Preparing Students for Professional Life through Fostering their Self Worth during the Academic Research

KHIARI Nor El Houda & BOUGHANI Siha
Bejaia

Abstract:

Conducting research is very beneficial for autonomous learning, skills development and motivation. Furthermore, it is one among various ways that allow students apply their acquired knowledge and prove their capacities. The present study investigates how the graduation projects conducted in Master two degree raise the EFL students’ awareness about the value of their selves by having the opportunity to be more productive. It explores how such kind of positive self-belief and positive affect are significant in preparing the students to be more prolific in their professional life. In pursuance of this aim, we opt for an exploratory design, where a questionnaire is administered to 30 EFL students who have been graduated and are now engaged in professional life. In addition, an interview is conducted to collect more details. The findings show that the research projects enable the students to notice their competences and to discern their abilities. Therefore, engaging students in academic research helps them to develop their self-esteem, grow their self-respect, and identify the skills and abilities needed for any task. Thus, the efforts afforded during this research period push the students to recognize the worthiness of their selves and learn the importance of being productive in their lives.

Keywords: Academic Research, Research Projects, Self Worth, Self Esteem, Professional Life.

ملخص:

يعتبر إجراء البحوث مفيد جدا للتعلم الذاتي، وتنمية المهارات وتحفيز الطلبة على تعلم المزيد. علاوة على ذلك، هو واحد من بين الطرق المختلفة التي تسمح للطلاب بتطبيق المعرفة المكتسبة وإثبات قدراتهم. من أجل هذا، تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى تسليط الضوء على أهمية مشاريع الماستر -كمذكرة تخرج- في توفير فرص لطلاب اللغة الانجليزية كلغة أجنبية ليكونوا أكثر إنتاجية و كذلك لإثبات أنفسهم و إعدادهم ليكونوا أكثر فعالية في حياتهم المهنية و بالتالي هذه البحوث تساهم في رفع وعيهم حول قيمتهم الذاتية. لتحقيق هذا الهدف، اخترنا دراسة استكشافية باستعمال استبيان وزع على 30 طالبا من طلاب اللغة الإنجليزية كلغة أجنبية الذين تخرجوا و أدمجوا في الحياة المهنية بالإضافة إلى مقابلة أجريت لجمع مزيد من التفاصيل. نتائج هذه الدراسة بينت أن المشاريع البحثية تمكّن الطلاب من إدراك كفاءاتهم وتمييز قدراتهم. ولذلك، فإن إشراك الطلاب في البحوث الأكاديمية يساعدهم على تطوير احترامهم لذاتهم وتحديد المهارات والقدرات اللازمة لأي عمل أو وظيفة وبالتالي، فإن الجهود المبذولة خلال فترة البحث تدفع الطلاب إلى التعرف على أنفسهم و احترام ذاتهم و كذلك لإدراك أهمية انجازاتهم.

INTRODUCTION

Many students at the secondary school level think that learning is meaningless due to the kind of studies they receive which is just theoretical and does not meet their wishes to be engaged in real life experiences. In higher education, learners are engaged in research projects which push them to feel more active and productive. Higher educational institutions usually require their students to do research, especially at their graduation years, as a preparation for their employability and professional future. Unfortunately, many students feel that doing a research is an academic activity just to get their certificate and diplomas. Moreover, they fear to get through this process believing that they are not yet competent to be responsible for a project that requires both a mastery of knowledge as well as an ability to apply theories empirically. So, the practical skills are not the only ones that matter for conducting research as well as in employability. Facts like the psychological and effective readiness and mainly the positive self-view and self-image are very important for students to be engaged in any project.

LITERATURE REVIEW

  1. EMPLOYABILITY, EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS AND HIGHER EDUCATION

The existence of many fields of vocations and jobs lead to the appearance of different definitions to the word ‘employability’. For Mason, Williams and Cranmer (2006) Employability refers to “work-readiness” from the employers’ point of view, the need to possess a set of the required skills, the needed knowledge and the appropriate attitudes and commercial understanding are the key elements towards a successful contribution to the organization being employed in. Yorke (2004) has defined employability as “A set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy” (cited in Bhola & Dhanawade, 2013). Employability, thus, requires a set of competencies in the field and these skills should be formulated and trained upon during their higher education.

