Constituting integration in work-integrated education and learning

ABSTRACT

Common to the effectiveness of what constitutes work-integrated learning (WIL) and work-integrated education (WIE) is how students’ experiences in tertiary educational and work settings are integrated. WIL comprises how individuals come to reconcile and construct meaning, capacities, and dispositions from experiences encountered in both settings. WIE comprises the organisation of experiences and educational interventions to assist students in intentionally integrating the two sets of experiences as part of a planned educational process. These two forms of integration are ontologically and epistemologically distinct, yet central to their processes and outcomes, which are also ontologically discrete. This paper commences by rehearsing the distinction of WIE from WIL and the centrality of integrations to both conceptions. The bases by which such integrations progress are then discussed: the provision of experiences and the process of experiencing. Considerations of the tertiary educational processes and processes of promoting learning to realise effective outcomes for students follow. These draw on findings from projects that sought seeking to integrate the two sets of experiences. The sociocultural positioning draws on a distinction between zones of potential and proximal development that accommodate what is afforded and mediated by those experiences and how learners might mediate their integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Work-integrated learning
• work-integrated education
• integration
• reconciling
• meaning-making
• experiencing

Constituting integration: introduction and overview

Concerns about effective occupational preparation and job readiness are becoming central to deliberations about the goals for and processes of tertiary education (i.e. vocational and higher education) (Knight and Yorke 2004). Being prepared for an occupation is a longstanding goal for this sector. Yet, more recently, the requirements are for job readiness, that is, being able to meet specific workplace requirements on graduation (Department of Innovation Universities and Skills 2008). This shift in goals and expectations of tertiary education emphasises the need for students to engage in workplace experiences, such as placements or internships, to develop that readiness (Cooper, Orrel, and Bowden 2010). This need for providing work placements or practicums often arises from an acknowledgement that experiences in and through tertiary education institutions, alone, will be insufficient to develop occupational capacities, let alone ‘job readiness’. Part of the educational element of that development is the worth of integrating the two sets of experiences (Billett 2009b). Hence, there is an imperative to have workplace experiences and their integration as both focus for and central elements of tertiary education provision. Under any circumstances, expectations of job readiness are very difficult, and even more so when the jobs students will secure on graduation are unknown. Consequently, efforts to provide tertiary students with workplace experiences are aimed to assist in achieving educational outcomes that can adapt to different kinds of work settings and occupational requirements. These have become popularly known as work-integrated learning (WIL) when, in fact, they usually refer to the provision of work experiences and then, to a lesser degree, their deliberate integration into the programme of study. This is more accurately described as work-integrated education (WIE) (Billett 2022). However, regardless of their titling, there is little emphasis in that literature on educational processes to intentionally integrate the two sets of experiences to promote occupational preparation and workplace readiness.

This oversight is problematic. Common to the effectiveness of both WIL and WIE is the degree and means by which these two kinds of experiences can be integrated to achieve those outcomes. For WIL, it comprises how students come to reconcile and construct meaning through these experiences and build capacities to achieve outcomes and develop dispositions associated with the occupational practice or workplace performance requirements; that is, how they come to engage, deploy, and change what they know, can do, and value through engaging with and reconciling these two sets of experiences (Billett 2022). For WIE, it comprises organising and sequencing educational experiences and enacting interventions to assist students in intentionally integrating the two sets of experiences as part of a programme of study, as directed towards intended educational goals (e.g. occupational competence and job readiness) (Billett 2022).

This paper proposes that, although ontologically distinct, both WIE and WIL and their conceptions of integration are central qualities to address the educational considerations and realise the goals for, processes of, and outcomes of such provisions. However, that salience warrants better conceptualisations and intentional enactments than are often currently being offered. The case commences by delineating WIE from WIL yet emphasises the centrality of integrations to both conceptions. To illuminate their distinct qualities, how the conceptions of integration are constituted is then elaborated. Conceptually, the positioning is sociocultural and, from a broad epistemological stance, draws on a distinction between zones of potential and proximal development in emphasising the active role of learners in the integration of experiences and construction of knowledge. That is, acknowledgement of the balance between the need for students to engage actively and excitedly through the exercise of their agency in extending what they know, can and value, as well as guidance and support being provided through educational and work settings. Following this, using examples from a recent study, considerations of the educational processes and learning practices that are necessary to realise effective outcomes for students are presented and discussed, including five bases by which they actively realise those interventions. This focus acknowledges and reconciles contributions from both the social world (i.e. experiences in educational and work settings) and the personal (e.g. their knowledge, interests, and readiness). In all, the positioning of integration in what constitutes both work-integrated education and learning is illuminated and elaborated centrally.

