ENHANCING EMPLOYABILITY:
TRANSFORMING STUDENTS
PERCEPTION OF THE CONCEPT OF AN
'EDUCATIONAL PROFESSIONAL’
Anesa Hosein, Namrata Rao and Pat Hughes
OUTLINE OF PRESENTATION
Destinations/ Employability of Education Studies
Graduate at Liverpool Hope University
 Background of the Study
 Methods of Data Collection
 Preliminary Results
 Conclusions
 Where Next?

LHU ED. STUDIES GRADUATE
DESTINATION (2008/2009)
Destination
Unemployed
Studying Only
Working & Studying
Working Only
Total
Percentage
6%
19%
15%
56%
96%
Less than 35% go onto study, of which 19% are
study only
 The 19% study only would include those who
probably go onto do a PGCE

LHU EDUCATION STUDIES GRADUATE
JOBS (2008/2009)
Liverpool Hope
No. Of Universities (> 60%)
Total Universities
Graduate
job
Non-graduate
job
28%
72%
7
35
42
Most of the graduates work in the non-graduate sector
 However, in 35 other universities over 60% of their
graduates in Ed. Studies degrees also go onto to do nongraduate work

LHU ED. STUDIES EMPLOYMENT
Liverpool Hope
Caring personal service occupations
Teaching professionals
Social welfare associate professionals
Sales assistants and retail cashiers
Elementary occupations
Customer service occupations
Secretarial and related occupations
Health associate professionals
Public service professionals
Public service and other associate professionals
Admin. occupations: Gov’t and related
Total
F/T
58%
13%
6%
5%
3%
2%
1%
1%
1%
1%
91%
P/T
50%
20%
10%
5%
5%
90%
BACKGROUND OF STUDY

The challenge:
Students on an Education Studies programme see
mainly one end job (our belief!):
 To become a teacher

Purpose: enhance employability of these
Education Studies students
 Method: Through one of the courses here at
Hope:

Educational Professional course
 Raise awareness of different job prospects within the
field of education
 Help to cultivate an attitude of thinking about
possible different jobs and their requirements

BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Students take this course in their 2nd Year
 The purpose of the course is to:

Enhancing the awareness of the different professions
within education
 Roles: teachers, education and training in the
community, and the wider children’s workforce, lifelong learning
 A push to creating a personal development plan

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS

At the beginning of the course, students are
required to:
Create/ update their curriculum vitae
 Prepare an action or personal development plan
 Optional: Look at job profiles on the internet or
newspapers
 Lecture on creating and keeping a reflective journal

LECTURES IN EDUCATIONAL
PROFESSIONAL
Lectures designed to raise awareness of possible
employment opportunities within the education
sector:
 Course Lectures

Role of teachers: primary and secondary
 Role of teaching assistant and learning mentors
 Extended school services


External Lectures/ Activities
Museum Education
 Further Education
 Prison Education
 Family and Community Education

PURPOSE OF STUDY
To ascertain what are the career choices of
students on the Educational Professional course
 To ascertain how they view an Educational
Professional i.e.



Do the students mainly view an educational
professional as someone who is a teacher?
If so, to modify their view of an educational
professional in order to consider other career
options
DEFINITION OF AN EDUCATIONAL
PROFESSIONAL
This presentation takes and extends the
definition of an educational professional from
Hughes (2009)
 An educational professional is defined as any
person who has a role and responsibility with
working with children in schools and adults in
life long educational settings.
 These roles may be multi-professional (e.g. health
officer, police officer) as well as multi-agency (e.g.
health trusts, police force).

STUDY
Two Phases
 Phase 1: Longitudinal Survey (completed)

Survey 1: Beginning of the academic year
 Survey 2: End of the academic year


Phase 2: Interviews (to start)
STUDY METHODS: SURVEY 1
Beginning of the course, Education Professional:
students filled in a questionnaire.
 Students were asked three questions:

What job or career (or other activity) are you
planning on pursuing at the end of your degree?
 Why this job or career (or activity)?
 What is your idea of an educational professional?

SURVEY 2: END OF THE ACADEMIC YEAR
End of the academic year
 Filled in the questionnaire with the same three
questions
 Additional set of questions on international and
cultural perspectives of an educational
professional

PRELIMINARY RESULTS: SURVEY 1

Educational Professional Class
74 female students: 71%
 30 male students: 29%


78 responses (approximately: 75% response rate)
63 female students: 81%
 15 male students: 19%


69 (88%) of the respondents indicated they were
considering a job in teaching or becoming a
teacher
Of which 32 (46%) specifically indicated they wanted
to become a primary school teacher
 Of which 6 (19%) of these were male students

SURVEY 2

42 responses (response rate: 40%)
36 female students (86%)
 6 male students (14%)


27 (64%) of the respondents indicated they were
considering a job in teaching
Of which 11 (41%) specifically indicated they wanted
to work in primary education
 Of which 2 (18%) were male students

MATCHED SURVEY
This presentation concentrates on the matched
survey
 39 students answered the questionnaire twice

34 female students
 5 male students

36 of these indicated a desire to teach in Survey 1
 26 of these indicated a desire to teach in Survey 2

