Learning in and learning from FE and skills policy in Wales: a relational approach

ABSTRACT

In the context of devolution, this paper argues that there is a distinctively Welsh flavour to FE and Skills policy, but that its nature and formation needs to be understood both intrinsically and relationally, especially in terms of its relationship to parallel policy developments in England. Consideration is given to structural aspects and significant changes in the ‘economic narrative’, and also to the reflection of certain values in policy and policy mechanisms. It is argued that policy learning of a sort visible in the realm of economic innovation is not yet apparent in the FE and Skills arena in Wales, where an avoidance of key features of English policy remains a touchstone. Finally, the paper sets out how a ‘relational’ approach is particularly helpful in appreciating these issues and in understanding the challenges in a major FE and Skills reform process in Wales.     

Playing for position: education policy,Physical Education and nationalism in Wales

This paper explores the connections between Physical Education, nationalism and citizenship in England and Wales focusing upon how education legislation, in particular the National Curriculum (NC) and Local Management of Schools (LMS), are implicated in the cultural production of ideational differences between and amongst the peoples of England and Wales. As our previous research has centred heavily on the making and implementation of education policy and PE in England, we take this opportunity to adjust our gaze and focus squarely on issues of cultural production in Wales, particularly relationships between the construction of images of Welsh identity and education policy and practice relating to PE and sport in schools. The analysis highlights that tendencies towards a narrow, conservative, cultural restoration are as evident in Wales as they are in England and obstruct progression towards more innovative and progressive ideals.     

Restrictive and expansive policy learning – challenges and strategies for knowledge exchange in upper secondary education across the four countries of the UK

Abstract

This article examines the challenges and possibilities for UK policy learning in relation to upper secondary education (USE) across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (NI) within current national and global policy contexts. Drawing on a range of international literature, the article explores the concepts of ‘restrictive’ and ‘expansive’ policy learning and develops a framework of dimensions for examining what is taking place across the UK at a time of change for all four national USE systems. From an examination of recent national policy literatures and interviews with key policy actors within the ‘UK laboratory’, we found that the conditions for expansive policy learning had markedly deteriorated due to ‘accelerating divergence’ between the three smaller countries and a dominant England that has been pursuing an ‘extreme Anglo Saxon education model’. The article also notes that some aspects of policy learning continue to take place ‘beneath the radar’ between UK and wide civil society organisations. This activity is more prevalent across the three smaller countries although each, to differing degrees, is still constrained by its position in relation to the UK as a whole.     

Primary Children's Perspectives on the World of Work: A Cross‐Cultural Comparison

Abstract

This paper presents a ‘political arithmetic’ of women in post‐ compulsory education and training in Wales, illustrating that, although there has been some ‘catching up’ in participation and qualifications achieved, essentially education and training systems are reinforcing the highly rigid pattern of gender segregation that characterises the Welsh labour force. Wales is in danger of consolidating its position as a low wage low skill economy unless this situation is addressed. Changes in the administrative frame work of post‐compulsory education and training in Wales allows the opportunity to develop such a strategy, but so far the main actors in the field appear to be taking a ‘gender‐neutral’ stance.     

Implementing curriculum reform in Wales: the case of the Foundation Phase

Abstract

The Foundation Phase is a Welsh Government flagship policy of early years education (for 3–7 year-old children) in Wales. Marking a radical departure from the more formal, competency-based approach associated with the previous Key Stage 1 National Curriculum, it advocates a developmental, experiential, play-based approach to teaching and learning. The learning country: A paving document (NAfW, 2001) notes that, following devolution, Wales intended to take its own policy direction in order to ‘get the best for Wales’. Building on a three-year mixed methods independent evaluation of the Foundation Phase we discuss in detail the aims and objectives of the Foundation Phase, including the context to its introduction, the theory, assumptions and evidence underlying its rationale, and its content and key inputs. We then contrast this with how the Foundation Phase was received by practitioners and parents, how it has been implemented in classrooms and non-maintained settings, and what discernible impact it has had on young children’s educational outcomes. The paper concludes with a critical analysis of the policy process and identifies a number of contextual issues during the inception of the Foundation Phase that has, it could be argued, constrained its development and subsequent impact. We argue that these constraints are associated with an educational policy landscape that was still in its infancy. In order for future education policy to ‘get the best for Wales’ a number of important lessons must be learnt.     