There are many attempts to clearly define the Employability Skills. Both the Dearing report (1997) in the UK and the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) Skills frameworks are among the most influential works about employability skills (Bhola & Dhanawade, 2013; Mason, Williams & Cranmer, 2006). Dearing’s (1997) employability skills involved: Communication skills, Numeracy skills, IT and Learning how to learn. Moreover, the ASTD model was developed to encompass the following skills: Basic Competency Skills, Communication Skills, Adaptability Skills, Developmental Skills, Group Effectiveness Skills and finally Influencing Skills (cited in Bhola & Dhanawade, 2013). These skills, thus, should be fostered in Higher Education through designing and developing curricula and syllabi which are based on these skills development. Carnevale, Gainer & Meltzer (1990) elaborated the SEVEN ASTD employability skills that the employers want. The skills are:

1. Learning to learn: This enables them to exploit different and efficient learning strategies that, according to the employers, help the workers to: “absorb and apply training more quickly, saving their employers’ money and time”. With this skill, employees become more productive and most importantly innovative (Carnevale, Gainer & Meltzer, 1990, p.17-18).

2. Reading Writing and computation: Both writing and reading are significant in any vocational field. Computation is related to the ability of the employee to compute and calculate. Although this skill seems less important compared to reading and writing, it is highly demanded by employers because the new technologies are based on this skill (p.18-22).

3. Communication skills (listening and oral communication): these skills are highly needed for interaction between individuals and/or organizations. These two skills enable the employees to be successful in the following domains: Interviewing, Making presentations at or conducting meetings, Negotiating and resolving conflict, Selling, Leading, Being assertive, Teaching or coaching others, Working in a team, Giving supervisors feedback about conversations with customers, and finally Retraining (Carnevale et al., 1990, p.25).

4. Adaptability: Creative Thinking and Problem Solving: these two skills are highly required in any field. The problem solving is related to the ability of the workers to spot, recognize and define the problems and then finding appropriate solutions. The creative thinking is related to rational and logical thinking to be able to understand the problems and to be innovative (Carnevale et al., 1990, p. 29)

5. Personal Management (individual effectiveness): this involves Self Esteem, Goal setting- Motivation, Employability and career development. As the employee is very important in the work, his moral, psychological and affective sides are very important too. The positive personal management leads to a higher productivity as it manifests a smoother integration of the individual in his work and pushes them to work to their full potential (Carnevale et al., 1990, p.30).

6. Group Effectiveness: this involves Interpersonal, Negotiation and Teamwork skills. Skills like knowing how to deal within inter-persons and negotiate and work in teams and having the sense of group purpose are very crucial in the vocational field. These interpersonal skills help the employees, since they work in organizations, to cope with the situations, absorb the undesirable behaviors, stress and anxiety etc. the teamwork helps to achieve quickly the goals because there is a collaboration among the employees to accomplish at once the group purpose. Finally, negotiation helps in building constructive interpersonal relationships, it helps in problem-solving and trust building in the team (Carnevale et al., 1990, p.31-32).

7. Influence: Organizational Effectiveness and Leadership: it deals with the understanding of the organization’s culture and how it works. This skill enables the employee to determine the forces and the factors that may cause any challenge to the organization and that may stop it from reaching and accomplishing the task. The understanding of the organization may put the employee in its center and in its lead (leadership) because he/she can spot the problem and solve it individually or in a team. The leadership skills foster a sense of reliability, peers’ respect and create conditions for succeeding in reaching the organization goals (Carnevale et al., 1990, p.34).