DEFINITIONS OF EDUCATIONAL
PROFESSIONAL (PRELIMINARY)

Definitions were coded as follow (one definition
could be coded twice):






Teacher
Skills
Qualification
Generic
Staff Identification
Other
Purpose
 Payment
 Unclear

TEACHER DEFINITION
This was a definition oriented towards a teaching
metaphor i.e. Information transfer
 “An individual who has the skills to teach others
and pass on their knowledge to other people” F, 20
 “Somebody who understand peoples' learning
needs that use a range of teaching methods” F, 20

GENERIC DEFINITION
This definition is more in keeping with the
definition used in this presentation – i.e.
Someone who works in an educational setting
being multi-professional and multi-agency
 “A person whose role includes working with
children and young people to support learning in
everyday life” F, 23
 “Educational Professional as seen as someone
who is employed in or school-based environment
or someone who works in partnership with
schools” F, 21

QUALIFICATIONS DEFINITION
This definition relates to the need of someone
having earned a degree or certificate i.e. a
qualification to be an educational professional
 “Someone who is qualified in some area of
education ... This can be in or outside of an
education setting”, F, 20
 “An individual with a degree or certificate
working in a career with educational roles e.g.
Police, teacher, nurse” F, 20

STAFF IDENTIFICATION
This is a list of possible educational professional
jobs rather than a definition
 “Teacher, TA, Ed Psyc, Admin staff, medical staff
in school, social workers, school governors etc” F,
21
 “Someone who teaches and encourages all aspects
of learning, including current and life long. I also
think this includes those who contribute anything
towards education; officers; mentor etc.” F, 20
(also teacher definition)

SKILLS DEFINITION
This definition indicated the type of skills that an
educational professional should have or a referral
to the educational professional needing skills
 “Well conducted (?) / good role model.
Considerate to individual needs. Polite/ Well
spoken” M, 20
 “Educational professional is an individual that
has the skills and knowledge to help and
influence people” F, 19

DEFINITIONS

20 of the students were considered to have given
a similar definition from the beginning of the
year to the end of the year
Survey 1: “Someone who works within the school
environment, aiding a child's progression”
 Survey 2: “Anyone who has contact with a school in
an education context” F, 27, Generic definitions

DEFINITIONS

18 of the students gave improved definitions:
Survey 1: “Everyone from teacher, tutor, admin staff,
who has contact with a student or a students' work
day”
 Survey 2: “Someone that works with an individual,
family or school to help improve the quality of
education, to improve their ideas of education. To
improve attainment of not only children but parents
and other adults too. To cross barriers that people
may face.” F, 28 (Staff identification to generic
definition)

NUMBER OF DEFINITIONS
Definitions
Survey 1
Survey 2
Total
Teacher
12
1
13
Skills
2
1
3
Qualifications
8
2
10
Generic
14
34
48
Staff Identification
2
1
3
Other
2
2
4
Total
40
41
81
CHANGING IDEA OF AN EDUCATIONAL
PROFESSIONAL
The number of “teacher definitions” had fallen
from Survey 1 (12) to Survey 2 (1)
 The number of “generic definitions” had
increased from Survey 1 (14) to Survey 2 (34)
 But did this changing idea of an educational
professional transform what students were
thinking about in terms of their prospective
careers?

JOBS
29 of the students in Survey 1 still indicated that
they would like to do the same job by the end of
Survey 2
 26 of these students who wanted to teach in
Survey 1 were still considering to teach



Of which 3 were considering teaching but something
else as well
8 students were no longer consider entering the
teaching profession

Learning mentors, social workers, prison education,
foster care, play therapists, speech therapists
WHY THE CHANGE?

Understanding the job description


“After learning the job description I realised I wanted
to go into this profession” F, 19 (Learning Mentor)
Mixing interests
“I have always wanted to teach but since leaving
school, I wanted to join the police and this is my way
of combining them. I am serious about this as a
career” F, 20 (Prison Education)
 “Lots of what we did this year has made me question
what I want to do. Speech and Language/ Prison
Education interests me alot” F, 21 (Teaching/ Speech
and Language/ Prison Education)

WHY THE CHANGE?

Non direct educational setting
“Because I am interested in working with children but
in a non-educational capacity” F, 20 (Play Therapist)
 “Would like to work with families to improve their
children's education and attainment”, F, 28 (Family
Mentor)

CONCLUSIONS
A majority of students are considering a
profession in teaching
 Considering the limited number of PGCE places
they will be disappointed
 Changing their concept of an educational
professional, providing knowledge of other jobs
and their requirements can probably help them
align themselves better in the job market and
avoid disappointment
 Additionally, be able to show them how they can
combine a number of their different interests

WHERE NEXT?
Interview students considering the teaching
profession to investigate what other jobs they are
considering if they do not get their first choice
 Determine from interviews whether the choice of
these different education professional jobs have
made them more open to considering a nonteacher education job
 Determine whether the creation of their
curriculum vitae and personal development plans
got them thinking about their different job
prospects
 Investigate why some students change/ not
change their choice of job career