Delineating WIL and WIE

The distinctiveness of what of what constitutes WIL and WIE is a worthwhile starting place. Despite these two constructs being ontologically and epistemologically distinct, they are often and erroneously conflated. So, it is important to make their distinctions clear. Without such a delineation there is the risk that this conflation will continue, leading to confused, incomplete, and unhelpful conceptions. For instance, as is already the case, what is often referred to as lifelong learning in the academic (Schuller and Watson 2009), governmental, and popular discourse is rarely focused on learning, but instead on the provision of educational experiences across the adult life course, i.e. lifelong education. As elaborated (Billett 2010), this conflation is unhelpful as there are major differences conceptually and procedurally between the provision of educational experiences to achieve intended goals, which is an institutional fact (Searle 1995), and the learning that individuals do across their lives through everyday interactions and activities, which is a personal fact (Billett 2009a). The same goes for WIE and WIL. Hence, limitations here include that learning experiences outside of those that constitute lifelong education (e.g. taught courses in educational institutions) are not valued, supported, or seen as being legitimate in the ways that are those educational provisions.

As foreshadowed, WIL comprises individuals’ experiences and integration of experiences in work and educational settings as personal processes of reconciliation and change. As a personal fact (Billett 2009a) these can only be understood from individuals’ experiences, perspectives, and processes of experiencing. This is because these arise ontogenetically in person-dependant ways: through individuals’ personally specific sets of experiences across their life course (Wertsch and Sohmer 1995). These pre-mediate or earlier experiences shape individuals’ ontogenetic development that arises moment by moment, and are the bases by which they subsequently engage with what they experience. That engagement can be described as micro genetic development or microgenesis (Scribner 1985; Wertsch and Sohmer 1995) as individuals confront and mediate both novel and familiar experiences. Importantly, this learning is nothing more or less than change in what people know, can do, and value as realised through ‘experiencing’ (i.e. the processes of construing and constructing experiences) and is person-dependent processes as both ontogenesis and microgenesis are inherently individually distinct (Billett 2003). Given that these experiences and individuals’ responses to them and, consequently, what they know (i.e. conceptual knowledge), can do (i.e. procedural knowledge), and value (i.e. dispositional knowledge) arise in ways that are, by degree, personally distinct or unique, they need understanding from the personal perspective. Indeed, as Newman, Griffin, and Cole (1989) remind, it is important to acknowledge that multiple goals occupy each individual at any given moment that reinforces the person-dependant nature of their experiencing.

So, across the life course (i.e. ontogeny) and through ontogenesis, not only do individuals have different kinds of experiences, but how they come to experience and construe and construct knowledge through them are personally distinct. This explains why individuals having the ‘same’ experiences construe them and construct knowledge from them differently. As Gergen (1994, 269) proposes:

As people move through life … we are continuously confronted with some degree of novelty—new contexts and new challenges. Yet our actions in each passing moment will necessarily represent some simulacrum of the past; we borrow, we formulate, and patch together various pieces of preceding relationships in order to achieve local coordination of the moment. Meaning at the moment is always a rough reconstitution of the past, a ripping of words from familiar contacts and their precarious insertion into the emerging realisation of the present.

WIE, in contrast, is a mode of education comprising the provision of experiences in both education and work settings and, sometimes, intentional efforts to integrate them. These programmes are intentional in their organisation and enactment as directed to address educational outcomes derived from societal institutions such as professional bodies, trade unions, or governmental prescriptions. They are also shaped by what is selected by educational institutions and those who teach, what can be provided, and the constraints of and availability of specific kinds of experiences to be provided through educational institutions and programmes: the available curriculum (Marsh 2004). So, importantly, education comprises the intentional provision of experiences, usually to achieve specific goals, and how what is intended is enacted through educational settings or programmes. These comprise institutional facts: those arising from society and exercised through social institutions and agents (e.g. administrators, educators, instructional designers with particular social purposes; (Searle 1995).

So, each of these constructs has distinct ontological premises, purposes, and processes. Their epistemological premises are also distinct in terms of, on the one hand, WIL as individuals’ moment-by-moment meaning-making (i.e. microgenesis) based upon their ontogenesis (i.e. development across an individual life course) that has shaped what they know, can do, and value. On the other hand, is the provision of experiences intended to achieve institutional goals (WIE). Also, the process of integration is central to both WIE and WIL, albeit having quite distinct forms and ontological orientations. It also highlights the distinctions between social affordances and personal engagement.

