Post‐Fordism, Curriculum Modernisers and Radical Practice: the case of vocational education and training in England (original) (raw)
Related papers
Liberal conservatism, vocationalism and further education in England
Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2012
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 discuss particular forms of vocationalism found in FE 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 illustrated. The paper concludes by highlighting the social and epistemological limitations of current approaches to vocational education and training in England.
The paper analyses continuing vocational education and training policies in the UK in the period 1979–2010 with a focus on regulation and governance. It reviews Conservative and Labour party policies to ascertain their principal components and explore their evolution through time. More specifically, the paper reviews the paradoxical existence of three seemingly opposed accounts of recent dynamics in the management of continuing vocational training: one that sees it moving inexorably to the political right, one that emphasises the singularity of social-democratic policies and one that focuses on the difficulties of any movement, towards the political left or right. The paper concludes that while there has been a degree of convergence between right and left, differences remained in terms of their favoured institutional decision-making structures. However, Labour played a two-level game, which combined the establishment of new channels for dialogue and coordination with key stakeholders, with a limited scope for meaningful stakeholder input to policy.
Education in Contemporary Capitalism Britain: Actual and Potential
Revista Colombiana de Educación, 2006
Este trabajo comienza con unos breves comentarios sobre las sociedades capitalistas contemporaneas, centrandose en la mercantilizacion del conocimiento y la agenda capitalista para y en educacion. Al adentrarse en el terreno crucial de la formacion de maestros, el autor analiza la vigilancia estatal para luego hacer unas sugerencias sobre las posibilidades que brinda la educacion para crear una arena eficaz en la cual se puedan tratar los asuntos globales y locales, donde los estudiantes se puedan conectar con las comunidades oprimidas, y donde puedan desarrollar su conciencia critica sobre el mundo neoliberal e imperialista de la actualidad.
1999
Ideology, Culture and Hegemony 110 The Curriculum and Reproduction 117 Teachers 135 The Further Education College as a Workplace in Transition 141 Summary 160 CHAPTER 5-The Inception and Development of BTEC 161 Introduction and Background 161 BEC 171 BTEC 175 CHAPTER 6-Tracing the Evolution of the BEC/BTEC Curriculum Huddersfield Technical College and the University of Huddersfield who have shaped my understanding(s) of the vocational curriculum over the years. These people, too numerous to mention individually have, sometimes directly and more often indirectly, influenced the formulation and content of this work. I wish to thank Dr. Yves Benett and Professor David Newbold of the University for their guidance during the early and inevitably difficult years of what was a part-time project where competing demands on my time too often conspired to impede progress. Latterly, Professor Cedric Cullingford became my Director of Studies and I have greatly appreciated the encouragement and detailed advice that he has given. I also wish to acknowledge the generous funding support that I have received from the University of Huddersfield and from the University's School of Education and Professional Development. Professor Inge Bates of the University Of Leeds, whilst in her previous post at the University of Sheffield, kindly commented on drafts of early chapters. I have also benefited over the last two years from the opportunity to attend, at the invitation of Professor Bates, regular seminar meetings of the Post-14 Research Group at the University of Leeds School of Education. I have been fortunate to have conducted two lengthy interviews with John Sellars, the former Chief Executive of BTEC, one of which was generously scheduled during his last week in office after twenty years at the helm. It should be noted, however, that this does not imply any kind of endorsement of this study by either John Sellars or BTEC/Edexcel. This work rests primarily on my academic background as a history graduate, my subsequent interest in the sociology of education, and my experience as a lecturer and curriculum developer in post-compulsory education. My studies in the sociology of education began when, as a masters student at the University of Bradford, I was taught by Dr. Ivan Reid and continued under the supervision of Dr. Ian Varcoe in the Department of Sociology at the University of Leeds. In Chapters 3 and 4I have revisited, developed and applied in the context of this very different study some theoretical work which I undertook at Leeds in the late 1980s. There has also been something of a "conversation" between this research and other projects which I have worked on since 1992; the Employment Department funded study Good Practice in GNVQ Induction Programmes which, together with University of Huddersfield colleagues, I contributed to during 1993/94 was one of these. Another influence was the Further Education Development Agency funded Improving College Effectiveness project from 1998-99 (also a Huddersfield team effort). It is likely that some extracts from Chapter 4 here will ultimately appear in a coauthored FEDA publication, however, all the work featured in this study was independently researched and is my own, as are all errors and omissions.
The paper explores the emerging consensus around post-compulsory education and training. It argues the notion of settlement needs to be developed to incorporate concepts of race and gender. It suggests a settlement is developing amongst the major political parties and other constituents who have a stake in post-compulsory education and training. These constituents share a common analysis of the problem facing education and training. Whilst these different groups have varying strategies to address the problem these are held under the sway of a capitalist logic. Post-Fordist arguments celebrate the progressive possibilities that inhere in a high skill, high trust economy; however, such optimism is easily co-opted and colonised by capitalist interests.
"Feeding the Monster": Vocational Pedagogy and the further education policy present
This chapter begins by comparing current models and structures of vocational education in the US with the vocational offer in colleges in England. While policy in the US has traditionally shied away from vocational 'tracking' because of the perception that this entrenches social division, increasingly, community colleges and other 'technical' educational institutions are seen as a way of marrying academic and industry-related education. Drawing on a research project involving teachers of vocational subjects from a number of different colleges in the West Midlands region of England, this chapter explores the reality as experienced by practitioners behind the recent policy anxiety about vocational pedagogy. It reveals how despite political rhetoric, policy initiatives to raise standards in vocational teaching and learning may not be yielding the results intended. It presents FE as a troubled landscape in which interventions under the Coalition government (2010-2015) targeting an improvement in vocational education appear to have diluted practitioners' ability to deliver a rise in the quality of provision. The failure of these policy intervention is indicative of the disconnect between policy makers and practitioners which appears to be a key characteristic of the relationship between government and
In Australia, like many western countries, there has been a convergence of education policy around a set of utilitarian and economistic approaches to vocational education and training in schools. Such approaches are based on the assumption that there is a direct relationship between national economic growth, productivity and human capital development resulting in the persuasive political argument that schools should be more closely aligned to the needs of the economy to better prepare 'job ready' workers. These common sense views resonate strongly in school communities where the problem of youth unemployment is most acute and students are deemed to be 'at risk', 'disadvantaged' or 'disengaged'. This article starts from a different place by rejecting the fatalism and determinism of neoliberal ideology based on the assumption that students must simply 'adapt' to a precarious labour market. Whilst schools have a responsibility to prepare students for the world of work there is also a moral and political obligation to educate them extraordinarily well as democratic citizens. In conclusion, we draw on the experiences of young people themselves to identify a range of pedagogical conditions that need to be created and more widely sustained to support their career aspirations and life chances.
The paper addresses national and global questions concerned with neoliberalism, social democracy and social justice. It explores a number of themes that arise from the British Labour Party's policy review and its rebranding as One Nation Labour (ONL). In particular it addresses ONL's approach to the economy, localism and vocational education and training in England by drawing a comparison with the policies of the Coalition government and New Labour. It argues that the policies of ONL are by no means new with many of these found in New Labour and the Coalition. It is suggested that the aspirations of ONL to refashion social democracy for austere times is compromised by the inherent capitalist nature of the economy. This poses the question as to how far the interest in social justice can be furthered in such circumstances.