Future apprenticeships in England: the role of mediation in the new model

Apprenticeship systems across the globe are having to adapt to changing international economic and social trends. England is no exception. This article examines the latest model of apprenticeship in England from the perspective of the ‘mediators’ who work at local and regional level with employers to construct and deliver the majority of current apprenticeships. The role of these actors is examined through a conceptual framework analysing different forms of mediation in the context of ‘the modern expanded state’. Their views were collected through 27 focus groups in nine regions of England in Spring 2016 and involving over 100 participants. These data suggest that the new apprenticeship model faces a number of challenges; notably how to engage small and medium-sized enterprises and how to better support the mobility and progression of apprentices. Participants advocated the development of regional and local networks comprising employers, FE colleges and other providers, HEIs and local government, as ways of sustaining the ‘apprenticeship market’, providing learner progression routes and stimulating employer demand for skills. The article concludes by suggesting a set of necessary local and national conditions if these networks are to have an impact on the successful development of the new apprenticeships.     

Middle attainers and 14–19 progression in England: half‐served by New Labour and now overlooked by the Coalition?

In the context of the international problem of ‘early school leaving’, this paper explores the issue of sustained participation in upper secondary education in England. It focuses in particular on the position of middle attainers, who constitute a large proportion of the cohort and whose progress will be vital in realising the government's goal of ‘Raising the Participation Age’ to 18 by 2015. The paper draws on evidence from national research undertaken as part of the Nuffield Review of 14–19 Education and Training in England and Wales and analysis of New Labour and Coalition policy between 2000–2012. It uses a three‐year local study of 2400 14‐ and 16‐year‐olds in an established school/college consortium to illustrate the effects of policy and practice on middle attainers. We argue that this important group of young people was ‘half‐served’ by New Labour, because of its incomplete and contradictory 14–19 reforms, and is now being ‘overlooked’ by Coalition policy because of its emphasis on high attainers. We conclude by suggesting a range of measures to support the 14+ participation, progression and transition of middle attainers in the English education and training system.     

Governing teachers’ work and learning through data: Australian insights

This article reveals the multiple ways in which data are constituted as a vehicle for governing teachers’ work and learning. Drawing on the concept of governance, including in relation to the sociology of numbers, and data from one school in Queensland, Australia, the research reveals how teachers’ work and learning were constituted through practices of: establishing specific ‘targets’, including various ‘audacious goals’ for school and national testing; focusing upon ‘aligning’ all forms of school, regional and national data collected within the school; and participating in various ‘data conversations’ about specific students with senior members of staff. While the research reveals how teachers found such practices beneficial for improving their practice with students, it also shows how this learning was always and everywhere framed within a broader discourse of data, and how this data-centric focus came to constitute what was valued about their work and learning, and that of their students.     

Three versions of ‘localism’: implications for upper secondary education and lifelong learning in the UK

As part of the international debate about new forms of governance and moves towards decentralization and devolution, this article discusses the increasing interest in the concept of ‘localism’ in the UK, marked recently by the publication of the UK Coalition Government’s ‘Localism Bill’. A distinction is made between three versions – ‘centrally managed’, ‘laissez-faire’ and ‘democratic’ localism. The article draws on two research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and one by the Nuffield Foundation, as well as sources by specialists in local government, political analysts and educationalists. It explores the broad features of the three versions of localism and their implications for upper secondary education and lifelong learning. The article concludes by examining the strengths and limitations of the first two models and suggests that the third has the potential to offer a more equitable way forward.     

The ‘local’ fetish as reproductive praxis in democratic learning

This article explores the theoretical conceptualization of the local as the preferential spatial domain for democratic participation and learning. It critiques the ideological nature of educational theory that bifurcates the local from the ‘the global’ through the application of the Marxist concept of ‘fetish’. The argument developed here is that the concept of fetish enables educators to conceptualize how and why this fragmentation of the local and the trans-local ultimately obscures the roots of social inequity and de-radicalizes educational responses to social problems, further generating fragmented forms of social mobilization and resistance.     

Multiculturalism,Interculturalisms and the Majority

Interculturalism, in its two forms, critiques multiculturalism. A European version emphasises cultural encounter and novelty, and is relatively apolitical except for its disavowal of the national in preference for the local and the transnational. In contrast, its Quebecan counterpart gives significance to the idea of the right of a national community to use state power to reproduce itself. Whilst the former is a recognisably cosmopolitan vision I ask if the latter represents a distinctive mode of integration. The core of the article is a textual examination of two recent publications by leading public intellectual scholars in Quebec, Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, respectively, including a lengthy discussion of the former’s concept of ‘majority precedence’. I argue that Quebecan interculturalism challenges multiculturalists to offer a positive view of ‘the majority’, which to date they have largely neglected to do, but which is possible within the conceptual and normative resources of multiculturalism.     