Central role of integration for both WIE and WIL

The integration of experiences – the ‘I’ word – is a central and salient consideration for the effectiveness of both WIE and WIL (Billett 2015; Cooper, Orrel, and Bowden 2010; Ellström 2001). Engaging students in activities provided in and through both educational and work settings represents distinct and worthwhile educative experiences, including securing specific learning outcomes (e.g. developing occupational capacities, readiness to working life, identifying occupations/specialisms) that might not be otherwise possible. Their contributions are more than ‘work experience’, or reinforcing and refining what has been taught and learnt in the academy. It is clearly not sufficient to merely provide students with work placements with particular, often specifically limited in the particular kinds of experiences they provide (Billett 2015): they need to be augmented and integrated to be generative of securing intended legacies to optimise their educational worth, including intentionally integrating and enriching their separate contributions. This can be realised through individuals’ reconciliation of those experiences (as in WIL) and/or the intentional provision of educational experiences to achieve that outcome (as in WIE).

Whilst acknowledging their importance, it is also necessary to be clear about what constitutes conceptions of integration and how it can be secured, educationally. Indeed, the integration of work experiences was central to earlier debates questioning the worth of educational processes and outcomes that were not adaptable to circumstances beyond schooling (Resnick 1985). This led to conceptions of transfer being expanded to account for the social circumstances of knowledge and its applicability to circumstances different from where the knowledge was acquired (Pea 1987), and the need to intervene, educationally, to achieve that outcome (Perkins and Salomon 1988), as negotiated by the learners (Beach 1999; Lobato 2012; J. Lobato, Rhodehamel, and Hohensee 2012). Key educational innovations emphasising engaging students actively in integrating experiences from one experience to another were fundamental to the cognitive apprenticeship movement (Collins, Brown, and Newman 1989), reciprocal teaching (Palinscar and Brown 1984), and Resnick’s (1987) projects that demonstrated the usefulness of integrating children's practical knowledge in the learning of maths. Central here is acknowledging the duality that comprises the processes of engaging and reconciling, what the social world affords (i.e. its invitational qualities), and how individuals (i.e. students) engage with what is afforded them (Billett 2001).

Importantly, educational experiences such as providing work placements and efforts to integrate them (i.e. WIE) are merely invitations to change. There can be no guarantee that what is afforded individuals will be engaged with and appropriated as is perhaps intended or quite the opposite (i.e. WIL). What for one individual might be a problem-solving activity worthy of time and effort and seeking elegant solutions, to another is a process of trial and error (Posner 1982) to complete a task which might not be perceived as relevant to their learning or important to their sense of self. So, the integration of what is afforded (e.g. WIE) and how individuals come to engage with it (i.e. WIL) is central to these dualities of institutional and personal practices Scribner (1984) proposed these as how sociocultural and psychological analysis could be integrated to advance explanatory accounts of how ‘basic mental processes and structures become specialised through experience’ (13).; through these means, working intelligence could be understood, she proposed.

Such considerations are well aligned with curriculum concepts. WIE can be viewed as the ‘intended’ (i.e. what is supposed to be the intended process and outcomes) and ‘enacted’ curriculum (i.e. what is implemented); WIL can be viewed as the ‘experienced’ curriculum (i.e. how students construe and construct meaning from what they experience, Marsh 2004). Such delineations of curriculum concepts are quite consistent with the ontological differentiations that have carriage through both WIE and WIL.

Educational efforts focused on integration

Consistent with the ontological distinctions between WIE and WIL set out above, what counts as the integration of experiences is quite distinct across these two concepts. For WIE, it is the organisation and provision of experiences in and through both educational and workplace settings and then intentional efforts to secure an integration of those experiences. These intentional efforts were featured in cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, and Newman 1989) and reciprocal teaching and learning processes (Brown and Palinscar 1989; Palinscar 1990; Palinscar and Brown 1984), all of which proposed that some form of guidance was preferred over direct teaching, once initial or foundational capacities had been secured through instruction and modelling. Similar approaches were advanced for achieving critical outcomes from educational experiences, with Mezirow (1985) proposing that central to that criticality was how students generate new understandings and act on them through such integrative processes.

For WIE, these processes can comprise briefings prior to students engaging in work placements, supporting them during those placements and then engaging in post-practicum interventions to assist students to compare and appraise their respective experiences and intentionally direct those processes towards educational goals. For instance, across a series of projects, there were identified and evaluated specific educational interventions that need to occur before, during, and after practicum experiences. Those prior to practicums included briefing about the requirements for the work to be undertaken (J. M. Newton and Butler 2019), familiarising with the physical and social environments that students were likely to encounter (Molloy and Keating 2011; J. Newton et al. 2011);, and providing them with specific capacities, so that they were able to contribute into those work settings (Billett 2015). It also found that during the practicum experiences, it was often necessary to provide additional support, particularly for students engaged in work that could be personally and professionally confronting (Cartmel 2011) or where the demands of the work and the scale of the organisation required that they had some support and guidance available in and through their work (Williams et al. 2019). One conclusion from these studies was that once the students had engaged in or completed their practicums, it was necessary to find ways of assisting them to optimise those experiences and directly link them to programmes of study in which they are engaged (Grealish et al. 2019). These post-practicum events can take a range of forms and have quite distinct purposes (Billett et al. 2019; Billett et al. 2020), ranging from opportunities for students to compare, contrast, and appraise their experiences and to draw out commonalities and differences from what they had experienced to understand something of the diversity of the occupational practices in which they would engage upon graduation (Cardell and Bialocerkowski 2019; Forde and Meadows 2011). There were also processes that sought to directly link what they experienced to the development of specific capacities (such as being able to give oral presentations about patients’ cases) which are a requirement for practice (Levett-Jones, Courtney-Pratt, and Govind 2019), and opportunities for students on rotation across different work areas (e.g. medical students, nurses; Steketee, Keane, and Gardiner 2019) to be reminded of and to re-engage with wards and specialisms from earlier in their course.

