Michael Tomlinson
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3701466 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Michael Tomlinson |
| PRENOMES | Michael |
| SOBRENOME | Tomlinson |
| ASSINATURA | TOMLINSON M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Southampton |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1057-5188 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 34 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 187 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 34 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2007 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Employer perspectives on professional identity and its role in graduate recruitment
Practice and theory on graduate employability continues to recognise the importance of professional identity (PI) as a key determinant of individuals perceived and realised worth in the labour market. However, studies are predominantly from student, graduate and academic perspectives with little exploration of employers’ perceptions on PI and its importance for graduates’ acculturation into practice and workplace outcomes. Accordingly, we explore…
Employer perspectives on graduates’ professional identity formation in the workplace
Professional identity (PI) is recognised as a crucial dimension in how graduates negotiate the transition to employment and move towards a pathway of sustainable professional development. Perspectives on PI have been derived mainly from higher education students with little attention given to the perspective of employers involved in supporting and supervising graduates in the workplace. Accordingly, the study surveys 339 industry professionals to…
Capitals, capabilities, and the conversion of commodities
The employment opportunities and outcomes of disabled graduates has gained increased international attention among researchers, policymakers and HE practitioners. This article explores the early employment transitions and experiences of neurodivergent graduates, a group who have been shown to experience significant barriers in accessing competitive employment. We offer a new framework which incorporates aspects from both capabilities and capitals…
Graduates' conceptions of meaningful work
This paper explores how meaningful work is conceptualised by recent graduates. Whilst the imperative to maximise economic returns from higher education (HE) endures in HE policy, less attention is given to how meaningful work is and its relationship to values and identities. Based on a qualitative study with recent graduates in the United Kingdom, the findings show that graduates' conceptions of meaningful work centre on three, often interconnect…
‘You have to work ten times harder’
Since the 1990s, UK government policy has sought to increase access to higher education, with a plan to improve social mobility. However, enhancing the employability prospects for all has proven difficult to achieve through widening participation alone. This research explores this paradox, via the experiences of first-in-family undergraduates as they prepare to enter the UK graduate labour market. The concept of capital development is applied to …
Graduating in uncertain times
This article examines the impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on recent UK graduates' initial employment outcomes and how they experience the transition into a challenging labour market context. We draw on longitudinal survey and interview data, collected from recent graduates who had mainly graduated during the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic in summer 2020 that examines graduate perception of the labour market, impacts on labour market entry impact…
In the name of employability
This introductory overview sets out the scope and aims of the special issue, which is concerned with establishing more meaningful understandings and discourses on the relationship between arts and humanities and graduate employability. The issue comes at a time of increased government-level questioning of the social and economic value of higher education (HE), and particularly humanities disciplines. The propositions developed in this introductio…
Conceptualising transitions from higher education to employment
This article develops and applies the concept of liminality and liminal identities to illustrate the relative positioning of graduates within the transitional spaces of moving from one institutional context to another and navigating an uncertain and challenging labour market. The current pandemic-affected labour market provided a rich context through which recent graduates have to sense-make and negotiate a future identity trajectory, exacerbatin…
The relative importance of work experience, extra-curricular and university-based activities on student employability
Declining graduate labour markets, perceived devaluing of degree qualifications, and intense focus on graduate employment metrics have increased pressure on universities to enhance their students’ employability. Formal curricula developments have been accompanied by co-curricular and extra-curricular offerings intended to enhance students’ career readiness and emerging graduate profiles. Using survey data from undergraduate and postgraduate stude…
Missing values
Finding a conceptually informed and substantive means of understanding the value of higher education (HE) remains a challenging but crucial issue in the context of continued market-orientated policies. This article offers a way forward and posits that formal approaches to measuring the value of HE can only have currency if engaging in longer-term and sustainable notions of value given that many of the benefits of HE are manifest in less tangible,…
When masses meet markets
The institutional form and conception of Higher Education have changed through the growth of mass higher education, which in many national systems now operates on market logics. Drawing on theories of credentialism, this article provides a critical analysis of the inter-relationship between massification and marketization and examines a range of consequences this has for institutional relations and dynamics. A central feature of credential inflat…
The changing value of higher education in England and Portugal
This article examines how the value of higher education (HE) is currently being (re)framed in two European countries: England and Portugal. HE has been central to a global discourse on the future of knowledge economy, whilst also being subject to the policy framework of New Public Management. Being so, the changing value of HE is related to the ways in which its missions are understood and must be considered within the context of massification, a…
Negative capital
