Improving Learning Cultures in Further Education

David James, Gert Biesta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134090334
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Through its unique theoretical framework - a cultural understanding of teaching and learning – this book develops a new way of understanding educational improvement, one which focuses on the formation and transformation of the practices through which students learn. Based on detailed ethnographic research of seventeen learning sites in further education colleges, this book generates a unique insight into a wide variety of practices of teaching and learning. Illustrated by case studies, it is structured around three key questions:

• what do learning cultures in FE look like and how do they transform over time?
• how do learning cultures transform people?
• how can people (tutors, managers, policy makers, but also students) transform learning cultures for the better?

Through a combination of theory and analysis, Improving Learning Cultures in Further Education makes a strong case for the importance of a cultural approach to the improvement of teaching and learning in further education, and provides practical guidance for researchers, policymakers and practitioners for implementing change for the better.

Part I
What are the issues?

Chapter 1

Improving learning cultures in Further Education?

Introduction

Is there scope for improvement in Further Education? Many people, from politicians and policy-makers to college managers and FE tutors, believe there is. As a matter of fact the pursuit of improvement is one of the few constant factors in the history of the sector. It is, of course, not only students who ‘can do better’ – the question of improvement is relevant for all who are involved in the creation of opportunities for learning, either directly or indirectly. But improvement is a difficult concept. What does it mean to improve? And how can it actually be done? This is partly a normative question, since any discussion about improvement requires value judgements about what counts as improvement. Is it improvement when more students get a qualification? Is it improvement when more students are happy? Is it improvement when a course becomes more selective? Is it improvement when tutors replace teaching with assessment? The question of improvement also has a political dimension which has to do with who is allowed to participate in making such value judgements. Should this be the prerogative of tutors? College management? Funding bodies? Inspectors? The government? Students?

There are also many practical questions around improvement. After all, even if there is agreement about what should happen, there are still different ways in which this might be achieved and different places to start from. Traditionally there has been a strong emphasis on teaching as the main driver of learning and the main motor of improvement. But although teaching is important, there are many other factors that impact upon the learning opportunities and the actual learning of students. Good teaching does influence learning, but it does not determine it. In this book we therefore advance a different approach to the question of improvement, one which aims to capture the complex interaction between the many factors, dimensions and influences that shape the learning opportunities for students. Our approach is informed by a cultural understanding of learning, and the key notion in this approach is the idea of a learning culture. Learning cultures are the social practices through which people learn.

Our answer to the question of improvement is in a sense very simple: Change the culture! But this is more easily said than done. This is first of all because learning cultures are complex and multifaceted entities. One might be able to influence some of the factors that shape a particular learning culture, but many factors are beyond the control of those directly involved, either because they are under the control of others (the funding of Further Education is, for example, beyond the control of tutors) or because they are difficult to control anyway (think, for example, of the influence of social class and gender). Changing the culture is also difficult because it is people who make cultures. Even under virtually identical circumstances – for example students who take the same course, read the same books, get the same teaching and do the same assignments – students will have different experiences and will learn different things, partly because they are positioned differently within the learning culture, and partly because they come from different backgrounds, have different prior experiences and different access to resources. Thus learning cultures exist through the actions, dispositions and interpretations of the participants. They exist through interaction and communication and are (re)produced by individuals just as much as individuals are (re)produced by learning cultures. Individuals’ actions are therefore neither totally determined by learning cultures nor totally free. This implies that we should not try to replace the question how teaching determines learning with the question how learning cultures determine learning. Our focus rather is on learning opportunities. The cultural approach to learning aims to understand the kinds of learning that are made possible as a result of the configuration of a particular learning culture, and the kinds of learning that become difficult or even impossible as a result of the way in which a particular learning culture operates. What we also should not forget in our attempts to change learning cultures, is that learning cultures are not static. They are social practices that depend on what people do and are therefore subject to continuous change (which explains why it often requires quite a lot of effort to keep learning cultures relatively stable over time), although the learning cultures of specific sites may differ in the extent of their openness to modification.