In these ways, the provision and sequencing of intentional educational experiences (i.e. work placements, practicums) are aimed to align with specific educational outcomes (e.g. smooth transitions to work, developing canonical occupational knowledge). This involves identifying and enacting educational processes that intentionally seek to augment, and intervene and make specific contributions to addressing these educational goals. This could be realised by organising these experiences in ways that are commensurate with the needs of time-jealousy in students (e.g. seeking to optimise the practicum experiences). This includes processes of gauging students’ readiness to engage in specific kinds of practicum activities; for instance, as mentioned above, having interventions associated with what might be most helpful for students before their practicum (e.g. promoting readiness, advance organisers), during it (e.g. support, guidance, and safe environments), and after it (e.g. post-practicum interventions). The classical practicum arrangements associated with structured experiences in healthcare and education settings are often accompanied by supervision by more experienced practitioners. Yet, these are not always available in a range of occupations. Hence, other educational programmes are required when either the quantum of students needing practicum experiences, or the circumstances of their requirements, mean that demands of supervised placements are impractical, or beyond workplaces’ reach to provide (Billett 2015).

In these circumstances, options other than supervised placements are required and these need to be organised and augmented by educators. This could include utilising students’ paid work experiences, their part-time jobs, or even voluntary work to be engaged as sets of experiences from which understandings about the world of work and, perhaps, specific occupational capacities could be derived, shared, critiqued, and compared. Collaborative efforts are likely means for optimising these educational experiences, as long as quests for consensus do not inhibit fully exploring differences and contradictions (Fischer et al. 2002). In addition, there can be structured opportunities for coming to understand the requirements for work practice and the environments in which it is undertaken that are quite distinct from engaging in supervised placements. For instance, some healthcare facilities offer experiences that are deliberate engagement strategies (e.g. ‘walk throughs’, open days, visits, observations) to inform potential employees or workers about the range and kinds of occupational practices that are available in those facilities. The concern here is that whilst some healthcare occupations are familiar, there are many others that are not visible or engageable as doctors and nurses, for instance. Hence, opportunities for visits and observations become part of what can be afforded by workplaces or educational institutions to inform, provide experiences, and make aware of the requirements of work across a range of settings.

These educational efforts are important for providing practice-based experiences that can assist students in learning about the requirements of those occupations and/or working life. In this way, they are affordances – invitational in quality – that aim to provide experiences and understandings through the activities and interactions that they furnish and encourage students to come to engage with. This then represents what has been described as a social suggestion (Wertsch and Tulviste 1992) – what the social world is suggesting to these students as one side of the duality between affordances and engagements. The other aspect of these dualities is the basis by which learners come to engage with and reconcile what they experience, that is, their personal processes.

Personal processes of reconciling experiences

The personal processes of individuals reconciling what they experience within and across both work placements and educational settings are foundational to explanations of cognition, learning, and human development. In essence, they comprise personally directed, engaged, and mediated processes of meaning-making and reconciliation. This has been well understood within accounts of human development over time, and within both social and individual constructivist perspectives. Across both perspectives, similar processes have been identified and articulated. The genetic epistemologist (Piaget 1976) and the constructivists that followed propose that people are drawn to making sense of what they experience, which Piaget cast as their quest for equilibrium. That process generated different kinds of processes and legacies for cognition, referred to as assimilation and accommodation, that are, respectively, aligning what is experienced with existing cognitive structures and the generation of new cognitive structures to respond to novel experiences.