The concept of capital has risen in prominence within educational policy and practice in the UK since Ofsted introduced cultural capital into its inspection processes in 2019. At the same time, fractured discourses exist across different types of capital – one of which concerns capitals that are negative in constitution and/or impact. This paper addresses both through: A systematic literature review of these negativities (in social, economic, and…
Competitive accountability and the dispossession of academic identity
This article discusses the intensification of research performance demands in UK universities in relation to the complex terrain of academic identity formation. It considers whether a demand for academic researchers to produce and evidence economic and societal impact – in the rewards game of the UK’s performance-based research funding system, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – influences their self-concept as ‘engaged researchers’. While …
Employers and graduates
This article provides evidence and insight on the demand-side of graduate employment and selection through an investigation of employers’ conceptions of what constitutes hireable and employable graduates. Drawing on evidence from a qualitative study with a diverse range of employers in the UK, the article shows that employers understand graduates’ employability to encompass a complex mix of key resources, understood here as capitals, that enable …
Professional identity formation in contemporary higher education students
The study examines the prevalence of emergent professional identity (PI) among different groups of higher education students as well as the determining factors in the formation of PI. Drawing on evidence from a survey among Australian and UK students (N = 433), from two institutions and across a range of disciplines, empirical and conceptual insights are developed on the formation and impacts of students’ professional identity. The article shows …
The end of the road? Critiquing the nascent trend of secondary education transition data
This paper identifies a nascent trend in several countries regarding increased collection, public availability and use of destination data for graduates of secondary education, with policy ambitions to support pupil-level decision-making and drive provider-level accountability. This trend mirrors the previous development of such data for higher education graduates and underpins a policy direction of data visibility and data engineering to support…
Investigating the relationship between career planning, proactivity and employability perceptions among higher education students in uncertain labour market conditions
Forms of capital and agency as mediations in negotiating employability of international graduate migrants
This study deployed a qualitative approach to explore an alternative perspective regarding graduate migrants’ employability. Twenty graduate migrants in Australia participated in in-depth interviews. Findings revealed graduate migrants faced various challenges in the target labour market, and to successfully secure employment it was important for them to develop key forms of capital – i.e., excellent technical knowledge, relationships with ‘signi…
Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market
A critical analysis is developed of the dominant meanings of value in marketised higher education. In policy terms, this has become informed by the logics of the measured market whereby value has become synonymous with economic return and institutional accountability. The notion of value is one which permeates many discussions on the purpose of higher education and the perceived benefits it confers onto individuals and society as a whole. This, h…
The Teaching Excellence Framework
In English higher education, the Teaching Excellence Framework represents a very significant recent policy lever in the continued operation of a measured market in the sector. Conceived as a policy to enhance and make further transparent the quality of teaching, it utilises a variety of key measurements to establish sets of related outcomes upon which effective teaching can be assessed. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence and ado…
Employers and Universities
Forms of graduate capital and their relationship to graduate employability
Purpose In the context of far-reaching changes in higher education and the labour market, there has been extensive discussion on what constitutes graduate employability and what shapes graduates’ labour market outcomes. Many of these discussions are based on skills-centred approaches and related supply-side logic. The purpose of this paper is to develop an alternative, relational conceptualisation of employability based on the concept of capitals…
Student Engagement
Critiques of Student Engagement
The degree is not enough’
The UK Government is calling upon higher education students to see their learning as an investment that will give them direct benefits in the labour market. At the same time, the relationship between educational credentials and their returns in labour market has been changing in recent times. Based on a qualitative study with 53 final‐year undergraduate students in a pre‐1992 university, this article examines the way higher education students und…
Student perceptions of themselves as ‘consumers’ of higher education
This article first offers a survey of what has become an area of increasing interest in higher education: the rise of the so-called ‘student-consumer’. This has been linked in part to the marketisation of higher education and the increased personal financial contributions individual students make towards their higher education. Drawing upon a qualitative study with students across seven different UK higher education institutions, the article show…
Forms of capital and agency as mediations in negotiating employability of international graduate migrants
This study deployed a qualitative approach to explore an alternative perspective regarding graduate migrants’ employability. Twenty graduate migrants in Australia participated in in-depth interviews. Findings revealed graduate migrants faced various challenges in the target labour market, and to successfully secure employment it was important for them to develop key forms of capital – i.e., excellent technical knowledge, relationships with ‘signi…
Professional identity formation in contemporary higher education students
The study examines the prevalence of emergent professional identity (PI) among different groups of higher education students as well as the determining factors in the formation of PI. Drawing on evidence from a survey among Australian and UK students (N = 433), from two institutions and across a range of disciplines, empirical and conceptual insights are developed on the formation and impacts of students’ professional identity. The article shows …
