‘I don’t make out how important it is or anything’: identity and identity formation by part-time higher education students in an English further education college.

Policymakers in England have recently, in common with other Anglophone countries, encouraged the provision of higher education within vocational Further Education Colleges. Policy documents have emphasised the potential contribution of college-based students to widening participation: yet the same students contribute in turn to the difficulties of this provision. This article draws on a study of part-time higher education students in a college, a group whose perspectives, identities and voices have been particularly neglected by educational research. Respondents’ narratives of non-participation at 18 indicated the range of social and geographical constraints shaping their decisions and their aspirations beyond higher education; whilst they drew on vocational and adult traditions to legitimate college participation, their construction of identity was also shaped by the boundaries between further education and the university. These distinctive processes illustrate both possibilities and constraints for future higher education provision within collegesN/

'Bridging' the gap between VET and higher education: permeability or perpetuation?

Demands for admission to higher education from vocational routes are widespread across Eu-rope but take different forms, depending on the recognition of tertiary VET or whether sharp-er distinctions between VET and higher education exist. In England, alongside policies pro-moting more employer-responsive tertiary provision, opportunities for ‘bridging’ from voca-tional routes to general university education, and vice versa, have been discussed. The study reported here examined four cases of existing provision supporting transitions into higher edu-cation, potential sites of practices supporting bridging across pathways. Each case provided valued support for progression to higher levels of study; yet these practices focused on exist-ing routes rather than transitions between more academic or vocationally-oriented sites. It is suggested, therefore, that the explicit denotation of separate tertiary provision may be more likely to constrain ‘bridging’ provision than for the latter to help students move beyond their existing route into substantially different forms of higher education.The paper draws on a study funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation GAT3398/J

Beyond comparative institutional analysis: a workplace turn in English TVET

Vocational education analyses often compare national patterns seen to favour industry-based training, state schooling or personal investment in skills acquisition: these are increasingly offered as ‘templates’ to new and established industrial economies. Institutionalist scholarship has correspondingly foregrounded skill formation as key to national policy differences; in particular historical institutionalism has focused on the role of labour market and state actors in negotiating and contesting arrangements for skill formation. Whilst paying relatively little direct attention to educational practice, these approaches provide theoretical tools to understand policy differences and to identify possibilities, limitations and strategies for change. This paper draws on their application in England, where apprenticeship and technical education reforms are periodically represented as relocating skills formation to the point of production on the model of collectivist systems: case study data is examined for evidence of institutional change strategies within emerging educational practices. Whilst the absence of engaged labour market actors renders the adoption of a substantially different model improbable, contestation over knowledge, control and educational roles is nevertheless evident, indicating the deployment of strategies for significant change. Their outcomes will determine the availability of transitions, with a layering of selective opportunities threatening to diminish the opportunities available to others.N/

Chapter 2 Lessons of European VET? National systems and international prescriptions

This chapter examines conflicting claims about the potential of European VET to provide a model for technical and vocational systems across the world. Technocratic accounts by international policy bodies, especially the OECD and EU, have focused on the possibilities for VET to facilitate transitions to employment by providing early experiences of learning at work, drawing on the integration of VET into production systems, as in the German system, seen as a barrier to neoliberal convergence because maintaining key progressive features into service sectors. Conversely, universalist welfare states held to underpin VET in Scandinavia have meanwhile given way to dualised social policies which, echoing the welfare state literature, can be seen either as ‘layered’ parallel provision or the direct erosion of comprehensive policies. During the early post-war period VET systems incorporated progressive educational elements which have come under attack, as signs of emerging dualisation have undermined the more progressive features of VET in Europe. Challenges from higher levels of VET, particularly in its most employer-responsive forms, can be seen as signs of this emerging dualisation

More morphostasis than morphogenesis? The ‘dual professionalism’ of English Further Education workshop tutors

An international repositioning of vocational teachers in relation to knowledge and the workplace is reflected in English Further Education through the terminology of ‘dual professionalism’. Particularly in settings most closely linked to specific occupations, this discourse privileges occupational expertise that vocational educators bring from their former employment alongside pedagogic expectations of the teaching role. In a qualitative study of recently qualified teachers employed substantially in workshop settings, using the analytical framework of Margaret Archer, workplace skills and generic attributes provided a basis for claims to expertise, extending to a custodianship of former occupations. Further augmentation of educator roles, however, appeared constrained by market approaches to development and employment insecurity in the sector and beyond. In Archer’s terms, the current environment appears to cast ‘dual professionalism’ as morphostasis, drawing on former practice at the expense of teacher identity in the face of insecurity. Morphogenesis into enhanced professional teacher identities, for example, developing coherent vocational pedagogies informed by research into advances in knowledge, appears the less likely outcome in the current and emerging sector.N/

