Delivering the DEAL: implementation of a work‐based learning programme at degree level

Abstract

This paper offers a strategy for the development of successful work‐based learning programmes within higher education. It identifies and addresses the key challenges facing such development. Firstly, whether it is possible to develop a work‐based learning programme which provides an effective learning experience at higher education level and which draws upon opportunities within the workplace. Secondly, whether work‐based learning programmes are an appropriate vehicle for structuring and accrediting the continuing development of the workforce. In addressing these challenges, we examine the design and quality assurance of a work‐based learning programme for qualified social workers, placing particular emphasis on the development of an appropriate learning model. We consider some of the criticisms levelled at competence‐based education and argue that work‐based learning programmes composed of learning outcomes achieved entirely through practice can be compatible with the aims of higher education.     

Interdisciplinary In‐service at the University: a participatory case‐based model for professional development

Abstract

The Participatory Case‐Based Model for Professional Development is an in‐service model which is useful across the human service disciplines (social work, occupational therapy, public health, special education, early childhood and family education). In the model, participants enrolled in a graduate course engage in dialogue and perspective‐taking, through case analysis and case writing. Using grounded theory and inductive data analyses, the major effects of this professional development model were studied. These effects included: (1) gaining new knowledge; (2) ‘really seeing’ from multiple perspectives; and (3) developing a sense of support, renewal and networking across various professions. Connections to the selected professional development literature —; problem‐based learning, case process and effects, and the practical argument model — offered affirmations and challenges to the Participatory Case‐Based Model for Professional Development     

Further Education and the New Managerialism

Abstract

As a result of the process of incorporation following the Further and Higher Education Act (1992), Cityshire College, a large further education (FE) college, left the jurisdiction of the local authority and gained greater responsibility for managing its own affairs. Arising from a case study based on interviews and questionnaires this paper considers the impact of changes within the College which took place between 1991 and 1994. Of particular interest is the development of a ‘new managerialism’, a management style which the paper identifies as having spread throughout public sector organizations during the 1980s. This paper goes on to consider the way in which quality procedures, the introduction of a technology associated with flexible learning and the introduction of market‐related mechanisms have had an impact on professional control. The evidence from a lecturer questionnaire circulated at Cityshire suggests that staff reject the values represented by these developments and are opposed to the threat they perceive to the professional culture of FE. The outcome of the various processes currently taking place at Cityshire and across the sector as a whole suggest that the deprofessionalization and, indeed, the ‘proletarianization’ of the FE lecturer may be taking place.     

Implementing change: an autobiographical case study of introducing a technology innovation within a West Midlands HEI

abstract

This article outlines the evaluation of student‐led group work as the major vehicle for a professional course in education (PGCE whole school studies) which relies heavily on work‐based learning. Group work is found to be an effective means of enhancing reflective practice. Problems of engaging whole group responsibility for the tasks and activities can be effectively managed through appropriate structuring of the learning experiences, induction programmes in team work, review and tutor facilitation. Two issues are identified as problematical in longer‐term work of this kind. The first is that of the social cohesion of the groups; where this works well the learning experience is enhanced, where not students are deprived of an effective learning experience. The other is that of the appropriateness of this form of learning for all preferred learning styles. A flexibility of approach is recommended.     

Institutional innovations in higher education in central Europe: Agenda for research and co‐operation

Abstract

Research findings on graduate employment in the UK continue to highlight the importance that employers attach to the general knowledge, attitudes and social skills that graduates possess in addition to specific disciplinary knowledge and expertise. Additionally, work based learning is increasingly being viewed as an important vehicle by which undergraduates can develop personal and social skills, as well as gaining knowledge of how organisations work. In this paper I will argue that although developments in undergraduate work based learning do raise a number of issues for higher education institutions and for employers, such developments have much to offer the broader education policy of lifelong learning.     

Ettore Gelpi: an appreciation

Abstracts

English

The aim of the paper is to argue for a curriculum model approach to problems of development in adult and lifelong (or continuing) education contexts.

The advantages of such an approach are outlined : relating theory to practice and social policies to educational processes; exploring professional role‐structures and their effect upon received curriculum assumptions in the adult sector, particularly the traditional needs‐meeting, remedial and compensatory elements of such assumptions.

The significance of recent theoretical and policy developments in adult and continuing education is reviewed in these terms and some distinctions made between alternative implicit models of the lifelong curriculum. It is suggested that adult education, as presently constituted, might, itself, be an obstacle to the development of an integrated lifelong education curriculum.