Employers and graduates
This article provides evidence and insight on the demand-side of graduate employment and selection through an investigation of employers’ conceptions of what constitutes hireable and employable graduates. Drawing on evidence from a qualitative study with a diverse range of employers in the UK, the article shows that employers understand graduates’ employability to encompass a complex mix of key resources, understood here as capitals, that enable …
The Impact of Market-Driven Higher Education on Student-University Relations
Critiques of Student Engagement
Competitive accountability and the dispossession of academic identity
This article discusses the intensification of research performance demands in UK universities in relation to the complex terrain of academic identity formation. It considers whether a demand for academic researchers to produce and evidence economic and societal impact – in the rewards game of the UK’s performance-based research funding system, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – influences their self-concept as ‘engaged researchers’. While …
Conceptualising transitions from higher education to employment
This article develops and applies the concept of liminality and liminal identities to illustrate the relative positioning of graduates within the transitional spaces of moving from one institutional context to another and navigating an uncertain and challenging labour market. The current pandemic-affected labour market provided a rich context through which recent graduates have to sense-make and negotiate a future identity trajectory, exacerbatin…
When masses meet markets
The institutional form and conception of Higher Education have changed through the growth of mass higher education, which in many national systems now operates on market logics. Drawing on theories of credentialism, this article provides a critical analysis of the inter-relationship between massification and marketization and examines a range of consequences this has for institutional relations and dynamics. A central feature of credential inflat…
The Teaching Excellence Framework
In English higher education, the Teaching Excellence Framework represents a very significant recent policy lever in the continued operation of a measured market in the sector. Conceived as a policy to enhance and make further transparent the quality of teaching, it utilises a variety of key measurements to establish sets of related outcomes upon which effective teaching can be assessed. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence and ado…
Between instrumental and developmental learning
The move towards a market-driven HE system in the UK and active policy promotion of students as consumers has generated much commentary on the ways in which students’ expectations and experiences have been transformed. This article introduces and develops a conceptualization of contemporary higher students’ views of their relationship to higher education within the new institutional conditions of marketization in the UK. This is based on a UK-bas…
Contextualizing Leader Dynamics
A generic conceptualization is developed of the evolutionary relationship between leader activity and context, informed by structuration theory. It is argued that theoretical development to date has underplayed the extent of leaders’ attempted — and more or less successful — manipulation of contextual factors, within structural parameters that bound their agency. A heuristic model of leaders’ interaction with their context is articulated. This li…
Employers and Universities
Student Engagement
Critical and Alternative Perspectives on Student Engagement
Graduate employability and student attitudes and orientations to the labour market
This article examines the way students, making the transition from higher education into the labour market, construct, understand and begin to manage their employability. It draws upon a qualitative study of 53 final‐year undergraduates in a pre‐1992 university in the UK. It firstly explores students’ perceptions of the current labour market for graduates and how they understand future career progression. It examines their different orientations …
The degree is not enough’
The UK Government is calling upon higher education students to see their learning as an investment that will give them direct benefits in the labour market. At the same time, the relationship between educational credentials and their returns in labour market has been changing in recent times. Based on a qualitative study with 53 final‐year undergraduate students in a pre‐1992 university, this article examines the way higher education students und…
Contextualizing Leader Dynamics
A generic conceptualization is developed of the evolutionary relationship between leader activity and context, informed by structuration theory. It is argued that theoretical development to date has underplayed the extent of leaders’ attempted — and more or less successful — manipulation of contextual factors, within structural parameters that bound their agency. A heuristic model of leaders’ interaction with their context is articulated. This li…
Developing Leadership Capacity in English Secondary Schools and Universities
Government responses to globalisation include developing educational leaders as reformers for workforce competitiveness in the knowledge economy. Qualitative research tracked interventions involving national leadership development bodies to acculturate leaders in secondary schools and universities. Acculturating leaders as reformers was mediated through interaction with professional cultures valuing autonomy. Yet mediation supported the governmen…
Graduate Employability
The Impact of Market-Driven Higher Education on Student-University Relations
Between instrumental and developmental learning
The move towards a market-driven HE system in the UK and active policy promotion of students as consumers has generated much commentary on the ways in which students’ expectations and experiences have been transformed. This article introduces and develops a conceptualization of contemporary higher students’ views of their relationship to higher education within the new institutional conditions of marketization in the UK. This is based on a UK-bas…
Forms of graduate capital and their relationship to graduate employability
Purpose In the context of far-reaching changes in higher education and the labour market, there has been extensive discussion on what constitutes graduate employability and what shapes graduates’ labour market outcomes. Many of these discussions are based on skills-centred approaches and related supply-side logic. The purpose of this paper is to develop an alternative, relational conceptualisation of employability based on the concept of capitals…