Hence, processes referred to elsewhere as new learning, and then the honing and reinforcement of those experiences, are captured in these two concepts that are fundamentally about integration, as Piaget (1976) explicitly stated in Behaviour and Evolution. Cognitivists have advocated schema theory – modifiable cognitive structures used to represent what we experience as people try to integrate new information (Glaser 1984), with Tomasello (2014) referring to these efforts as simulations that include using existing knowledge to fill in gaps in what is being experienced. The radical constructivist von Glasersfeld (1987) adopted a more ontogenetic (i.e. from individuals’ prior experience) perspective in proposing that individuals’ existing knowledge was superordinate to what is perceived through the senses. Yet, securing viability remained central to what drives the constructive explanations of responding to what is experienced (von Glasersfeld 1987). This is also aligned with what Van Lehn (1989) proposed as securing equilibrium from what has been experienced. Vygotskian perspectives emphasise interactions mediated by social forms, practices, and artefacts, including language, the development of which arises through those interactions, thereby privileging or making the suggestions from the social world more superordinate (Vygotsky 1978). Regardless of whether their emphasis is ontogenetic or sociogenetic, these accounts emphasise the active construction of meaning by the individual, who is in some senses pressed into doing so because otherwise what they experience would not make sense. So, consistent with both individual and social constructivist perspectives, the engagement with what is experienced is, to some degree, necessary and compelling as an imperative for individuals to comprehend and include what they are encountering within what they know, can do, and value.

This personal process of meaning-making, however, is far from linear, outwardly predictable, uncontested, or unproblematic. It is interdependent in complex and multifold ways. A study of metal machinists learning to operate computer numerically controlled lathes (Martin and Scribner 1991) indicated that the integration of these new requirements, including symbolic knowledge, differed between those who knew how to manually control lathes and those who knew and understood computer programming. It can be a demanding and effortful process, which Sweller (1990) cautioned can impose a heavy cognitive load, even leading to dissonances when what is being encountered is so novel as to be overwhelming (Royer, Mestre, and Dufresne 2005). Indeed, as part of that process of engaging with what is being suggested by the social world, Valsiner (2000) proposed that individuals need to actively ignore much of what is being suggested to them, otherwise they would be overwhelmed by experiences.

To guarantee relative stability of the personality system, it has to be well buffered against immediate social suggestions. The latter may be filled with dramatisms, hurtful efforts, or declarations of love or hate (or both) yet likelihood of such single episodes having long-term effects of any direct kind need not be taken for granted. Hence, what is usually viewed as socialisation efforts (by social institutions or parents) are necessarily counteracted by the active recipients of such efforts who can neutralise or ignore a large number of such episodes, aside from single particularly dramatic ones. (Valsiner 2000, 393)

Analogously, averting gaze, the deliberate process of looking away to minimise or manage more effectively the suggestions being directed towards individuals when they are engaging in cognitively demanding tasks offers another example of personal epistemological practices (Glenberg, Schroeder, and Robertson 1998).

These personally mediated process of engaging with and reconciling the suggestion of the social world emphasise how individuals engage with what they experience. From a sociocultural perspective, Wertsch (1998) advanced the processes of mastery and appropriation. Mastery refers to superficial engagement with what is experienced socially and, in particular, when what is being suggested does not align with their interests, needs, or readiness. This engagement is directed towards being socially compliant, rather than being driven by personal commitment. Consistent with Leontyev’s (1981) initial formulation, Wertsch (1998) referred to appropriation as being full-bodied engagement with what is being experienced, particularly when there is alignment between the individual's beliefs and values and what they are experiencing. So, in these ways, it is being proposed that whilst being compelled to engage with the suggestion from the social world, individuals also have means and devices for managing their engagement with that suggestion. Ultimately, individuals’ readiness, what they know, can do, and value, and the ways they exercise that readiness is central to their ability, interest, and quality of engagement with reconciling what they are experiencing within and across those two distinct physical and social environments (Billett 2015). This includes the exercise of individuals’ agency based on their readiness, interests, and personal imperatives that shape how they direct their efforts when construing and constructing knowledge. This is perhaps best captured by the concept of intentionalities (Malle, Moses, and Baldwin 2001). That is, what directs the focus, direction, and intensity of human cognition when engaging in tasks such as engaging in activities and interactions, and efforts to reconcile two sets of experiences as per the process of integrating experiences in both practice and education settings.

Noteworthy, this process (and outcome) is what Vygotsky referred to as the zone of potential development (Wertsch and Tulviste 1992), which is quite different from the popular zone of proximal development, most likely developed by Bruner. Vygotsky's concept of the zone of potential development is shaped by the interest, excitation, and agency of the learner; he exemplified this by referring to how children learn through play (Valsiner 2000). This is ontologically and epistemologically distinct from Bruner's concept of the zone of proximal development that emphasises the scope of learning being promoted by joint problem-solving with a more experienced partner (Wertsch and Tulviste 1992), which is what is afforded by WIE. Certainly, the concept of the zone of potential development captures well the scope of learning promoted when the student is actively engaged in the thinking and acting process because they see it as interesting, energising, and worthwhile.

