Learning for utopia: from banal to critical Work-Integrated Learning (WIL).

While long part of vocational and professional training, forms of practice-based education like Work-integrated learning (WIL) are now spreading to academic disciplines like Political Science. The pedagogical entailed in WIL is that student learning requires the theoretical knowledge and practice of both the classroom and the workplace, and therefore pledges better employability for graduates. At the same time, this promise entails a potential threat to disciplines that may call into question the assumptions of market and state relations. The question thus emerges: is it possible to do critical WIL, and what would it look like? This paper makes a normative case that a critical WIL is both desirable and possible by turning to Hanna Arendt and Richard Turner to differentiate 'banal' from 'critical' education. It further argues that any 'critical' educational programme must be based on three principles. First, students must learn about how social systems work and how to be successful in them, but they must also learn to critically reflect on the systems themselves, and to do so in normative terms linked to ending domination. Second, are students required to develop both the dispositions and attributes required for working life, and those required for acting to end domination. Finally, there must be sufficient institutional independence of the programme from its partner institutions to protect the critical WIL agenda. These claims are illustrated through reference to a real-world attempt to institutionalise WIL in a Political Studies Masters programme in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]