Further Education, Professional and Occupational Pedagogy

Knowledge and Experiences

Sai Loo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351050654
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The further education (and skills) sector in England has been viewed as a backwater of educational research compared to the other sectors. This comparative lack of research and related publications may be due in part to the huge diversity of the sector. Further Education, Professional and Occupational Pedagogy addresses some of the gaps by bringing together empirical research and theoretical frameworks to give a coherent understanding of the sector, emphasising the occupational experiences of deliverers, alongside their pedagogic and life experiences. This book also includes investigations on the education of professionals in the higher education sector.

The overall theme of this book relates to the teaching and learning of work-related provisions in further and higher education. The book covers topics such as FE teachers' emotional ecology, their professional identities, a systematic literature review of FE teachers' professional identities, a reconceptualisation of widening participation from a teaching perspective, pedagogic implications of teachers in professional education, and curriculum formation of creative professionals in higher education.

This book will be vital reading for researchers and academics in the fields of professional learning, teacher training and education, and vocational and occupational education. It will also appeal to policy-makers, teacher educators and education professionals.

Chapter 1

Researching further education, professional and occupational landscapes

Simon (1981) questioned the lack of pedagogy in England. He meant that there was no identifiable systematic approach to teaching and learning that was based on theoretical ideas. In a sense, this pedagogical vacuum might apply to the post-compulsory education sector in England, otherwise known as further education (FE) (and skills) or lifelong learning sector, although the various nomenclature of the sector, to an extent, highlight the diversity and issues of the sector. The diversity might be viewed from the provisions from the academic to the vocational, the academic levels from the pre-university to higher levels, and the age groups of the learners from 14-plus and beyond. Furthermore, the sector is also known for offering learners with diverse learning requirements opportunities to continue their education. Perhaps, the diversity of the sector might also be the cause of its lack of distinctiveness compared to the compulsory and higher education sectors. This lack of a distinct characteristic might also have hampered carrying research in the sector. Coffield (1998) was critical of the cosy arrangements of research findings in the sector where terms such as pedagogy and vocational education and training (VET) were not clearly defined nor contested with the tacit notion that there were common agreements amongst the academic fraternity. If the research findings do not offer a distinct perspective of the sector, one, perhaps, cannot blame the policymakers’ lack of understanding of and, crucially, failure to establish workable policies for implementation.

To an extent, this research monograph is a result of these questionings. As a researcher, I am conscious of my role, and this includes providing empirical evidence for potential stakeholders such as policymakers, teachers, managers, learners and researchers to develop sound and implementable pedagogic strategies, curricula and policies, whether in this diverse sector or beyond.

This research monograph is a collection of unpublished articles, which is based on empirical research. Its common themes are work- or occupation-related pedagogy, knowledge and experiences, hence the title of the monograph. Each contribution can also be read as a standalone chapter. The main work-related theme covers the further education sector, higher and professional education and the knowledge economy.

Following this chapter, the next four chapters reflect my research interests and teaching experiences in the FE sector. Chapter 2 was a result of a remark from one of the research participants, who mentioned her emotional investment in her learners and the empathy she had for them. The initial version of this chapter appeared as a British Educational Research Association (BERA) conference paper in 2013 at the University of Brighton, England. The chapter is based on the FE teachers’ emotional narratives concerning their professional and personal lives, pedagogic practices and past professional/occupational experiences. It uses Zembylas’s (2007) definition of emotional knowledge and conceptual framework of emotional ecology to examine the participants’ pedagogic, life and occupational experiences.

Chapter 3 focuses on the professional identities of teachers in the FE sector. The inspiration for this chapter was from my own experiences as an FE teacher who had previous occupational experience as a chartered accountant with a decade of work experience in the private sector before entering teaching. The earliest version of this chapter was at the BERA Conference at the University of Warwick in 2010 and with a subsequent presentation at the Learning and Skills Research Network (LSRN) Conference in London in the same year. This chapter is based on the relationships between teaching knowledge of qualified FE teachers who have occupational experiences and their professional identities via their symbolic representative articulations.

The next contribution – Chapter 4 – relates to the previous chapter. It is based on a systematic review of literature relating to the FE sector and staff identities. The publications are analysed based on two research questions regarding the characteristics of professional selves/identities of those working in the FE sector, and the extent the vocational dimension is included in such studies.

