The Role of LSP Education in the Context of Employability

Abstract

Croatian higher education institutions have witnessed considerable changes since the Bologna process was introduced in 2005. One of the most important tasks of LSP in HE is to help students succeed in job applications. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the current situation of LSP teaching and to see to what extent it has been adapted to student-centered approach. A survey was conducted at nine life science HE institutions and data for the survey were derived from a questionnaire that was administered in order to identify the position of LSP within the overall curricula, syllabus design, teaching methodology, assessment criteria, learning outcomes that develop desired competences, and students’ participation in the EU exchange programmes. The final part of the paper is concerned with the attitudes of LSP teachers toward obstacles and challenges in LSP teaching. The paper concludes that there is lack of harmonisation with respect to learning outcomes, ECTS number as well as poor cooperation with subject specialists in course design. Therefore, in order to develop mobility and employability capacity of Croatian life science graduates, LSP syllabuses should be better adapted to learners’ needs, labour market needs and general content of life science curricula.