IER News & blogs

Dr Deirdre Hughes has been invited to co-deliver a webinar with Yolande Burgess, Strategic Director, London Councils to the US National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth (NCWD-Youth). This Network coordinates the State Leaders Career Development Network and includes leaders from 20 states who meet monthly to discuss their career development implementation efforts, especially as they apply to the use of individual learning plans. The webinar will focus on sharing good practice in the design, implementation, and evaluation of career development.

The Oxford Handbook of Skills and Training has just been published by the Oxford University Press. Co-edited by IER Director Chris Warhurst, it features sections on: Concepts, Definitions and Measurements of Skill; Education, Training and the Development of Workforce Skills; Skills Demand and Deployment; Skill Outcomes; Differing Skill Systems; and Current Challenges to Policy. Read more.

New research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation examines inclusive growth: a major issue in the UK and internationally. To generate ideas to influence UK city leaders research, co-authored by IER's Anne Green and Erika Kispeter, Paul Sissons at Coventry University and Francesca Froy from Whose City Ltd, examined international examples of cities that have developed and implemented agendas and policies to combine economic growth and social inclusion. The research, How international cities lead inclusive growth agendas, highlights that the labour market is a core focus for policy to connect growth and inclusion and points to the importance of paying greater attention to the demand-side of the labour market and minimising the risks of transitions into and within employment.

I attended a meeting with Sir Mark Walport recently where he said that academics need to work more effectively with government policymakers. The Warwick Institute for Employment Research (IER), of which I am Director, does this almost on a daily basis. Working with the Foresight team, we have just produced a number of short reports to help better communicate research to policymakers and academics on the future of skills and skill needs across the life-course, for example.

As a part of the LEGACY project, Dr Heike Behle recently presented a paper in which two ways to measure learning gain were critically assessed: Credentials and self-assessed improvement of specific skills.

Both ways have drawbacks: Credentials can be an effective way of measuring student learning within a particular class, since most institutions have a scaled grading system already in place. It is problematic, however, to use across classes and institutions and it does not measure the ‘distance travelled’ during higher education. On the other hand, self-assessed improvement of skills will always be subjective and will differ according to individuals’ personality and their personal and HE-related circumstances such as gender and subject studied. It is also important to notice that both data is censored, i.e. improvement is not unlimited.

Using Futuretrack data, Heike compared both ways and found that those who increased their learning gain using credentials are less likely to assess their skills highly, both variable correlate negatively. The findings are currently being prepared for publication. Reported in THES.