2. The Development of Work-based University Courses
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It has long been assumed that vocational and professional education in universities should have two elements. The first is the practice element which is developed in the field through contact with practical vocational problems in a real life context. The second is the theoretical element involving an understanding of fundamental discipline-based knowledge which underpins practice and is taught on campus.
The credibility and expertise of a professional may be presumed to rest on a substantial knowledge base. He, or she, links theory and practice through extrapolating from fundamental discipline-specific concepts in order to solve challenges and problems experienced in the professional field (Schon 1983). Traditionally, this has happened through the relevant theory being learned in the university with the application to practice occurring as an additional element, often during a special apprenticeship year at the end of the university education component.
This model of protected and guided practice has operated in a range of professions such as medicine, teaching and law for over a century. It is a model which has assumed that theory once learned can be readily applied to practice. It is also one which has been as much concerned with the protection of the client as with the training of the budding professional.
Several criticisms have been made of this model of professional training. The first is that theory learned in the classroom is not readily used in the practical field. Over the years there have been numerous expressions of concern by professional bodies about the lack of appropriate knowledge in new graduates. The second concern is that training for the professions has taken a long time: three to five years of discipline knowledge, followed by one or two years of internship. The length of time has meant that the training of professionals has also been expensive.
Endeavours to overcome these criticisms have involved curriculum changes, with attempts being made to ensure that theory and practice are related, and with the assistance of academic staff in classroom learning situations. Professional practice subjects have increasingly appeared in the curriculum of vocational courses; professional practitioners have been brought into the university to teach aspects of the course; assignments and exercises and practicals related to professional problems have been set as part of the university learning experiences, and, in some instances, opportunities have been created for students to experience professional practice for a time during their educational program. Such opportunities have been seen to provide a sheltered environment where the theoretical and the practical aspects of professional education can be combined and developed. Such initiatives have received praise from government and from industry (Crebert 1995).
The idea of providing more vocationally relevant curricula and some professional experience within the limits of a course was taken up with enthusiasm by the traditional professions as well as by the newer professions, particularly engineering, after the end of World War 2. In Europe at this period, there was a compelling need to rebuild nations, to re-educate, to provide opportunities for young people and returning soldiers, to re-establish the social fabric. One of the consequences was the surge in demand for trained professionals and attention was turned to ways of ensuring these professionals were produced quickly and efficiently (Kitson 1993). The idea of relating theory to practice in the context of a sheltered professional environment was warmly received. In a series of joint ventures, industry and the universities of the United Kingdom developed a range of models of work-based education the most popular of which was the sandwich course. The London Times of 5 July 1948 announced that:
Before the close of this decade four of our biggest engineering companies will be working with universities ...through the introduction of sandwich courses to educate young men... to become engineers...these will be the first wave of professional graduates on whose shoulders the future of this nation will rest.
The sandwich course most usually involved a year of professional work experience 'sandwiched' between the second and fourth year of a university course. The introduction of these courses to the educational world together with the general mood of optimism following the end of the Second World War, may have contributed significantly to the praise they received from all quarters. It is difficult to find any contemporary comment which is in any way critical of either the concept or the outcome.
Kitson (1993) has said that the seeds of the demise of the sandwich course were in its original outstanding success. Such was the impact of the model that for over twenty years it was never seriously questioned or evaluated. Between 1950 and 1980, the majority of studies of undergraduate work-based education focused on how these courses should be structured. For how long should students be in the workplace and the university? The virtues of double tier sandwiches, of open sandwiches, of the thickness of the middle and the sides were all debated (Kitson 1993), but the overall effectiveness of such programs in developing professional expertise was not seriously questioned.
A decade or so ago, however, the climate changed. Government and industry began making increased demands on higher education to develop more vocationally relevant courses and the questions asked of work-based education changed. The work of Schon (1983), on educating the 'reflective practitioner', had a major impact. He emphasised that despite a rhetoric of relating theory to practice, what frequently happened in vocational university courses was that students learned a practice innocent of theory in the workplace and a knowledge innocent of professional relevance in the university. He emphasised the need to reflect on professional as opposed to theoretical problems in the university, but to do so in a way that was obviously informed by theory.