These seven skills are highly demanded in any vocational domain as they awaken practical and personal abilities afforded to achieve the organization’s aims. This is why developing these skills is very important. Further, employability skills are not always practical ones. The personal attribute and the personal image are important components of employability skills. These personals start with the inner self-recognition and a clear and positive self-image. This is what Lankard (1990) confirmed by saying “Employability skills include personal image, interpersonal skills, and good habits and attitudes” (cited in Bhola & Dhanawade, 2013). This introduces us to the second research variable which is ‘self-worth’.

  1. SELF WORTH AND SELF-ESTEEM: FROM RESEARCH TO EMPLOYABILITY

The review of the literature related to self-worth showed that it is related and very close to the meaning of self-esteem and they are used interchangeably in various contexts. Self-esteem, which is one of the oldest concepts, was firstly introduced in 1890 by the American psychologists William James (as cited in Crocker and Luhtanen, 2003) who suggested that people are selective about the domains on which they stake their self-worth, concluding that “our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do” (p. 703). For some people, their value may depend on being attractive, loved, or good at school; for others, it may depend on being virtuous, powerful, or self-reliant. This is why people seek out situations and engage in activities which they consider as opportunities to achieve success and feel their worth (Pelham & Swann, 1989).

Branden (1992) believed that basing one’s self-worth on academic performance is a powerful motivator for academic success. Other researchers including Crocker and Luhtanen (2003) believed that students who do so will focus on performance and have high grades to prove their worth rather than studying for sake of learning itself. The self-worth theory of academic achievement motivation argues that students who base their worth on more externally controlled factors are associated with “high levels of effort but more anxiety, maladaptive coping with failure, decreased persistence, decreased intrinsic motivation, lower levels of goal attainment, and the absence of the increase in well-being associated with attainment of intrinsic or internalized goals” (Covington, 2000, as cited in Crocker and Luhtanen, 2003, p. 705).

Many research works emphasize the role of higher education in fostering Employability Skills and helping learners build their self-worth. Learners should keep in mind that basing self-worth on academic performance in not a problem. The mistake is when searching for self-worth by comparing themselves to others which we consider as ‘fighting in a losing battle’. The healthy thing is to challenge ourselves; to know the unique qualities that differentiate us from the others, to know our strengths and focus on them and know our weaknesses and work on them. We have to build our sense of self on our own accomplishments. We have to compare ourselves to how we were months ago and feel satisfied with our achievements. We have to keep working and to go for bigger goals to keep our success growing. For us, as researchers, a true sense of self-worth can be fostered by practising self-comparison rather than comparing ourselves to others or being self-critical. Therefore, there are different ways that enable students to acquire and apply the aforementioned skills, yet, they should first learn how to be independent, autonomous and self-reliant. These features can be acquired in higher education mainly when the learner is a slot in a work related to his/her needs or interest. This is mostly found in the research projects where the learners choose to work on topics of their interests and their choices.

METHODOLOGY AND RESULTS

1. SAMPLE AND POPULATION

This study targets the EFL learners who are graduated and engaged in professional life. The Sample consists of 30 students from OUM EL-BOUAGUI and BEJAIA University who are now teaching or working in agencies. 70% of the participants are holders of Master Degree and the others are Ph.D. students or holding Magister Degree. 83% of them have conducted research only at master two level and others at ‘Licence’ degree or at both levels. Even though 54% of the participants have been obliged to make research, 97% of them have chosen a topic of their interest.

2. DESIGN & METHODOLOGY

This research is exploiting exploratory design for the sake of investigating the EFL Learners attitudes towards the impact of research works on developing their self-worth and how this feeling and research projects help them to be engaged into the employability life in a smoothie way.

In pursuance of this aim, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. We opt for an online questionnaire of 21 items exploring our three variables. In addition, in order to obtain details about the inquiry, we decide on an interview with 6 student-employees. The interview consists of 6 questions that explore the main questions of our study.