Chapter 6 Welfare vocationalism

In contrast to the technical elites, specific groups of young people – women, those from the lowest social classes, and those with the poorest educational experiences – are already likely to engage with poorer quality further education programmes, those associated primarily with low-paid and precarious employment. They undergo workplace learning as a much more limited experience, studying in vocational areas many of which already include substantial work placements as part of many learning programmes. Childcare, which already requires longer periods in the workplace than are stipulated by T Level requirements, is a prime example. Their time in the workplace is conceptualised as learning to interact with service users and to acquire the personal attributes of workers in these occupations. Placements can sometimes be seen as the routine work of ‘caring’ and service occupations, and young people interviewed often expressed impatience and frustration, linked to preparation for routine employment. The socialisation of these groups appears a key premise of the expectations and rationale offered by policymakers for recent reforms

Chapter 1 Technical and further education after COVID

Technical and vocational education have assumed a significant role in the plans of developed nations to overcome economic crisis, relocating learning into the workplace and extending it to higher levels. Policy discourses are based on the premise that education polarised between universities and low attainment has poorly served the needs of modern economies and young people. This chapter sets out the principal claims of these approaches to improve youth transitions and contribute to social justice. These claims are traced back to their origins in the shift to service-based economies and collapse of youth labour markets, leading to a crisis in vocational education and fuelling demand for higher education credentials; and to the emergence of international policies aiming to reconstitute youth transitions on neoliberal lines. Addressing these questions from a social justice perspective, we ask whether such disruption of the educational divide between general and vocational routes has eroded its role in reproducing and validating the social structures of the post-war period, with the creation of new routes and the postulation of new elites validating the emergence of existing and new forms of educational and social inequity

Chapter 1 Technical and further education after COVID

Technical and vocational education have assumed a significant role in the plans of developed nations to overcome economic crisis, relocating learning into the workplace and extending it to higher levels. Policy discourses are based on the premise that education polarised between universities and low attainment has poorly served the needs of modern economies and young people. This chapter sets out the principal claims of these approaches to improve youth transitions and contribute to social justice. These claims are traced back to their origins in the shift to service-based economies and collapse of youth labour markets, leading to a crisis in vocational education and fuelling demand for higher education credentials; and to the emergence of international policies aiming to reconstitute youth transitions on neoliberal lines. Addressing these questions from a social justice perspective, we ask whether such disruption of the educational divide between general and vocational routes has eroded its role in reproducing and validating the social structures of the post-war period, with the creation of new routes and the postulation of new elites validating the emergence of existing and new forms of educational and social inequity

Identity formation among part-time Higher Education students in an English further education college.

This thesis reports an empirical study of identity formation among part-time higher education students in a Further Education College in England. Higher education within colleges has attracted attention from policymakers, increasingly with regard to the part-time modes of study that have traditionally dominated this provision. Yet the perspectives, identities and voices of its students have been underreported in higher education research. Data was collected from a sample of part-time students through semi-structured interviews and analysed to examine their construction of identity. Participants described identity largely through accounts of their earlier nonparticipation, which in turn shaped their identity formation and their apprehension of the possibilities opened up by higher education. Their own 'adult' identities were compared to those of traditional and nontraditional 'others'. Participants also described their relationships with work organisations, along with the social and geographical constraints affecting their engagement with higher education and their aspirations beyond it. This thesis offers insights into the processes through which adults take part in and make sense of higher education in a further education setting, which have implications for the expansion, differentiation and stratification of higher education systems

Chapter 2 Lessons of European VET? National systems and international prescriptions

This chapter examines conflicting claims about the potential of European VET to provide a model for technical and vocational systems across the world. Technocratic accounts by international policy bodies, especially the OECD and EU, have focused on the possibilities for VET to facilitate transitions to employment by providing early experiences of learning at work, drawing on the integration of VET into production systems, as in the German system, seen as a barrier to neoliberal convergence because maintaining key progressive features into service sectors. Conversely, universalist welfare states held to underpin VET in Scandinavia have meanwhile given way to dualised social policies which, echoing the welfare state literature, can be seen either as ‘layered’ parallel provision or the direct erosion of comprehensive policies. During the early post-war period VET systems incorporated progressive educational elements which have come under attack, as signs of emerging dualisation have undermined the more progressive features of VET in Europe. Challenges from higher levels of VET, particularly in its most employer-responsive forms, can be seen as signs of this emerging dualisation