Kevin Orr

Reflexivity in the co‐production of academic‐practitioner research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a reflexive account of the co‐production of a qualitative research project with the aim of illuminating the relationships between research participants.Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws upon personal experience of designing and conducting a research project into management learning, run jointly between an academic and a senior practitioner. The methodological issues involved and the reflexive dynamics of how the work of research collaboration is accomplished are considered.Findings – Engaging with radical reflexivity helps to produce insights about the co‐production process.Originality/value – This paper contributes to the field of reflexivity and is innovative in its context of academic‐practitioner research.

Dual identities: the in‐service teacher trainee experience in the English further education sector

Since 2001 there has been a statutory requirement for teachers in English further education (FE) colleges to gain teaching qualifications. However, in marked distinction from other sectors of education, around 90% of FE teachers are employed untrained, and complete their initial teacher training on a part‐time in‐service basis. Traditionally, this route has been necessary to attract established vocational practitioners into FE and to enable them to continue earning whilst undertaking their teacher‐training. Consequently, staff sustain the dual role of teacher and trainee teacher. This paper explores the dual identities of trainees on in‐service FE teacher training courses. It argues that how their two roles interact may cause tensions in their development, shaping and reinforcing a conservative understanding of further education and the role of the FE teacher.

Room for improvement? The impact of compulsory professional development for teachers in England’s further education sector

After years of neglect, the New Labour government has identified the further education (FE) sector in England as being the crucial means to achieve two policies at the centre of their project: social justice through widening participation in education and enhancing the skills of the nation’s workforce to compete in a globalised economy. This has led to FE and the staff who work there being more and more closely scrutinised and directed by the government, and from September 2007 teachers in FE colleges in England are required to participate annually in at least 30 hours of continuing professional development (CPD) in order to maintain their qualified status. This and many of the other government initiatives are associated with restrictive and impoverished notions of professionalism, but the sanctioning of CPD chosen and recorded by the staff themselves, rather than their employers, may allow room for a more meaningful and autonomous professionalism to evolve.

Conceptualising inclusive talent management: potential, possibilities and practicalities

This paper explores the possibilities and potential surrounding inclusive talent management in contrast to conventional normative treatments. By closely examining the meaning of ‘inclusive’ in relation to talent, the paper moves towards a definition of inclusive talent management which is contextualised in a four-part typology of talent management strategies which offers greater conceptual clarity to researchers working in this field. Our conceptualisation of inclusive talent management is further located in the traditions of positive psychology and the Capability Approach. The practical implications of introducing inclusive talent management strategies are considered.

HE in FE: vocationalism, class and social justice

The paper draws on the Wolf (2015) report (Heading for the Precipice: Can Further and Higher Education Funding Policies Be Sustained?) and other quantitative data, specifically that derived from HEFCE’s Participation of Local Area (POLAR) classifications. In addition it explores key literature and debates that associate higher education in further education (HE in FE) with the pursuit of social justice. This enables an interrogation of conceptualisations of vocationalism as well as a consideration of its articulation with class and gender. Whilst the paper is set within a particular and English socio-economic context, it addresses issues that have a much broader global significance. The paper argues that whilst HE in FE has limited traction in facilitating social mobility it does serve as a resource in the struggle for social justice.

Coping, confidence and alienation: the early experience of trainee teachers in English further education

This article examines what both in-service and pre-service trainee teachers learn from their early experience of teaching in further education (FE) colleges in England. Despite differences between in-service and pre-service trainees, that early experience is often characterised by isolation and lack of control over practice for both groups. Although trainee teachers may develop as a result of this experience of working in FE, a discourse that emphasises their growing confidence obscures how these trainees may not be enhancing their professional practice, but rather learning to cope with difficult circumstances. This article draws on data gathered between 2005 and 2009 from two separate projects, one that focused on pre-service, the other on in-service teacher education in FE colleges. It problematises the effect of this early experience and applies the Marxist concept of alienation to analyse the development of trainee teachers in relation to coping rather than learning to teach. As a partial counterbalance to the paucity of the early experience of many trainee teachers, the article concludes by arguing that teacher education for the FE sector should be directed towards increasing the autonomy of teachers and be constructed around a body of professional knowledge rather than the long list of statutory professional standards that shapes current provision in England.

