Life skills for ‘real life’: How critical thinking is contextualised across vocational programmes

Background: This article presents an analysis of how critical thinking is contextualised in everyday teaching in three vocational education and training (VET) programmes: Vehicle and transport, Restaurant and management, and Health and social care.

Purpose: The main question addressed is: What knowledge discourses permeate different VET-contexts, and hence what kinds of opportunities for critical thinking do they offer students?

Method: The qualitative analysis draws on data from a four-year ethnographic project exploring learning processes that can be characterised as civic education in Swedish vocational education. The analysis presented here used data collected during 85 days of observations of teaching in six VET classes, interviews with 81 students and 10 teachers, and collected teaching material. To explore why some contextualisations provided more opportunities and encouragement for critical thinking than others, we applied Bernsteinian concepts of ‘horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses’ and ‘discursive gaps’.

Findings and conclusions: Overall, teaching that was observed focused primarily on ‘doing’. However, in all three programmes, the analysis identified that there were also situations that touched upon critical thinking. Three major themes were identified: critical thinking related to ‘Personal experiences’, ‘The other(s)’ and ‘Wider perspectives’. It appeared that the frequency and nature of such situations varied with the knowledge discourses permeating the programme. Furthermore, we discuss the manifestations of critical thinking in relation to the wider context of what Bernstein refers to as pedagogic rights; individual enhancement, social inclusion and development of the competence and confidence to participate in political processes.     

Elementary Teachers’ Teaching for Conceptual Understanding: Learning From Action Research

This study reports teachers’ learning through action research on students’ conceptual understanding. The study examined (a) the teachers’ views about science teaching and learning, (b) the teachers’ learning about their teaching practices and (c) the conditions that supported the teachers’ learning through action research. A total of 14 elementary in-service teachers’ course discussion, self-video reflection, action research reports, and learning reflection were analyzed. Findings revealed that (a) the teachers in this study commonly espoused the importance of probing and utilizing students’ preconceptions in science teaching, but they demonstrated various levels of epistemological understanding of student learning and teaching, (b) the teachers experienced the action research as a means to evaluate science teaching methods and changing their teaching practices, and (c) the teachers identified sharing goals, problems, and solutions as an essential supporting condition for their learning through action research. Implications for professional development and further research are discussed.     

Staying mindful in action: the challenge of ‘double awareness’ on task and process in an Action Lab

Action Learning is a well-proven method to integrate ‘task’ and ‘process’, as learning about team and self (process) takes place while delivering on a task or business challenge of real importance (task). An Action Lab^® is an intensive Action Learning programme lasting for 5 days, which aims at balancing and integrating individual challenges and business challenges, as well as the ‘Action’ and the ‘Learning’ of Action Learning. However, in spite of the aspiration to balance and integrate ‘task’ and ‘process’, a tendency and a challenge is experienced: When deeply involved in delivering on a business challenge, participants tend to shy away from or see reflection on the process as disturbing or disrupting. This tendency is like a seesaw: When the pressure of the task increases, awareness about the process goes down. This account of practice aims at exposing and understanding better this tendency by sharing a study looking into what hinders and promotes mindful awareness on the process, while dealing with a business challenge in an Action Lab^®. Drawing on the findings, the account of practice will share some recommendations for the Action Learning facilitator to take up the challenge of integrating task and process whenever the seesaw is tipping.     

Becoming a PI: From ‘doing’ to ‘managing’ research

While achieving research independence by becoming a principal investigator (PI) is a key aspiration for many postdocs, little is known of the trajectory from PhD graduation to first PI grant. This interview-based study examined how 16 PIs in science, technology engineering, mathematics or medicine, in the UK and continental Europe, prepared for and dealt with this career transition. Individuals demonstrated commitment to lengthy periods of postdoctoral work in a range of institutions (often involving international mobility) to achieve PI-status. Their emotionally laden journeys required resilience and self-belief, since getting a grant was conceived as partly luck. Once individuals had their grant they faced new challenges that distanced them from actively researching. Still, individuals navigated their intentions in a sustained fashion to create a distinct intellectual profile in the face of challenging circumstances. The results highlight the centrality of emotion in the journey, as well as curricular imperatives for both doctoral and postdoctoral learning.     

From ‘ritual’ to ‘mindfulness’: policy and pedagogic positioning

Schools and professionals respond to statute in different ways. However, professional activity is more than mediated response to policy. Versions of pedagogy are not simply envisaged on high and enacted in the workplace. This paper examines how professional views formulate policy imperatives. It proposes that to understand pedagogy requires an understanding of the ways in which professional selves are realised in relation to the policy formation process. To do this, positioning theory is used to describe how practice produces policy. Accordingly, the paper examines the dynamic interplay between: first, the story lines unfolding within and outside school; second, the positions adopted by individuals in the course of pedagogic decision-making. Third, the illocutionary (that achieved in saying something) and perlocutionary (that achieved by saying something) effects of language. Following this ‘positioning triad’, the paper proposes ‘pedagogy as ritual’ and ‘pedagogy as mindfulness’ and how these are representative, respectively, of limiting and delimiting pedagogic discourses.     

