Thursday, 17 October 2013

Employability, Student Confidence and the Double Bind

I was in a meeting about student employability today. My institution is one that gives opportunities to students who would not otherwise have the opportunity of getting a degree, and who have often had difficult experiences with education in the past. I believe this is the most important group of students in education - it's where we can really make a difference. But it's very difficult.

The moment of transition when the course stops, the students gain their qualification and they have to turn and face the 'world outside' to get a job can present particular challenges. Student confidence, the ability to be flexible about expectations of employment, the resilience to 'keep going' if initial applications are unsuccessful, the restlessness that is necessary to keep students anxious to carry on learning new skills, the continual monitoring of what's available, the sense of how to position oneself... these are all things which tend not to get taught on degree programmes which, naturally enough, tend to focus on "how to get a degree". Sometimes, student confidence can be hit if their experiences of trying to get a degree have reinforced expectations of failure repeated from previous experiences of education: the cycle of 'referrals', 'repeats', 'change of module pathway', etc can be demoralising. From that position it is very hard to turn to face the world with the necessary vigour which will fight the competition.

All this has led me to think about 'student confidence'. We had a rather authentic meeting today where both staff and students were encouraged to share their hopes and fears about their employability situation (the elephant in the room with employability in HE today is that staff often have worse prospects of employment than students!). It seemed to be a good thing for students to see the vulnerabilities in their teachers. The message is "it's not just you!". It was almost like "Employability Anonymous".

Which has got me thinking...

Gregory Bateson wrote what I think is his best paper about Alchoholics Anonymous (see "Steps to an Ecology of Mind"). What he identified was a self-defeating cycle whereby the individual was caught in a trap: feeling terrible that they were an alcholic while they were sober that they would drink to alleviate the depression. Is this feeling of helplessness so different from (or not part of) low self-esteem? Then, Bateson describes what he thinks AA does: it helps individuals to see the trap they are in. On becoming aware of the dynamic, they are able to step outside it.

The pattern when talking to troubled employment-seekers about the positive action they might take to find work tends to be "could you could do something to make your work more visible so others can see what you can do?", being met with reasons why the individual can't do that. Or the employment-seeker might grudgingly agree that there is something they can do, agree to do it, and then not do it. Is the intransigent employment-seeker like the alchoholic and the bottle? Is their modus operandi one of:

  1. feeling bad about not wanting to look for work
  2. addressing the badness of their feelings by reinforcing excuses for not doing anything
This would mean that the "empoyability problem" is a problem of addiction to "excuse-making" for not doing anything about employability.

If this is true, how can we treat it?

Following Bateson's example, helping people see the cycle they are trapped in is very important. The only way they can see this is by seeing it in operation in other people. The AA-style meeting is essential. 

An "excuse" is a particular kind of explanation. It addresses something that hurts by convincing the excuse-maker that the pain is a natural function and that nothing can be done about it. This is the easiest way of addressing the pain. By showing that excuse-maker that the explanation doesn't explain how they feel (and in fact reinforces it) forces the need for new explanations to be sought. This is the first step towards jumping outside the cycle. 

Is confidence where excuses are turned into opportunities? Maybe we should be treating "excuse addiction" (and not just to our students!)

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