Performativity and professional development: the gap between policy and practice in the English further education sector

The New Labour government identified the further education (FE) sector as a vehicle to deliver its central policies on social justice and economic competitiveness in England, which has led to a torrent of initiatives that have increased central scrutiny and control over FE. Although the connections between social justice, economic competitiveness and education are hegemonic in mainstream British politics, they are unfounded. Therefore, FE can only fail to deliver fully the government’s central programme. Thus, a gap exists between policy initiatives and practice in colleges even, paradoxically, where reforms are ostensibly successful. In order to illustrate this gap and how it is maintained this paper considers one specific reform: the statutory obligation for teachers in English FE colleges to undertake 30 hours of continuing professional development (CPD) annually. Evidence from small‐scale exploratory research suggests that this initiative has had little impact on patterns of CPD, though the government’s quantifiable targets are being systematically met. This paper argues that a symbiosis of performativity has evolved where the government produces targets and colleges produce mechanisms to ‘evidence’ their achievement, separate to any change in practice and thus maintaining the gap between policy and practice.

Local Government Chief Executives’ Everyday Hauntings: Towards a Theory of Organizational Ghosts

This paper develops a theory of organizational ghosts, a concept that describes the haunted and burdensome aspects of organizational life and in particular of leadership action. The concept of organizational ghosts is not offered as yet another metaphor, a lens through which to analyse particular organizations. Rather, I offer my discussion of ghosts as a theoretical concept that explains how inheritances of the past haunt the relations and struggles of the present. I tell a ghostly tale of the everyday leadership and learning practices of UK local government chief executives, and provide an exploration of organizational ghosts as a contribution to the growing interest in the action in the shadows, atmospheres, margins and boundaries of organizations. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of UK local councils, and embracing the multiplicity and heterogeneity of organizational ghosts, the paper considers the theoretical, political and ethical stakes involved in taking ghosts seriously. Its contribution is to show how ghosts are insinuated in organizations and to highlight leaders as figures who are both willing agents and uneasy hosts of hauntings, and to point to the mediating role of leaders in handling confrontations between the past, the present and the future.

Down and out at the British Library and other dens of co-production

As part of a searching for scholarly relevance, there is growing interest in how academics and practitioners might work together to produce knowledge. We offer reflections on our experiences as an academic and a practitioner co-creating a research project about leadership in UK public sector organizations. Using an autoethnographic approach we explore how we have engaged in becoming co-researchers, interactive processes which entail a multiplicity of identities and struggles with organizational and professional pressures. We suggest a way of thinking about academic-practitioner research interactions which emphasizes that, rather than forming a communion accomplished in a space beyond politics, they remain as situated and unsettling interactions. Our contribution is to offer a counterpoint to accounts of co-production which present collaborative research as a process of fusion; instead we portray it as involving relations between protagonists which are mutually constituting and uplifting but also at times disturbing and debilitating.

Dominant discourses of pre‐service teacher education and the exigencies of the workplace: an ethnographic study from English further education

The placement in colleges is a crucially formative experience for trainee teachers on pre‐service Further Education (FE) initial teacher training courses. A project at the University of Huddersfield researched these placements in four colleges in the north of England and the relationships that were formed between the trainees, their mentors, other staff and students. Where the trainees were placed and who they taught were often matters of expedience, and their individual circumstances were contingent upon diverse, often local, factors. As such, the picture that emerged of the lived experience of placement defied simple classification and explanation. Drawing on data gathered during the project this paper argues that the experience of placements is characterised by confusion, insecurity and marginalisation on the one hand and integration, enthusiasm and development on the other. Regardless of their individual experience, however, there is evidence that the trainees learnt to cope and even that messiness may be useful preparation for the unstable FE workplace. The paper problematises the developmental basis for placements and questions what constitutes a successful placement before considering how trainees can be best prepared to teach in the FE sector.