Community Knowledge Exchange

Community Knowledge Exchange publications focus on current and pertinent topics in the field of work based and placement learning (in the broadest sense) and are written by ASET members. An overview of each publication is provided below and the full resource can be viewed by members logged into the ASET Community.

Breastfeeding and Placements

written by Abi Holmes, Kingston University

Despite breastfeeding being a subject that affects all parents, supporting students who are breastfeeding whilst seeking a placement or when on placement is an underexplored area, and one that placement practitioners may need to consider.
A student support need may arise if the age of a breastfed baby exceeds a student’s maternity leave period or if a student gives birth mid-course or returns to studies shortly after birth.

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Digital career resources or a filled lecture theatre are efficient methods to deliver career guidance but are they effective?

written by Dr Andrew Mizumori Hirst, Beth Medley and Elizabeth Lansell, School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, University of York

What makes career guidance effective is exactly the type of question the White Rose Industrial Physics Academy (WRIPA) are exploring (www.wripa.ac.uk). WRIPA is a collaboration between five Northern university physics departments and a business network of over 500 technical employers. WRIPA was created to provide physics students with the opportunity to gain skills and work experience that better prepares them for graduate-level technical employment. A key element of achieving this rests on effective career guidance.

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Integrating Freelance Working Practices within Higher Education to Future-proof Graduate Employability

written by Alex Vann, Leeds Trinity University

The prevalence of freelance, self-employed, and casual contractor work continues to increase, particularly in specific sectors of industry. The Office for Students (OfS) does not recognise self-employment in its statistics relating to graduate outcomes in HE, meaning HE providers (HEPs) tend to focus on securing traditional employment prospects for students. Entrepreneurial initiatives remain discretionary due to a lack of sector-wide metrics or incentives from Government policymakers, a short-sightedness that fails to reflect the increasingly dynamic landscape of work.

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Menopause and Placements

written by Tanya Barrass and Dr Helen Hooper, Northumbria University

Do you know what the common link is between people and narwhals, killer whales, beluga whales and short-finned pilot whales?
These are the only mammals currently known to science that undergo menopause! This is a light-hearted attempt at illustrating the more worrisome void in the public and cultural discourse surrounding menopause. Despite menopause affecting half the world’s population, it is rarely featured in TV, films, novels or other popular media, which can make women who are experiencing menopause feel excluded and invisible and it may also mean that some women do not recognise their symptoms as menopause related. This general lack of knowledge combined with the persistent stigma and shame surrounding menopause, and around ageing more broadly, can be a barrier to both accessing and providing support for women experiencing the negative impacts of menopause in the workplace.

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Positive Action Internships – a case study

written by Lisa Foote, UWE Bristol

UWE Bristol celebrates having a diverse student demographic, with over 60% of students from under-represented groups and within the Widening Participation (WP)* student category.
UWE encourages the use of positive action to meet its strategic goals in the pursuit of a more inclusive organisation. A few of these initiatives delivered through the Careers and Enterprise service are shared here to promote good practice within the ASET community.

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Writing Gender Fair Adverts

written by Dr Helen Hooper, Northumbria University

Attracting more women into placements in traditionally male dominated sectors is a challenge many placement practitioners and employers seeking to diversify their workforce continue to grapple with. Under-recruitment results in the continued under-representation of women in a range of fields such as engineering, the natural sciences and business, all of which offer both great placement and graduate career prospects. Despite excellent prospects, with many of the best paid graduate jobs being in engineering, in 2021 women made up just 16.5% of the engineering sector workforce (compared with 47.7% of the workforce overall).

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