From ‘no’ to ‘yes’: postcolonial perspectives on resistance to neoliberal higher education

Various scholars have suggested ways to resist neoliberal conditions in higher education (HE). In analysing current neoliberal policies and practices in HE, I suggest that postcolonial theories of resistance can enhance our ability as faculty and administrators to understand and ‘resist’ these policies and practices. In this article, I review four modes of postcolonial resistance as described by David Jeffress (2008), mobilizing a critique of resistance as writing and cultural practice and challenging the reactionary nature of subversion and opposition. I argue that we need to place emphasis on transformational resistance, or the creation of new ways of being, knowing and doing in HE in order to transform the academy.     

Learning in Early Childhood: experiences,relationships and ‘Learning to Be’

Learning in the earliest stage of life — the infancy, toddlerhood and preschool period — is relational and rapid. Child-initiated and adult-mediated conversations, playful interactions and learning through active involvement are integral to young children making sense of their environments and to their development over time. The child's experience in this early phase of life is at the heart of ‘Learning to Be’ in any society. This article reviews early learning studies aimed at understanding children's personal, intellectual and social development, and promoting that development. Particular reference is made to attachment and attention, the process of self-regulation, and the adult-child engagement strategies that advance the child's receptive and expressive language: these all exercise substantial influence on early childhood learning and child development outcomes over time. The selected research studies variously highlight the development of infants, toddlers, and young children in kindergarten and the early years of school, and how children make sense of their environments as social, learning and unique human beings. Both the home learning environment and early childhood education programmes are important in children's development. This article argues for high-quality early childhood experience and giving attention to the engagement role of adults in advancing young children's development, minimising the risk of poor development and supporting positive long-lasting personal, academic and social benefits. In this early phase of life, in the words of Jacques Delors: ‘… none of the talents which are hidden like buried treasure in every person must be left untapped’. (Delors et al. 1996, p. 23).     

From Awareness to Action: College Students’ Skill Development in Intergroup Dialogue

A central goal of intergroup dialogue (IGD) is to strengthen individual and collective capacities to foster social justice commitments by supporting new ways of thinking about oneself, others, and the social structures in which we live. Relatedly, IGD assists individuals with building multicultural competencies and skill sets that support peoples’ capacities to take action and work towards social change. The following qualitative study contributes to current research by describing the types of skills undergraduate students report learning as a result of their IGD experience and the challenges they encounter as they develop communication, cognitive, and affective skills.     

From data source to co-researchers? Tracing the shift from ‘student voice’ to student–teacher partnerships in Educational Action Research

This article provides a review of the concept of student voice as it has been represented in Educational Action Research from the 1990s to the present day. Contextualised within an exploration of the challenges posed by educational action research that incorporates student voice in the current age of accountability as reflected and understood in academia, we explore issues of power and authority, issues of process and issues of ownership as they emerge in the literature. We note ways in which these challenges are manifest in primary and secondary schooling and in tertiary education. Finally, we survey some recent representations of student voice in Educational Action Research, observing something of a shift from earlier conceptualisations of students as a ‘data source’ to a more active involvement as co-researchers and joint constructors of knowledge, progressing toward more active student–teacher partnerships.     

From Input to Output:Chinese College Students’English Language Learning Situation

English as a second language has been learned and taught in Chinese colleges for several decades. But seen from stu?dents’TEM-4 and TEM-6 results and their practical application, the effect is limited ...     

The prevalence of ‘life planning’: evidence from UK graduates

At a time when ‘personal development planning’ is being rolled out across the UK higher education sector, this paper explores young adults’ inclinations to plan for the future in relation to work, relationships and other aspects of life. Although Giddens has emphasised the prevalence of strategic life planning (or the ‘colonisation of the future’) in all strata of contemporary society, du Bois Reymond has argued that there are important differences by social class, with young people from more privileged backgrounds more likely than their peers to engage in such life‐planning activities. This paper draws on interviews with 90 young adults (in their mid‐20s) to question some of these assumptions about relationships between social location and propensity to plan for the future. It shows how, within this sample at least, there was a strong association between having had a privileged ‘learning career’ (such as attending a high‐status university and identifying as an ‘academic high flier’) and a disinclination to form detailed plans for the future. In part, this appeared to be related to a strong sense of ontological security and the confidence to resist what Giddens terms ‘an increasingly dominant temporal outlook’.     