These considerations are captured in the title of the research project on which this book is based: Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (the TLC project). In one respect this title expresses the ambition of the TLC project to contribute to the improvement of learning in Further Education by focusing on the ways in which learning cultures can be transformed for the better. In another respect it acknowledges the ways in which learning cultures can be transforming for the teachers and students who participate in and contribute to them. The title also reveals our awareness that learning cultures in FE are themselves always ‘in transformation’ – and if there is one thing that our research has made visible, it is the extraordinary high pace of change in the Further Education sector.

To adopt a cultural approach to the improvement of learning in Further Education requires three things. First, it requires an understanding of the characteristics and dynamics of learning cultures in Further Education and of the wider contextual issues and developments in the sector, including an understanding of its history. It is, after all, only after we know what it is that we might want to transform that we can begin to think about transformation for improvement. Second, it requires an understanding of the dynamics of particular learning cultures and, more specifically, the relationships between learning cultures, learning opportunities, learning practices and learning ‘outcomes’. We need, in other words, an understanding of the kinds of learning that are made possible as a result of the particular configuration of a learning culture and the kinds of learning that are made difficult or even impossible as a result of the way in which a particular learning culture operates. Third, we need to understand the ways in which learning cultures can be transformed and particularly the opportunities that the different actors in Further Education – from policy-makers and college management to tutors and students – have to influence, change and transform learning cultures. The chapters in this book are precisely organised along these lines.

First, we provide an overview of the theory of learning and the theory of learning cultures which have informed our research (Chapter 2). After this we sketch a brief history of improvement in the Further Education sector (Chapter 3) and provide an analysis of key characteristics of the learning cultures that we examined in our project (Chapter 4). We then address the question of how learning cultures transform people. We look at the practices of learning that result from deliberate attempts to organise learning cultures in a particular way (‘the learning of practices’), and pay attention to how learning cultures shape people’s thinking and doing in ways that are often less visible and sometimes even invisible from the perspective of the official curriculum (‘the practices of learning’) (Chapter 5). Next we focus on the question of how – and to what extent – learning cultures can deliberately be managed and transformed (Chapter 6) and we look at the wider (policy) context for professional action in Further Education (Chapter 7). Finally in Chapter 8 we discuss the practical implications of our research which we have summarised in a set of ‘principles of procedure’ which identify what policy-makers, college managers, tutors and students might do to transform learning cultures in Further Education for the better. In the remainder of this chapter we introduce the TLC project itself.

A quick reading guide

• If you read this book from cover to cover you will get a detailed account of the Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education project, its theoretical framework, the main findings and conclusions and practical implications.
• If you are interested in the practical implications you can go to Chapter 8 and have a look at the Principles of Procedure for improving learning and teaching in Further Education.
• If you want to read about the theoretical framework which underlies our work, you need to read Chapter 2.
• Chapters 4, 5 and 6 give an overview of our findings and focus on the relationships between learning cultures, learning opportunities, learning practices and learning outcomes and show you how learning cultures might be transformed.
• Chapters 3, 5 and 7 discuss underlying issues that have to do with the ways in which learning cultures in FE can be transformed.
• The Methodological Appendix provides detailed information about how the project was designed and conducted and how we reached our conclusions.

The ‘Transforming Learning Cultures In Further Education’ project

The TLC project was announced in September 2000 as part of the second phase of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme, a large programme of research managed by the Economic and Social Research Council. The project started in 2001 and finished in 2005. To date it has been the biggest project ever targeted at English Further Education, a significantly under-researched sector. The project had three overarching aims:

• to deepen understanding of the complexities of learning in FE
• to identify, implement and evaluate strategies for the improvement of learning opportunities in FE
• to set in place an enhanced and lasting capacity among FE practitioners for inquiry into FE practice.

These challenging aims led us to adopt a relatively complex, large-scale research design which combined work on detailed case studies with extensive questionnaire surveys over a three-year data collection period. The project was conducted in a unique partnership between Higher Education academics and researchers from four universities and FE practitioners and researchers from four FE colleges – a decision motivated by the desire to conduct research in and with rather than on Further Education (see Bloomer and James 2003).

