Expectations of Field Supervisors in Kenya: Implications for Community-based Human Service Practicums
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Community-based learning (CBL), which provides opportunities for undergraduate students to develop disciplinary and work-related knowledge and skills, is increasingly becoming an integral component of higher education. Similar to other countries, there is a widespread belief among employers in Kenya that there is a mismatch between university programs and labour market demands. In order to enhance the employability of graduates, many departments at a Kenyan university have incorporated work-integrated experiential learning opportunities such as practicums in the educational experience for undergraduate students. The aim of this article is to describe the expectations of field supervisors in host organisations participitating in a community-based human services program at a Kenyan University. Fifteen purposively sampled field supervisors participated in individual face-to-face interviews that included questions about their understanding of the department’s expectations of student learning activities during practicums, knowledge of the academic preparation of students in the program and challenges associated with the supervisory role. Six field supervisors exhibited some level of understanding of the expectations of their role in working with practicum students, while nine field supervisors indicated unclear expectations of the students’ practicum experience. Thematic analysis revealed key themes related to: (1) student abilities, learning goals and their contributions to the host organisations, and (2) the academic program of study and academic support available from the university faculty or staff to field supervisors. The results of our study revealed a lack of clarity around practicum expectations for most of the field supervisors interviewed and insufficient preparation of the community-based organisations to host a practicum student. Several recommendations are identified to clarify the expectations of community partner organisations and the staff providing student supervision to ensure benefits for both students and the host organisation. Results from this study can be used to inform the development or improvement of practicum opportunities focused on producing a skilled workforce.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".