Pedagogy for employability
Including:
• Using questions
• Discovery learning
• Case studies
Peter Scales
Lifelong Learning
Further and Higher Education
www.peter-scales.org.uk
What is employability?
If you were an employer, what skills,
qualities, attributes, abilities would
you expect from an employee?
“Employability is, at heart, a
process of learning.”
(Harvey, Locke and Morey, 2002: 2)
For companion paper “Employability: a process of learning” see:
http://www.peter-scales.org.uk/he-and-he-in-fe-resources/
“We take as a premise that there is no
necessary conflict between employability
and traditional academic values. Good
teaching and learning practices can serve
both kinds of end...” (Knight and Yorke, 2003)
How can your students
develop these skills, etc.?
Reflection
and PDP
Deep
learning
Employability
Graduate
attributes
T & L methods
Constructivist
Complex
learning
Pedagogy for employability
We will consider some teaching and learning
methods can foster employability, e.g.
 Questioning
 Case study
 Discovery
Why do teachers ask questions?
•Management and control
•Keep students interested and alert
•Gain attention/ check paying attention
•Check understanding and pitch sessions at an appropriate
level
•Recall of information
•Revise
Why do teachers ask questions?
•Develop thinking skills
•Encourage discussion
•Encourage discovery
•Stimulate new ideas
•Draw learners into the lesson
•Symbolic value - sends message that learners are
expected to be active participants in learning
Closed questions
• Usually only one correct answer
• Can usually be answered with one word – usually yes
or no
• The initiative is forced back on the questioner. No need for
answerer to extend or develop
• Example:
“Do you come
here often?”
Open questions
 May have several possible answers
 Requires the answerer to provide a fuller response than just
one word
 Can develop discussion and develop thinking
 Example:
“What’s a nice
person like you doing
in a dump like this?”
Lower-order and higher order questions
• Lower-order questions
Require students to remember
• Higher-order questions
Require students to think
Linked (or Socratic) questioning
This style of questioning is based on the belief that people
already know a lot. The purpose of education is to draw it
out of them.
“Socratic questions provide a stimulus for thinking and
responding, and Socratic questioning differs from random
open-ended questioning in that it follows a pattern, a
progression of follow-through questions that probe reasons
and assumptions and which take the enquiry further”
Fisher, R. (2003)
Linked? Socratic questioning – an example
Why is there a cliffhanger at the end of a soap opera?
 To make sure people keep watching
Why is it important that people keep watching?
 To maintain high viewing figures
Why do TV companies need high viewing figures?
 To attract advertisers
What do advertisers provide?
 Income
And what do the TV companies do with the income?
 Make more programmes
Examples of questions to develop
Socratic dialogue
“Can you explain that…”?
Explaining
“How does that help…?”
Supporting
“Do you have evidence…?”
Evidence
“What if someone were to suggest that…?”
Alternative
views
“Does it agree with what was said earlier…?”
Consistency
“How does what was said/ the question help us…?”
Connecting
Using Bloom’s taxonomy to encourage
different levels of questioning
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
Discovery learning
“The learning that takes place when students are not
presented with subject matter in its final form [expository
learning] but rather are required to organise it
themselves. This requires learners to discover for
themselves relationships among items of information.”
Lefrancois (2000) p158
Discovery learning
“Discovery learning involves confronting the learner with a
problem and allowing them to explore the problem and
try out solutions on the basis of inquiry and previous
learning under the guidance of a teacher”
Armitage, et al (2003) Teaching and Training in Post-Compulsory Education
Discovery learning
Discovery as ‘process’
 Learning how to learn
 Metacognition
 Transferable skills
Discovery as motivation
 A better way to learn a prescribed knowledge and/or skills
An example of discovery learning
Vocabulary building
Much of our language is based on Greek and Latin roots,
prefixes and suffixes. This is particularly true of
academic, especially science-based, subjects. If students
have a stock of word roots, prefixes and suffixes, they
should be able to work out the meanings of unfamiliar
words.
Discovery – vocabulary building
Prefixes (Latin)
a, ab, abs = from, away
con, com = with, together
inter = between, among, in between
re = back, again
Greek
auto = self
poly = many
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_an
d_Latin_roots_in_English
for a comprehensive list
Case studies
What is a case study?
“… student-centred activities based on topics that
demonstrate theoretical concepts in an applied setting.”
(The Higher Education Academy – Guides to Lecturers)
A history of an event or set of circumstances where relevant
details are examined by learners
Case studies
Case studies fall into two broad categories:
 Those in which learners diagnose the causes of a particular
problem or draw conclusions about a certain situation.
 Those in which the learners set out to solve a particular problem
Case studies
What skills are developed by the use of case studies?
 Group working
 Study skills
 Information gathering (in long-term case study)
 Analytical skills
 Thinking skills
 Time management skills
 Presentation skills
 Practical skills (in practical case study)
References
Armitage, A., Bryant, R., Dunhill, R., Hayes, D., Hudson, A., Kent, J., Lawes, S. and Renwick,
M. (2003) Teaching and Training in Post-Compulsory Education Buckingham: Open
University Press
Fisher, R. (2003) Teaching Thinking London: Continuum
Harvey, L., Locke, W. and Morey, A. (2002) Enhancing employability, recognising diversity
(Executive Summary) Universities UK
Knight, P and Yorke, M. (2003) Employability and Good Learning in Higher Education
Teaching in Higher Education, Vol. 8, No. 1
Lefrancois, G. (2000) Psychology for Teaching (10th Ed.) Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Thomson Learning
Links
Pegg, A., Waldock, J., Hendy-Isaac, S. and Lawton, R. (2012) Pedagogy for
Employability York: Higher Education Academy
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/employability/pedagogy_f
or_employability_update_2012.pdf
Pedagogy for Employability Group (2006) Pedagogy for employability
York: Higher Education Academy
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/employability/id383_peda
gogy_for_employability_357.pdf