Work-integrated Learning (WIL) is renowned for providing a bridge between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ that fosters ‘employable graduates’. This study critically argues that the WIL discourse continues to ascribe a dualistic meaning to graduate employability that primarily contributes to creating the so-called theory–practice gap for students. As an argument towards such a conclusion, a genealogical discourse analysis of how the graduate employability idea operates in 87 present and past official documents concerning the Cooperative Education (Co-op) WIL model is used. Two accounts of graduate employability, the antagonistic practice acclaiming account and the harmonious theory and practice account, recur in both the present and past documents. Both accounts contribute to creating the gap, while the latter also contributes to bridging it. The non-dualistic account, which involves knowing that the key to becoming employable is understanding how both research-based and informal theory shape daily occupational work, could be a useful alternative to these accounts. This is because it could encourage students to see how theory is a form of knowledge manifested in, rather than disconnected from, this work. However, the usual WIL design, whereby universities and workplaces outside universities are respectively institutionalised as the places where ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ is learnt, is not so much instrumental in spreading this non-dualistic account, but rather implies to students that ‘theory’ is absent from daily work until they apply it. Thus, I discuss how establishing physical and/or virtual countersites to the usual WIL design could potentially spread this account to students.

工作整合学习（WIL）以在“理论”与“实践”之间架起桥梁来培养“可就业的毕业生”而闻名。这项研究批判性地认为，WIL话语继续赋予毕业生就业能力以双重意义，这主要是为学生造成了所谓的理论-实践差距。作为对此结论的一个论点，使用了关于87个当前和过去有关合作教育（Co-op）WIL模型的正式文档中毕业生就业观念如何运作的家系话语分析。毕业生就业能力的两个叙述，对立实践的赞扬叙述和和谐的叙述有关理论和实践的说明，请参见当前和过去的文档。两个账户都有助于建立差距，而后者也有助于缩小差距。非二元论者的帐户可以替代这些帐户，它涉及了解成为可雇用人员的关键是了解基于研究的理论和非正式理论如何塑造日常职业工作。这是因为它可以鼓励学生了解理论是如何在这项工作中体现而不是与之脱节的一种知识形式。但是，通常的WIL设计（将大学和大学以外的工作场所分别制度化为学习“理论”和“实践”的地方），在传播这种非二元论的说明方面并没有太大帮助，而是向学生暗示，“理论”是日常工作中所没有的，直到他们应用它为止。因此，我讨论了如何建立与常规WIL设计相对应的物理和/或虚拟对等站点如何可能将此帐户传播给学生。