300
Views
7
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Job-related requirements and competences of educational science graduates

&
Pages 166-176 | Received 17 May 2015, Accepted 27 Feb 2016, Published online: 16 Nov 2016
 

Abstract

All over the world, universities have to cope with the mission to promote the employability of their graduates, implying that competences should be trained which are relevant for the professional experience. In this context, it is of special interest where graduates work and what they are doing at work. In this study we focus on educational science graduates (N = 1565) and compare them to graduates of other study programmes (N = 10,224). Using data of the German DZHW graduate panel 2005 (N = 11,789), we address the questions (1) in which fields graduates of educational science work, (2) whether a theoretical-based four-dimensional internal structure of graduates’ job-related requirements and competences can be confirmed, (3) what kind of self-rated requirements educational science graduates experience at work, and (4) which self-rated levels of competences they possess, compared to other graduates. The analyses show that most graduates of educational science find an appropriate job in a clearly educational setting and that generic competences (systematic, social, and personal competences) are rated as more important than knowledge processing.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the project team of the DZHW graduate panel 2005 for making the data available, Hilde Schaeper (DZHW) for giving helpful advice concerning the data analysis as well as the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for funding the manuscript preparation within the research programme ‘Modeling and Measuring Competencies in Higher Education’ (01PK11015B). The manuscript has been proofread by a native speaker.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.