Student Engagement
Critiques of Student Engagement
Critical and Alternative Perspectives on Student Engagement
Student perceptions of themselves as ‘consumers’ of higher education
This article first offers a survey of what has become an area of increasing interest in higher education: the rise of the so-called ‘student-consumer’. This has been linked in part to the marketisation of higher education and the increased personal financial contributions individual students make towards their higher education. Drawing upon a qualitative study with students across seven different UK higher education institutions, the article show…
Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market
A critical analysis is developed of the dominant meanings of value in marketised higher education. In policy terms, this has become informed by the logics of the measured market whereby value has become synonymous with economic return and institutional accountability. The notion of value is one which permeates many discussions on the purpose of higher education and the perceived benefits it confers onto individuals and society as a whole. This, h…
The Teaching Excellence Framework
In English higher education, the Teaching Excellence Framework represents a very significant recent policy lever in the continued operation of a measured market in the sector. Conceived as a policy to enhance and make further transparent the quality of teaching, it utilises a variety of key measurements to establish sets of related outcomes upon which effective teaching can be assessed. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence and ado…
Employers and Universities
Forms of capital and agency as mediations in negotiating employability of international graduate migrants
This study deployed a qualitative approach to explore an alternative perspective regarding graduate migrants’ employability. Twenty graduate migrants in Australia participated in in-depth interviews. Findings revealed graduate migrants faced various challenges in the target labour market, and to successfully secure employment it was important for them to develop key forms of capital – i.e., excellent technical knowledge, relationships with ‘signi…
The end of the road? Critiquing the nascent trend of secondary education transition data
This paper identifies a nascent trend in several countries regarding increased collection, public availability and use of destination data for graduates of secondary education, with policy ambitions to support pupil-level decision-making and drive provider-level accountability. This trend mirrors the previous development of such data for higher education graduates and underpins a policy direction of data visibility and data engineering to support…
Investigating the relationship between career planning, proactivity and employability perceptions among higher education students in uncertain labour market conditions
The changing value of higher education in England and Portugal
This article examines how the value of higher education (HE) is currently being (re)framed in two European countries: England and Portugal. HE has been central to a global discourse on the future of knowledge economy, whilst also being subject to the policy framework of New Public Management. Being so, the changing value of HE is related to the ways in which its missions are understood and must be considered within the context of massification, a…
Negative capital
The concept of capital has risen in prominence within educational policy and practice in the UK since Ofsted introduced cultural capital into its inspection processes in 2019. At the same time, fractured discourses exist across different types of capital – one of which concerns capitals that are negative in constitution and/or impact. This paper addresses both through: A systematic literature review of these negativities (in social, economic, and…
Competitive accountability and the dispossession of academic identity
This article discusses the intensification of research performance demands in UK universities in relation to the complex terrain of academic identity formation. It considers whether a demand for academic researchers to produce and evidence economic and societal impact – in the rewards game of the UK’s performance-based research funding system, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – influences their self-concept as ‘engaged researchers’. While …
Employers and graduates
This article provides evidence and insight on the demand-side of graduate employment and selection through an investigation of employers’ conceptions of what constitutes hireable and employable graduates. Drawing on evidence from a qualitative study with a diverse range of employers in the UK, the article shows that employers understand graduates’ employability to encompass a complex mix of key resources, understood here as capitals, that enable …
Professional identity formation in contemporary higher education students
The study examines the prevalence of emergent professional identity (PI) among different groups of higher education students as well as the determining factors in the formation of PI. Drawing on evidence from a survey among Australian and UK students (N = 433), from two institutions and across a range of disciplines, empirical and conceptual insights are developed on the formation and impacts of students’ professional identity. The article shows …
The relative importance of work experience, extra-curricular and university-based activities on student employability
Declining graduate labour markets, perceived devaluing of degree qualifications, and intense focus on graduate employment metrics have increased pressure on universities to enhance their students’ employability. Formal curricula developments have been accompanied by co-curricular and extra-curricular offerings intended to enhance students’ career readiness and emerging graduate profiles. Using survey data from undergraduate and postgraduate stude…
Missing values
Finding a conceptually informed and substantive means of understanding the value of higher education (HE) remains a challenging but crucial issue in the context of continued market-orientated policies. This article offers a way forward and posits that formal approaches to measuring the value of HE can only have currency if engaging in longer-term and sustainable notions of value given that many of the benefits of HE are manifest in less tangible,…
Sociology (28 obras) · Political science (27 obras) · Higher Education and Employability (24 obras) · Higher education (22 obras) · Pedagogy (22 obras) · Economics (20 obras) · Economic growth (17 obras) · Public relations (17 obras) · Higher Education Governance and Development (16 obras) · Social science (15 obras)