3. THE RESULTS

3.1 THE QUESTIONNAIRE

In order to know the importance of academic research in developing the employability skill, we asked the participants to select the benefit(s) they have acquired while conducting their research paper. Most of the participants believed that conducting research helps them be responsible and develop academic writing, representing the highest percentages 73% and 70% respectively. Being autonomous received the second highest percentage (60%) followed by both developing selective reading and being pro-active which in turn received 53% with 16 participants. The (23%) goes to developing interpersonal relationships. The other options have been selected by less than half of the participants with percentages ranged between 43% and 27%. Finally, only 3% of the participants suggested another quality that can be gained from conducting a research project, which is ‘perseverance’.

Figure 1: The Frequencies chosen by the participants concerning the benefit(s) they have acquired while conducting research paper

The participants were asked to answer 9 questions in the form of a Likert-Scale. The results are summarized in the table below.

Table 1: A Summary of the Participants’ Answers of the Likert-Scale

The participants were asked an open-ended question (On which basis do you believe that you are worth or worthless for a given job?) and they have written various answers, yet the majority do share approximately the same bases on which they base their worth. First, most of the responses have in common the idea that one’s abilities, competencies, educational and intellectual qualities, background knowledge and professional experiences, especially those needed for a specific job, are the most important criteria according to which we can say s/he is worth or worthless for the job. Besides, some participants evaluate their worth according to the outcomes and the results they achieve, believing that the addition they bring to the classroom or to the workplace will affect the way students and colleagues treat them. Moreover, one of these participants states that “active persons and hard workers are worth for any given job”; however, the workplace conditions and obstacles encountered should be taken into consideration. In addition, a few participants mentioned that the sense of responsibility, motivation, patience, the love towards the job, ethics and high morals and values are imperative for any job.

All in all, the questionnaire was used in order to know the learners’ attitudes towards whether the academic research helps the learners to recognize the worthiness of their selves as a step towards the employability world. The results show that the research period is really beneficial to learners to acquire a lot of things not only what concerns the knowledge and the competencies, but also their character, affect and psychological state. The participants show that during the hours of their work recall things that they have learned during their research. The success in the research period pushed the learners to know how much they are competent and to know what they can do and what they cannot.

3.2 THE INTERVIEW

Six participants have been interviewed (a semi-structured interview) in order to obtain more details about their attitudes towards the importance of the research works on developing self-worth. The results obtained are described in the forthcoming part.

All the interviewees believed that conducting research helped them (1) recognize the value of themselves (their self-worth) and (2) helped them integrate into their job in a right way. Although they provided different explanations for their claims, an interesting point is that some of them gave similar views; they agreed about some points such as:

  • Conducting research made them autonomous, more confident, motivated and patient.

  • It helped them think critically and creatively.

  • During that period, they got rid of stress, shyness and anxiety and they acquired skills like flexibility and effective communication as the most needed skill for teaching that was learnt during the period of conducting research.

  • They try to make what they have learnt during their study year applicable in their teaching sessions.

  • Selective reading is a necessary skill for conducting research: Skimming, scanning and the SQ3R technique are useful reading strategies the participants mentioned.

  • They acquired how to accurately use computer and software like Word, Excel, SPSS, in addition to surfing the net.

DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS

The learners’ ultimate aims when arriving at university is acquiring the needed knowledge, skills and competencies that prepare them to be integrated into activities which make them acquainted with real-life situations and face the new challenges they may encounter in the employability world. Higher education in Algeria requires students to conduct research works where they need to spot problems in their fields of interest then suggest and test the presupposed solution. This process, if well implemented, would act as a motivator for students as it matches their wills and wants. EFL research, in particular, engages students in educational, linguistic, ESP or literature problems and issues which are supposed to be treated within the students’ future professional environments. Such kind of activities would foster the learners’ creative and critical thinking and their problem-solving skills. Therefore, the recognition and then the acquisition of these competencies result in fostering the EFL learners’ self-worth as they come to know their abilities and capacities that could be very beneficial in their future professional life.