In order to elucidate this a number of curriculum concepts, familiar enough in the general theory of education, are considered in the less familiar context of adult and lifelong education: typologies of curriculum models are used to explore some issues of development in this context (e.g. objectives, provision, process, action, research models etc.)

Ideas of a ‘core’ curriculum, and of the ‘hidden’ or ‘latent’ curriculum, together with curriculum development and evaluation are also considered.

The existing state of the adult and continuing education curriculum is then analyzed within such a conceptual framework. The disposition of professional roles is described, together with the curricular implications of the structure of provision (the University Extra‐Mural Departments, the WEA and the LEA sector).

The ideas of ‘flexibility’ and ‘access’ are critically reviewed as a function of professional (rather than political) ideologies, and the adult‐lifelong curriculum is analyzed in terms of administrative criteria on the one hand and educational process and social action on the other.

A prevailing orthodoxy of continuing education is elucidated in curriculum terms, and contrasted with the curriculum implications of lifelong models. For example, such models stress the functional interdependence of learning stages in an ‘intrinsic’ rather than a ‘remedial’ way, whereas much thinking about adult and continuing education in Britain is concerned with compensatory responses to failures of early educational experience.

In conclusion, it is argued that, in curriculum terms, the development of a continuing or a lifelong education system is by no means as straightforward as is sometimes supposed, and that the obstacles lie primarily within the nature of present curriculum assumptions as much as the more obvious material obstacles to development. Adult education, as it is presently organized, articulates the same kind of curriculum assumptions as initial education. The curriculum assumptions of lifelong education, however, are much more concerned with education in terms of social control and knowledge‐content than with access to professional provision which reproduces curriculum models of initial education sectors.     

Practice stories in natural resource management continuing professional education: springboards for learning

The use of stories from professional experience in continuing professional education has been on the rise in many fields, often aimed at bolstering capacity through sharing professional knowledge and/or supporting reflective practice. Practice stories are also suggested to be beneficial in supporting professional learning of new concepts. These uses of practice stories are not evident in public natural resource management (NRM) continuing professional education. In light of greater public involvement in NRM practice over the last 20 years, however, the use of practice stories could now be particularly beneficial to NRM professionals. This study examines the use of practice stories in workshops aimed at deepening public NRM professionals' understanding of social science concepts suggested to be valuable in making sense of the social and political complexity intertwined in public involvement practice. Feedback from workshop participants suggests that practice stories may be able to support NRM professionals in reflecting on previous experiences, learning from colleague's practice experiences and serving as a springboard for learning by fostering linkages between social science knowledge and practice. The study also finds that the perceived benefits of sharing practice stories were comparatively less for some more experienced participants.     

Education and nationalism in Scotland: governing a ‘learning nation’

Abstract

Nationalism is a key resource for the political work of governing Scotland, and education offers the Scottish National Party (SNP) government a policy space in which political nationalism (self determination) along with social and cultural forms of civic nationalism can be formed and propagated, through referencing ‘inwards’ to established myths and traditions that stress the ‘public’ nature of schooling/education/universities and their role in construction of ‘community’; and referencing ‘outwards’, especially to selected Nordic comparators, but also to major transnational actors such as OECD, to education’s role in economic recovery and progress. The SNP government has been very active in the education policy field, and a significant element of its activity lies in promoting a discourse of collective learning in which a ‘learning government’ is enabled to lead a ‘learning nation’ towards the goal of independence. This paper draws on recent research to explore recent and current developments in SNP government education policy, drawing on discourse analysis to highlight the political work that such policy developments seek to do, against the backdrop of continuing constitutional tensions across the UK.     

Catholic and Protestant Schools,a Better Choice in the Netherlands?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the influence of the sector of education (Catholic, Protestant and public) on the success of their pupils in tertiary education and on the labour market in the Netherlands. In the United States Coleman and Hoffer (1987) could hardly find any differences between the job prospects of pupils of private and public schools, but they did find effects of Catholic secondary education on success in tertiary education. In this study, which is based on longitudinal data of a nationally representative cohort of Dutch primary school leavers in 1965, an analogous comparison is made between the success in tertiary education and the job careers of the pupils who attended Dutch Catholic, Protestant or public secondary education. Differences are found between success in tertiary education and on the labour market of those who attended Catholic, Protestant or public Dutch schools. Pupils of public schools enter the university more often than pupils of private schools and pupils of Catholic schools enter the lower valued tertiary vocational education more often than pupils of Protestant or public schools. Significant effects of school sector were only found for those job characteristics which indicate the kind of job (sector of the job, nature of the job) but not for job characteristics which indicate the level of job. Especially pupils of Protestant schools less often have jobs in the administrative‐financial sector and the medical‐social sector than pupils of non‐Protestant schools. They also less often have jobs which have an exact or social nature. These differences in success in tertiary education and on the labour market are not systematically in favour of the private Catholic and Protestant schools.     

