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Further Education, Professional and Occupational Pedagogy
The further education (and skills) sector in England has been viewed as a backwater of educational research compared to the other sectors. This comparative lack of research and related publications may be due in part to the huge diversity of the sector. Further Education, Professional and Occupational Pedagogy addresses some of the gaps by bringing together empirical research and theoretical frameworks to give a coherent understanding of the sector, emphasising the occupational experiences of deliverers, alongside their pedagogic and life experiences. This book also includes investigations on the education of professionals in the higher education sector. The overall theme of this book relates to the teaching and learning of work- related provisions in further and higher education. The book covers topics such as FE teachers’ emotional ecology, their professional identities, a systematic literature review of FE teachers’ professional identities, a reconceptualisation of widening participation from a teaching perspective, pedagogic implications of teachers in professional education, and curriculum formation of creative professionals in higher education. This book will be vital reading for researchers and academics in the fields of professional learning, teacher training and education, and vocational and occupational education. It will also appeal to policy-makers, teacher educators and education professionals. Dr Sai Loo is an academic at UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK.
Routledge Research in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education series
Books in this series: Life and Learning of Korean Artists and Craftsmen Rhizoactivity Dae Joong Kang Enhancing the Wellbeing and Wisdom of Older Learners A Co-R esearch Paradigm Tess Maginess Global Networks, Local Actions Rethinking Adult Education Policy in the 21st Century Marcella Milana UNESCO’s Utopia of Lifelong Learning An Intellectual History Maren Elfert Adult Education and the Formation of Citizens A Critical Interrogation Andreas Fejes, Magnus Dahlstedt and Maria Olson How Non-Permanent Workers Learn and Develop Challenges and Opportunities Helen Bound, Karen Evans, Sahara Sadik and Annie Karmel Further Education, Professional and Occupational Pedagogy Knowledge and Experiences Sai Loo
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/education/series/RRLLAE
Further Education, Professional and Occupational Pedagogy
Knowledge and Experiences
Sai Loo
First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Sai Loo The right of Sai Loo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-48490-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-05067-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To Caroline and Anna for their support and understanding, and not forgetting the irrepressible Tosca. And to my father, for all he has done for me.
Contents
List of figures and tablesviii Acknowledgementsix About the authorx 1 Researching further education, professional and occupational landscapes
1
2 Teachers’ emotional ecology: pedagogic, life and occupational experiences
4
3 Teaching knowledge, professional identities and symbolic representations of qualified teachers with occupational experiences29 4 Professional identities in the further education sector: a systematic literature review
48
5 Reconceptualising teacher education as part of a strategic approach to broadening and advancing research in the field of widening participation
86
6 The pedagogic implications of occupation-related teaching professionals in higher education
104
7 Working and learning of creative workers: implications for a knowledge-driven curriculum
124
8 Reflections on the further education, professional and occupational landscapes
141
Index144
Figures and tables
Figure 7.1 A theoretical framework of creative knowledge work
126
Tables 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 4.1
Details of participants Emotional planes and emotional knowledge Details of teacher participants Professional identities and knowledge Tabular review of the characteristics of professional identities in further education 6.1 Details of participants
10 15 35 37 50 105
Acknowledgements
The seed for this research monograph was planted after my conversations with Emeritus Professor Denis Gleeson. He very patiently listened to my ideas and suggested that I should bring them together as a collection. I would like to thank him for his kindness and belief in my abilities. Without his enthusiasm, I would not have brought this collection of ideas to fruition. I would also like to thank the editor, Aiyana Curtis, and sub-editor, Will Bateman, at Routledge in supporting my ideas for this book. I am grateful for their enthusiasm and flexibility in bringing this book to completion. Special thanks must be given to the reviewers and those interviewees who participated in the investigations that formed the chapters. Their hospitality and willingness to give up their time to assist in the related studies were humbling for me as an investigator. I will cherish their generosities of kindness and openness, which went beyond their call of duty, and professional insights.
About the author
Dr Sai Loo is an academic at UCL Institute of Education, University College London. Before joining the Institute, he taught accounting and finance at higher education institutions on undergraduate, postgraduate and professional programmes, and vocational areas in further education. Sai worked in industry as a Chartered Accountant. His areas of interest are in the interdisciplinary approaches to identifying, defining and applying knowledge in work, learning and teaching settings. He has published widely in over 85 publications, conference papers and keynotes (80 percent are single authored) and some of these can be accessed at ioe.academia.edu/SaiLoo. His recent research monographs by Routledge include Teachers and Teaching in Vocational and Professional Education, Creative Working in the Knowledge Economy, and Vocationalism in Further and Higher Education: Policy, Programmes and Pedagogy (with Professor Jill Jameson). He is currently working on another research monograph, Multiple Dimensions of Teaching and Learning for Occupational Practice.