The Universities and initial teacher education; challenging the discourse of derision. The case of Wales

ABSTRACT

For nearly 40 years the quality and value of the contribution of universities to initial teacher education has been brought into question. This is particularly so in England where the ongoing ‘discourse of derision’ has resulted in universities no longer being seen as necessary partners in the process. More recently, similar challenges have taken place in other countries such as USA and Australia. However in 2013, when the Welsh Government turned its attention to the apparent low quality of its current provision, rather than challenging the role of universities, it chose to strengthen their contribution. There were however to be important changes that insisted that universities put the student teacher learning at the heart of course planning, that universities clarify their own distinctive contribution and that they work in close collaboration with schools. While this approach to initial teacher education is not new, this is the first time that such a model has been implemented on a national scale. This paper outlines the nature, rationale and underlying research for the reforms in Wales. It concludes by speculating on their likely impact in raising the quality of provision and securing the future contribution of universities to teachers’ learning.     

Neither a borrower nor a lender be: exploring ‘teaching for mastery’ policy borrowing

Abstract

Mathematics education is a high-stakes indicator of success in ‘über’ performative systems. The search to address England’s mathematics underperformance resulted in cross-national attraction toward, and policy borrowing of, ‘teaching for mastery’ from the high-performing education systems of Shanghai and Singapore. We argue that the cultural baggage implicit in mastery was in direct conflict with fundamental structures underpinning the English education system—structures which resulted in significant barriers toward implementing and internalising mastery. Theoretically grounded in the work of Lyotard, Foucault, and Ball, our paper maps how teachers working in the East Midlands region of England borrowed, implemented, and internalised mastery. Our micro, classroom-scale, examination reveals macro-scale performative drivers, as well as the pitfalls of policy borrowing without due care and attention. We highlight that policy borrowing is far more complex than simply copying and checking for fidelity between the original and the borrowed. We conclude by suggesting that underestimating the consequences of policy borrowing has highly significant and even detrimental outcomes at both the micro and macro scales.     

Education in England – a testbed for network governance?

Abstract

Since devolution in the late 1990s, education policy in England has diverged further from that in Scotland and also from policy in Wales and Northern Ireland. In this paper we review the roots and trajectory of the English education reforms over the past two decades. Our focus is the schools sector, though we also touch on adjoining reforms to early years and further and higher education. In so doing, we engage with various themes, including marketisation, institutional autonomy and accountability. Changes in governance arrangements for schools have been a defining feature of education reforms since devolution. This has been set against an evolution in national performance indicators that has put government priorities into ever sharper relief. In theorising the changes, we pay particular attention to the suggestion that the English education system now epitomises the concept of ‘network governance’, which has also been applied to education in a global context. We question the extent to which policies have in practice moved beyond the well-established mechanisms of ‘steering at a distance’ and undermined the very notion of an education system in England. We conclude by considering possible futures for education policy and how they may position England in relation to other parts of the UK and the wider world.     

