Competing purposes for vocationally and professionally oriented education

implications for curriculum, professional expertise and pedagogy

Professor Kathryn Ecclestone, University of Sheffield (UK)

Outline

• features of English vocational education (VE)• long and enduring problems • meanings of ‘vocational’• competing social and educational purposes• factors shaping definitions and constructions

of knowledge effects on teachers’ everyday practice

• implications

Research base

• recent study of how ‘knowledge’ in VE is defined and constructed (funded by Pearson)– stakeholders and teachers

• my studies of assessment policy and practice in VE and the international ‘therapeutic turn’ in education• Leverhulme trust proposal (UK, Finland, Sweden, Australia)

• my (long!) experience of vocational and professionally-related education (initial teacher education and post-graduate study for education professionals)

• 2002-9 collaboration with FNBE• vocational skills tests• peer evaluation and moderation

English VET system (1)types of programme

• 1950s to now – relatively stable general ‘academic’ track• 14-16, 16-18

– schools and further education/tertiary colleges• 1950s to now - highly unstable, constantly changing pre-

vocational preparation, general vocational track– schools and tertiary colleges, universities

• occupational training, work-based training – workplace apprenticeships– on-the-job training

• transition/rehabilitation programmes– unemployed, prisoners/offenders, those with SEN

• universities – mixed vocational and academic• license to practice• post-qualifying development

English VET system (2)broader context

• 2.5 million 14-19 year olds• over half 16-19 year olds in general or work-

based tracks• universal aspiration for higher education• high returns to employment experience and

apprenticeships• dual labour markets: secure and skilled,

insecure and low-skilled• increasing demand for post-training,

professional qualifications to doctoral level

English VET system (3)many stakeholders

• growing numbers of ‘stakeholders’ designing, inspecting, changing and administering the system– policy makers– government regulatory bodies– commercial awarding bodies– large companies (public and private sectors)– government-appointed ‘sector’ bodies– public sector providers (schools, colleges, universities)– project-based /commercial providers– professional associations– trade unions

Problems (1) structural

• rapid and unpredictable changes to labour market• worsening labour market prospects

– over-qualification in some areas– lack of skilled/employable workers in others

• high levels of youth unemployment• growing concerns about ‘crisis’ of youth• poor government expertise in planning and

responding

Problems (2) structural

• between 25% and 33% 16-19 in low-level vocational qualifications with little or no labour market value

• increasing ‘yo-yo’ participation: ‘messy’ and demoralising trajectories

• 350,000 gain little/ no benefit from post-16 education

• less than 50% have basic Mathematics and English qualifications

• persistent levels of low achievement

Problems (3) administrative/organisational

• endless reforms to content and format of qualifications, funding and regulation structures

• low levels of teacher training• highly centralised, ‘top-down’ system• declining levels of employer/working life involvement

in GVE • public subsidy of working life human resource training

and development• constant criticism from working life about quality of

education• variable quality of GVE and work-based tracks

Problems (3) inequalities and uncertainities

• persistent low levels of achievement for over 50% 16-19

• segregation between tracks/within VE – class, gender race

• 40 year rhetoric of ‘parity of esteem’• VE positioned as a second choice and second

chance alternative

Meanings of ‘vocational education’

There is no formal definition …in England, and the term is applied to programmes as different as the highly selective, competitive and demanding apprenticeships offered by large engineering companies and the programmes which recruit highly disaffected young people with extremely low academic achievement.[….] The many [meanings] reflect the many different purposes which 14-19 education serves and its large and diverse student body. Some qualifications are highly specific, oriented to a particular occupation. Others are more general, and are referred to sometimes as vocationally-related or pre-vocational. (Wolf, 2011: 23, governmentt review of vocational qualifications)

Competing purposes

• Improving or remediating general education – literacy and numeracy, IT etc

• occupational awareness • occupational specialism/trade or craft/practical skills• workplace knowledge and skills• soft skills: transferable, learning to learn, social, interpersonal etc• theoretical knowledge for occupational fields of practice• learning about the field of practice (e.g what working in a science

laboratory involves)• applying theoretical and practical knowledge• emotional well-being and mental health

– resilience, emotional intelligence, optimism, self-awareness• social cohesion and social mobility

– eg widening participation for ‘disadvantaged’ groups– remedying inequalities lower down the education system

Stakeholder perceptions of who and what vocational education is for

• a hybrid route to HE and employment, but stakeholders believe that VE:

• should be more occupational– too much blurring of generic with vocational

• does not prepare adequately for university study• is predominantly for lower achievers• is an ‘applied learning and assessment’ route

– not about different forms of knowledge but ‘types’ of pedagogy, avoidance of examinations etc

Discourses of skill (1)