The context of the research

From its conception, the project recognised that English FE was chronically under-researched (Elliott 1996b; Hughes et al. 1996), especially when compared to other sectors. Most existing research focused on management and professional identity, rather than on learning (Elliott 1996a; Ainley and Bailey 1997; Gleeson and Shain 1999; Shain and Gleeson 1999). Some partial exceptions to this appeared in the public domain soon after the start of the project, including Ecclestone’s work on particular forms of assessment (for example, Ecclestone 2002) and the work of Bathmaker and her colleagues on trainee FE teachers (for example, Bathmaker et al. 2002). Yet, despite this overall paucity of research, FE was nevertheless in a process of becoming more visible and significant in relation to government policy on lifelong learning, social inclusion and economic regeneration (Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) 1998, 1999; Department for Education and Skills (DfES) 2003a, 2003b), and in the lives of vast numbers of young people and adults (Gleeson 1999).

This elevation of the profile of FE was accompanied by the creation of new structures and a redefined sector. Following the Learning and Skills Act 2000, the Further Education Funding Council was replaced in April 2001 by the Learning and Skills Council, with a much broader remit (essentially, post-16 learning of all kinds except Higher Education) and a national and regional structure: the new Learning and Skills Sector included work-based and adult and community providers in addition to colleges. The Further Education Development Agency (FEDA), with whom the TLC project had formed a partnership, itself dated from a merger in 1995 of the Further Education Unit and the national FE Staff College. It grew and changed a number of times internally and then in November 2000 became the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA), a body which itself commissioned some new research with a bearing on learning in FE colleges (see, for example, LSDA 2003; Torrance et al. 2005), but compared to primary, secondary and higher education, the sector was and continues to be under-researched. It remains to be seen whether this situation changes under the most recent wave of reorganised structures. From April 2006 the Learning and Skills Development Agency divided into two new bodies: the Learning and Skills Network (LSN), responsible for research, training and consultancy, and the Quality Improvement Agency for Lifelong Learning (QIA), ‘set up to spark fresh enthusiasm for innovation and excellence in the learning and skills sector’ and to promote improvement through self-evaluation (QIA 2006). The LSDA also sponsored a regional network of researchers and practitioners – the Learning and Skills Research Network – which has continued to promote research activity in postcompulsory education despite the end of the LSDA. In addition, two other bodies now have a significant presence, in the form of Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) and the Institute for Learning (IfL). The former body oversees the professional development of all those working in libraries, archives and information services, work-based learning, HE, FE and community learning and development; the latter one is, at the time of writing, working to establish itself as a membership-driven professional body for teachers and trainers and student teachers in the learning and skills sector. A further significant development is the move to ‘demand-led’ training where this means employer, not student, demand. This is being overseen by the Sector Skills Councils and includes a new engagement with both the structure and curricular content of all vocational training.

Because of its historical Cinderella-like image, the sheer scale of FE can be easily overlooked. At the time of our initial fieldwork, there were 2.35 million students enrolled at colleges in the FE sector in England, 1.97 million of whom were within Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) funded provision. Of these, 27.2 per cent of students were aged under 19; on average each of these students was studying for 3.49 qualifications, and 78.5 per cent of these were enrolled on full-time, full-year programmes. The qualifications for which they were studying were mainly vocational (the General National Vocational Qualification: GNVQ), as well as many qualifications focused on specific vocational areas. However, a significant number of full-time students were studying for academic qualifications at two levels: the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), normally intended for 16-year-old school leavers, and the more advanced General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced (A levels) and recently introduced half-A levels (AS). A total of 72.8 per cent of students on state-funded provision, then organised through the FEFC, were adults studying, on average, 1.32 qualifications each. Only 9.4 per cent of these adults were enrolled on a full-time, fullyear programme. The qualifications for which they were working were very varied, with no one qualification standing out as by far the largest category (Learning and Skills Council (LSC) 2002).

