From WIL1 to work ready: Evaluating the student-learning continuum, a qualitative study

This paper presents the preliminary findings of an ongoing qualitative study investigating the experiences of students, practitioners, and educators in the placement of students within professional practice and outlines the subsequent implications for professional education. This includes an evaluation of a pedagogical model for work integrated learning (WIL) within the built environment and design disciplines, and its relationship to the student-learning continuum. This research aims to address a gap in current knowledge, which commonly views a student’s ‘transition into’ university and ‘transition out’ into professional practice as independent, static events. This paper argues that, rather than simply moving ‘into’ university and ‘out’ into professional practice, the student instead experiences a threshold transgression continuum. This is where the student and their learning evolves and transforms through the crossing-over between workplace and academia that occurs several times throughout their study. In attempting to better understand what it is for the student to transgress and transform, the role that WIL plays in the transition of student from learner to professional is questioned. Using an inductive approach based on grounded theory, this paper evaluates data extrapolated from a series of qualitative open-ended participant interviews with students, practitioners and academics and is collated and analysed using thematic analysis.