Models of Work-based University Education
In the 1980s it became espoused wisdom that theory and practice would not automatically be related by placing a student with theoretical knowledge in a practical, professional situation. Academic staff had to work at helping students to make the connections (Uzzell 1986; Chatterton, Roberts & Huston 1989; Sweeney 1990; Benett & Lee 1991). At about this time, a range of different models of university work-based programs were developed and introduced which involved academic staff giving students more support to make the link.
Cooperative programs differed from the traditional sandwich course in that the work experience component was integrated into the overall curriculum, instead of being a separate additional year. Programs along these lines are by far the most common form of work-based learning in contemporary Australian and British university courses (Davies & Hase 1994). The Higher Education Council, in its 1990 Report, declared that they were 'an effective means of fostering industry links and ensuring that higher education courses are designed to provide a blend of principles and practical skills'. They are typically entrepreneurial ventures through which academic staff can develop links with industry. They are collaboratively designed to assist students' entry into the workplace.
In the cognitive apprenticeship model of work experience, the aim is to give students an opportunity to observe and absorb the organisational culture of the workplace. This model has been particularly popular in law and political science courses (see Collins, Brown & Newman 1987 for a fuller description). In theory, the model is well suited to the concept of apprenticeship in a professional practice where the student absorbs a multitude of new learning experiences, reflects on them and, in time, puts them into practice. In reality, the experience is frequently different. In a case study which included interviews with law students on work placements, Crebert (1995) found that the students were either relegated to very mundane tasks for fear of the possible costly mistakes they might make or, at the other extreme, were expected to plunge straight into the exploration stage where they lacked the experience and expertise to cope on their own.
Cooperative education for enterprise development (CEED) programs are a type of cooperative education program where the objectives extend beyond the development of professional experience of students and promote enterprise development through a university-industry partnership in training, innovation and development (Jarrot 1991).
CEED students and their academic supervisors offer the employer their accumulated expertise and access to all the resources of the university. The program is so structured that students are not regarded as a source of cheap labour but as contributors to the operations of the organisation. These programs aim to achieve their objectives by being highly structured and tightly managed and operate on the basis of a series of firmly constructed contracts where the benefits for all parties are made explicit.
Joint industry-university courses are, in some instances, jointly run and funded with a major company. The Ford Studies program, implemented by Deakin University, aims for a seamless unity between university and workplace expertise; for example, it draws on the expertise of Ford's staff in the course teaching, while both they and academic staff meet with the students on site and jointly design the self-paced learning materials. Workplace practices are used to enhance learning and the knowledge and skills gained through the university are transferred back to the organisation. The course accredits students with advanced standing in their degrees.
The clinical placement model, another type of work-based education, is the clinical placement or practicum. Medical, veterinary science and nursing faculties in particular require students to spend extended periods in clinical settings before graduation and in some medical professions there is still a year or more of internship after completing the university course before they become registered as professionals. The aim of the placement is to give students the experience of the basic requirements of their future work. Such experience is generally claimed to be an invaluable enhancer of students' confidence and understanding.
Fieldwork is a model dominant amongst the social work professions. It is similar to the cognitive apprenticeship model developed above in that the aim is to give students an opportunity to observe and absorb the organisational culture of the workplace. However, there is a greater expectation that students will be involved in working for and supporting the agency. The extent and level of the work is negotiated between student, university and agency and is largely dependent on the needs of the agency at the time of the fieldwork. The time spent in the agencies is less than in most other models of work experience, ranging from one day a week over a period of weeks, to four or five days a week, up to a ten week period. Similar criticisms to those made of the cognitive apprenticeship model have been made of this approach (Martin & Bowden 1991).
Selection of Courses for this Study
It was not the aim of this study to evaluate specific models of work-based university education but rather to examine a range of practices and to consider what aspects of it could be related to successful student learning. Courses were selected from the four vocational areas of business, engineering, social work, and biological sciences because of their accessibility, their willingness to participate in the study and because the programs were well established and reasonably regarded within the profession. It was expected that all programs would have aspects of good practice to share, even though it was likely that overall some would be more successful than others in terms of student learning or employer satisfaction.
Perhaps because of the range of disciplines examined and a tendency for different disciplines to be characterised by different models of work experience, each of the four case study programs can be seen to represent a different model. The Accounting program is a good example of a cooperative education program; the Electronic Engineering course fits the cooperative education for enterprise development (CEED) model; the Medical Laboratory Science program represents a clinical placement model and the Youth Work Course represents a fieldwork model.