The present piece of research investigates how research projects foster EFL learners’ Self-Worth as a first step towards being engaged in the employability world. The participants were employees who had conducted a research during their Higher Education. Both the interview and the questionnaire reveal that the students’ self-worth is developed throughout the academic research period which in turn prepared them to be engaged in their professional life. The analysis of the gathered data revealed that most of participants recognize the importance of research in preparing them for their jobs and vocations and also demonstrate the qualities that learners acquired during the research period that helped them engage with their works smoothly, such as autonomy, responsibility, motivation, academic writing, selective reading, communicative and interpersonal skills, creative and critical thinking, problem-solving skills and many others. Moreover, Academic research helps students foster their personal characteristics and traits. Most of the participants stated that they became more aware of their personal value, they acquired personal management skills, and they became able to control negative affective factors. If we revise the employability skills developed by the ASTD model, we find most of them are cited by the participants as being developed during the academic research period. From here we can conclude that conducting research projects prepares the students to acquire skills, build competencies and to be prepared psychologically.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND IMPLICATION

Through the results obtained by study, we come to make some suggestion, derive some conclusions and suggest some implications. These are summarized in the followings:

  1. Success can be achieved by being aware of personal capacities and applying it in experiences. Consequently, it is highly demanded to start research early. This may be applied through the adoption of Project Base Instruction where students are supposed to accomplish some small works in different learning subjects.

  2. The research projects are very important not only in developing employability skills but also in fostering a sense of responsibility and self-reliance which are very indispensable in any work or vocation. Therefore, it is widely demanded to engage the students in research projects to help them foster the autonomy and independent learning among EFL learners.

  3. The psychological and affective factors are very important in shaping the learners’ success. So, it is suggested to take into account this side of the learners in any educational decision (like the choosing the teaching method, learning activities …etc.)

  4. Self-worth is the source of self-esteem and self-confidence and many other psychological and affective factors (like motivation); therefore, teachers should take a careful care in how to foster this characteristic.

  5. The professional life is the target of the students; thus, it is important to know how to make teaching based on the learners’ needs; this would foster their self-worth and help them to recognize their value.

These are main implications that can be derived from the whole study; however, the topic needs to be investigated deeply through experimental designs to be able to infer and generalize the results to larger populations.

CONCLUSION

The graduation research project is the first work experience for students to test their abilities. Since learners have conducted research related to their area of interest, they were engaged in problems that are related to their future employability environment. They have learnt that they are able to face challenges, to suggest a solution, to test them, to correct them and most importantly to learn from them. Through accomplishing the whole work with their own efforts, the students became well acquainted with how much they are capable and most importantly valuable. Through this experience and with all these achievements, students became aware of how worth are their selves; thus they can be engaged in work without being anxious or having low self-esteem, but with a high self-worth.

REFERENCES

Bhola, S. S. & Dhanawade, S. S. (2013). Higher Education and Employability- A Review. SSRN Electronic Journal. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarang_Bhola/publication/256048757_Higher_Education_and_Employability_-_A_Review/links/55d350de08ae7fb244f58653/Higher-Education-and-Employability-A-Review.pdf

Branden, N. (1992). The power of self-esteem. Florida: Health Communication Ink.

Carnevale, A. P., Gainer, L. I, & Meltzer, A. S. (1990). Workplace Basics: The Essential Skills Employers Want. San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers. Retrieved from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED319979.pdf

Crocker, J., & Luhtanen, R. (2003). Level of Self-Esteem and Contingencies of Self-Worth: Unique Effects on Academic, Social, and Financial Problems in College Students. The Society for Personality and Social Psychology PSPB, 29(6), pp. 701-712. doi: 10.1177/0146167203252881

Frascati Manual: Proposed Standard Practice for Surveys on Research and Experimental Development’ (2002)

Mason, G. Williams, G & Cranmer, S. (2006). Employability Skills Initiatives in Higher Education: What Effects Do They Have On Graduate Labour Market Outcomes? Education Economics, 17(1), 1-30. Retrieved on March 29th, 2017 from: http://www.niesr.ac.uk/pubs/DPS/dp280.pdf

Pelham, B., & Swann, J. (1989). From Self-Conceptions to Self-Worth: On the Sources and Structure of Global Self-Esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(4), 672-680.