Chapter 1
Researching further education, professional and occupational landscapes
Simon (1981) questioned the lack of pedagogy in England. He meant that there was no identifiable systematic approach to teaching and learning that was based on theoretical ideas. In a sense, this pedagogical vacuum might apply to the post-compulsory education sector in England, otherwise known as further education (FE) (and skills) or lifelong learning sector, although the various nomenclature of the sector, to an extent, highlight the diversity and issues of the sector. The diversity might be viewed from the provisions from the academic to the vocational, the academic levels from the pre-university to higher levels, and the age groups of the learners from 14-plus and beyond. Furthermore, the sector is also known for offering learners with diverse learning requirements opportunities to continue their education. Perhaps, the diversity of the sector might also be the cause of its lack of distinctiveness compared to the compulsory and higher education sectors. This lack of a distinct characteristic might also have hampered carrying research in the sector. Coffield (1998) was critical of the cosy arrangements of research findings in the sector where terms such as pedagogy and vocational education and training (VET) were not clearly defined nor contested with the tacit notion that there were common agreements amongst the academic fraternity. If the research findings do not offer a distinct perspective of the sector, one, perhaps, cannot blame the policymakers’ lack of understanding of and, crucially, failure to establish workable policies for implementation. To an extent, this research monograph is a result of these questionings. As a researcher, I am conscious of my role, and this includes providing empirical evidence for potential stakeholders such as policymakers, teachers, managers, learners and researchers to develop sound and implementable pedagogic strategies, curricula and policies, whether in this diverse sector or beyond. This research monograph is a collection of unpublished articles, which is based on empirical research. Its common themes are work-or occupation- related pedagogy, knowledge and experiences, hence the title of the monograph. Each contribution can also be read as a standalone chapter. The main work-related theme covers the further education sector, higher and professional education and the knowledge economy.
2 Researching further education
Following this chapter, the next four chapters reflect my research interests and teaching experiences in the FE sector. Chapter 2 was a result of a remark from one of the research participants, who mentioned her emotional investment in her learners and the empathy she had for them. The initial version of this chapter appeared as a British Educational Research Association (BERA) conference paper in 2013 at the University of Brighton, England. The chapter is based on the FE teachers’ emotional narratives concerning their professional and personal lives, pedagogic practices and past professional/ occupational experiences. It uses Zembylas’s (2007) definition of emotional knowledge and conceptual framework of emotional ecology to examine the participants’ pedagogic, life and occupational experiences. Chapter 3 focuses on the professional identities of teachers in the FE sector. The inspiration for this chapter was from my own experiences as an FE teacher who had previous occupational experience as a chartered accountant with a decade of work experience in the private sector before entering teaching. The earliest version of this chapter was at the BERA Conference at the University of Warwick in 2010 and with a subsequent presentation at the Learning and Skills Research Network (LSRN) Conference in London in the same year. This chapter is based on the relationships between teaching knowledge of qualified FE teachers who have occupational experiences and their professional identities via their symbolic representative articulations. The next contribution – Chapter 4 – relates to the previous chapter. It is based on a systematic review of literature relating to the FE sector and staff identities. The publications are analysed based on two research questions regarding the characteristics of professional selves/identities of those working in the FE sector, and the extent the vocational dimension is included in such studies. Chapter 5 offers the final contribution to the FE sector. Its inspiration came from the ongoing quest to widen participation to as many learners as possible. This has been one of the main characteristics of the sector. The research emphasis to date had been on the students and their specific pedagogic and social needs. The chapter focuses on the import of teachers and teaching in assisting widening participation (WP). It uses concepts of multimodality and reflective peer review to argue that quality teaching and the appropriate curriculum can add to the WP equation. The initial presentation of this idea was at the BERA Conference at the University of Leeds in 2016. Chapter 6 focuses on teaching professionals in the higher education sector. As an academic who is involved in the delivery in the higher education sector, this is also an area of my research interests, which sits neatly with professional education. These are deliverers on professional training programmes in clinical practices such as general practice and emergency medicine. Like the FE lecturers from the earlier chapters, these deliverers teach and some practice alongside the two professional activities. The aim of this contribution is to create a conceptual framework for understanding how they utilise their know-how in the
Researching further education 3
two activities and consider the pedagogic implications for the teaching institutions. This contribution is an off-shoot of my earlier research monograph, Teachers and Teaching in Vocational and Professional Education (Loo, 2018). The penultimate chapter – Chapter 7 – deals with the work-related theme of creative workers in the knowledge economy. The knowledge economy and the other academic areas reflect the spectrum of my research interests. The overarching theme is work or occupations related to teachers, learners and workers. These workers use their creative talents and know-how to create products and services in the digitally driven economy. The types of know-how and the application of their creative talents have teaching and learning implications for the programme deliveries in higher education institutions (HEIs). It offers insights into how HEIs may act as a bridge between work organisations and the creative workers before and while at work. This contribution is a spin-off from an earlier research monograph, Creative Workers in the Knowledge Economy (Loo, 2017). Chapter 8 provides a reflection of the previously mentioned standalone contributions, which covers the sectors of further, higher and professional education. It also delineates the knowledge economy and areas relating to teachers, curriculum, learning, knowledge and experiences.