All of this is the terrain of WIL. Importantly, and of direct relevance to considerations of relations between WIE and WIL, the zone of proximal development is defined as the distance between the learner's actual developmental level, as determined by independent problem-solving, and a higher level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Vygotsky 1978), which is reflective of WIE. But, in following these precepts, WIE and what it affords needs to be aligned more with the level of potential development than with the level of actual development; that is, pressing learners, rather than instructing or teaching them.

Post-practicum programme and projects

This explanatory backdrop provides the basis for the analysis of a range of projects that focused on how to realise the integration of the two sets of experiences after students have engaged in them: post-practicum. These projects were part of a teaching and learning grant that incorporated 19 Australian universities and a total of 40 projects in the two-phase programme across over 20 discipline areas. In the first phase, 20 projects from the health and social care sector engaged in piloting different ways of integrating the two sets of experiences, post-practicum, in year-long processes. These projects each had their own specific educational focuses and purposes and employed distinct post-practicum processes in seeking to reconcile the two sets of experiences in addressing specific educational concerns identified by each research team (Billett et al. 2019). The processes and outcomes of this first round of 20 projects were shared with another group of university teachers from a range of disciplines outside of, but including, health and social care. That sharing occurred through a two-day dialogue conference during and after which the second-phase participants designed and set out to enact their own year-long or more post-practicum projects, influenced by the health and social care projects (Billett et al. 2020). Much of the focus of these projects was on the provision of educational experiences aiming to realise specific educational goals (i.e. WIE), although some gathered specific data on students’ engagement with and learning outcomes from these practicum processes (i.e. WIL). Through an analysis of the processes by which students came to engage across these projects and integrate experiences afforded through their practicums, as captured in the two edited volumes, it was possible to identify five bases that shape their active engagement in these processes. These bases offer a means to understand how the process of integrating experiences can be advanced through both WIE and WIL as two distinct processes.

Students engage with and integrate what is afforded to them

Analyses of project processes and outcomes across the two phases of the post-practicum programme identified five bases that illuminated and elaborated how the students participated actively in the processes of engaging and integrating the experiences through their practicums. These were likely to be representative of them exercising agency, excitation, and effortful engagement of the kinds that addressed their potential for development, and were instrumental in reconciling their experiences:

1. Initiating and sourcing work experiences/placements

2. Agentic and purposive engagement

3. Appraising experiences against personal goals

4. Comparing, contrasting, and critiquing work placements, part-time work experiences, volunteering, or work experiences

5. Initiating engagements with others about potential occupational preferences.

In the following sections, these five bases are briefly described.

Initiating and sourcing work experiences/placements

Whilst in many fields of occupational practice, work experience and placements are sourced by placement officers within tertiary education institutions, in other cases, it is necessary for students to actively seek out and source work experiences for themselves. That sourcing requires agency and strategies to identify places in which practicum experiences can be organised and with whom in those work settings the students need to engage to secure those experiences. For instance, students seeking work placements in information technology, engineering, vocational education, and hospitality are more likely to source their own placements than those studying in fields such as healthcare, education, or social work, where often the placement arrangements are more codified and organised on an institution-to-institution basis. Securing placements in this way likely requires students to be agentic, focused, and active in identifying relevant work settings, making contact, and negotiating the nature of their placements. These kinds of placements may lack the institutional support and traditions of novice engagement that would be found in healthcare settings, schools, and social work agencies.

Agentic and purposive engagement

Overall, when students engage actively and purposefully in their activities and interactions, the likelihood of rich learning is enhanced as the constructive process of generating the higher order and strategic outcomes requires effortful engagement (Glenberg, Schroeder, and Robertson 1998; Resnick 1987). It is this active engagement and excitation that Vygotsky's concept of the zone of potential development captures, from his observations of children at play: through their own excitation and engagement (Valsiner 2000). As proposed above, intentional and effortful engagement is central to developing the kinds of capacities needed for seeking out, accessing, and constructing the kinds of knowledge required for expert performance. This arises through the active engagement, mediation, and appropriation of knowledge (Wertsch 1998). This is of the kind that is more likely to arise from learning-related activities than those that are taught, although these can be helpful to make accessible knowledge that is hard to access and to assist the learners in going beyond discovery efforts alone (i.e. through proximal guidance by more informed partners; Vygotsky 1978).

