An increasingly performative culture in higher education has tied the concept of ‘teaching excellence’ to ‘employability’. Consequently, higher education institutions and their academic teaching staff have been encouraged to rethink their approaches to embedding employability in the curriculum by collaborating with industry partners in the provision of ‘real-world learning’ (RWL) opportunities. Indeed, political discourse has positioned a culture of partnership at the forefront of higher education practice, reinforcing the importance of a positive experience of collaboration for all. The review of literature noted a prevalence of studies which have sought to identify and disseminate good practice in the development of real-world learning through collaboration. However, research into how collaborative practices can cultivate learners capable of transferring knowledge to real-world scenarios is in its infancy. Specifically, the lack of investigation into what employability means to students, academic staff and industry practitioners in the context of their experiences of RWL has been noted.

Focusing on the growing trend for collaboration between universities and industry partners in RWL provision and a desire to illuminate the diversity of experiences, this research examined a ‘direct’ model of collaboration (Bolden et al., 2009) involving one UK university and one local industry partner operating in the sport development sector. The resulting programme of RWL was aligned to a subject-specific strand of modules which were offered at the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications Level 4, Level 5 and Level 6 of one undergraduate degree course. Through the RWL programme, academic tutors and industry practitioners jointly supported students in applying subject-specific knowledge and skills to the real-world, via a combination of case studies, live briefs and extra-curricular activities, with the aim of enhancing employability for a career in the sport industry.

Adopting an interpretivist case study design and taking the programme as an illustrative example of RWL in UK higher education, three research questions were posed 1) How do stakeholders conceptualise and orientate to employability? 2) How is RWL experienced by different stakeholders? 3) How are stakeholders’ conceptualisations of employability and experiences of RWL related to the creation and maintenance of an employability culture?

The experiences of nine students, two academic tutors and four industry practitioners involved in the programme were explored via semi-structured interviews. A crystallised approach to analysis highlighted a series of critical incidents in the stakeholder experience of RWL. It is argued that stakeholders’ behavioural responses to such incidents are intertwined with their perception of the various aspects and functions of the RWL programme in which they are engaged and that these perceptions are simultaneously influenced by their beliefs about ‘employability’ in this context. Consequently, tension between stakeholders’ idealised beliefs about ‘employability’ and the reality of the RWL experiences provided through a university-industry collaboration actually presented challenges in the creation of the employability culture that such a programme of RWL demands. I therefore offer a ‘Framework for Establishing a Culture of Employability in RWL’ which is intended for educationalists to consider how the operations of a RWL programme may be manipulated to constrain or reify the occurrence of those critical incidents which will ultimately influence a stakeholder’s perception of the RWL programme and their beliefs or conceptions of ‘employability’.

A crystallised approach to data analysis and representation presented an opportunity to explore multiple ways of understanding the lived experience, acknowledging that each account gleaned through semi-structured interviews with students, academic tutors and practitioners relies on the presence or absence of others. Ellingson’s (2009) ‘dendritic’ crystallisation was adopted to achieve a pragmatic blend of inductive, deductive and abductive reasoning across three distinct phases of analysis, rooted in Derrida’s (1978) approach to deconstruction. Derridean analysis is concept-driven, so the first phase sought to reveal the hierarchies in systems of thought relating to stakeholders’ conceptualisations of employability. This was achieved through an inductive thematic analysis of transcripts which revealed 22 conceptions of employability. These were organised into five belief systems which represented employability as occupational competence, as knowledge, as experience, as self-awareness and as fitting in. Findings illustrated contradictions in how stakeholders conceptualised and orientated to employability. The second phase was approached deductively, with Third-Generation Activity Theory (Engeström, 1999) used as a lens to deconstruct the experience of the RWL programme. This revealed contradicting perspectives relating to 1) the recognition of identity, 2) the use of language as a mediational tool, 3) the expectations of own and others’ boundaries of responsibility, 4) the perception of mutual benefit. The third phase set about reconstructing a narrative of the experience. This was deductively informed by Bildungsroman as a genre of narrative inquiry whereby personal growth is said to occur despite or because of various tribulations. I refer to these dissonances as ‘critical incidents’ in the stakeholder experience of RWL. The crystallisation of narratives revealed tensions between the ideal and the reality and demonstrated how critical incidents in the lived experience provide a forum for stakeholders’ beliefs about employability, which are manifested in their employability orientation, to be constrained or reified. Finally, abductive reasoning was applied to bring all three phases together. A theoretical contribution is made in the form of a ‘Framework for Establishing a Culture of Employability in RWL’. The Framework highlights the diversity of social and cultural practices influencing a range of stakeholder expectations and motivations for participating in an educational programme based on university-industry collaboration, and how this can create an expectation gap (Patrick et al., 2008). The primary intention of the Framework is to support the identification of contradictions which lead to mismatches in perspectives and enables practitioners to seek solutions for the development of a culture of effective collaboration.

Dewey (1933, p.22) stated that “we never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment. Whether we permit chance environments to do the work, or whether we design environments for the purpose makes a great difference”. Of course, the environment can refer to physical learning spaces or the overall culture of that learning space. On this basis, I conclude that critical incidents in the stakeholder experience mediate the culture of employability associated with the programme of RWL. Freeman et al. (2010) emphasised the importance of ensuring a culture that supports all stakeholders to see value in the collaboration by working on a greater alignment of their diverse interests. Where stakeholders feel that a programme of RWL is aligned to their values and beliefs about employability, they will have a positive outlook on such experiences. This sets the course for a positive orientation to employability development. Consequently, stakeholders’ employability orientation is positively associated with the creation and maintenance of employability culture (Nauta et al., 2009). The ‘Framework for Establishing a Culture of Employability in RWL’ demonstrates how we can manipulate the system, structure and operation of a programme, in response to belief systems relating to the meaning of employability and critical incidents in the experience of RWL, to ultimately bridge the gap between the ideal and reality. I am interested exploring its application to further instances of university-industry collaboration, particularly in terms of its potential to encourage stakeholders to discuss their beliefs, perceptions and actions and thus enable them to see their own and others’ truths in a more constructed, less idealised light.

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