Chapter 5 offers the final contribution to the FE sector. Its inspiration came from the ongoing quest to widen participation to as many learners as possible. This has been one of the main characteristics of the sector. The research emphasis to date had been on the students and their specific pedagogic and social needs. The chapter focuses on the import of teachers and teaching in assisting widening participation (WP). It uses concepts of multimodality and reflective peer review to argue that quality teaching and the appropriate curriculum can add to the WP equation. The initial presentation of this idea was at the BERA Conference at the University of Leeds in 2016.

Chapter 6 focuses on teaching professionals in the higher education sector. As an academic who is involved in the delivery in the higher education sector, this is also an area of my research interests, which sits neatly with professional education. These are deliverers on professional training programmes in clinical practices such as general practice and emergency medicine. Like the FE lecturers from the earlier chapters, these deliverers teach and some practice alongside the two professional activities. The aim of this contribution is to create a conceptual framework for understanding how they utilise their know-how in the two activities and consider the pedagogic implications for the teaching institutions. This contribution is an off-shoot of my earlier research monograph, Teachers and Teaching in Vocational and Professional Education (Loo, 2018).

The penultimate chapter – Chapter 7 – deals with the work-related theme of creative workers in the knowledge economy. The knowledge economy and the other academic areas reflect the spectrum of my research interests. The overarching theme is work or occupations related to teachers, learners and workers. These workers use their creative talents and know-how to create products and services in the digitally driven economy. The types of know-how and the application of their creative talents have teaching and learning implications for the programme deliveries in higher education institutions (HEIs). It offers insights into how HEIs may act as a bridge between work organisations and the creative workers before and while at work. This contribution is a spin-off from an earlier research monograph, Creative Workers in the Knowledge Economy (Loo, 2017).

Chapter 8 provides a reflection of the previously mentioned standalone contributions, which covers the sectors of further, higher and professional education. It also delineates the knowledge economy and areas relating to teachers, curriculum, learning, knowledge and experiences.

References

Coffield, F. 1998 A fresh approach to learning for the learning age: the contribution of research. Higher Education Digest, 31: 4–6.

Loo, S. 2017 Creative Workers in the Knowledge Economy. Abingdon, Routledge.

Loo, S. 2018 Teachers and Teaching in Vocational and Professional Education. Abingdon, Routledge.

Simon, B. 1981 Why no pedagogy in England? In: Simon, B. and Taylor, W. (Eds) Education in the Eighties: The Central Issues. London, Batsford Academic and Educational Limited, pp. 124–145.

Zembylas, M. 2007 Emotional ecology: the intersection of emotional knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23: 355–367.

Chapter 2

Teachers’ emotional ecology

Pedagogic, life and occupational experiences

Introduction

Emotional experiences and teaching and learning are recognised as connective dimensions. The special issues in journals by Nias (1996), and Van Veen and Lasky (2005) and the literature review by Sutton and Wheatley (2003) added to their growing significance. Research in this area of emotional experiences and education has been carried out globally (e.g. Hastings, 2004 [Australia]; Hargreaves, 2000 [Canada]; Yin and Lee, 2012; Lee et al., 2013 [China]; Zembylas et al., 2011 [Greece]; Pines, 2002 [Israel]; Day and Kington, 2008 [UK]; and Sutton, Mudrey-Camino and Knight, 2009 [US]). This is studied in different sectors of education (e.g. Cross and Hong, 2012 [primary/elementary]; O’Connor, 2008 [secondary/high schools]; Robson, Bailey and Larkin, 2004; Jephcote and Salisbury, 2009 [further education]; Trigwell, 2012 [higher/university]).

