WIL-Power: Towards a Signature Pedagogy in Journalism

Abstract

Capstone courses in undergraduate education, especially in professional schools such as journalism, usually try to teach students to think and perform like the future practitioners they intend to become. Internships, practice-based subjects, work experience courses—they all aim to bridge the students’ knowledge from the largely theoretical to the urgently practical; knowledge that will be essential in the workplace, whether it’s a doctor in a hospital, a lawyer in a courtroom or a teacher in a classroom. Shulman’s ground-breaking insight was to articulate these as Signature Pedagogies and to define them clearly in three dimensions—to think, to perform, and to act with integrity—just as experienced practitioners in the field are doing. This article contends that overseas Work Integrated Learning (WIL) courses such as those examined here, conducted by the researcher for the University of Queensland (UQ), are a Signature Pedagogy because the student participants are required to behave, think and perform ethically, just as foreign correspondents must do.