Further On: personal reflections on a life in vocational education and training[1]

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the relationship between changes in the labour process, recent developments in the vocational curriculum and challenges that these changes present to the preparation of further education lecturers in England and Wales. Firstly it will be argued that the economy is moving from a Fordist to a post‐Fordist phase and that this change is affecting the vocational education curriculum. Previous attempts to relate post‐Fordism to education have tended to analyse the relationships in terms that are too general. When a specific aspect of education and training is examined such as the introduction of National Vocational Qualifications and General National Vocational Qualifications in England and Wales, more light is shed on the question of ‘correspondence’. This in turn reveals issues such as divisions between mental and manual work and issues of conception and execution which tend to be ignored or overlooked in debates about changes in the curriculum and changes in the economy. Secondly it will be argued that the new curriculum demands a new kind of professionalism for vocational teachers and a new kind of teacher preparation and expectation     

The one-in-ten: quantitative Critical Race Theory and the education of the ‘new (white) oppressed’

ABSTRACT

This paper challenges the notion that quantitative data – as a numeric truth – exist independent of a nation’s political and racial landscape. Utilising large-scale national attainment data, the analysis challenges the belief that ‘White working class’ children in England, especially boys, are ‘the new oppressed’ – as a former equality adviser has publicly claimed. The analysis applies Quantitative Critical Race Theory, or ‘QuantCrit’, an emerging quantitative sub-field of Critical Race Theory in education. The paper argues that far from being ‘oppressed’, White boys continue to enjoy achievement advantages over numerous minoritised groups; especially their peers of Black Caribbean ethnic origin. Additionally, the analysis uniquely exposes racialised trends of ‘equivalency’ in core subject qualifications, whereby minority ethnic children are over-represented in certain lower-status qualifications that are counted as equivalent in education statistics but not in the real world labour market. The analysis concludes that knowing misrepresentations of quantitative data are at the heart of an institutional process through which race and racism are produced, legitimised and perpetuated in education.     

Autonomy,rights and children with special educational needs: the distinctiveness of Wales

ABSTRACT

Wales was the first UK country to incorporate the UNCRC into domestic law and the first to appoint a children’s commissioner. Wales is distinctive in the strong links between education and the promotion of the Welsh language as evidenced in successive Welsh language strategies. With regard to children with special educational needs, the 2018 Additional Learning Needs and Educational Tribunal Act makes provision for children’s voices to be heard in their own right. This paper examines the complexities in hearing the voices of children with severe and profound learning difficulties (SPMLD), and how these can be addressed in the language context of Wales. It concludes that there are cautious grounds for optimism about our ability to hear the views of children with SPMLD, as long as we are prepared to acknowledge the resource implications. However, there is a need for more debate about the potential tensions between the Welsh language strategy and making provision for children with special educational needs in their preferred language. This debate needs to be informed by research on the impact of immersion education on progress, access to the curriculum and inclusion for children with SPMLD, and on their views about all aspects of their provision.     

Analyses Of “Teaching”

Abstract

This article aims to critically examine how misrecognition is conceived as a challenge for pedagogic action.Krassimir Stojanov’s notion of the pathological behaviour patterns of teachers and Charles Bingham’s ‘pitfalls of recognition’ introduce how misrecognition may appear in schools, and offer advice to teachers and students on responding to the challenges of misrecognition.Their ideas elicit the problems embedded in the theory of recognition and the problems resulting from understanding misrecognition as a challenge for pedagogic action.This article concludes that recognition theory offers pedagogic action a problematic challenge: it is as problematic to follow Honneth’s original ideas as it is to invent new directions in understanding misrecognition as a pedagogical challenge.     

Under starters orders: The established market,the Cardiff study and the Smithfield project

The early results of a recent, as yet unfunded, study of the impact of markets on schools suggest that schools in Wales have become less stratified since 1988 in terms of indicators of poverty and educational need (Gorard & Fitz, 1998). The Smithfield study in New Zealand, on the other hand, concluded that market-like systems of choice had made segregation worse by advantaging the already advantaged (Waslander & Thrupp, 1997). Commentators in England, impressed by the range of existing secondary evidence from England, as well as from the Smithfield project, showing a relationship between school choice and class, have suggested that the picture for Wales is entirely a Welsh phenomenon. This article shows that this is not so, and that early results from a similar analysis in England confirm that between-school segregation has declined since 1998. It goes on to suggest that a fuller consideration of the interaction of poverty, markets and public monopoly schooling can help to resolve the dispute. The findings from Wales, the Cardiff study, did not fit in with the zeitgeist, appeared to contradict mainstream research on school choice, and threatened to defend the use of market forces in education policy. Of course, none of these are valid reasons for rejecting them. This article suggests that, despite the impressive work of the Smithfield project and others, there are few empirical or analytical reasons for rejecting the new findings either. It is proposed here that the linked notions of the starting-gun effect and the established market can resolve some of the apparent differences in the findings.     

