LEARNING OUTCOMES AND EMPLOYABILITY: A CASE STUDY ON MANAGEMENT ACADEMIC PROGRAMMES

The implementation of Bologna Declaration has prompted the development of higher education quality assurance processes in several European countries. Different tools, such as learning outcomes, were vital to this implementation, contributing to a paradigm shift towards student-centred learning and teaching. Learning outcomes describe what students should be able to demonstrate, represent or produce, based on their learning histories, which could contribute to a clear statement of their professional output profile. Thus, this study aims to analyse employability models of all Management (1st, 2nd, and 3rd study cycles) academic programmes currently running on the Portuguese Higher Education System, by exploring the relationship between effective learning outcomes implementation and employability skills. Therefore, content analysis of the skills to be acquired by the students was performed using MAXQDA 12. Of note, each parameter of "skills to be acquired by the students" is limited to 1000 characters, and is a partial requirement for the evaluation and assessment of the academic programmes. The results from this analysis were compared with the USEM Model [1] and the CareerEDGE model [2]. Knight and Yorke developed the USEM model of employability in 2003, which proposes four inter-related components of employability: understanding, skills, efficacy beliefs and metacognition. This model provides a background for embedding employability into the academic programmes and recognizes the need to consider stakeholder perceptions. In 2007, Pool and Sewell developed the CareerEDGE model. This second model could be used to explain the concept of employability to those new to the subject, particularly to students and their parents, and was developed from existing research into employability issues and the experience of the authors. It relies on the five main topics: career; experience; degree subject knowledge, understanding & skills; generic skills and emotional intelligence. Overall, this research work will provide new insights concerning the relevance of academic learning outcomes on employability, possibly prompting new studies and alternative definitions for effective learning outcomes implementation in Management related fields.