Teaching Students about the World of Work

Abstract

Teaching Students about the World of Work is an attempt to consider how jobs, good jobs, can hold a central place in higher education curricula. Faculty members are often tasked with not only recruiting majors but also ensuring that students graduate and gain meaningful employment. Following through with the bold guarantees made by higher education administrators is a tall order. Editors Nancy Hoffman and Michael Lawrence Collins compile chapters from teachers, education researchers, and advocates who realize that a successful college education involves more than filling lecture halls and typing letters of recommendation. Hoffman and Collins organize chapters starting with practical strategies and ending with broader theoretical observations. Chapters 1 through 3 work best in the dean’s office or in an elevator conversation with a department chair. Chapter authors argue the case for a work-centered curriculum in higher education—good fodder to make pitches to college and university administrators. Chapters 4 and 5 detail the nature of jobs and careers, which can be helpful for faculty who advise students and coordinate professional development seminars. The final three chapters provide conceptual knowledge about education reform and social justice. Their authors attach critical theory to the appraisal of higher education curricula. Described in these writings are obstacles of job mobility for low-income students of color and indigenous descent, as well as proposals to support systemic change in higher education curricula. Reading this book, I found geography’s social scientific side to be consistently affirmed as a marketable perspective and skillset. Geographers in higher education may be inspired by the book’s overview of “ethnographies of work” (EOW), a two-part instructional model that challenges students to “use ethnographic methods to investigate a career they are interested in (EOW I)” and “to address a workplace problem/research question using ethnography (EOW II)” (61). In a capstone course, the EOW framework could provide a chance for upper-level geography students to apply methods and modes of analysis from human geography to navigate their careers. Another contribution is the identification of metrics for students and faculty to evaluate jobs and careers. When discussing the geography of careers, the term “labor shed” (like a watershed or windshed) is used to examine the availability of different types of jobs in an area (76). Readers are introduced to a typology of labor—lifetime jobs, springboard jobs, and static jobs—as well as tactics to measure a good job, like analyzing company data, consulting external sources (e.g., Glassdoor and Indeed), gauging customer/client satisfaction, and interviewing people in that job network. Some jobs will be less than ideal, so suggestions are given for how to make any job a better job, like building skillsets, soliciting feedback, requesting additional responsibilities, locating a mentor, and maintaining contact with one’s wider network. Drawing from personal experience, I have concerns that these aspects might get taken for granted the further faculty members are removed from the job search. This book is geared toward community college faculty and administrators—those who work closely with low-income students in preparation for a job or to transfer to a university. Regardless of the target audience, I am convinced that every geographer in higher education could find this subject matter useful. Lone geographers in small colleges and universities might use ideas from this book as a steppingstone to align the discipline more closely with job-focused curriculum reform. No future of geography education can be charted without bringing jobs into the equation. Teaching Students about the World of Work serves as an important reminder as geography educators reinvent the discipline.