References Coffield, F. 1998 A fresh approach to learning for the learning age: the contribution of research. Higher Education Digest, 31: 4–6. Loo, S. 2017 Creative Workers in the Knowledge Economy. Abingdon, Routledge. Loo, S. 2018 Teachers and Teaching in Vocational and Professional Education. Abingdon, Routledge. Simon, B. 1981 Why no pedagogy in England? In: Simon, B. and Taylor, W. (Eds) Education in the Eighties: The Central Issues. London, Batsford Academic and Educational Limited, pp. 124–145. Zembylas, M. 2007 Emotional ecology: the intersection of emotional knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23: 355–367.
Chapter 2
Teachers’ emotional ecology Pedagogic, life and occupational experiences
Introduction Emotional experiences and teaching and learning are recognised as connective dimensions. The special issues in journals by Nias (1996), and Van Veen and Lasky (2005) and the literature review by Sutton and Wheatley (2003) added to their growing significance. Research in this area of emotional experiences and education has been carried out globally (e.g. Hastings, 2004 [Australia]; Hargreaves, 2000 [Canada]; Yin and Lee, 2012; Lee et al., 2013 [China]; Zembylas et al., 2011 [Greece]; Pines, 2002 [Israel]; Day and Kington, 2008 [UK]; and Sutton, Mudrey-Camino and Knight, 2009 [US]). This is studied in different sectors of education (e.g. Cross and Hong, 2012 [primary/elementary]; O’Connor, 2008 [secondary/high schools]; Robson, Bailey and Larkin, 2004; Jephcote and Salisbury, 2009 [further education]; Trigwell, 2012 [higher/university]). Within the research area of emotions and education, it may be classified into four main types. The first relates to the strong feelings of teachers (Nias, 1989; Elbaz, 1992; Woods and Jeffrey, 1996; Hargreaves, 1998; Yin and Lee, 2012). These feelings may be divided into the positive and negatives ones. Positive feelings include caring for their learners (Godar, 1990; Robson, Bailey and Larkin, 2004), satisfaction when students show progress (Lortie, 1975) and pleasure when learners respond to teaching (e.g. Hargreaves, 1998). Negatives ones include anger and frustration in seeing their students misbehave (Sutton, 2000), working with uncooperative colleagues (e.g. Nias, 1989), stress due to the nature of the job (e.g. La Porte, 1996; Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees, 2008; Robson and Bailey, 2009), guilt resulting from their jobs as teachers (e.g. Hargreaves and Tucker, 1991) and sadness from the learners’ home environments (e.g. Sutton, 2000). As teachers’ emotional responses appeared to be influenced by their students’ engagement with learning, their learners appeared to be influenced by teachers’ emotions. These might include positive emotions such as caring for students (e.g. Goldstein, 1999) and negative ones such as teachers’ aggressive teaching strategies (e.g. Thomas and Montomery, 1998). The second type relates to the interrelationships between teachers’ emotions and their cognitive functions (e.g. Mesquita, Frijda and Scherer, 1997; Frijda,
Teachers’ emotional ecology 5
2000). The cognitive functions might include attention span (e.g. Derryberry and Tucker, 1994), memory (e.g. Parrott and Spackman, 2000), problem- solving (e.g. Isen, 1993) and motivation (e.g. Pekrun et al., 2002). The third type of research identified related to teachers’ selves and related professional lives. Teachers’ heavy investment in their work acted both as professional and personal views of themselves (e.g. Kelchtermans, 1996; Hargreaves, 2001; van den Berg, 2002). One way of articulating the personal and professional selves of teachers is through narratives. The telling of stories by teachers completes the fourth type of teacher emotions. These narratives offer an emotional sense of their journeys in the educational landscapes, whether related to teacher education (e.g. Noddings, 1992) or as a way of understanding one’s