Tapping into the ‘standing-reserve’: a comparative analysis of workers’ training programmes in Kolkata and Toronto

This paper examines employment-related training programmes offered by state funded agencies and multinational corporations in Toronto (Canada) and Kolkata (India). In recent years both cities have witnessed a rise in the service sector industries aligned with global regimes of flexible work and the consequent reinvention of a worker subject that is no longer disciplined according to the needs of industrial production. A worker must now be self-regulated, competitive, flexible, with an ability to convey an urbane, English-speaking deportment within the workplace. Training of employees, especially soft skill training becomes crucial in this connection as a form of technology for achieving this end. Based on Martin Heidegger’s conceptualisation of ‘standing-reserve’, we suggest that what training programmes do in the context of neoliberal capitalist production is the creation of an essential quality of human-ness that has to be harnessed, its potentialities tapped and amplified through training. We further suggest that such programmes often remain heavily influenced by race/class/gender hierarchies as well as stereotypical assumptions of desirable/undesirable bodies, forms of socialisation and modes of habitation that often are naturalised in the course of training.     

Learning ‘about’ and ‘from’ religion: phenomenography,the Variation Theory of Learning and religious education in Finland and the UK

The paper addresses the relationship between the twin tasks of enabling pupils both to learn about and learn from religion in the state education systems of Finland and the UK. Recognising that the relationship between these two tasks is the subject of considerable confusion, it is argued that the most appropriate way to view the connection is fundamentally ontological. In a plural society in which there is no basic agreement about the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, there nevertheless remains a common concern to enable pupils to live flourishing lives in harmony with the ultimate order‐of‐things. The paper draws on phenomenography and the Variation Theory of Learning to unpack the pedagogic implications of this argument.     

‘We not I’ not ‘I Me Mine’: Learning from Professional Memory about Collectivist English Teaching

This article investigates the professional memories of English teachers who began their careers between 1965 and 1975. The teachers began their careers in circumstances that offered opportunities to work in collectivist ways. Their memories reveal a strong collective identity, a powerful sense of agency and a critical engagement with the aims of English teaching. It is argued that by exploring these memories, and by re-imagining English as a ‘relational’ or ‘heteroglossial’ activity, current practitioners might find inspiration to work collectively and collaboratively to challenge dominant conceptions of the subject.     

Learning to ‘site-see’: place-reflexivity as a methodological tool for qualitative researchers

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to further examine ‘place-reflexivity’ as a methodological tool for engaging in site-seeing in qualitative research. Qualitative research often involves a site or field. Yet, the ‘where’ of qualitative research has often been overlooked in methodological discussions. This approach is akin to sightseeing where sites are a backdrop rather than foregrounded. We draw on scholarship that conceptualizes site, place, field, and context from sociological, geographical and anthropological disciplines, as well as on concepts of third space as they apply to qualitative inquiry. We offer an argument for the fuller inclusion, and expanded treatment of sites including tools to assist qualitative researchers with this type of thinking.     

From ‘you’ to ‘we’: A foreign language teacher's professional journey towards embracing inclusive education

This qualitative case study explores how a novice foreign language teacher negotiated personal and professional identities and positioned herself and students in relation to classroom and broader cultural communities through pronouns. The participants included a Turkish teacher and six students at an American university. The teacher's use of pronouns we, you, and they was explored using video-recorded classroom observations and discourse analysis. The findings indicated the different ways the teacher used pronouns in the classroom to include/exclude or invite students into Turkish community, and how the switches between personal and professional perspectives signaled the teacher's journey towards embracing inclusive education.     

The social life of Learning Analytics: cluster analysis and the ‘performance’ of algorithmic education

This paper argues that methods used for the classification and measurement of online education are not neutral and objective, but involved in the creation of the educational realities they claim to measure. In particular, the paper draws on material semiotics to examine cluster analysis as a ‘performative device’ that, to a significant extent, creates the educational entities it claims to objectively represent through the emerging body of knowledge of Learning Analytics (LA). It also offers a more critical and political reading of the algorithmic assemblages of LA, of which cluster analysis is a part. Our argument is that if we want to understand how algorithmic processes and techniques like cluster analysis function as performative devices, then we need methodological sensibilities that consider critically both their political dimensions and their technical-mathematical mechanisms. The implications for critical research in educational technology are discussed.     

‘From OBE to C2005 to RNCS’: Are we still on track?

Abstract

There is a general lack of understanding about the interrelationship between outcomes-based education (OBE), Curriculum 2005 (C2005) and the revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS). There is a tendency to perceive the three as different and distinct entities. This stems from the belief that the transformation of education in South Africa followed the pattern of ‘from OBE to C2005 to the RNCS’, and that this movement or shift is exclusive in the sense that each step in this chain or progression is totally new and independent of the previous one. Based on this, the author is apprehensive as to whether the RNCS will be implemented as envisaged. The fault may lie with the teachers themselves as a result of acquired prejudices and anxieties, the manner in which the Department of Education (DoE) conducts its advocacy campaigns or the teacher training institutions’ curricula.

This article looks at teachers’ understanding of this evolutionary sequence, ‘from OBE to C2005 to RNCS’; and relates it to the intention to stay on track for the purposes of educational transformation and the implementation of the RNCS.