Careers and employability learning: pedagogical principles for higher education

Careers and employability learning: pedagogical principles for higher education

Increasingly, universities prioritise employability as a primary purpose of personal and public investment into higher education and target graduate employability in their teaching, learning, assessment, and student support strategies. However, despite its emergence as a central concern in higher education, graduate employability lacks coherent and robust theoretical or pedagogical foundations. In particular, limited conceptualisations of career development learning applied in most graduate employability scholarship do not include key theories from the field of career development. Rather than continuing to approach graduate employability and career development as different things, the higher education community should recognise their congruence and compatibility and instead adopt a more integrated and critical understanding of careers and employability learning. This article offers a curricular vision of an integrative pedagogy of careers and employability learning, based on six pedagogical principles that can inform efforts to deliver high quality, equitable, and empowering careers and employability learning for students.