practice or self (La Porte, 1996). One sector of education that is under-researched (with only four publications, which are listed earlier) in this area of teacher emotions is in further education (FE). FE in England covers a wide range of teaching settings. These settings include FE colleges, voluntary and community sector organisations, commercial organisations and independent training providers, adult and community learning providers, industry, specialist colleges, armed and uniformed services, prisons and offender learning institutions, and other public-sector organisations (Education and Training Foundation, 2014). Implicit in these teaching settings is the wide range of learners from the 16-plus age group to adult and lifelong learners with a diverse range of learning abilities. Also, over 70 percent of the provisions are vocational/occupation related (Frontier Economics Limited, 2016, Table 17), and one would expect these teachers to have occupational experiences (i.e. non-teaching practices in areas such as dance, dental hygiene, graphic design, journalism and printmaking). These characteristics – diverse teaching settings and learners, and occupation-related provisions – are distinctive to this sector and the focus of this study is based on the empirical data of eight FE teachers. This chapter draws on two types of research in teacher emotions identified earlier: teachers’ professional lives and their narratives. From the perspectives of their professional lives, the eight teachers alongside their professional (pedagogic) lives also include their lives outside of the pedagogic contexts as they entered teaching after having had other real-life and occupational experiences. This study uses Zembylas’s (2007, p. 356) definition of emotional knowledge to investigate the teachers’ wider professional lives. These lives are “a teacher’s knowledge about/from his or her emotional experiences with respect to one’s self, others (e.g., students and colleagues), and the wider social and political context in which teaching and learning take place”. The definition offers this chapter scope to include especially FE teachers’ wider range of biographical experiences. From the narrative perspectives, the articulations of the eight teachers serve to gain insights into their relationships between their lives and experiences and ‘emotional ecology’. This form of ecology is “a system consisting of many sources and forms of knowledge in a symbiotic relationship”
6 Teachers’ emotional ecology
(Zembylas, 2007, p. 356) in a socio-cultural environment of teachers and students at its core. This definition of a possible complexity and interrelationships with the wider forms of knowledge and the teachers’ environments offers theoretical spaces for exploration. This study subscribes to Zembylas’s notion of a “middle voice” (Zembylas, 2007, p. 365) where discussions of emotions, values and knowledge in teaching are encouraged. It is not the intention of this investigation to offer a new research area or an investigation into teacher knowledge per se, but further articulations of teachers’ emotions in response to their wider biographies and learners where the teachers’ beliefs and values affect their choices of teaching approaches. Thus, the foci of this chapter are on the specificities of the eight teachers’ teaching contexts such as subject areas, teaching values, learners and socio-political aspects about their emotional knowledge/experiences and their eventual responses to their teaching. This investigation is of value to future studies on teachers’ emotions. It is valuable especially to teachers who have wider professional experiences such as occupational experiences, together with insights into the interrelationships between the individual teacher and her/his professional environments, where emotions and pedagogic activities are viewed as part of a wider framework of a teacher’s professional practice.