A tale of two countries – forty years on: politics and teacher education in Russia and England

Abstract

The relationships between politics and teacher education have become increasingly close over recent decades in many contexts around the world, often causing significant challenges as well as some opportunities. In this article, we draw on a project on the reform of teacher education in Russia and through a comparison with the development of teacher education policy in England – especially over the last forty years – we explore how the evolution of a new politics in both contexts has affected policy on teaching and teacher education. Looking, for example, at ‘post-communism’ and ‘neoliberalism’ and their respective impacts on political systems, a number of contradictions and paradoxes are identified, when comparisons are drawn between the two systems.     

The (mis)use of the Finnish teacher education model: ‘policy-based evidence-making’?

Abstract

Background: International achievement studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have an increasing influence on education policy worldwide. The use of such data can provide a basis for evidence-based policy-making to initiate educational reform. Finland, a high performer in PISA, is often cited as an example of both efficient and equitable education. Finland’s teachers and teacher education have not only garnered much attention for their role in the country’s PISA successes, but have also influenced education policy change in England.

Main argument: This article argues that the Finnish model of teacher education has been borrowed uncritically by UK policy-makers. Finnish and English philosophies of teacher preparation differ greatly, and the borrowing of the Finnish teacher education model does not fit within the teacher training viewpoint of England. The borrowed policies, thus, were decontextualised from the wider values and underpinnings of Finnish education. This piecemeal, ‘pick “n” mix’ approach to education policy reform ignores the fact that educational policies and ‘practices exist in ecological relationships with one another and in whole ecosystems of interrelated practices’. Thus, these borrowed teacher preparation policies will not necessarily lead to the outcomes outlined by policy-makers in the reforms.

Sources of evidence: Two teacher preparation reforms in England, the University Training Schools (outlined in the UK Government’s 2010 Schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching) and the Master’s in Teaching and Learning (MTL), are used to illustrate the problematic nature of uncritical policy borrowing. This article juxtaposes these policies with the Finnish model of teacher education, a research-based programme where all candidates are required to complete a Master’s degree. The contradictions exposed from this analysis further highlight the divergent practices of teacher preparation in England and Finland, or the disparate ‘ecosystems’. Evidence of educational policy borrowing in other settings is also considered.

Conclusions: Both the MTL and the White Paper reforms overlook the ‘ecosystem’ surrounding Finnish teacher education. The school-based MTL contrasts with the research-based Finnish teachers’ MA. Similarly, the University Training Schools scheme, based on Finnish university-affiliated, teaching practice schools, contrasts heavily with the rest of the White Paper reforms, which contradict the philosophies and ethos behind Finnish teacher education by proposing the move of English teacher preparation away from the universities. The analysis highlights the uncritical eye through which politicians may view international survey results, looking for ‘quick fix’ options instead of utilising academic evidence for investigation on education and education reform.     

