Work Placements, Internships & Applied Social Research

Showcasing how you can use a work placement to develop your research and professional skills, this warm and personable book demonstrates how you can transfer and grow skills from your academic training to the workplace and maximise the benefits of learning by doing. The book also: * Helps you confidently navigate the entire internship process, providing reassuring guidance about key steps such as applying and interviewing for placements * Highlights the importance of practicing reflective learning and encourages you to become a reflective researcher * Empowers you to make an internship work for you, giving you key employability and workplace skills. Drawing on a range of real student voices, this pragmatic guide helps you make the most of the opportunities offered by a work placement and shows how the skills you learn will help you thrive in academia and beyond.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Chapter 1: Experiential learning and applied research Chapter 2: The benefits of experiential learning in applied social research Chapter 3: How to apply for a work placement or internship Chapter 4: How to prepare for, do and reflect on an interview Chapter 5: How to get through your first day Chapter 6: How to use a framework for reflection Chapter 7: How to develop your analytical and research skills Chapter 8: How to develop your professional skills Chapter 9: Using the work placement experience to inform continuing study Conclusion

About the Author :
Jackie Carter is a professor of statistical literacy at The University of Manchester. She co-directs the Q-Step Centre at The University of Manchester and leads the programme of paid internships which she established in 2013. In 2020 she was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by Advance HE, the UK professional body that oversees teaching and learning in Higher Education, for her work on making an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession in Higher education. She is also a Senior Fellow of Advance HE. She sits on the University of Glasgow’s Urban Big Data Centre’s Advisory Committee, the ESRC’s Strategic Advisory Network, and has previously held positions on various committees including with the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and SEDA (Staff Educational Development Association).  Jackie is passionate about giving students opportunities to develop their skills in the workplace. She draws on pedagogic research and was inspired by the work of Pablo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Her work in the UK is now being developed in Latin America through the EmpoderaData projects, working with universities in Colombia and Brazil to develop immersion activities for undergraduates to acquire research and analytical and professional skills in social research careers, whilst studying. Jackie has won numerous research and teaching grants in her career and focuses on bringing data into the classroom, and on helping students acquire research and professional skills in the workplace.

Review :
This book has lots of practical advice to help you get the most out of your work-placement – read it before you start applying! A helpful guide for students to consult before, during and after their placements. The chapters are written in a very engaging style, both authoritative and friendly, so it is easy to put a great deal of trust in the advice being offered. I also very much like the author’s little stories of how she has learned from her own experiences. They will help students think about their placement experiences in a new light or from different perspectives. Having the student narratives is very helpful in that regard, as they can learn from those experiences as well as having them to hold their own placement experiences up against. This book contains good examples of experiential learning and the emphasis on workplace learning and the possibility to achieve a successful internship / placement is made very real. The narrative is most supportive to those anxious about their first placement.