Children and the competent professional: a conceptual framework for challenging current approaches to ‘employability’ for the children’s workforce.

The Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth5th International Conference

"Researching children's everyday lives: socio-cultural contexts" 

Tuesday 1st July - Thursday 3rd July 2014The Kenwood Hall Hotel, Sheffield, UK

Jim ReidHigher Education Academy National Children’s Research Centre

Employability:

A set of achievements, - skills, understandings and

personal attributes – that make graduates more likely to

gain employment and be successful in their chosen

occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce,

the community and the economy (HEA 2012)

Placement & Job Seeking

KEY AREAS: • Support for Pupils (to

progress!). • Support for Teachers

(performativity!). • Support for the Curriculum

(for business!). • Support for the School (in

the market!).

Reference:• Relevant Experience• Education and Training• Special Knowledge and

Skills• Overall Ability(predominant focus on knowledge and skills)

Questions

• How does your experience equip you for the job? (knowledge and skills)

• What personal qualities enable you to work with children? (Relationships AND riskiness)

• Describe a difficult team experience and what you did to solve the issues / what did you learn? Teamwork/problem solving

• What would you do if... ? (Policy and procedure AND risk)• What are the essential skills for working in a classroom

environment? (Pupil progress and marketized education).

Children’s Questions

• If you had £10 to spend on anything what would you buy?• You are in charge of the school for a day, what changes would

you make?• What’s the one thing you would NOT want to see on the lunch

menu?• If you were an animal what kind of animal would you be?• What is the last book you read?• If you could trade places with any other person for a week,

who would it be?• How would you describe yourself in three words?

My Questions

• What are the children trying to find out about the person? What are they revealing of themselves?

• What’s the difference between the children’s focus and that of the adults?

• Why does it matter? – Different conceptualisations of childhood. A particular social construction & policy enactment (Braun et al 2011) OR ‘a heterogeneous assemblage’ (Prout 2014)?

• (EM)PLACEMENT

Individual Work Placement:

• It was excellent. I got to plan my own lesson for a group of kids who the teacher was trying to get better grades.

• The staffroom was awful.

• It’s all about making progress there’s no time to be creative.

• There’s nobody to talk to.

Team Work Placement:

• I understand we learnt a lot but it’s not what I wanted. I’ll do an individual placement in the future

• We couldn’t work with the kids because the teachers wanted them in class. There was no communication.

• It’s frustrating when people take credit for the work you do and don’t pull their own weight.

Issues:

• ‘treason of the intellectuals’ (Benda 1927/2006)• ‘docile citizens’ (Baltodano 2012)• Quality of work is constructed on the basis of pupil

outcomes• An individualist discourse of responsibility• ‘individual fault’ and ‘private worry’ (Bauman 2008)• Conflict• Needs – defined by who? Whose are being met?

Individuals in a single setting

• We got to do our own thing and then to work together. It was really good having each other to talk too.

• Because we were in different classrooms the teachers know what was happening and they talked to each other too.

• We negotiated an activity that was important to the teachers ... They let the children come out of class and we could be creative.

The difference? – (ir)responsibility and collaboration!• School Council / facilitators / children’s (outdoor) space /

children as customer / negotiation / project management

Conceptual framework

• An expressive-collaborative approach“An expressive collaborative model looks at moral life as a continuing negotiation among people, a practice of mutually allotting, assuming, or deflecting responsibilities of important kind, and understanding the implications of doing so” (Walker 1998, 69)

• Responsibility – Privileged irresponsibility (Tronto 1993; 2013)

• Placement – Emplacement - Displacement

Conceptual framework (Tronto 1993; 2013)

ResponsibilityThose attentive to the need for a skilled, qualified workforceThose with responsibility to ensure a skilled, qualified workforceThose required to assure achievement of employabilityThose required to be responsive to the needs of the market.Children (& EMPLACEMENT)

Privileged irresponsibility• Protection• Production

• Caring for self/own• Personal responsibility• Charity• (DIS)PLACEMENT

Power, needs, included/excluded

DISPLACEMENT

A few days after it was finished, and the students had completed their placement, this wall was pulled down by the school as it was deemed unsafe!