The ‘Second Level’ Education Professional: a Traineeship Programme Fostering a Proactive Approach to Employability

In this chapter, we outline the process that led to the development of the current traineeship programme − Tirocinio Formativo e di Orientamento (TFO) related to the Master’s Degree Course in Education at the University of Milan-Bicocca. We focus particularly on the interconnection between developing professional competences and addressing the issue of employability

Professional Development Tutoring: Comparing Italian and International Models

The paper presents the first outcomes of a comparative research of the incoming, on-going and outgoing practices of tutorship. The purposeful sample of universities extracted consisted of 18 Italian universities and 18 US universities. A tutorship concept in line with the transversal cross-curricular skills required for undergraduate and graduate students (Green Paper 2016, Dublin descriptors 2004) exceeds the vision of assistential tutorship and student tutoring practices, exercised by teachers and/or offered by services devoted to different types of intervention. The tutorship can be conceived as systemic and organizational action coherent in all phases with professionalising approach, starting from the earliest initiatives between school and university classrooms

Insights from the Fields: the Role of Reflection in ‘Learning How to Learn’

In experiential learning, on-field experience needs to be processed consciously in order for learning to take place. Reflection plays a crucial role by providing a bridge between practical experience and conceptualization. Despite being a protected environment, university traineeship is a form of experiential learning that offers students a chance to learn from the fields and reflect on a possible future profession. In this paper we present and discuss a research project whose goal is the development of a methodology to educate trainees’ reflective thinking and writing

Transfer of Non-Academic Skills in Academic Context: towards a Sustainable Employability

This essay is an element of dialogue between educational practices acquired in territorial education contexts and the University. In particular, starting from the 10-year long experience consolidated in three educational centres operating in border areas of the Province of Naples, a series of ‘key competences’ have been highlighted that are indispensable to the containment of social risk disadvantage in an inclusion (Bertolini 1977; Freire 2004; Rossi 2014; Sabatano 2015a, 2015b) and well-being project (Iavarone 2007, 2009) from an educational point of view. Such competencies have become subject of a ‘participatory didactic planning’ between expert educators working in these contexts and a university course on ‘Pedagogy of relationships’ within the Department of Motor Science and Well-Being at the University of Naples Parthenope. The participatory planning practice has set the most ambitious goal of achieving a ‘system methodology’ to be used in the curriculum-design of the university courses in order to make the academic education offer a proper link element between the educational demand of young people, the demand for professional skills in the territory and the emerging social needs in order to improve employability processes. The main results that this experience has highlighted can be deducted from the student’s satisfaction survey, as well as from the data collected and processed by the University Assessment Team, in the Department’s Joint Commission Reports, which show a clear and overall improvement of the communication processes between non-academic institutions collaborating with the University for the conduct of internships, training sessions and placement-targeted activities. The empirical evidence and the positive results obtained provide substantial comfort in considering that the experience gained can be a ‘good practice’ to be included in the didactic planning process of the courses, even in relation to the need to improve the educational and didactic offer with reference to the new quality assurance parameters (QA) for the periodic accreditation of the CdS according to the AVA-ANVUR legislation in force

Doctorates and Employability: New Perspectives for Doctoral Education

Profound processes of change are affecting doctorates all over the world, above all, to provide broader employment prospects. However, the link between the transformations of a doctorate and employability is complex, and entails re-thinking formative pathways for doctorates by focusing on the professional identity of a PhD

Employability and Transitions towards Work: MSc Degree Programme in Educational Planning and Human Resource Development, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Brescia

The acceleration of changes underlines the need to enhance our efforts to adapt education to the dynamics of the current economic situation and the issue of employment. In the framework of the circular economy, pedagogy, which is based on the educability of individuals, takes into consideration forms of educational planning to identify a long-lasting balance between economic prosperity, social wellness, and environmental development. The challenge of the future is the possibility of increasing youth employment; this calls for pedagogical expertise and organizational planning to ensure that everyone’s development is authentic and holistic. To this end, the MSc Degree programme in Educational Planning and Human Resource Development offered by the Catholic University trains graduates to become professional figures with expertise in coordinating and managing the development of human resources (guidance, selection, personal services); the professional training and retraining of project managers in social and educational contexts for both academic and corporate spheres. The guiding vision behind the MSc in Educational Planning and Human Resource Development is fully in line with the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart’s educational project, to support a culture of responsibility and creativity, entrepreneurism and collaboration, multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills, and scientific research for the purpose of holistic human development. Educational planning, in a period of socio-economic and social change, involving the whole planet in many respects, can relaunch an ‘integral model of development’, based on long-term wellbeing, technological innovation, ‘human development’, and the dignity of work

Employability-Oriented Curriculum: Strategies and Tools to Train Young Graduates. The PRIN EMP&Co. Project

This paper focuses on the impact of employability-oriented modules on the design, planning, and implementation of work transitions. It takes its lead from the PRIN EMP&Co project developed by the University of Florence in 2014-2017, and how its research protocol allows a mapping of the construction of employability during the Master’s Degree Course

Nursing Students’ Future Employment Preferences and the Real Demands of Patients using the Health Services. A Qualitative Study on a Group of Final-Year Students at the University of Padua

Increasing life expectancy and the growing number of chronic diseases have changed the kind of patients who need to be assisted. This paper presents a qualitative study conducted with a group of nursing students near graduation, aimed at describing and discussing vocational preferences and desirable healthcare settings for future employment

Boosting Entrepreneurship Capability in Work Transitions

Work personalization within cognitive capitalism (Alessandrini 2013) demands universities to certify competences that can promote new forms of employability (Boffo, Federighi, Torlone 2015), connected to global network innovation (Steiner et al. 2013). Personal entrepreneurship becomes the heuristic promoter of career changes (Federighi, Torlone 2013). This enables individuals to ask new questions, to provide innovative solutions, and to create endeavours that can extend the current limits of knowledge, or define new ones (Costa 2014). Methodology: The research analysed variables and, by doing so, strengthened entrepreneurial competence (Morselli, Costa 2015; Costa, Strano 2016) from an enabling perspective, involving more than one hundred people going through a career change (Sen 2000). Based on a mixed method (Ponce, Pagán-Maldonado 2015) the research was developed over four phases: 1) Self-assessment (Pittaway, Edwards 2012) of entrepreneurial attitudes; 2) Recognition (Federighi 2014) of emerging competences from global innovation networks; 3) Reflective thinking (Mortari 2003) and switching in terms of awareness (Mezirow 2003); 4) Capability (Sen 2006) of opportunities and resources for the instigation of entrepreneurial action (Costa Strano 2016). Results: The data observed show that during career changes the development of competences is positively linked to age, education, and experience, above all when combined with enabling processes. As for entrepreneurship, training contexts in the service industry prove strategic, even if still too focused solely on the technical-informative dimension. Furthermore, the results show that entrepreneurial training (Pittaway, Edwards 2012) becomes competence that can promote action starting from resources/opportunities in various career changes (Costa 2014)

A Student Voice Approach in Work-Related Learning. From Lesson-Learned in Secondary School to Suggestions for Higher Education

This paper presents a research on work-related learning through School-work Alternance in Secondary Education that involved researchers of University of Florence, ten secondary Schools, public and private entities in the Province of Arezzo and La Spezia. From the analysis of three case studies, it elicits criteria for an educational model that integrates work-related learning with student voice perspective