Appraising experiences against personal goals

The outcomes of purposeful engagement and learning are most likely heightened when the learning is intentionally directing their thinking and acting towards achieving personal goals, as in appropriation (i.e. the active mediation and acceptance of what is being experienced) (Wertsch 1998). That is, the activities that individuals elect to engage in are goal-directed in relation to the kinds of knowledge that they need and/or want to learn, rather than what others might want them to learn. Rehearsing the concept of appropriation, the alignment between personal imperatives and what individuals are asked to engage with by educational institutions or workplaces is likely to be important for how they come to engage in and learn through these experiences (i.e. superficially or effortfully). So, the ability of WIE provisions to inform, advise, and guide those experiences in ways aligned with realising students’ goals is likely to be central to how students come to participate and integrate the two sets of experiences in these programmes. That includes, prior to practicum, making explicit how that experience might be aligned with the achievement of those goals, preparing them for being able to participate in ways to achieve those goals (Billett 2015). Monitoring those experiences whilst students are participating in them, and the ability to explicitly identify and reconcile what they have experienced in terms of achieving those goals after the programme has been completed, are ways in which WIE provisions can be effective.

Comparing, contrasting, and critiquing work placements, part-time work experiences, volunteering, or work experiences

Whilst the provision of experiences such as organising work placements and then some kinds of post-practicum interventions are important, ultimately what matters is how and to what degree students engage in the active process of comparing, contrasting, and critiquing the experiences they have had and their relationship to the educational goals to which their programmes of study are directed. Here is an example of where appropriation, rather than mastery (Wertsch 1998), is likely to be salient; that is, an effortful process of comparing practicum experiences across and amongst the student body, identifying the contrasting factors, and appraising why these experiences are different across instances of work practice. Then, having the capacity to provide a critique of these experiences can lead to the kinds of understandings, procedural capacities, and dispositions that will assist students in translating what they know, can do, and value to their employment circumstances post-graduation (Billett et al. 2019, 2020), that is, enhancing their capacities to be ‘job ready’. Realising that there are distinct ways of working and manifestations of occupational practices based on the exigencies of work settings are likely to be helpful bases for understanding the different goals, processes, and ways of working that students will encounter on graduation. However, mastery – superficial engagement – might lead to little more than realisation of difference.

Initiating engagements with others about potential occupational preferences

Whilst emphasising personal qualities of agency and intentionality, effortful engagements, and focused goal-directed activities, it is also important to acknowledge how interactions with interlocutors, as partners or more experienced participants, are likely to be helpful and, in many instances, essential to secure knowledge that arises through history, culture, and situation and is possessed by those who have had the opportunity to appropriate that knowledge earlier and the opportunity to test its viability, strengthen its associations, and make effective its procedural qualities (i.e. achieving goals). Emphasising these personal practices is to adopt not a highly individualistic orientation to engagement and construction of knowledge, but rather one that is shaped through interactions with others from whom knowledge that is sociogenetic (i.e. arises from the social world) can be engaged and constructed.

Integration as an element of WIE and WIL

It is these five qualities that were evident in the projects that comprised the post-practicum grants referred to above. In Tables 1 and 2, six examples of these projects are summarised and their alignment with both WIE and WIL is set out in distinct columns to the right of the titling of the project. In the centre column are presented the elements of WIE, and in the right-hand column, WIL. The central column describes the various interventions utilised in those post-practicum events, whereas the right-hand column indicates how students came to engage and for each instance, references made to how ways in which some of the five elements are evident in the constructive actions of the students. Table 1 refers to projects associated with speech pathology, dietetics, and medical students; Table 2 provides examples from medicine, midwifery, and occupational therapy. It should be noted that because these projects are all from within healthcare, the first basis is not represented. Central to these examples is (a) the integration of those experiences as elements of the intended and enacted curriculum (WIE), and (b) individuals’ active integration and reconciliation of what they experience (WIL); that is, the intentional enactment of educational experiences, on the one hand, and their experiencing by students, albeit in particular ways depending on the particular institutional circumstances (e.g. the absence of the first basis in these examples), on the other.

Table 1. Speech pathology, dietetics, and medical education (from Billett et al. 2019).

