  There is an increasing pressure for lecturers to work with two goals. First,
they need to ensure their undergraduate students have a good grasp of the
knowledge and skills of the intellectual field. In addition, they need to
prepare graduates and postgraduates for careers both within and outside of
academia. The problem addressed by this paper is how assessments may reveal a
shift of focus from a mastery of knowledge to a work-focused orientation. This
shift is examined through a case study of physics and the sub-discipline of
theoretical physics as intellectual fields. The evidence is assessment tasks
given to students at different points of their studies from first year to
doctoral levels. By examining and analysing the assessment tasks using concepts
from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), we demonstrate how the shifts in the
assessments incrementally lead students from a pure disciplinary focus to one
that enables students to potentially pursue employment both within and outside
of academia. In doing so, we also highlight the usefulness of LCT as a
framework for evaluating the preparation of science students for diverse
workplaces.
