Personal, Social, Academic and Career Development in Higher Education

This book is about SOARing to Success: a pedagogy that engages individuals in a structured and supported process of personalised learning, leading to the development of transferable career management and employability skills.

The SOAR model (as it has come to be known and used) provides tried and tested ways for educators to implement Personal Development Planning (PDP), Career Development Learning (CDL) and employability agendas. The theoretical concepts and practical activities that are interpreted and integrated within SOAR require all learners to make meaningful dynamic connections within and between Self, Opportunity, Aspirations and Results, through inbuilt requirements for self-reflection, action and interaction, research, analysis and synthesis.

Especially relevant for regeneration in the post-pandemic world, this fully updated edition emphasises and addresses the needs to:

• focus more broadly on multidimensional employability, enterprise and entrepreneurship
• take account of post-Covid-19 educational and employment landscapes, changing labour market realities and employers’ technology-enabled recruitment methods
• engage proactively and positively with ways to strengthen resilience, health and wellbeing in ourselves and others
• tackle academic learning and assessments with digital research and information literacy skills
• be(come) adaptable and/or adaptive according to the demands of different contexts
• co-create (with social enterprise and business skills) a better world in which self-actualisation aligns with the actualisation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
• reflect globalisation in the internationalisation of higher education (HE).

Packed full of useful practical features, this text and its e-resources will help all staff and education development professionals, teachers in HE and advisers to motivate and enable students to relate their learning and achievements to the demands of life and work in our times.