Within the research area of emotions and education, it may be classified into four main types. The first relates to the strong feelings of teachers (Nias, 1989; Elbaz, 1992; Woods and Jeffrey, 1996; Hargreaves, 1998; Yin and Lee, 2012). These feelings may be divided into the positive and negatives ones. Positive feelings include caring for their learners (Godar, 1990; Robson, Bailey and Larkin, 2004), satisfaction when students show progress (Lortie, 1975) and pleasure when learners respond to teaching (e.g. Hargreaves, 1998). Negatives ones include anger and frustration in seeing their students misbehave (Sutton, 2000), working with uncooperative colleagues (e.g. Nias, 1989), stress due to the nature of the job (e.g. La Porte, 1996; Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees, 2008; Robson and Bailey, 2009), guilt resulting from their jobs as teachers (e.g. Hargreaves and Tucker, 1991) and sadness from the learners’ home environments (e.g. Sutton, 2000). As teachers’ emotional responses appeared to be influenced by their students’ engagement with learning, their learners appeared to be influenced by teachers’ emotions. These might include positive emotions such as caring for students (e.g. Goldstein, 1999) and negative ones such as teachers’ aggressive teaching strategies (e.g. Thomas and Montomery, 1998).

The second type relates to the interrelationships between teachers’ emotions and their cognitive functions (e.g. Mesquita, Frijda and Scherer, 1997; Frijda, 2000). The cognitive functions might include attention span (e.g. Derryberry and Tucker, 1994), memory (e.g. Parrott and Spackman, 2000), problem-solving (e.g. Isen, 1993) and motivation (e.g. Pekrun et al., 2002).

The third type of research identified related to teachers’ selves and related professional lives. Teachers’ heavy investment in their work acted both as professional and personal views of themselves (e.g. Kelchtermans, 1996; Hargreaves, 2001; van den Berg, 2002). One way of articulating the personal and professional selves of teachers is through narratives. The telling of stories by teachers completes the fourth type of teacher emotions. These narratives offer an emotional sense of their journeys in the educational landscapes, whether related to teacher education (e.g. Noddings, 1992) or as a way of understanding one’s practice or self (La Porte, 1996).

One sector of education that is under-researched (with only four publications, which are listed earlier) in this area of teacher emotions is in further education (FE). FE in England covers a wide range of teaching settings. These settings include FE colleges, voluntary and community sector organisations, commercial organisations and independent training providers, adult and community learning providers, industry, specialist colleges, armed and uniformed services, prisons and offender learning institutions, and other public-sector organisations (Education and Training Foundation, 2014). Implicit in these teaching settings is the wide range of learners from the 16-plus age group to adult and lifelong learners with a diverse range of learning abilities. Also, over 70 percent of the provisions are vocational/occupation related (Frontier Economics Limited, 2016, Table 17), and one would expect these teachers to have occupational experiences (i.e. non-teaching practices in areas such as dance, dental hygiene, graphic design, journalism and printmaking). These characteristics – diverse teaching settings and learners, and occupation-related provisions – are distinctive to this sector and the focus of this study is based on the empirical data of eight FE teachers.

This chapter draws on two types of research in teacher emotions identified earlier: teachers’ professional lives and their narratives. From the perspectives of their professional lives, the eight teachers alongside their professional (pedagogic) lives also include their lives outside of the pedagogic contexts as they entered teaching after having had other real-life and occupational experiences. This study uses Zembylas’s (2007, p. 356) definition of emotional knowledge to investigate the teachers’ wider professional lives. These lives are “a teacher’s knowledge about/from his or her emotional experiences with respect to one’s self, others (e.g., students and colleagues), and the wider social and political context in which teaching and learning take place”. The definition offers this chapter scope to include especially FE teachers’ wider range of biographical experiences. From the narrative perspectives, the articulations of the eight teachers serve to gain insights into their relationships between their lives and experiences and ‘emotional ecology’. This form of ecology is “a system consisting of many sources and forms of knowledge in a symbiotic relationship” (Zembylas, 2007, p. 356) in a socio-cultural environment of teachers and students at its core. This definiti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• 1 Researching further education, professional and occupational landscapes
• 2 Teachers’ emotional ecology: pedagogic, life and occupational experiences
• 3 Teaching knowledge, professional identities and symbolic representations of qualified teachers with occupational experiences
• 4 Professional identities in the further education sector: a systematic literature review
• 5 Reconceptualising teacher education as part of a strategic approach to broadening and advancing research in the field of widening participation
• 6 The pedagogic implications of occupation-related teaching professionals in higher education
• 7 Working and learning of creative workers: implications for a knowledge-driven curriculum
• 8 Reflections on the further education, professional and occupational landscapes
• Index