• 1950s - ‘hard’ technical abilities (an idealised, nostalgic view now)– spatial awareness, physical dexterity– craft and trade skills

• now – ‘soft’ and generic‘employability’– behaviour and discipline, inter-personal, social,

communication, self-awareness• entrepreneurial – emotional intelligence, self-awareness/personal

development, business, finance, customer service• ‘learning to learn’: types of pedagogy and assessment

– active, reflective, practical, personalised/student-centred• emotional well-being and mental health skills/dispositions and

strategies

Discourses of skill (2)

Confederation of British Industry:Over two thirds of employers (70%) want to see the development of employability skills among young people at school and college made a top priority [….] Two thirds of employers (65%) also see a pressing need to raise standards of literacy and numeracy amongst 14-19 year-olds. [….] Many young people are still leaving school and college with serious shortfalls in …. employability skills. Over half of employers (55%) experience weaknesses in school leavers’ self-management skills and two thirds (69%) believe they have inadequate business and customer awareness. (CBI, 2011: 6)

Factors shaping vocational teachers’constructions of knowledge, pedagogy and

assessment • learning and assessment ‘careers’ and dispositions of

students and teachers– powerful expectations and stereotypes

• quality of resources, teaching environment• social and cultural values around class, race, gender,

ethnicity– over-whelming concerns about equality, social justice,

employment, education and social opportunities• interaction of these with prescriptive specifications,

inspection, retention and achievement targets

Constructionsa type of pedagogy for a type of student

• a qualification route for learners who find exams difficult or off-putting, or they’re harder to engage maybe (government official DfE)

• ” ...[building up] your ongoing assessment ....it’s not all an exam at the end and allows those learners who find that sort of approach difficult [a more ]accessible route

• It’s ‘let’s do a poster (AGAIN)’ (VE teacher)• ..on the day when I’m ...signing up pupils for [post-16 stage

in school], the general question is “is there coursework?”, “no”, “is there an examination?”, “no”. This seems to be our kids’ ideas of whether they want to take it or not

Constructionsinstrumental achievement (1)

• [They’re] very much driven by the assessment method. And the first lesson on any unit (module) is ‘how many pass tasks, how many merit tasks, how many distinction [tasks] are there?

Constructionsinstrumental achievement (2)

• When they get further into the course [the students] become very familiar with the assessment process… saying ‘which bit does this cover, which bit does this cover, which P is this, which M is that….’ They then become very focused… on the assessment criteria rather than the learning… so if you stray slightly, you ….have to sneak it in…(Business lecturer)

Constructions (3)‘fragile’ or ‘vulnerable’ students

• the ‘therapeutic turn’• privileging disadvantage, emotional well-being and

mental health– ‘trigger warnings’– interventions for resilience and EWB– an increasingly ‘therapeutic’ discourse

• softening difficult parts of the course• maximising esteem and achievement• avoiding direct criticism and exaggerating praise• more and more ‘support’ systems

– ‘we will provide the support you need to achieve’

Effects (1)

• expanding purposes dilutes and expands professional expertise

• competing purposes confuses teachers– conflict of priorities

• professional education socialises teachers into the same assumptions/images/understandings

Effects (2)

• ‘vocational’ synonymous with:• soft generic and transferable skills– absence of difficult, irrelevant, elitist/excluding

theoretical knowledge– active, friendly, personalised, accessible (easy or

unchallenging?) teaching and assessment• ‘bits’ of underpinning knowledge/’bite sized

chunks’– personal and emotional development – support to achieve

Effects (3)

• traditional association of GVE with second chance or genuine alternative has shifted to low ability and/or types of pedagogy and assessment – undermines status of GVE as distinctive in own

right

Effects (4)stakeholders

• ad hoc, random stakeholders• too many stakeholders• missing stakeholders

– subject specialists from universities and subject associations

- teachers and teacher educators• lack of expertise in key areas• over-emphasis on ‘employability skills’• little attention to teacher competences

Effects (5)uncertainty about ‘knowledge’

• little interest or will to invest in ‘knowledge’• instead reforms to structures and regulation

• theoretical knowledge enables people to think the unthinkable and not-yet-thought (Bernstein, 1996)

• provides different frameworks for understanding the world (ranging from science, to music, to language –Gardner, 2008)

• equity and justice: access to knowledge shapes and constrains opportunities in young people’s future working and learning lives

• Powerful knowledge provides more reliable explanations and new ways of thinking about the world and acquiring it [provides] a language for engaging in political, moral and other kinds of debates. (Young, 2008: 14)

Recommendations

• assert distinctive forms of vocational and professional knowledge

• clarify and restrain meanings and purposes of vocational education

• identify key expert and legitimate stakeholders

• resist or challenge ‘crisis’ discourses