Private higher education: challenges for Australia and beyond

Among the chief characteristics of the post‐industrial society are ambiguity and paradox. In Australian higher education, as in other sectors of Australian Society, these have found expression in individualism, private initiative and entrepreneuship.

The ‘privatization’ of higher education now includes the imposition on enrolment charges, the re‐introduction of ‘full cost’ fees, especially for private overseas students, moves towards the deregulation of salaries and conditions of employment of academic staff and the establishment of new ‘self‐contained’ and ‘hybrid’ private higher education institutions.

In response to these developments, debate has tended to centre upon a number of mythologies which inter alia assert that private higher education is new to Australia, that it is foreign to the Western academic tradition and that such education avoids the employment of public funds. Moreover, it is claimed that while private higher education is ipso facto elitist, it will, through competition, result in a more effective and efficient public sector.

The above mythologies are examined in the light of past, present and proposed developments in Australian higher education, with particular note being taken of the establishment of the Bond University in Queensland.     

How policy impacts on practice and how practice does not impact on policy

The TLRP project reported on in this article attempts to understand how the Learning and Skills sector functions. It traces how education and training policy percolates down through many levels in the English system and how these levels interact, or fail to interact. The authors first focus upon how policy impacts upon the interests of three groups of learners: unemployed people in adult and community learning centres, adult employees in work‐based learning and younger learners on Level 1 and Level 2 courses in further education. They focus next upon how professionals in these three settings struggle to cope with two sets of pressures upon them: those exerted by government and a broader set of professional, institutional and local factors. They describe in particular how managers and tutors mediate national policy and translate it (and sometimes mistranslate it) into local plans and practices. Finally, the authors criticise the new government model of public service reform for failing to harness the knowledge, good will and energy of staff working in the sector, and for ignoring what constitutes the main finding of the research: the central importance of the relationship between tutor and students.     

Cultural historical activity theory and professional learning

In this article I will discuss the route by which I came to work with Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). The brief tracing of my own biography will highlight theoretical and methodological milestones. I will then discuss my current work, with colleagues, on approaches to investigating and improving the learning of professionals who are involved in interagency work, which intends to reduce the risks of social exclusion for marginal groups. In this case I will consider those young people who become excluded from school and whose needs are complex and rapidly fluctuating. This project is concerned with the learning of professionals in the creation of new forms of practice, which require joined‐up solutions to meet complex and diverse client needs. We study professional learning in services that aim to promote social inclusion through supporting clients as effective actors in their worlds. At any given time in their lives individuals may take part in particular configurations of several, diverse social practices. In this discussion I will draw on recent developments in CHAT and theories of learning at work.     

Deterrents to participation in web‐based continuing professional education

Abstract

This study examined the perceptions of certified public accountants concerning deterrents to participation in Web‐based continuing professional education. A survey instrument was mailed to a random sample of the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants’ membership, and 444 usable surveys were returned. Four broad dimensions of deterrence to participation in Web‐based education were identified through factor analysis. The two most influential deterrents were Concerns about Electronically Mediated Communication and Concerns about the Quality of Course Offerings. The other two were Concerns about Access to Technology‐Associated Resources and Concerns about the Availability of Necessary Personal Resources. The vast majority of respondents reported that they had access to the technology and that they perceived themselves as having the personal characteristics necessary for participation in Web‐based education activities. However, the proportion of respondents using Web‐based education for continuing professional learning in 1998 was minimal.     

Knowledge practices and relations in professional education

ABSTRACT

The dynamics of knowledge in society have transformed the conditions of professional work and learning. Professional expertise has become increasingly specialised, and practitioners are challenged to keep up with rapid developments in their fields. At the same time, the complexity of professional work requires the integration of different forms of knowledge and knowing. Against this background, the knowledge settings in which learners engage and the practices and resources these offer are of vital importance. This article addresses professional education as embedded in profession-specific ‘machineries of knowledge construction’, that is, the set of practices and arrangements through which knowledge and ways of knowing in a profession are generated. It is argued that such machineries span settings in education and work. Examples from research in three professional programmes are used to discuss how students are introduced to epistemic practices and resources in selected knowledge settings. Analytical attention is given to the dynamic interplay between people, practices, knowledge resources and educational arrangements as well as to how connections to work and the epistemic machinery are made. Taking these linkages into account is important for our understanding of what learning entails in different areas of expertise and how this may change over time.     