This diversity of provision is visible in college-to-college variation and also across the range of activity within individual colleges. While this presented the project with a difficult set of decisions in terms of what to study, it also presented an opportunity, because we felt that if our cross-section of cases could reflect the diversity itself, this was likely to add to empirical and theoretical understanding of learning more generally. As is explained more fully in the chapters that follow, throughout the time of our research, the FE sector was (and arguably, still is) characterised and perhaps dominated by what has been termed the ‘new managerialism’ (Avis et al. 1996) or the audit culture (Power 1997). Following the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, colleges of Further Education moved out of the control of the local democratic structures and became free-standing in relation to a central government funding mechanism. This was called ‘Incorporation’. The government subsequently established the FEFC together with a performance-related funding mechanism (Ainley and Bailey 1997). In essence, all state FE funding depended upon the recruitment, retention and achievement of individual students. A key focus of the new mechanism, especially in the early days, was to even out funding across all colleges, primarily by driving funding levels down, in a search for greater efficiency and ‘value for money’. This was further supported, soon after, by the imposition of a national inspection service, which laid down detailed criteria against which FE provision was to be judged. Once the Labour government came to power in 1997, this audit trend continued, but with the added imperative to meet every student’s personal learning needs and to increase social inclusion through widening participation.

As well as forming part of the context for the study, these factors have also impinged in a more intimate sense on the operation of the TLC, as will be briefly described later. They certainly provided a further justification for the research. There was a need to know how these processes, ostensibly aimed at improving learning, actually impacted upon learning and teaching on the ground. Furthermore, lying behind both the funding and inspection frameworks lurks a set of strong if implicit assumptions – that good teachers and teaching are always the prime determinants of effective learning, and that there are universally applicable standards of good teaching that can be applied in any situation. These assumptions are well worth testing out and the TLC research has provided the opportunity to do that.

The research context for the project was also significant. In the late 1990s, there was what appeared to be a concerted attack on educational research quality in the United Kingdom. This came from both inside the educational academic community (Hargreaves 1996, 1997; Reynolds 1998; Tooley and Darby 1998) and from outside (Hillage et al. 1998; Blunkett 2000; Oakley 2000). The main thrust of this attack was that too much educational research was of low quality, projects were too small and too diverse, there was little evidence of cumulative findings, and what there was lacked relevance to practice. In addition, it was argued that there was not enough quantitative research, and too much qualitative research lacked methodological rigour and transparency. Although most of the research being criticised related to school-based education, the cumulative impact of these challenges resulted in a significant shift in the climate for all educational research – towards a search for decontextualised scientific truths, telling government and practitioners ‘what works’ (see Hammersley 1997, 2002; Simons et al. 2003; Hodkinson 2004; Hodkinson and Smith 2004; Biesta 2007; for critiques of this ‘new orthodoxy’). The Teaching and Learning Research Programme was at the vanguard of this new climate. At least in the early days, programme events celebrated research that might underpin the ‘evidence-based practice’ similar to that of the medical world and encouraged a perception that projects had to combine the scientific robustness of positivism, with the engagement of action research, all on a very large scale. Because of its scale and political significance, the TLRP and the projects within it had and continue to have a high profile.

The theoretical rationale for the project

One of the concerns of the TLRP was the need for the study of teaching and learning in ‘authentic’ ways. This idea resonated strongly with the collective view of the TLC team. We wished to study learning as it actually happened, and we were aware that this meant a departure from how learning was often defined, understood, measured and studied. But as our design-phase discussions with a range of FE practitioners continually underlined for us, ‘authenticity’ meant even more than this. An authentic study of learning must try to address the complexity of relationships between teachers, teaching, learners, learning, learning situations and the wider contexts of learning. Where educational research focuses on particular variables and, especially where these are narrowly defined, there is always a danger of decontextualising the object of study. Particular aspects are emphasised, often from within the concerns of one academic discipline, and other factors may come to be treated as background or even ignored. A well-known example would be the textbook presentation of classical and operant conditioning, offered to teachers and would-be teachers as a source of secure knowledge about the nature of learning. Our view is that teaching and learning cannot be decontextualised from broader social, economic and political forces, both current and historic, and that addressing this complexity directly is t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of project members
• Foreword
• Series editor’s preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I What are the issues?
• Part II What does the research tell us?
• Part III What are the overall implications?
• Methodological appendix
• References