Degree Apprenticeships: The Boundary of UK Higher Education and Built Environment Employer Organisations

Abstract

Degree Apprenticeships (DAs) have been advocated as a way to partially address the skill shortage experienced amongst built environment (BE) professions. However, little is understood about how Employer Organisations (EO’s) in the Built Environment and Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) can engage effectively through Degree Apprenticeships. This work uses Boundary Object Theory to establish the essential conditions necessary when employer organisations and higher education institutions engage in Built Environment Degree Apprenticeships. Using an interpretivist approach, qualitative data were gathered from a series of expert focus groups following three lines of enquiry: the interrelationships and interdependencies of HEI’s and EO’s; the primary blockers and enablers that exist through the DA at its boundaries, and; the essential conditions needed to support the delivery of DAs. Primary data were organised using qualitative data analysis software, analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, and theorised using Boundary Object Theory. Thematic mapping illustrates the four essential conditions that are determined as necessary to support the delivery of Built Environment Degree Apprenticeships. These conditions of; 1) Onboarding, 2) Structure 3) Co-operation, and, 4) Infrastructure are then diagrammatically expressed in this work via the new Built Environment Degree Apprenticeship, or BEDA-Model. In addition to these knowledge contributions, this work furthers our understanding of Boundary Object Theory more generally through its application in a new context, i.e., examining degree apprenticeships in the built environment. The work also has the potential to contribute more practically, through the enhanced understanding of Built Environment Degree Apprenticeships that it affords. Specifically, application of the BEDA-Model can: increase structural alignments between HEIs and EOs; help facilitate transdisciplinary co-operative working across the domains of HEI and BE; and, provide a recommended set of regimes to be used by HEI’s and EO’s to support the delivery of the BE DA. Consequentially, whilst this work can aid collaboration between HEI’s and EO’s, it can also facilitate informed strategic investment into BE DAs by other stakeholders.

Date of Award	28 Mar 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Northumbria University
Supervisor	Barry Gledson (Supervisor) & Jack Goulding (Supervisor)