Theoretical framework Emotions, as viewed in this chapter, are “socially constructed, personally enacted ways of being that emerge from conscious and/or unconscious judgements regarding perceived successes at attaining goals or maintaining standards or beliefs during transactions as part of socio-historical contexts” (Schutz et al., 2006, p. 344). Teachers use their judgements, knowingly or unknowingly, in their teaching sessions and these judgements affect the way they interact with their learners. These interactions may include the teaching beliefs the teachers associate with or the teaching approaches they use in facilitating students’ learning. Prinz (2006) advocated the link between moral judgement and emotion where emotions were necessary and that such judgements were intrinsically motivating. From a teacher’s perspectives, Prinz’s study using multi-disciplinary concepts from disciplines, such as psychology and cognitive neuroscience, is helpful as it establishes a possible link between an educator’s judgement of herself/himself with a related stakeholder such as a student about an emotion (e.g. satisfaction and guilt). In the study by Hastings (2004), cooperating teachers in Australia expressed their positive and negative emotions in their pedagogic roles. A cooperating teacher is a teacher educator who is based in schools, and one of her/his roles is to support a pre-service teacher during the time the teacher is undergoing her/ his teacher training at the school including taking classes. Emotions of positive nature such as relief, sympathy and satisfaction and of negative nature such as disappointment, frustration and anxiety were expressed by these cooperating
Teachers’ emotional ecology 7
teachers, which according to Hastings (2004) were a result of the complex teaching environment that these teachers found themselves in. This study is relevant to this chapter as the cooperating teachers offer a wider professional experience of not just as teachers or managers in their secondary schools but also as mentors to trainee teachers. The coordinating teachers’ wider professional experiences may, at least, offer possibilities of understanding the eight FE teachers’ professional experiences, which include pedagogic, life and non- pedagogic (occupational) experiences. Additionally, some of the emotions (both positive and negative ones) arising from Hastings’s survey might offer insights into some of the FE teachers’ emotions. The next study by Trigwell (2012) is relevant as it relates teachers’ emotions to their teaching approaches. In this study, the university teachers in Australia expressed both positive and negative emotions concerning their teaching activities and evidenced the types of pedagogic approaches to the forms of emotions. Those teachers expressing positive emotions (e.g. pride and motivation) appeared to use student-focused teaching approaches and those with negative ones (e.g. anxiety and nervousness), applied transmission (teacher- centred) approaches. The former teaching approaches were more likely to be applied where teachers had a holistic understanding of their disciplines. Academic development programmes also appeared to foster the use of such student-focused teaching strategies. The application of the transmission teaching approaches tended to be by those teachers who felt their teaching activities were not valued and had little control of the programme specifications (Trigwell, 2012). This rare study of linking teachers’ emotions with teaching approaches would be useful for investigating FE teachers in their relationships between their emotional perceptions and their eventual teaching approaches they applied to their learners with diverse needs and in differing teaching programmes. Implicit in the previous two studies on teachers’ emotions are the sociological contexts the teachers operate in. Schutz et al. (2006) quoted at the start of this section referred to the teachers’ emotions as ‘socially constructed, personally enacted ways of being’ and the remainder of the four studies to be reviewed exemplify the activities of teachers, which occur in socially enacted environments. The qualitative findings based on three secondary school teachers from Australia by O’Connor (2008, p. 117) indicated the ‘emotionally engaging and personally demanding’ aspects of the teachers’ professional work in often-complex contexts. Their caring behaviours towards their students were investigated via their performative, professional and philosophical dimensions from Mills’s (1959) sociological lenses. A performative dimension might relate to a teacher’s motivational behaviour in enabling students to achieve their learning outcomes. Professional dimension could refer to how a teacher managed and maintained her/his professional relationship with students and philosophical dimension was concerned with the teacher’s emotional connection with learners from the standpoint of her/his beliefs, philosophy or ethics.
