How to enhance employability and workplace practices in tranaltion/interpreting programs?

This element is very crucial in educational systems that strive to deliver significant outcomes in society. Employability is used in / by many institutions which strive hard to adjust its programs with the world of work. So, programs get reviewed internally and externally to improve contents, pedagogies and other educational practices. The quest for improvement is ongoing. And so it should in these complex and unstable times.

I presume in classical higher education contexts( particularly university level ) programs, concepts such as ' employability' ; 'workplace practices', 'technology', 'market', ' experiential learning and training' and professional practices' are less welcome and, usually, looked at with a suspicious eye, above all in the human and social sciences.

Yet, these 'ghost' concepts may be integrated in our programs smoothly should there be an intention / leadership to innovate and engage in professional developments schemes. For instance, one should :

- See case studies using professional training modes of instruction and see if he or she can transfer one or more of these practices into the discipline. These can be imported from Business and management sciences.

- Read about what is written on the didactics of his or her discipline. You cannot be good in pedagogy without being trained and constantly reflecting on your classroom ( online or in-class) practices. One could get inspired of active / action-based methods in teaching & learnings sciences that enhance learning/teaching companies and engage students accordingly.

- Take a course on Teaching in a university context itself or on Andragogy to see the dynamics of teaching adult students and how they learn. Andragogy is not pedagogy. Professionally oriented disciplines are not the same like traditional and human or socially oriented disciplines. In other words, involve and engage in the scholarship or teaching & learning.

Our colleagues in the humanities and other disciplines ( apart from educations sciences) always seem to look down upon any pedagogical element in their practice; yet, it is a fact that nowadays in higher education, that this specific element becomes necessary. Things have changed in the world of the ivory towers!!!  ' the professional', ' the pedagogical' and the 'technological'  will prevail...much more after COVID time! . Content does not have the monopoly and prestige it used to have along the previous 200 years or so! since the emergence of the new university model of education.

A case in point, and this could apply to any other field, In the field of translation & interpreting, we witness the same scenario. Kiraly ( 1995, 2000, 2006, 2016) made a huge revolution in the field of applied translation studies . He made sense to the teaching and learning ( pedagogy) of translation. Before him, there were no such systematic ways of organizing translation classrooms.

Discussing course/program developments in an other way. The 'how to'?

Many authors with long work experience in teaching translation/interpreting in the Arab world (Atari 2012,  Ferghal 2009, Taibi 2016, Mehrash 2003) alarmed the community on the big gap existing in not only curriculum design but also development and implementation in the case of translation/interpreting programs.  In our review of literature and practices in the region, we observed that the curriculum practices in many translation units/departments at many Arabic universities are carried out exclusively by a committee whose baseline /core scholarship is barely in the field of translation studies, and barely have 'pedagogical 'know how' and 'know what' in their discipline specific didactic. Arguing about either moving, adding or deleting courses is an old pattern of curriculum development and discussion. You can notice that when discussing with colleagues  little reference is given to:

- What the scholarship of training , learning and teaching in a university context says
- What the scholarship on translation and interpreting pedagogy says ( that included findings from recent studies on similar issues in other countries)
-What the profession or market needs ( results from surveys, interviews, focus groups)

- Students profiles and needs ( results from surveys, focus groups, interviews)

- Employers needs( results from surveys, focus groups, interviews)

- What translation pedagogy says about curriculum practices at various levels of curriculum development , design and implementation in various countries and cultures. What are the principles and criteria to based one's decision on the 'how' and 'what' in a classroom context?

Our dear colleagues argue out of mere inherent experience, intuition and relying on ad hoc criteria. No frameworks to refer to and no evidence to base the arguments on. Things need to change. curriculum review or discussions need to be taken seriously and proper training in teaching and learning scholarship, including curriculum theory and practice should be given to these colleagues to align their reasoning with evidence based arguments.

Curriculum practices in a higher education context may be divided into three models : the theoretical and academic ( what we do in our universities since more than 90 years), the professional approach and the eclectic approach ( which we should do in a university context with more focus on the professional part in postgraduate programs ) ( see calvo, 2011 ).

When discussing curriculum parctices , reference to scintific literature as wellas department or personal specific needs is important