Roy Fisher

A pariah profession? Some student perceptions of accounting and accountancy

ABSTRACT Accountancy is firmly established as an important profession and as a major employment destination for graduates in the UK. There is, however, some ambivalence regarding the image of the accountancy profession as well as the status of accounting as an academic discipline. This paper reports on small-scale surveys of the perceptions of groups of accounting and non-accounting students which suggested that negative stereotypes of accountants which were prevalent during the 1960s have survived beyond the Thatcherite revolution. The surveys undertaken indicated that within the two groups there was an apparent co-existence of high status and low esteem in their perceptions of accounting and accountancy. The authors follow this with a brief discussion of a range of historical and sociological factors which may have contributed to this contradictory condition. The transformation of accounting pedagogic practice, through the incorporation of critical approaches to knowledge, is seen as a necessary prerequ...

Subject Specialist Pedagogy and Initial Teacher Training for the Learning and Skills Sector in England: The Context, a Response and Some Critical Issues.

This paper explores tensions arising from the dynamics of educational change. The focus is on higher education programmes preparing teachers for the learning and skills sector (LSS) in England. Recent policy initiatives relating to this provision have insisted on the development of subject specialist pedagogy. Powerful social, political and economic considerations, together with practical concerns, have combined in recent decades in a way that has propelled the LSS curriculum, and the training of those who deliver it, in an opposite direction to this new imperative. The momentum for change at both the macro and micro levels within the LSS has been, since the 1980s, towards the provision of multidisciplinary curricula and generic teacher training. Resistance to this trend has largely been seen as reactionary and conservative. Teacher educators for the LSS are now being required to implement curriculum change that, at an abstract level, is not consistent with the predominant model and they are (apparently) without a practicable mechanism for doing so. One means that has the potential to address the ‘subject specialist pedagogy’ requirement has been relatively neglected. A collaborative initiative involving four universities in exploiting new technology to address the policy priority for subject specialist pedagogy is outlined and a number of critical contextual issues are identified.

Liberal conservatism, vocationalism and further education in England

Focusing on vocational learning in the English further education (FE) sector and situating it within its social, political and historical context, this paper provides an overview of English attitudes towards the vocational and its subordinate status in relation to ‘academic’ education. It outlines the development of FE in England, describing its peculiarly working-class heritage, and discusses how the nature of the sector has changed against the backdrop of increasing global competition and the restructuring of the UK economy since the 1970s. The paper goes on to outline particular forms of vocationalism found in FE in England and considers some of the limitations of ‘progressive’ vocationalism and of competence based education and training. Following this, there is a discussion of emerging themes for vocational education and training, and the FE sector in particular, under the UK Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government elected in 2010. Continuities and fractures with established practice are considered. The paper concludes by highlighting the social and epistemological limitations of current approaches to vocational education and training in England. Whilst vocational education in England – within the FE sector at least – is once again on the verge of organisational and regulatory reform, there is little prospect that sociocultural attitudes to the vocational will change significantly, despite global transformations impacting on knowledge production and transfer.

From franchise network to consortium: the evolution and operation of a new kind of further and higher education partnership

Abstract The Consortium for Post-Compulsory Education and Training (CPCET) is a single subject consortium of further education and higher education providers of professional development relating to in-service teacher training for the whole of the post-compulsory sector. Involving more than 30 partners spread across the North of England, CPCET evolved from a long established franchise network centred on the University of Huddersfield. This article, as a matter of contextualisation, briefly outlines the background of higher education to further education franchising before providing an account of the development of this distinctive partnership. Furthermore, at a time when cross-sector collaboration has become a policy priority, it considers some implications of this experience for the postcompulsory sector as a whole. The main operational procedures of CPCET are described and some current issues are discussed

Vocational education teacher training in Scotland and England: policy and practice

This article compares and contrasts the policy context of Vocational Education Teacher Training (VETT) in Scotland and England by setting this within its wider socio‐economic context, one emphasising lifelong learning and competitiveness. This facilitates a comparison of the two nations and enables an analysis of VETT responses to globalisation and lifelong learning. It allows an exploration of policy continuities and breaks across Scotland and England, leading to a consideration of the limits and possibilities of the different ‘solutions’ adopted. In these nations VETT is somewhat marginal having only recently become mandatory, unlike many other European responses. The articles policy analysis is complemented by a small scale illuminative case study of VETT educators in Scotland and England, which explores the way policy is lived and mediated at the site of practice. The research suggests that whilst both systems are compromised, VETT educators seek to work on the ‘good’ side of the system in which they are placed.

