Three ways to embed career development learning more deeply in your curriculum

One of the most important arguments for embedding career development in the curriculum is equity. Extracurricular opportunities require time and resources that not all students can afford. Confident, proactive students are best placed to engage in them, meaning that those who would benefit most may find them least accessible. 

In contrast, curricular learning, particularly when part of mandatory assessment, includes every student. Context is also important. When career development learning is embedded into academic content and taught by discipline experts, it can have more value. 

• Resource collection: Getting students workplace-ready
• Teach the skills required for a future we can’t yet imagine
• Engaging students with careers resources early and often

These are two key arguments underpinning current drives towards an embedded approach to careers-oriented learning, shifting from “bolt on” (co-curricular learning experiences) to “bolt in” (careers content added to curricula). Here, an academic and a careers professional at RMIT University draw on our experience and collaborative work to offer three key ideas towards deeper modes of embedding career development learning.

Discipline-specific understanding can be career development understanding

Kate Daubney offers the term “extracted employability” to describe the outcome of “identifying elements that have innate employability value in a programme, subject or discipline”. This approach avoids unnecessary disruption to teaching or cramping of curricula. It focuses instead on making existing careers-oriented learning visible and declarative, both for the benefit of students and to demonstrate adherence to quality and compliance standards. 

It also ensures an authentically contextualised approach to careers-focused learning, emerging organically in discussions, research and explorations central to the study discipline. 

In our experience of collaborating to develop careers-focused content for RMIT’s Bachelor of International Studies, we found that many areas of the discipline offer considerable scope for extracted employability. From there, career development learning can be deeply embedded.

Developing inclusive approaches and understanding different perspectives is crucial to International Studies. The subject prepares students for the ambiguities of the real world and underpins the work they’ll undertake in NGOs, government agencies and international businesses.

Such considerations were part of International Studies curricula long before embedded career development learning was deemed best practice. They create opportunities to form deep, integrated, contextualised connections with the tasks of informed career planning, job market research and reflection on professional skills and values.

Well-acquainted with holistic and critical perspectives, International Studies student cohorts are also equipped to engage with some of the complexities underlying popular approaches to career management.

These include its tendency to gloss over significant issues of systemic inequity in the job market, focusing instead on strategies individuals could use to become more employable, implicitly rendering them responsible for their career outcomes. 

Meaningful connections can be formed between the challenges of the discipline and students’ planning of their own careers. Many students appreciate that these connections and ambiguities are addressed rather than left implicit or passed over without mention. 

Discipline-specific skills can be career development skills

The transferable skills fostered by many disciplines are tools students can use to support and develop their own employability. For example, highly developed research skills are useful for understanding how industries work, gauging likely expectations of organisations and locating or creating interesting opportunities. 

Project management skills, taught as part of many disciplines, can also be usefully directed towards the job-seeking process – often a multifaceted undertaking in itself, featuring deadlines, prioritisation and goal setting. Clarity and persuasiveness of communication, developed throughout many degrees, are relevant here, in the design of job application documents and performance in interviews.

In International Studies at RMIT, intercultural communication is a foundational subject, helping to build awareness of how diversity impacts the way messages are expressed and received by different people. Fostering an empathetic perspective in students helps them become aware of how communication must be crafted differently according to different audiences to be effective, a further key skill in navigating the job application process. 

Discipline-specific expertise can be career development expertise

Most disciplines in higher education engage in some form of forecasting, whether the focus is on developing technology or evolving political, social, economic or environmental situations. A natural area of focus for International Studies curricula is the methods used by futurists, which enable informed approaches to global issues through strategic analysis of trends and developments. This offers concrete perspectives and tools to contextualise subjective experiences of the world, and engaging in an array of high-quality research.          

Well-honed future-casting techniques and strategies can also be turned to career planning and research, using the same principles of looking at current evidence to create informed predictions for the future. International Studies students become skilled in interpreting trends, consulting precedents and identifying reliable participants and research. When this expertise is developed as part of the curriculum, it is easily extended to the process of career planning and development.

Anna Branford is a careers educator and Julian Lee is an academic and educator for International Studies, both at RMIT University. 

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