Framing young people’s educational transitions: the role of local and contemporary economic contexts

Despite rates of participation in post-compulsory full-time education reaching approximately 84% in Wales, social class inequalities continue to shape young people’s transitions from compulsory to post-compulsory education. This article draws upon data from a project which explored how young people’s educational decisions and transitions in Wales, UK are influenced by national economic landscapes, the popular narratives framing them and the structure of local employment opportunities. The analyses revealed that young people from similar social class backgrounds, but living in different localities, make very different sorts of transition from compulsory to post-compulsory education; in essence, they are either ‘pushed’ or they ‘jump’ into post-16 education. The article aims overall to contribute both empirically and theoretically to understandings of the complexity of educational decision-making, revealing how class and location intersect to frame decision-making processes, in so doing producing and reproducing educational inequalities.     

University as regional development agent: a counterfactual analysis of an African university

ABSTRACT

The contribution of universities to regional development has in the last few decades gained significant currency. Inter alia, this contribution has been through steered national, regional, and institutional policies aimed at enhancing national development, good governance, human capital creation and innovation in an increasing knowledge-dependent economy, and through the universities’ core technologies of teaching and research. Based on empirical findings from an African case study, this article argues that other forms of contributions to regional development exist, which are neither from deliberate efforts nor steered by direct policies. This article proposes new forms of contributions termed ‘unintended contributions’, in which universities become growth poles by virtue of being located in a particular region. Using the counterfactual and ‘export and import substitution’ methods of analysis, this study shows the various ways in which a rural university in Cameroon has ‘contributed to regional development as a ‘growth pole’.     

Young black males: resilience and the use of capital to transform school ‘failure’

This article addresses the idea of ‘failure’ of young black males with respect to schooling. Perceptions of black masculinity are often linked to ‘underperformance’ in the context of school academic achievement. This article addresses how young black men, by great personal effort, recover from school ‘failure’. It explores how young black men, despite negative school experiences, see possibilities for their future and how they seek to transform school ‘failure’ into personal and educational ‘success’. Low attainment combined with permanent/temporary exclusion from school does not necessarily deter young black men from pursuing their education. This low attainment is used by some to make a renewed attempt at educational progression in a different post-school learning environment. Yosso’s concept of ‘community cultural wealth’ provides an understanding of how different forms of capital are accessed by young black men to form a ‘turnaround narrative’. This article considers the complex ways in which young black males work to transform their negative school experience. Their narratives reveal a determination to succeed and the ways in which cultivation of this determination by the family, organisational/community agents promotes a sense of possibility. However, it remains to be seen how, in the UK, the cuts to vital local services and support will impact on this sense of possibility.     

Who are the custodians of Pacific ‘post-2015’ education futures? Policy discourses,education for all and the millennium development goals

This article discusses influences of Education for All (EFA) and the education Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on education policies in the Pacific sub-region in the context of ongoing ‘post-2015 development agenda’ deliberations, focusing on Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. It is based on doctoral work undertaken as a component of an Australian Research Council Linkage grant, partially supported by the former Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), and continuing postdoctoral research.Pacific postcolonial nations’ engagement with EFA and the MDGs was compared through a critical discourse analysis of multi-scalar education policy formation processes. The research identified paradoxical influences of global approaches, and multi-level processes. While such frameworks at once facilitated educational debate and legitimized broader education policy participation, they also supported a status quo in mainstream donor and state dominance of educational development agendas. There is some evidence of wider national participation in the emerging ‘post-2015′ policy processes, but the extent of its influence on multi-level policy deliberations globally and regionally is yet to be seen. Many of the education issues currently being raised in both nations, and regionally, have endured since colonial occupation and independence. This article focuses on educational relevance and gender issues in education, and positions them in relation to the concept of ownership within post-colonial political dynamics and multilevel discursive contexts for participation, which I interpret as being of continued importance to understanding these enduring education concerns.     

