Learning through practice: A comparative study of student and graduate perceptions of learning to be and becoming a journalist

This study examines approaches to learning and teaching journalism through practice at two UK Higher Education courses accredited by the UK Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC).It explores how students and recent graduates from the two courses perceived their learning to take place and when, if at all, a professional identity as a journalist is created.Using the methodology of case study, it examines two examples of learning the skills of journalism through experiential and situated learning perspectives.The research identifies hands-on experience, making mistakes, repetition and reflection as ways in which students perceive their learning to take place. Hands-on experience and repetition also contribute to making students ‘feel like a journalist’. The study also identifies a sense of pride that develops in students as a result of creating a physical product. When this product is placed in the public domain, this creates a sense of reality and public responsibility which contributes to their professional identity. The research also explores the role of critical reflection in the learning process. It recommends a hybrid model of experiential learning for BJTC courses that embeds critical reflection in the industry-style production days, known as newsdays, to create flexible and adaptable graduates required by industry. Other recommendations for newsday providers that have arisen from this thesis include not assessing newsdays on content, blocking the days together and harnessing the public responsibility in students to create a real public service journalism. In addition, it recommends more training in preparation for internships before students are ‘thrown in the deep end’ and a careful framing of selective internships to avoid creating divisions in the cohort, recommendations that could potentially apply wider across other vocational disciplines in HE