The accountability era in US teacher education: looking back,looking forward

Abstract

In keeping with the theme of the 40th anniversary issue of EJTE, this article looks back and forward at US teacher education accountability. It argues that “holding teacher education accountable” has been the major approach to reforming teacher education in the US for the last two decades, assuming that enhanced teacher education quality depends on vigilant public evaluation and monitoring of outcomes related to teacher education institutions, programs, and teacher candidates. This article looks back at the “era of accountability” by examining five policy, political, and professional developments that contributed to its emergence and strong hold on US teacher education. Looking forward to the future of teacher education accountability in the US, the article argues that we need a new approach – democratic accountability in teacher education – which is based on intelligent professional responsibility for students’ learning including democratic knowledge and skills, strong equity, and genuine collaboration with multiple stakeholders.     

Gender & Education Association: a case study in feminist education?

This article focuses on feminist activist academics who were instrumental in creating the UK Gender & Education Association at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on my own intellectual biography (David, M. E. 2003. Personal and Political: Feminisms, Sociology and Family Lives Stoke-on-Trent. Trentham Books.) linked to the collective biography and life history of feminism in academia over the last 50 years, Feminism, Gender & Universities: Politics, Passion and Pedagogies (David, M. E. 2014. Feminism, Gender & Universities: Politics, Passion & Pedagogies. Farnham: Wheatsheaf.), I consider how we, as feminist educators, developed our pedagogies and professional approaches to gender and education. In so doing, I also look at three cohorts or generations of feminist academics, from the university pioneers of second-wave feminists like myself, through to those who might be considered third wave feminists. In this it is clear that whilst feminist values of women's liberation and/or gender equality shine through, there are clear differences of emphasis. This is in relation to personal, political and professional values, and approaches to education through teaching or the social sciences. Indeed, neither feminism nor gender was in the lexicon of higher education or public policy when we were starting out, and by the third cohort gender equality had become incorporated into forms of neo-liberalism. In reviewing the developments of feminisms in higher education, I also look towards what might be considered a feminist future in global higher education, given learning from previous waves to new waves of feminists such as fourth wave and beyond. Here I briefly consider the work of our EU Daphne funded research project (2013–2015) into challenging gender-related violence (GRV) through education and training for professionals working with children and young people.     

Problem-Based Learning

Abstract

Problem-based learning has been described for use in medical education and is thought to be a superior approach to traditional didactic methods. We describe the use of PBL as an innovative approach to the education and training of social workers on an interdisciplinary health care team. An actual PBL case is described, and a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages to this approach is presented. The use of PBL on interdisciplinary teams helps educate social workers to work effectively on teams, and educates other professionals about the social work role and how to utilize social work services effectively.     

The Teacher–Learner Relationship: Considerations for Social Work in the Digital Age

ABSTRACT

In light of a rapidly changing educational landscape, this paper will discuss the implications of online education for the teacher–learner relationship, which is a critical aspect of academic and professional development for the social work student. As technology revolutionizes relationships, how will we ensure the intra-and interpersonal nature of social work education? The pursuit of accessible and flexible educational opportunities presently driving social work education threatens to undermine this important alliance. The centrality of relationship is discussed here in the context of current trends in distance learning. Relational-Cultural Theory and Transactional Distance Theory are posited to provide evidence for the significance of relationship in learning.     

Learner-Learning Environment Fit

ABSTRACT

The person-environment paradigm is pivotal to our profession; however, few social work educators have utilized this theoretical perspective to shape curricula or to advance teaching practices that take into account what we know about the adult learner (Coulshed, 1993) and the learning environment (Knowles, 1972). In this article, the authors propose a model of social work education based on recent theoretical developments and research findings in the field of adult learning. The model consists of three phases of learning: the decision to learn, the learning process, and the learning outcome. Characteristics of the adult learner (motivation, personal attributes, cognitive development, learning style) and conditions of the learning environment (physical, interpersonal, and socio-cultural) are emphasized in the model.     

Improving the Research Climate in Social Work Curricula

Abstract

Research courses are associated with performance anxiety and educational insecurity for many social work students. This paper makes the case that student anxiety associated with research courses is rooted in the history of the social work profession, and this history sheds light on the present day climate of research in social work education. The authors suggest that improvement to the research climate in social work education requires an “institutional” response. To that end, this paper describes a committee process that resulted in changes to one school's curriculum policy by revamping student learning objectives for a sequence of five research courses that spanned BSW and MSW programs. The committee produced a continuum of student learning expectations based on Bloom's taxonomy, which represents a logical progression of knowledge and skill competencies as students advance through their course work.