Maggie Gregson

Modernisation and the Role of Policy Levers in the Learning and Skills Sector.

This paper examines the changing use of policy levers in the English postcompulsory education and training system, often referred to as the learning and skills sector (LSS). Policy steering by governments has increased significantly in recent years, bringing with it the development of new forms of arms‐length regulation. In the English context, these changes were expressed during the 1980s and 1990s through neoliberal New Public Management and, since 1997, have been extended through the New Labour government’s project to further ‘modernise’ public services. We look here at the changing use of policy levers (focussing in particular on the role of targets, funding, inspection, planning and initiatives) over three historical phases, paying particular attention to developments since the formation of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in 2001. We conclude by considering the range of responses adopted by education professionals in this era of ‘modernisation’.

Endless change in the learning and skills sector: the impact on teaching staff

This paper explores the impact of change on tutors and managers in 24 learning sites in England, in vocational courses at Level 1 or Level 2 1 in further education (FE) colleges and in basic skills provision in adult community education and workplaces. We discuss the views of these participants in the research project, The Impact of Policy on Learning and Inclusion in the Learning and Skills Sector, funded through the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) of the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), in relation to other research on professionals in the sector. We then consider in turn the diversity in a group of tutors and managers we interviewed; their perceptions of the sources of change in their sector; and changes in the learner groups with whom they work. Three examples of changes affecting staff, and their responses to those changes, are then discussed, one from each of the research contexts: FE colleges, adult and community learning (ACL) and work‐based learning (WBL). We raise serious questions about the pace of policy‐led change, the management of change and professionals’ responses to turbulence in the sector, and stress the need to consider the impact on staff, and to listen to those who work closely with learners.

Thinking Skills frameworks for use in education and training

This article details findings from a systematic review and evaluation of frameworks and taxonomies for understanding thinking, with particular reference to learning in post-16 contexts. It describes the means used to identify and evaluate 35 frameworks and identifies three that appear to be particularly useful in the context of lifelong learning. In the light of this analysis, a schematic integrated model of thinking is outlined and discussed.

How policy impacts on practice and how practice does not impact on policy

The TLRP project reported on in this article attempts to understand how the Learning and Skills sector functions. It traces how education and training policy percolates down through many levels in the English system and how these levels interact, or fail to interact. The authors first focus upon how policy impacts upon the interests of three groups of learners: unemployed people in adult and community learning centres, adult employees in work-based learning and younger learners on Level 1 and Level 2 courses in further education. They focus next upon how professionals in these three settings struggle to cope with two sets of pressures upon them: those exerted by government and a broader set of professional, institutional and local factors. They describe in particular how managers and tutors mediate national policy and translate it (and sometimes mistranslate it) into local plans and practices. Finally, the authors criticise the new government model of public service reform for failing to harness the knowledge, good will and energy of staff working in the sector, and for ignoring what constitutes the main finding of the research: the central importance of the relationship between tutor and students.

‘The heart of what we do’: policies on teaching, learning and assessment in the learning and skills sector

One of the stated aims of government policy in England is to put teaching, training and learning at the heart of the learning and skills system. This paper provides a critical review of policies on teaching, learning and assessment in the learning and skills sector over the past five years. It draws upon data collected and analysed in the early stages of an ESRC‐funded Teaching and Learning Research Programme project. 1 Using evidence from policy sources, we argue that despite policy rhetoric about devolution of responsibility to the ‘front line’, the dominant ‘images’ that government has of putting teaching, learning and assessment at the heart of the learning and skills sector involves a narrow concept of learning and skills; an idealization of learner agency lacking an appreciation of the pivotal role of the learner–tutor relationship and a top‐down view of change in which central government agencies are relied on to secure education standards.

Riding the waves of policy? The case of basic skills in adult and community learning in England

This paper draws on data from secondary sources and in‐depth interviews to explore the question: What is the impact of policy on teaching, learning, assessment and inclusion in Adult and Community Learning (ACL) Skills for Life (SfL) provision? In particular, it focuses on the government’s use of five policy‐steering mechanisms—funding, inspection, planning, targets and policy initiatives (in this case SfL). The design of the study allows us to use evidence from four sets of interviews with teachers, learners and managers of ACL in eight sites of learning (four in London and four in the North East) over a period of 26 months of considerable policy turbulence. We argue, first, that there is a symbiotic relationship between ACL and SfL provision; and second, that while the combined effects of targets and funding have the most powerful effects on tutor and manager actions, inspection, planning and tutors’ and managers’ own professional values also have an important role in shaping the teaching of literacy and numeracy in ACL sites. We conclude by suggesting that professionals at the local level should be allowed to play a greater role in SfL policy‐making to ensure effective policy and practice.