8 Teachers’ emotional ecology
This sociological typology offers this chapter a framework for understanding how FE teachers relate their motivational behaviours, professional roles, and personal beliefs and ethical codes with their learners. Cross and Hong (2012) approached their study of teachers’ emotions in the US from the additional perspective of emotional experiences as relational in addition to being sociologically based. They subscribed to this relational stance where people and their environment interact and impact on teaching and learning (Denzin, 1984). This explicit relationship of socio-relational perspective enables a broader investigation of FE teachers’ professional experiences. Also featured are the usual pedagogic stakeholders and contexts (e.g. learners, teaching settings and provisions), and the teachers’ life/biographical experiences (e.g. parents’ divorce, living abroad, living with a disabled sister, and experience of poverty and homelessness). Included are occupational/non- teaching (e.g. working in private sectors, juggling teaching and occupational practices, and adherence to professional standards in teaching) practices and experiences. In order to study the socio-relational environment of the elementary teachers, Cross and Hong (2012, p. 959) used Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems framework incorporating the microsystem (of activities surrounding the teacher including students, colleagues, parents and administrators), the mesosystem (of interactions between the teachers and related stakeholders and the exosystem (such as parent-teacher networks, school board and government agencies). The final macrosystem relates to overarching organisations concerning the legal, political and economic aspects of the society. Even though this form of emotional ecology may be too wide ranging for this chapter from the perspective of its research aims, nevertheless the relational and sociological dimensions of critiquing teachers’ emotions together with the framework’s emphasis on teacher beliefs and coping strategies offer strategic intellectual spaces for this chapter. The final study is by Zembylas (2007) and, like Cross and Hong’s study, it uses a relational and socio-ecological approach with potential relevance to FE teachers’ occupational experiences. A teacher’s emotional ecology may be viewed as “emotional knowledge in a particular social and political context, including the rich connections to emotional experiences, and relationships with others” (Zembylas, 2007, p. 357). In defining emotional ecology in this manner, Zembylas assumed that the development of emotional knowledge occurred during the teacher’s career and that there were related interactions between teacher and her/his environment. Though emotional knowledge was not equated with teaching knowledge per se, Zembylas (2007) referred to Connelly and Clandinin’s (1988) ‘personal practical knowledge’. Zembylas referred to the four case studies of teachers’ narratives and articulations, which formed significant understandings of their “personal histories, learners, and subject matter to make curricular decisions and form pedagogical practices” (Zembylas, 2007, p. 358). This link with teachers’ narratives (Noddings, 1992; La Porte, 1996) and emotions (Nias, 1989; Elbaz, 1992), as stated earlier in the
Teachers’ emotional ecology 9
opening section, is useful in studying FE teachers’ emotions, life and occupational know-how and eventual teaching approaches because the findings in this chapter are derived partly from the FE teachers’ narratives and partly from their emotions in relation to their teaching life and occupational experiences. Furthermore, the three planes of emotional ecology as delineated by Zembylas are used as a way of structuring the discussion of the data in later sections. First is individual (such as emotional connections with the subject matter, beliefs about teaching and learning, and self-awareness). Second is relational (such as emotional connections with learners, their emotional experiences and knowledge of learners’ emotions). Third is socio-political (such as emotional knowledge of institutional, cultural contexts, curricula, subject matter and pedagogies) (Zembylas, 2007, p. 358). This typology of emotional ecology offers a useful theoretical framework to critique and evaluate the wider professional knowledge of the FE teachers.
Methodology A narrative analysis of emotions was employed to investigate and analyse this complex phenomenon (Denscombe, 1998; Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2000; Robson, 2002). As mentioned in the introduction, the characteristics of the FE sector in England is different from those in the compulsory sectors of primary and secondary because of the diversity of teaching settings, the learners and the types of provisions. The eight teachers who took part in this study were volunteers who had been on a two-year part-time teacher-training programme at a large city in South East England and after their programme continued in this study. All the eight purposive teachers lived and taught in this part of England. Each of the participants was given a project name (Table 2.1) to a) preserve her/his anonymity and b) still provide an accurate rather than an abstracted picture of each of the participant in the ‘Findings and discussion’ section. Ann (as with the rest of the participants, names have been made anonymous for ethical reasons) is a female in her 40s and was teaching at an FE college on a full-time basis. She taught in a vocational area of radio production and journalism for four years. Her learners, as is common with learners in this sector, were from underprivileged backgrounds where it was not uncommon that their parents were not in professional occupations. For whatever reasons, these learners did not academically achieve in the compulsory education sectors, and the FE institutions such as these colleges offered additional opportunities for them to remain in education and to achieve a non-academic or occupation- related qualification. Because of the inner-city locations of this FE institution, the learners came from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Ann was a high achiever and was academically able to gain a first degree from the University of Oxford. Her family background was not privileged, and she went to a state school. Her father was British and her mother Spanish. Her mother died when she was in
