Curriculum and Social Class: adventures in pedagogy, engagement and intervention in England and Wales (original) (raw)
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Teacher Educators in Vocational and Further Education (edited by Sai Loo), 2022
An exploration of a more radical, dynamic and more meannigful ITE/ITT. In 1981, Brian Simon reflected on the nature of education within English mainstream provision, posing the question: “Why no pedagogy in England?” This raised the argument for a more robust teacher training programme, encouraging many to question how our European counterparts had indeed been successful in their interpretation and implementation of a teaching pedagogy where we had failed. Indeed, forty years on, the question remains all the more pertinent for thosewithin the Further Education (FE) sector. Simon (1981) argued that the English education system had failed to develop pedagogy because of social class division. I will argue, over the past forty years, this has been enhanced by the failure to address parity of esteem issues between the academic and vocational curriculum, which makes the absence of a real pedagogy in Further Education (FE) and alternative provision (AP) even more profound than it is perhaps within mainstream compulsory sector. While there have been substantial changes since 1981, Simon’s basic contention and the question of why no pedagogy in England remains to be the case. Teacher education and professionalism essentially relate to what it means to be a ‘professional’ and link to the relevant theoretical concepts of teacher education This is all the more pertinent in FE given the diverse nature of the sector and the responsibility that teaching practitioners (qualified or other) have towards students, especially those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), those who are vulnerable and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) requirements. This chapter provides a personal and reflective approach as a former FE teacher educator regarding pedagogy associated with skills development in FE in-service initial teacher education (ITE), the impact on the FE ITE curriculum and vocational education and training VET, and how it may be possible to learn from that history and move forwards with an improved future curriculum. The analysis of existing FE in-service ITE models will provide a framework for the study. The nature of the research project is observational and rooted in reflective practice of five phases of development. In the discussion, I explore employability and vocational learning along with the skills agenda and place them within a practical application of the theoretical framework to create a radical teacher education/ training and mentoring scheme. The distinction between teaching and learning is breaking down and learner autonomy is enhanced not only by advances in information learning technology (ILT), but by project and problem-solving based approaches. They represent a more radical, meaningful and dynamic approach to teacher training and mentoring for teachers and learners of the future and a personalised approach to pedagogy and curriculum design.
Politics is an art that influences people and to some extent uses as the power to control governance. It also entails making and execution of laws and policy. Politics influence education system both in broader and narrower sense. This essay will critically reflect the impact on political agenda on pedagogy with reference to vocational education. This essay will review "Wolf's report on vocational education". "Review of Vocational Education" was assigned to Alison Wolf with the intention to analyse the current status of Vocational education. Training in England and making a recommendation for improvement and future development of VET in England. The essay will review the analysis, outcomes and recommendation of the Wolf report and how the report has impacted the status of VET from a pedagogical perspective.
Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 1999
The article explores the social and economic context of teaching within further education in England. It examines the lived experiences of lecturers working in the sector. It suggests that the attempt to explain these in terms of proletarianisation or re-professionalism is limited, and argues instead that we are witnessing a transformation of teaching and learning. This transformation is informed by an understanding of the economic context in which the sector is placed together with an interpretation of the needs of learners within these new conditions. It is suggested that a social bloc has been formed of constituencies that share this understanding. The transformation of teaching and learning in the sector opens up new forms of practice and identities for lecturers. The challenge is to work on the good sense of these changes.
The importance of teaching: pedagogical constraints and possibilities in working-class schools
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This paper starts from the propositions that (a) pedagogy is central to the achievement of socially just education and (b) there are existing pedagogical approaches that can contribute to more socially just outcomes. Given the ostensible commitments of the current English Government to reducing educational inequality and to the importance of teaching, we set out to explore the conditions that would need to be put in place to enable these approaches to be developed and sustained consistently in disadvantaged schools in England. We start by analysing classroom observation and interview data from four primary schools with contrasting socio-economic composition, highlighting the different pedagogical practices that emerge in working- and middle-class schools and also in working-class schools in different circumstances. Interviews with pupils show the impact of these practices on learner identities. We then draw on a variety of literatures on school composition, markets, leadership and teacher identities to present an account of the ways in which these different pedagogies are consciously or unconsciously produced. We point to systemic constraints: a mismatch between student demands and organisational capacity; teachers’ attitudes and professional identities and performative pressures on school leaders. All of these suggest the need for fundamental reforms to educational purposes and system architecture, rather than the naïve reliance on teacher agency to transform educational outcomes. Nevertheless, the current policy environment in England does offer some possibilities for action and we close the paper with some suggestions about ways in which capacity for more socially just pedagogy could be built within English schools.
"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
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This paper presents evidence to show how vocational qualifications act as boundary objects in the stimulation of learning at work and how they, in turn, become the catalyst for the creation of artefacts that have a purpose and existence beyond the life cycle of an accreditation process. The context for the paper is the UK's automotive manufacturing industry, a sector that has undergone considerable change over the past thirty or so years and has been under intense pressure to improve standards. The paper presents evidence from case studies of two companies that produce parts for global car manufacturers. These companies have introduced competence-based approaches in order to audit and assess the skills of their workforces in response to demands from the companies they supply that they can prove their employees are working to the required international quality standards. The competence-based approach, which is contested in the academic literature, has enabled employees to gain National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs), which, in turn, are still controversial some twenty years after they were first introduced. The paper argues that a competence-based approach can be beneficial to both organisations and individuals, but the ambiguities inherent in the NVQ model of competence create tensions and opportunities for restrictive as well as expansive forms implementation. 1 Details of the multi-sector study ((RES 139250110A), which is funded under the UK's Economic and Research Council's Teaching and Learning Programme (TLRP), can be found at: http://learningaswork.cf.ac.uk. The study is co-directed by Alan Felstead, Alison Fuller and Lorna Unwin. music: learning processes, training and productive systems-the case of exercise to music instruction', Learning as Work Research Paper No 6, Cardiff:
A new learning and skills landscape? The central role of the Learning and Skills Council
Journal of Education …, 2005
a single learning and skills system (LSS) are having on teaching, learning, assessment and inclusion for three marginalised groups of post-16 learners. Drawing primarily on policy documents and 62 in-depth interviews with national, regional and local policymakers in England, the paper points to a complex, confusing and constantly changing landscape; in particular, it deals with the formation, early years and recent reorganisation of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), its roles, relations with Government, its rather limited power, its partnerships and likely futures.
Analysing Pedagogy: Using learning theory to transform practice and improve outcomes for GCSE learners., 2015
The authors teaching career began at a time of reform of teaching standards in the UK with the formalisation of annual performance reviews based on national teaching standards developed by the Teacher Development Agency. Whilst these standards changed over time and the links between performance and pay were resolutely established, what always struck the author was that this reform led to very little change to the profession at the "chalk face". The author echo's Sir Ken Robinson and suggests that this was because education was being continually reformed rather than transformed (Robinson and Aronica 2009). This paper analyses elements of the authors personal pedagogy through behaviourism, motivation and metacognition identifying areas for improvement. Also postulated in this paper is that where deficits exist in the authors teaching practice there are opportunities through these lenses for improvement of practice thus improving outcomes for GCSE learners. Further the paper asserts that whilst the author has worked with rudimentary communities of practice there is an opportunity through this form of situated learning to allow students to make considerable educational gains through these communities with the teachers role being peripheral.