Title	WIE	WIL
Bouncing forward: a post-practicum workshop to promote professional identity, self-efficacy, and resilience in master of speech pathology students (Cardell and Bialocerkowski 2019)	Bouncing forward workshop Timing: 2-hour post-practicum workshop following students’ 12-week practicum at the end of Trimester 1 in Year 2 Aim: To increase students’ understanding of the three constructs of professional identity, self-efficacy, and resilience at a deep, meaningful level by drawing on their own practicum experiences as a reference point and an anchor for their learning Format: 4 stages: (i) introduction, (ii) construct modules (i.e. professional identity, self-efficacy, and resilience), (iii) integrated clinical dilemma activity, and (iv) closure summary and action	2-3-4-5 Involved groups of 6–8 students: Identifying clinical dilemmas during practicum, describing initial reactions (feelings and behaviours) to these situations, describing strategies taken to resolve situations and reflections on their effectiveness considering other potentially helpful strategies and reflection to identify what could be done differently Shared their dilemmas and responses to the larger group, followed by whole-class discussion
The reflective debrief: using students’ placement experiences to enrich understandings of distinct kinds of nutrition and dietetics practice (Williams et al. 2019)	The reflective debrief Timing: a 90-minute session Aim: to provide a staff-facilitated opportunity for students to reflect formally and collectively on their hospital placement experiences and to explore the implications for future dietetic work Format: a 2-stage process including (i) critical incidents reflected on by participants and discussed in small groups with trained facilitators, followed by (ii) a large, facilitated group discussion on themes arising from small group discussions and linked to future practice implications	2-3-4-5 Each group member generated one or two critical incident reflections on their hospital experience, verbally explored the situation with the group, discussion of actions and possible alternatives Trust and confidence established in the small group sessions as the foundation for the next session engaged by the entire cohort synthesising key themes
Clinician peer exchange groups (C-PEGs): augmenting medical students’ learning on clinical placement (Harrison et al. 2019)	Clinician Peer Exchange Groups (C-PEGs) Timing: fortnightly sessions throughout a clinical placement Format: a 30- to 40-minute activity of five students with relatively open-ended topics for discussion Aim: creating a safe learning environment for students to share content that matters to them; this helped to engage the students in the process of engagement in an authentic and natural way	3–5 Shared an experience and/or a particular learning point from the previous couple of weeks on the ward One or two groups shared an item from their small group with the whole group of about 25 students, with some commentary from the teacher

Table 2. Medicine, midwifery, and occupational therapy.

Title	WIE	WIL
Consolidating clinical learning through post-rotation small group activities (Steketee, Keane, and Gardiner 2019)	The modified clinical debriefing tutorial (MCDT) Timing: 6 MCDTs delivered to final-year medical students Format: 2-hour MCDTs in the presence of an experienced clinician – small group, clinician-led conversational sessions Aim: to augment student learning during clinical placements	2-3-4 Identified a complex professional issue during clinical rotations Prepared a structured case presentation of the issue Identified and discussed potential management strategies during the tutorial Shared and debriefed clinical rotation experiences
The continuity of care experience and reflective writing: enhancing post-practicum learning for midwifery students (Sweet, Graham, and Bass 2019)	Post-practicum structured reflective writing: self-awareness, evidence of sources of knowledge, reflection and critical reflection, evidence-informed practice and critical thinking, and style Timing: required for midwifery students at all year levels Format: structured written reflections Aim: to augment post-practicum experiences	2–3 Evaluated the experience to reassess and identify what has been learned, and what this means for the future Critically reflected on ideas, assumptions, and feelings, to question what, when, how, where, who, and why Adopted critical stances in relation to the journey of becoming reflective practitioners
The preferred method of reflection for occupational therapy students during and after clinical placements: video, written or artistic? (Gribble and Netto 2020)	Methods of reflection Timing: third-year occupational therapy students Format: written, video, or an artistic format Aim: to determine the preferred method of reflection and the benefits and problems with each format	2-3-4 Shared assessment and intervention ideas, discussed challenging scenarios, debated ethical dilemmas, verbalised their clinical reasoning, and learned from each other and occupational therapist who facilitated the tutorials selected a topic from a list of 32 or created own topic, identified and described critical incidents or significant event occurring in clinical placement that related to the topic in a reflective task using the medium of their choice, i.e. written, video or artistic (e.g. painting, drawing, dancing, or song)

WIE/WIL: affordances and engagement in action

In sum, the utilisation, augmentation, and integration of students’ experiences in both educational and workplace settings is likely optimal when structured experiences constituting WIE provisions can be aligned with and effectively support the engagement, experiencing, reconciliation, and appropriation of the process of experiencing that constitutes effective WIL. Rather than considering one or the other, or on their own, at best, the integration efforts of both educational institutions and individuals need to be aligned as being necessarily interdependent and actioned accordingly. Hence, WIE needs to provide invitations to learners to engage effortfully and deliberately through the provision of experiences and guidance and in ways that prompt them to engage in appropriating what they need to learn. Exercising this duality offers a basis for the educational worth of ‘work-integrated learning’.

Consequently, to realise its educational goals, the project often referred to as ‘work-integrated learning’ necessitates advancing integration efforts and supporting students’ engagement with them. This requires accommodating conceptions and practices of integration from the perspectives of both WIE and WIL. Viewing what has become labelled as ‘work-integrated learning’ from the perspectives of WIE and WIL seems essential, and this is supported by consideration of what has been referred to above as the zone of both potential and proximal development. This includes considerations of how the intended and enacted curriculum (WIE) will be designed and enacted and the selection of specific pedagogic practices that can best assist students in reconciling their experiences (WIL), and in ways that are generative of broader and adaptable understandings. Here, these are held to extend beyond those intended and enacted by educational institutions and educators, to those outside and beyond them. Ultimately, the duality of what is afforded and engaged remains a central premise for explaining the means of proceeding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).