Work-based higher education and skill utilisation, examining the interaction between the academy and the workplace

In the UK, as elsewhere, employers are urged to invest in workforce development to increase competitiveness (DfEE 2005; DIUS 2007). Policy makers have argued that demographics in the UK require the existing workforce to be ‘up-skilled’ through part-time and work-based learning (WBL) including via new vocationally-based foundation degrees (FDs). However, in a climate of financial constraint, higher education (HE) is increasingly viewed as an investment in the skills of the workforce or individual, raising questions regarding the effectiveness of that investment - particularly given evidence that increasing the supply of HE level skills may not be sufficient to improve an organisation’s productivity and performance (Scottish Government 2008). Recent analyses recognise that demand for new skills, deriving from work design and opportunities to deploy skills are critical factors. Consequently, we need greater understanding of the relationship between learning practices, the context of the workplace and the potential role of HE WBL in skills utilisation. Public sector workforce development in England has been shaped by the ‘modernisation’ agenda resulting in significant shifts in workforce organisation and the creation of many new ‘intermediate’ roles (Edmond and Price 2009). In this paper, we address the conference theme of ‘Learning Theory, Skills and Work’ and consider Cultural Historical Activity Theory in examining the relationship between HE WBL programmes, individual learner/worker agency and developing professional identities and work organisation and skill utilisation. We argue that a more nuanced understanding of the potential of HE WBL practices to support skill utilisation in the workplace is needed to critically examine policy assumptions. Drawing on public sector examples, we suggest that HE WBL has the potential to be instrumental in shaping identities at work and can have a distinctive role to play in mediating social practices in the workplace to support demand for skills and hence skill utilisation

Discourses of ‘equivalence’ in HE and notions of student engagement : resisting the neoliberal university

Copyright © 2014 Nadia Edmond and Jon Berry. This is an open access journal article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedThere is no shortage of analysis of marketization and the theorizing of the student as consumer/customer and how this impacts on notions of student engagement. This compelling - but largely academic - analysis forms the starting point for any investigation into the possibilities for resistance to the current hegemonic view of education and learning as commodities. An example of this is the discourse of 'equivalence' in education arising from the converting of experience into academic currency linked to employability. An adjunct to the commodification and marketization of education is the growing role of academic credit awarded for work experience in HE in which work becomes part of commodified learning valued in terms of its exchange value in academia and ultimately employment. The discourse of equivalence conflates parity of this exchange value with parity of use value of the learning and serves to obfuscate the distinctiveness of learning and student engagement in different contexts and the inherent contradictions therein, yet it is these contradictions which could create scope and spaces for resistance. Against the background of academic understanding of marketization/neo-liberal hegemony, the authors suggest that the very notion of ‘student engagement’ becomes problematic and argue for wider, societal discussion of concepts of ‘engagement’ and ‘resistance’ in the academyPeer reviewe

The meaning of HE in developing professional identities: some reflections on workbased foundation degrees and skill utilisation

In a climate of financial constraint there is increasing pressure on HE to justify its draw on the public purse. Viewing HE as investment in raising the skill level of the workforce raises the question of the effectiveness of that investment and understanding effective skill utilisation is therefore critical. In this paper, the authors argue that the relationship between experience, education and skill utilisation is more complex than notions of skill acquisition suggest and skill utilisation depends not on the ‘possession’ of skills but on the dynamic interaction through social practices between individual factors and the social context. Drawing on empirical work in the context of part‐time Foundation Degrees the authors report on how HE can be instrumental in shaping and transforming identities at work and argue for the need to research the role of HE in mediating social practices in the workplace to support skill utilisation

Telling tales on either side of the teacher: methods of researching professional and biographical transformations in the context of Education

This paper discusses the approaches and research methods used in two projects which examine professional transformations on ‘either side’ of the school teacher. The authors consider how the projects drew upon the different yet potentially complimentary methodological approaches of discourse analysis and autoethnography in the examination of professional identity. Following a description of the projects and the chosen methods, which includes discussion of the respective traditions from which they stem, the approaches are compared and contrasted through analysis of their application with a focus upon their various advantages and limitations within these particular contexts. The authors discuss these examples in terms of the wider discussion of quality and rigour in qualitative research and as a contribution to the debates on the complementarity of different qualitative approaches

Beyond 'Entrepreneurialism of the Self': What it Means to be a Student in the Neoliberal University

As market forces and market mechanisms increasingly reframe the work of the university, the concept of 'entrepreneurialsm of the self' is useful in examining certain student practices  associated with the neoliberal university.  However, the chapter goes on to argue that such entrepreneurialsm does not totally define student identities within which these practices coexist with practices which resist neoliberalism's imposition of market logic on Higher Education

Higher education and the marketization of compulsory schooling:English universities and academy sponsorship

Recent policy emphasis on market mechanisms to drive up the performance of education systems has resulted in rising fees and increased competition in Higher Education (HE) in England, and in the creation of different types of self-governing state funded schools run independently of municipal authority in compulsory schooling. University sponsorship of Charter Schools in the US raises issues which this article examines in relation to university sponsorship of academies in England. The article provides a quantitative overview of university sponsorship of academies over the last decade and explores how the policy context has shaped the discursive construction of sponsorship by the institutions concerned. Different patterns of sponsorship linked to institutional position and differentiated discourses of ‘sponsorship’ consistent with ‘academic entrepreneurship’ are identified. The discursive function of sponsorship is argued to extend to a legitimation of the policy itself reflected in increasing government pressure on universities to sponsor academies