Dr Elizabeth B Knight
Career Development, Vocational & Higher Education Practitioner Researcher
I'm Lizzie - a researcher and career development practitioner interested in how tertiary education engages in the labour market, taking a sociological perspective. My work concerns equity of access to, in and from post-school education. Much of my research is connected with my work in tertiary institutions for the last twenty years as a career counsellor, disability support worker and academic registry. I have particular focus on the provision of institutional information and support for transition into post-compulsory education.
This site presents current projects I'm working on, things I've been working on recently and details of my work and career. My work is themed around five key programs of work which are interlinked but distinct: Access to career information; Support for educational access; Place based institutional engagement; Qualification & product reform and Career transition and employability.
Currently working on a forthcoming book related to the work with a contract with Palgrave for 2023 publication!
This book is based on funded research (Collier Fund) project (read about it here) looking at career information barriers for young people living in care settings with Dr Emma Colvin, CSU.
Global edited book collaboration co-lead with Dr Belgin Okay-Somerville, University of Glasgow investigating how career thoughts in school impact wellbeing. The proposed book aims to extend our understanding of young people’s wellbeing and school-to-work transitions from an interdisciplinary perspective, by exploring the concepts of career thoughts (e.g., perceived employability) and wellbeing in a number of country contexts in order to consider the role of agency and structure in labour market entry.
This book was published April 2022 explores new and distinctive forms of higher vocational education across the globe, and asks how the sector is changing in response to the demands of the 21st century. Examining a range of geographic contexts, the editors and contributors aim to address these contexts and highlight various similarities and differences in developments.
Current projects
Inclusive Vocational Training
I was awarded a 2022 International Specialist Skills Institute Fellowship to investigate how VET practitioners can be better supported to understand how to create inclusive environments for students with disability.
Focusing on vocationally oriented programs linked to specific occupations, I will investigate how curriculum and pedagogy can be organised to ensure they are inclusive and uphold UDL principles. Read more about the Fellowship here.
Trauma-sensitive career practice
Working with Australian and Canadian experts, this project will provide insight into career development frameworks of practice that can be used by career development practitioners and educators across school settings who work alongside young people with experience of trauma. It will draw on current research in a scoping review to see where the gaps are and also conduct a policy analysis one site of practice, Australia, to establish if trauma-informed approaches are enacted within policies and practices of career development.
Sustainability & Career Development
I am collaborating with Dr Mary McMahon, University of Queensland on this program of works which investigates ideas of career guidance and sustainability. It exhorts the field to take a role in leading critical conversations about sustainable development and the world to come. Moving towards a neutral emissions labour market and sustainable development as described in the 17 goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a complex systems problem to which everyone on the planet has a role to play in addressing.
Forthcoming projects...
These are some of the work I'm developing at the moment - please do get in contact if you're interested in finding out more!
Career information
One of my core interests is the investigation of how career information is produced and used in educational and labour market transitions and my doctoral research focused on how higher education institutions have changed over the period of massification.
Employability
As a career counsellor with experience and interest in higher education a key stream of work has been developing understanding on employability, much of this work has been in collaboration with Professor Dawn Bennett of Bond University. I continue to work on this area.
Research on student parents and pregnancy
After completing a project on Students as Parents in 2022 for the Australian National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education with colleagues from La Trobe and Charles Darwin University this is a developing area of academic work.
Place based conceptual research
The importance of place in tertiary transitions is of increasing focus and in 2022 I was part of a major project looking at how skills and jobs interact with local communities and institutions in the reports Skill Needs in the West of Melbourne and its follow up Strategies for Skills and Jobs in Melbourne's West.
Work on Adult Career Guidance
Along with Professor Siobhan Neary of International Centre for Guidance Studies we are developing a program of work looking at the current and future needs of Adult Career Guidance.
Secularism and public education
A focus on the explicit and encoded purposes of education directs this work with Dr Naomi Barnes of QUT and Dr Melanie Myers of University of Queensland. One article was recently published and we are working on another.
Higher education narratives of transition
Working with a team led by Professor Sue Webb arising from an Australian Research Council Discovery Project 2017-2020 I'm writing up research that investigated how decisions were made by individuals in novel forms of higher education, particularly the growing field of Bachelor's degrees in TAFEs.