Teachers’ Learning: Committed and Resilient Teachers are More Effective Practitioners

This paper draws from and presents an analytical summary of the findings of seven UK-based teacher education projects funded by the ESRC ‘Teaching and Learning Research Programme’ (TLRP), which the author was the principal investigator for one and a co-participant in another. Different in design and methodology, the projects point to the roles of teachers in promoting a range of learning outcomes. Together they illuminate phases of teachers’ lives, work and careers exploring matters such as, their values and dispositions towards teaching and learning, classroom practices and wider societal and policy contexts which impact on what they do. In turn, this sheds light on the formation and re-formation of teacher identity and professional knowledge over time, that is, to recognize the stages and phases of teachers’ work and lives

Teachers’ learning: Committed and resilient teachers are more effective practitioners

This paper draws from and presents an analytical summary of the findings of seven UK-based teacher education projects funded by the ESRC ‘Teaching and Learning Research Programme’ (TLRP), which the author was the principal investigator for one and a co-participant in another. Different in design and methodology, the projects point to the roles of teachers in promoting a range of learning outcomes. Together they illuminate phases of teachers’ lives, work and careers exploring matters such as, their values and dispositions towards teaching and learning, classroom practices and wider societal and policy contexts which impact on what they do. In turn, this sheds light on the formation and re-formation of teacher identity and professional knowledge over time, that is, to recognize the stages and phases of teachers’ work and lives

The unintended consequences of funding policies on student achievement at colleges of further education in Wales and England

The processes of policy making and implementation are not linear or unproblematic but, on the contrary, are based on complex social interactions, often giving rise to unforeseen outcomes. Thus, matters such as colleges' organisation and curriculum are open to negotiation and re-negotiation over time. Within these processes, control over funding is regarded as a key lever for ensuring policy change, but the consequences, especially in social terms are rarely thought through in advance. This presentation draws attention to this fact, depicting how changes to the governance of the Further Education (FE college) sector in England and Wales are underpinned by a 'marketized' approach, in which colleges have to compete with each other to attract students. Their funding largely depends upon enrolment. This presentation draws on fieldwork research undertaken in the period of the two academic years 2005-07 and subsequent ongoing analysis and dissemination of findings. It took place in three colleges, dispersed geographically over seven sites, chosen to reflect the cultural, social and economic diversity evident across Wales. As a constituent country of the UK, together with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the college system is similar, and especially so in Wales and England. Within the limitations of any qualitative work, the extent that findings can be generalised is limited, but the findings are particularly pertinent to England which has experienced similar policy regimes

Further education teachers' accounts of their professional identities

This study of further educationteachers, conducted over a two-year period, captures the realities of their working lives and, in particular, draws attention to how teachers reconcile competing pressures. This contributes to the growing interest in and body of knowledge about teachers' lives and the formation of their professionalidentities. The study draws on a variety of data including ethnographic observation, journals and biographical accounts to indicate the nature of their fractured professional base that leaves them open to exploitation. The ongoing pressure for performativity and constant change destabilises their work, yet they remain committed to meeting the needs and interests of their students

School Subjects, Subject Communities and Curriculum Change: the Social Construction of Economics in the School Curriculum

The place of economics in the curriculum in England and Wales provides a lens through which we may view the ways in which the curriculum as a whole is fought over and remains shifting terrain. Conceived of as social movements, school subject communities are made up of competing factions giving rise to contest and conflict both within themselves and with other subjects. A social constructionist perspective, such as Goodson's, would suggest that the form and content of the curriculum are outcomes of such ongoing struggle, involving the interplay of power and control that reflect deep‐rooted traditions. Bernstein's notions of school subjects imply complex interplay of official and pedagogic agents in determining their fates as singulars, regions or generic entities. The rise and fall of economics lay substantially outside the control of its subject community and the social movements within it. At post‐16, a search for new content and pedagogies seemed to take little heed of its curricular market position. During the compulsory phase, the emergence of sub‐factions interested in vocational rather than economics education ensured its consignment to cross‐curricular theme status and relative oblivion in the post‐1988 National Curriculum

Recontextualising Discourse: Exploring the Workings of the Meso-Level

This paper explores the role of meso‐level actors and their ongoing mediating roles in educational policy processes situated, as they are, between policy‐makers and central government, on the one hand (the macro level), and teachers and schools, on the other hand (the micro level). Although the example given here is in the role of a group of meso‐level actors engaged in the shaping of economics education it seeks to serve two wider purposes. First, by focusing on a particular subject it uses it as a lens through which to view the construction of the curriculum to discern the ways in which school and subject curricula are defined and the ways in which different definitions and prescriptions construct and distribute knowledge. Secondly, it explores the roles and motives of those who intervene by promoting or opposing change to illustrate the relationships and linkages between them. More broadly, it offers some insight into the relatively neglected area of the workings of micro‐political processes at the meso level, that is into the workings and processes of policy‐making, mediation and implementation, and how actors contributed to the conditions for dispute through the deployment of ideological and material resources

The wider social context of learning: beyond the classroom door

This paper draws attention to the complexity of students’ lives, their interactions with teachers, pointing in turn, to the ways in which learning is ‘negotiated’. In comparison with British schools and universities, little is known about what goes on in colleges of further education (tertiary colleges). This study reported here followed the ‘journeys’ of 45 students and 27 teachers over a two year period in colleges in Wales. It recorded the various twists and turns of what went on day-to-day, as revealed from a range of data, some provided by the participants, others from first-hand observation. The purpose of doing this was to improve our understanding of learning processes in further education and to add to knowledge of the relationships between learners and teachers and to the sorts of learning outcomes this gave rise to. Taken together, the data provide detailed insights into students’ and teachers’ lives, illuminating aspects of their life histories and individual career and learning journeys