Milan "Bicocca" Unit

The University of Milan Bicocca will analyze the transitions between study and work from the joint perspectives of students, university, and employers. The focus will be on:

• the multiple representations of graduate employability of different systemic actors (students, teachers, professionals, employers);
• “doing transitions” as a pragmatic socio-cultural approach that highlights the social construction of professional identity through myths, rituals, languages, and practices;
• the complexity and entanglements of transitional processes from and to university, students’ experience, trajectories and professional paths;
• the imagined and required skills, functions entrusted and tasks performed by pedagogists in an evolving world and different contexts (private/public, services, third sector organizations, enterprises, etc.). The latter also entails the effects of new regulations, such as the Decree 788, approved on 09/04/24.

Fieldwork will be conducted with narrative and participatory methods within and in collaboration with the LM57 (Training and Development of Human Resources) and LM85 (Pedagogical Sciences) degree courses at the Department of Human Sciences for Education "Riccardo Massa" and their external stakeholders.

The framework of this study is a critical, ecosystemic, narrative approach to education and learning; the concept of graduate employability will be reframed with a specific attention for dominant and marginal theories and constructs, dilemmas and tensions emerging from empirical research and published works, the role of critical reflexivity in supporting transitional and transformative learning, and the contribution of a systemic perspective (micro, meso and macro level) to a deep understanding of the learning and education processes entailed by employability and transition.