This chapter explores the concept of work-integrated learning (WIL) and its philosophical and theoretical underpinnings. WIL belongs to the constructivism learning paradigm and taps into the philosophy of experiential learning, while supporting the notion of community engagement. The background section of this chapter gives a historical overview of WIL, the main section describes the concepts to help the reader understand the terms related to WIL, as well as the different frameworks available. Fundamental aspects of industry-academia collaboration are included in this chapter, with a proposed model of how WIL can be used to strengthen industry-academia collaboration. Lastly, the chapter includes recommendations on how the proposed model can be implemented, as well as areas to focus on for future research.
1.2. Background
Teacher-centred approaches, such as lectures, have been the predominant approaches used to convey course materials in university contexts. While these approaches may be useful in terms of rapidly imparting basic knowledge to classes with large numbers of students, they come with limitations related to the difficulty of imparting managerial and professional skills to students, as well as issues related to students’ motivation, interest in the course and task performance (Casado-Aranda et al., 2021). Around the world, changes related to moving away from, or minimising the use of, teacher-centred learning approaches have been proposed to improve students’ employability. The intention is to shift towards learner- or student-centred learning approaches. Importantly, there have also been extensions of learning from the classroom to outside the classroom, which involve exposure to industry or work settings for students so that they are able to gain experience and a real feel of the job market, thereby connecting theoretical knowledge with practice in an industry.
The history of WIL can be traced back to Herman Schneider, who implemented co-operative education in the late 1890s in response to a need for the integration of academically acquired knowledge and skills within workplaces in the real world context (Howard, 2004). Over the past 100 years, educationalists and researchers have embraced the value of WIL and have worked to improve this notion. A study that drew comparisons between in WIL in three countries (Germany, South Africa and Namibia) revealed that it is compulsory for most university technology courses and vocational programme to include WIL (Reinhard et al., 2016). Before major transformation which took place in the higher education systems, which also calls for training curricula to be transformed, WIL has been utilised for students registered in traditional academic qualifications such as nursing, teacher education, and engineering, due to the assumption that they most needed to put theory into practice. Since then, most countries have put national frameworks and prescriptions of WIL into their curricula, as well as requirements from accrediting bodies before registration and accreditation of the programme is done. However, it should be noted that structures of WIL activities differ according to the curricula and framework followed.
Since WIL takes place in the workplace or industry settings, there is a need to understand the relationship between industry and higher education. Therefore, the overarching aim of this chapter is to analyse and describe how WIL, as a model, can be used to strengthen industry-academia collaboration.