Mediation, translation and local ecologies: understanding the impact of policy levers on FE colleges

This article reports the views of managers and tutors on the role of policy ‘levers’ on teaching, learning, and inclusion in colleges of Further Education (FE) in our research project, ‘The impact of policy on learning and inclusion in the Learning and Skills Sector (LSS)’. Using data from five research visits conducted over two years in eight FE learning sites, we explore the processes by which colleges ‘mediate’ and ‘translate’ national policy levers and how this affects their ability to respond to local need. The paper tentatively develops three related concepts/metaphors to explain the complexity of the policy/college interface—‘the process of mediation’, ‘acts of translation’ and ‘local ecologies’. We found that policy levers interacted with a complex set of national, local and institutional factors as colleges responded to pressures from the external environment and turned these into internal plans, systems and practices. We conclude by suggesting that national policy‐makers, who design national policy levers, may not be fully aware of these complexities and we make the case for the benefits of greater local control over policy levers, where these interactions are better understood.

Learners in the English Learning and Skills Sector: the implications of half-right policy assumptions

The English Learning and Skills Sector (LSS) contains a highly diverse range of learners and covers all aspects of post‐16 learning with the exception of higher education. In the research on which this paper is based we are concerned with the effects of policy on three types of learners—unemployed adults attempting to improve their basic skills in community learning settings, younger learners on Level 1 and 2 courses in further education colleges, and employees in basic skills provision in the workplace. What is distinctive about all three groups is that they have historically failed in, or been failed by, compulsory education. What is interesting is that they are constructed as ‘problem learners’ in learning and skills sector policy documents. We use data from 194 learner interviews, conducted during 2004/5, in 24 learning sites in London and the North East of England, to argue that government policy assumptions about these learners may only be ‘half right’. We argue that such assumptions might be leading to half‐right policy based on incomplete understandings or surface views of learner needs that are more politically constructed than real. We suggest that policy‐makers should focus more on systemic problems in the learning and skills sector and less on problematising groups of learners.

Working Together: Research and Scholarly Activity in Further, Adult and Vocational Education.

Vocational education and training (VET) systems differ internationally regarding how practitioners are required to hold qualifications to teach, or undertake continuing professional development. Few require the undertaking of research into professional practice, although in some cases there are strategies to encourage and enhance this. This article provides an insight into how vocational practitioners in England have been encouraged to examine their professional practice through two initiatives: a research network and an HE-supported practitioner-research programme. Both have attempted to create systematic, collaborative approaches to changing and improving professional practice by placing the practitioner at the heart of their activities. The challenges of supporting such initiatives are examined in the context of the increasing demands placed upon practitioners as VET is directed to meet economic goals of many nation states.

Frameworks for Thinking: Frameworks dealing with productive thinking

Introduction The second family group consists of frameworks for understanding critical and creative thinking, which we subsume under the more general term productive thinking . By productive thinking (a term used by Romiszowski, 1981), we understand what Bloom refers to as analysis , synthesis and evaluation and various combinations of these and other processes, when they lead to deeper understanding, a defensible judgment or valued product. It may involve planning what to do and say, imagining situations, reasoning, solving problems, considering opinions, making decisions and judgments, or generating new perspectives. The phrase captures the idea that this kind of thinking is not confined to the analysis of existing arguments, but is also concerned with generating ideas and has consequences for action. It makes little sense to separate critical thinking from creative thinking, since in many situations they overlap and are interdependent. Thinking as conceptualised within the frameworks included in this family is considered to involve more than cognition, since most theorists also specify dispositions which they believe to be extremely important in the development of productive thinking. Allen and colleagues who limit themselves to argument analysis (Allen, Feezel, and Kauffie, 1967) are exceptions to this generalisation. It should be noted that the role of dispositions was one of the issues which divided the American Philosophical Associations expert panel on critical thinking, although the majority (61%) did regard specific dispositions to be integral to the conceptualisation of critical thinking and 83% thought that good critical thinkers would have certain key dispositions (Facione, 1990).