‘Little prisoners of city streets’: London elementary schools and the School Journey Movement, 1918–1939

This article examines the experience of the ‘school journey’, an educational fieldtrip of a fortnight’s duration, as practised in London’s interwar elementary schools. Established historical debates over perceptions of the countryside in interwar Britain have previously failed to discuss the messages promoted in schools. This article demonstrates that an idyllic notion of the rural countryside often influenced school practice, but that there was little attempt to link this explicitly to a wider ideological message around national identity or patriotism. Although exposure to the countryside was seen as undoubtedly beneficial, school journeys were not uncritical of rural life. They also encompassed a much wider range of purposes, being an opportunity to study different industries and local heritage, or foster contact with local people. Furthermore, they provided an unequalled opportunity for increased supervision by teachers, and thus a valuable chance to counter the perceived moral ill-effects of a child’s usual working-class environment.     

New courses for Trojan horses: rethinking RPL in a South African teacher education curriculum

This article reflects on some of the findings of a research project which investigated the practice of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) within a major national teacher upgrading project in South Africa – the National Professional Diploma in Education (NPDE). The article analyses the ways in which a range of contextual factors have positioned RPL within the NPDE curriculum. Rather than support evaluations of RPL in the NPDE which have argued that RPL should be prior to rather than within the curriculum, the article uses and critically examines a theorized typology which characterizes RPL as ‘credit-exchange’, ‘developmental’, ‘radical’ and/or ‘Trojan horse’ to show how RPL in the NPDE has combined elements of these approaches in a distinctive way. The article suggests that the ‘Trojan horse’ model may provide the best framework for the use of RPL in linking qualifications-led professional development of practising teachers with other forms of continuing professional development. In conclusion the article reflects on how Trojan horse RPL could be included in critical engagement with the new national framework for teacher education and professional development.     

Education decentralization in Argentina: a ‘global-local conditions of possibility’ approach to state,market, and society change

This research examined the international origins, national intentions, and local interpretations and actions of the most recent education decentralization movement in Argentina. As a mixed-method, multi-level study, the research was framed with the understanding that current reforms like education decentralization must be approached as contemporaneously constituted policies but historically constructed processes. Using historical methods and archival analysis, this research traced the patterns and pressures of the international policy environment in which policies like privatization, deregulation and decentralization have gained much attention. It reviewed Argentina's recent current educational decentralization laws in light of these global trends as well as their national and subnational context. Employing technical, political, and narrative methods of policy analysis, this research examined the degree of correspondence between the laws' international origins and national intentions and the actors' local interpretations and actions of them. Drawing from the ‘analytic narratives’ that resulted from this study, the bulk of this article compares actors' interpretations, re-actions, and en-actions of education decentralization in three provinces of Argentina. By assessing the relationship between the provinces' political, economic, and cultural contexts and the actors' interpretations and actions of education decentralization, the research concludes that both material capacities and symbolic identities affect the outcomes of education decentralization.     

Global-local divides and ontological politics: feminist STS perspectives on mobile learning for community health workers in Kenya

ABSTRACT

This theoretical paper argues that Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) can help advance the emancipatory project in critical Ed Tech research. To support this claim, we deploy Tsing’s concept of ‘scale-making projects’ (2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) to connect ‘global’ narratives to ‘local’ users in a mobile learning project for Kenyan health workers. Drawing from this exemplar case, we discuss more broadly how FSTS provides useful theory and methods for tracing the trans-national power relations of digital technologies ‘on the ground’. The paper concludes by advocating for new forms of emancipatory Ed Tech research – ones framed not only within oppositional pairings such as ‘global’ versus ‘local’, but which elucidate how binaries themselves are constituted through far-flung trans-national arrays of sociomaterial practice.     

Making ‘place’ for ecological sustainability in early childhood education

Culturally, childhood is often understood as a time of innocence which can mean that issues such as ecological sustainability are considered too problematic for early childhood practice. By drawing on findings from a research project that focused on issues of ecological sustainability in early childhood centres in New Zealand from Western and indigenous perspectives, this article contributes a critical perspective of ecological sustainability as an educational issue in early childhood education (ECE). The article falls into two parts: the first section gives an overview of some of the conceptual and theoretical issues that underpin critical perspectives of childhood, and provides a context for current global ECE discourse, while the second section introduces the research project and discusses the intersections of ‘local’ and ‘global’ in light of teachers’ emerging ‘pedagogies of place’. The intent is to demonstrate that critical engagement with such complex global issues as ecological sustainability generates spaces for new understandings of how ECE can contribute to theory and practice of education for sustainability.     