Reflections on communities of practice, on‐line learning and transformation: teachers, lecturers and trainers

Engagement in communities of practice has increasingly come to be seen as an important aspect of adult learning. Participation within such communities is thought to provide a dialogic space in which learning can take place. These ideas are increasingly being applied to the work of teachers, lecturers, and trainers. This reflective paper addresses a number of issues: firstly, it locates communities of practice within a discussion of situated cognition and ‘mode 2 knowledge’. This is followed by an engagement with Lave and Wenger’s notion of communities of practice and situated learning. There is an affinity between these ideas and those developed by David Hargreaves, particularly his discussion of on‐line learning communities and ‘teacher tinkering’. In a number of respects these arguments are couched in overly optimistic and progressive terms. The concluding section seeks to raise a note of caution, considering the limits and possibilities of the previous arguments for the development of progressive and transformative educational practices, with the application of Gramscian ideas that call for the wider politicisation of practical education.

The golden age of BTEC: the business education curriculum in 1980s further education

This article provides an account of ‘three generations’ of the Business Education Council (BEC)/Business and Technician (later Technology) Education Council (BTEC) curriculum as implemented in further education colleges between 1979 and 1992. There is discussion of aspects of the underlying philosophy of BEC/BTEC, the structure and content of the programmes, skills, assessment, work experience, learning strategies, and aspects of monitoring and quality control. It is argued that BEC/BTEC, through a form of vocational progressivism, successfully transformed pedagogic practices in FE during the 1980s. The advent of the National Council for Vocational Qualifications, however, and the subsequent introduction of General Advanced Vocational Qualifications in 1993 effectively marked the end of the ‘BEC/BTEC’ era and the establishment of a more directly instrumentalist approach to vocational education.

The “Autodidact”, the Pursuit of Subversive Knowledge and the Politics of Change

This paper contrasts two types of “autodidact” located in the UK in different historical periods, which utilised different learning/research technologies to different ends. From the 1920s to the 1960s some working-class activists committed to the Communist Party of Great Britain became “educated” in Marxism (and more) through the processes intrinsic to their politics. This radical acculturation was undertaken outside the universities in consequence of both an absence of access to higher education and because of the relatively enclosed social world of British Communism. The widening of educational opportunities and the decline of political Marxism effectively extinguished this kind of autodidact. New technologies have meant that the 21st century is witnessing individuals and cyber-communities that are creating knowledge-based challenges to professional and institutional power in the face of personal/family “medical” crises. The paper outlines the characteristics of these two categories of autodidact and a new terrain of counter-hegemonic learning.

From Business Education Council to Edexcel Foundation 1969–96: the short but winding road from technician education to instrumentalist technicism

This study accounts for the formation in England of the Business Education Council (BEC) in 1974, and its development and transitions into the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) in 1983, and Edexcel Foundation in 1996. The article outlines the background and response to the 1969 report from the Committee on Technician Courses and Examinations (the Haslegrave Report), paying attention to its conceptualisation of the notion of ‘technician’. It is argued that this further entrenched the class‐based ideological subtext that would continue to deny ‘parity of esteem’ to vocational education. The BEC/BTEC curriculum is characterised as one that, presenting a detour through a form of progressive vocationalism, transformed pedagogic practice in further education. By 1993, however, BTEC was, in practice, constrained by the National Council for Vocational Qualifications and its innovative role in curriculum development was lost.

International students and further education colleges in England: The context, policy tensions, and some aspects of practice

This chapter sets out the context of publicly funded further education colleges in England, outlining the position and development of these complex institutions within the broader educational structure. This is followed by discussion of some tensions and contradictions which arise from government policies partially driven by anxieties derived from debates surrounding levels of immigration together with recognition of the imperatives and opportunities arising from globalization. The benefits of the internationalization of education have been expounded whilst simultaneously enforcing visa regulations which impede the efforts of colleges to make inroads in the international student market. In particular, disparities between the treatment of the further and higher education sectors are highlighted. The paper also provides an account of practices which have emerged in a single FE college in England over a decade of working with international students following an access to HE course. The chapter indicates some of the many benefits which have been brought to FE by international students as well as the ways in which a college has developed its practices in response to their needs.