Primary humanities: a perspective from Wales

ABSTRACT

How the humanities subjects are represented in primary schools in Wales has been influenced by curriculum developments including Curriculum Cymraeg, the Skills Framework and the Foundation Phase. A central tenet of Welsh Government policy has been to actively encourage schools to promote a sense of ‘Welshness’ through curriculum content, pedagogies and school policies. In addition, early years’ education has been extended to 5–7-year olds and at Key Stage 2 skills and competencies are priorities, with subject content providing the context for learning. In 2015, the Donaldson Review’s recommendations were fully implemented in the Government’s plans for a new 3–16 Curriculum for Wales to be fully implemented by 2021. Humanities became one of six Areas of Learning and Experience (AoLE) with the curriculum content to be developed by an all-Wales partnership team which includes the Pioneer Schools’ network. This article traces the post devolution build-up to this latest ‘radical change’. It suggests that for stakeholders developing the humanities curriculum the challenge will be considering how the key concepts of different ‘subject pedagogies’ are represented, while fulfilling the Government’s emphasis on early years’ pedagogy and its focus on a competency-led curriculum.     

Condorcet on education

Abstract

Multicultural education (of which ‘multifaith’ RE in England and Wales is sometimes regarded as a subset) was attacked by antiracists in Britain in the 1980s. Although it is arguable that not all of the criticisms were valid, the debate raises questions about the efficacy of religious education in countering racism. The paper argues that a lack of analysis of the concepts ‘religions’ and ‘cultures’ in British RE has led to a representation of religious traditions which essentialises them, playing down their internal diversity, and which assumes a ‘closed’ view of cultures. A more flexible approach is suggested, drawing on work in ethnography and other social science disciplines, which might better combine with antiracist stances than earlier approaches. The work of the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit is introduced briefly as an example of an attempt to address some of the above issues in terms of an integrated approach to theory, the study of religions in the community and the development of religious education curriculum materials.     

An ‘at‐risk’ curriculum for ‘at‐risk’ students? Special educational needs and disability in the new Australian Curriculum

The number of students who are ‘at risk’ including those with special education needs and or disabilities is increasing rapidly worldwide in all schools. This has prompted widespread debate regarding the impact of initiatives in Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting for this group of students. Teachers, parents and administrators need to have further information to enable them to contribute to the development of content, assessment and reporting processes in the curriculum that are inclusive, relevant, reliable and valid. This paper explores some of the issues and dilemmas raised by recent policy discussions regarding the inception of a first national Australian Curriculum. It draws purposively on literature relating to developments in England and Wales, where national curriculum provision has existed for over 25 years, as well as the responses of a group of stakeholders (teachers and leaders) from both England/Wales and Australian schools and settings. These data highlight both tension and opportunity in this area of work.     

Mixed messages in education policy: Sign of the times?

Abstract

The education policy of Conservative governments in Britain since 1979 is sometimes said to be contradictory. It purports to empower the consumer, but legislation has given the lie to this, vesting ever greater powers in central government, less so in Scotland, the more so in England and Wales. In short, education policy contains mixed messages, or contradictions. But these contradictions to some extent express the tensions which have become apparent in an age of transition: that between the modern and the postmodern, or between Fordist and ‘disorganised’ forms of capitalism. A new mode of regulation is being established within the agencies of the welfare state. It reveals an isomorphic structure ‐ at the level of the pupil, the teacher, the parent and the school ‐ whose purpose is the management of consent, and whose justification appeals to the culture of consumption. The analysis is illustrated mainly with reference to Scotland.     

Valuing difference in teachers and learners: building on Kolb's learning styles to develop a language of teaching and learning

Abstract

The first part of this paper provides a brief historical account of the development of mathematics teaching and learning through the medium of Welsh. It provides a review of developments which have seen the teaching and learning of mathematics through a native but minority language become an accepted part of the curriculum for a great number of pupils. It goes on to examine the nature of bilingual education currently to be found in Wales by considering two main types of bilingual schools which currently serve Welsh pupils and which have contributed towards a modest but notable minority language revival. It is in this context that current practice relating to Welsh‐medium mathematics is explored and a number of questions concerning current mathematics teaching, learning and assessment practices are raised. While celebrating the success and expansion of bilingual education in Wales, attention is drawn to the need to subject current practice to closer scrutiny. Although the paper focuses on the particular situation to be found in Wales, the issues and questions raised are clearly of interest to those involved with other bilingual educational programmes.