ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the placement situation, and in particular on some aspects of the anomalous role which students experience in organisations during their period of placement. A hasty reader might scan this chapter thoughtlessly and – seeing all the references to ‘ambiguities’ and ‘difficulties’ of the student’s role on placement – come to think that we are antagonistic to the placement element in educational courses. It is clearly necessary at this point to present definitions of the two kinds of ambiguity in the role of students during placements: the essential and the accidental. Essential ambiguities involve those problems of the placement role which are intrinsic to the very design of those courses incorporating placements. The firm may feel that the provision of placements is one way of discharging its social responsibility for training skilled professionals. The placement experience is an opportunity to get to know the ethos of industry, the feel of the workaday world.
