Reconsidering Graduate Employability: The 'graduate identity' approach

Abstract

This paper attempts to elaborate a cogent alternative to the skills agenda as an approach to graduate employability. This alternative is based on two things: first, a conceptual and theoretical analysis of the nature of human behaviour; and second, the claim that situated behaviour can only be properly understood by interpreting activity as performance-of-a-kind. Such interpretation depends upon there being a set of social practices and a set of identities appropriate to the social situation. This analysis of employability leads to suggestions for undergraduate curriculum enhancement.