Counter-conduct in creative university research: deliberations on freedom

This article describes how a political assemblage currently at work in higher education is re-articulating academic subjectivities. This assemblage draws together entrepreneurial and humanist concepts of creativity into an intellectual resource that can change national economies. Academics are urged to use their creativity to counteract the narrowing funding base of the university. The article first introduces a history of the concept of creativity and explains how governmental agendas for creative industry and creativity in education emerged. Second, it describes a practice-based research project that grapples with the difficulties of knowledge transfer between the ‘creative’ and ‘social science’ academic disciplines. This raises questions about creative knowledge and reveals some ethical tensions in the performance of academic research. The research project is then positioned as a ‘counter-conduct’, used to short-circuit the procedures implemented for the conduct of creative research in the creative, entrepreneurial university.     

Further education in England: at the crossroads between a national,competitive sector and a locally collaborative system?

ABSTRACT

During the 25 years since Incorporation, when further education (FE) colleges were taken out of local government control, FE in England has been shaped by processes of marketisation to become a competitive national sector that has increasingly diverged from the more ‘collaborative system logic’ of the other three countries of the UK. However, following recent government reforms, FE in England appears to have reached a crossroads with the opportunity to participate in a more collaborative skills-based landscape at the local and sub-regional levels. This article brings together evidence from historical and international comparative system analysis, a series of UK-wide seminars and in-depth research on the Area-Based Review of FE colleges to assess the strategic direction of FE in England at this critical juncture. We argue that English FE providers can take advantage of these trends to make a transition from a reactive, competitive national sector towards a more collaborative, regional and sub-regional system focused on inclusive economic and skills development. The article concludes that the potential for cross-UK policy learning depends on whether FE in England gradually transitions towards a more collaborative future that could bring it closer to FE and skills systems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.     

赣南客家乡土文化中生态智慧发掘利用及其现代价值研究

经济发展、城市建设和社会和谐都需要可持续性,可持续的理念也深入人心,这其中最为根本的是生态系统的可持续性,即生态可持续性。它与生态安全、生态系统服务等已经成为国家发展战略和国家安全的核心。党的十八大明确提出了“五位一体”的建设方略,将生态文明建设作为重要一环列入基本国策,重视程度史无前例。生态文明的建设关乎人民福祉和人类未来,而广泛存在于各地乡土文化中的民间生态智慧,则成为我们可供利用的文化资源。     

Exploring the interweaving of contrary currents: transnational policy enactment and path-dependent policy implementation in Australia and Japan

This article explores the neo-institutional theory of global policy convergence, or ‘isomorphism’, by comparatively examining one of its most recent manifestations – the global diffusion of national standardised testing – in Australia and Japan. By understanding the particular configurations of national testing as being conditioned by both nations' institutional frameworks and historical legacies of education policy development, this study illuminates how the conditioning effects of these frameworks and legacies resulted in the divergent ways in which a policy model circulating at the transnational level became translated into assessment policies that are ‘simultaneously similar and different’. These findings are related to the concept of ‘path dependency’, emphasised in particular by political science and historical institutionalism. The theoretical conclusions drawn on this basis indicate a promising direction of comparative education research, one that recognises global convergence and national divergence as processes that simultaneously shape the globalisation of education policy. In so doing, they summarise the implications of the study for the ongoing debate on the neo-institutionalist theory in comparative education.     

Safety in stereotypes? The impact of gender and ‘race’ on young people's perceptions of their post‐compulsory education and labour market opportunities

This article examines the impact of gender and ‘race’ on young people's perceptions of the educational and labour market opportunities available to them after they complete their compulsory schooling in England. Its findings are based on a study of the views of girls and boys about the government‐supported ‘Apprenticeships’ programme, which, because it reflects labour market conditions, is highly gendered and also segregated by ethnicity. The research shows that young people receive very little practical information and guidance about the consequences of pursuing particular occupational pathways, and are not engaged in any formal opportunities to debate gender and ethnic stereotyping as related to the labour market. This is particularly worrying for females, who populate apprenticeships in sectors with lower completion rates and levels of pay, and which create less opportunity for progression. In addition, the research reveals that young people from non‐White backgrounds are more reliant on ‘official’ sources of guidance (as opposed to friends and families) for their labour market knowledge. The article argues that, because good‐quality apprenticeships can provide a strong platform for lifelong learning and career progression, young people need much more detailed information about how to compare a work‐based pathway with full‐time education. At the same time, they also need to understand that apprenticeships (and jobs more generally) in some sectors may result in very limited opportunities for career advancement.