Rich
Lou
Fred
Fran
Cori
Col
Male 40s
Chris
Radio production and journalism (4 years)
Female 30s Adult and community institution full-t ime Female 30s Adult and community institution part-t ime (5 hours/week) Male 50s Further education college full-t ime
Information technology and art (5 years)
Dance and Feldenkrais movement (5 years)
Life skills (4 years)
Adult and community Art – painting and institution part-t ime drawing (6 years) (4 hours/w eek) Male 50s Further education college Mathematics (28 years) full-t ime Female 50s Higher education institution Dental hygiene, part-t ime (10 hours/week) psychology and biology (9 years) Female 50s Adult and community Art – printmaking, institution part-t ime textiles, drawing and (4 hours/week) painting (20 years)
Female 40s Further education college full-t ime
Ann
Trained and practised as a graphic artist, palmist, homoeopath and reflexologist Worked and lived in Australia, Switzerland and the US before settling in the UK
Practised as a painter Mixed parentage (mother was Czechoslovakian of Jewish heritage and father Indian) Lived abroad Lived and experienced homelessness and extreme poverty while abroad Worked as a dancer in the continent
Practising dental hygienist Lived and worked abroad with the Navy
Lived and worked in South Africa
Worked in private sector (in the hotel industry in Japan) and public sector (as a civil servant) Mixed parentage (mother is Spanish and father British) Practising artist and architect
Teacher’s Gender and Teaching institution and Subject areas and teaching Biographies ‘name’ age group employment status – experience (years) Full- or part-t ime (hours/w eek)
Table 2.1 Details of participants
Teachers’ emotional ecology 11
her teens, and she had a period of therapy after her mother’s death. She lived in Japan and worked in the hotel industry before settling back in the UK where she took a civil service job. She eventually gained her postgraduate qualification in journalism and practised as a journalist with some media organisations including the British Broadcasting Corporation before becoming a teacher. While Ann was a teacher in the inner-city FE college, as with the other participants in this study, she enrolled in the teacher-training programme where she volunteered to participate in this study. Chris is a male participant in his 40s. He taught part-time for around four hours per week at adult and community institutions. His learners were adults ranging from their 20s to 60s, and some had learning issues. The teaching settings would include public libraries and care homes, and he was not based on a specific location. He had taught painting and drawing in these places for six years. The provisions were not accredited, i.e. with any formal or informal assessments. Chris is Cypriot in origin and had lived in this city for several decades. In addition to teaching art, Chris was a practising artist specialising in printmaking. Alongside this artistic endeavour, he was an architect and was working in a managerial capacity of coordinating projects in this field. He had postgraduate qualifications in both these occupations. In addition to these occupations, Chris had lived abroad in Europe and Asia. Col is a male teacher in his 50s. He taught in an FE college in the suburbs of a large city in South East England. He was a full-time teacher specialising in mathematics for 28 years. Before this, he taught in a secondary school, which he found ill equipped to understand his students. After moving to the FE college and enrolling in the teacher education programme, he volunteered with the other participants to be part of this study. At this college, the subjects he taught included mathematics and physics at the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level (usually for students aged 14–16) and at Advanced Level (pre-university). Col came from South Africa where he held several posts including teaching mathematics in townships and managing mathematics provisions in the South African countryside/outback. Cori, a female teacher in her 50s, was employed as a teacher of dental hygiene in a higher education institution (HEI) when she enrolled in a teacher education programme. She entered this programme as she felt that her teaching of an occupational discipline would be of benefit to being with teachers of other occupational areas in the FE sector. She specialised in psychology (her first degree) and biology (via her previous nurse training) at the HEI on a part-time basis of around 10 hours per week. She had nine years’ teaching experience. The relevant professional body also accredited the programme in addition to the HEI’s awarding body. Her learners were all females and usually straight out of schools at the age of 18/19 or their early 20s. In addition to her teaching, Cori also practised as a dental hygienist and had lived and worked abroad. Some of this period abroad included her naval service as a dental hygienist in Malta to both military personnel and local inhabitants.
12 Teachers’ emotional ecology
Fran, another female participant in her 50s, taught art (non-accredited provision) in adult and community institutions. These institutions included care homes, community-run locations and libraries. Her learners were adults, and some of them had learning issues. She taught on a part-time basis around four hours per week and had 20 years of teaching experiences. In addition to teaching art, Fran also practised in printmaking, drawing and painting, and worked with textiles. Fran’s father was Indian in origin and was a full-time painter who resided in New York, London and other parts of the world. Her mother was of Jewish origin from the former Czechoslovakia and divorced her husband when Fran was in her teens. One of Fran’s siblings had Down syndrome, and she was cared for at home, which was unusual at the time in the UK. Fran had lived abroad including Israel. Fred, in her 30s, was a full-time teacher of life skills and health education with nine years’ teaching experience. She taught in inner-city FE colleges, business organisations, and adult and community settings mainly in community-run locations. Her learners included adults with previous drug and alcohol/criminal convictions together with learning issues as well as adults aiming to enter the health and social care sector. Fred had lived outside of England in her teenage years and had experienced homelessness and extreme poverty while abroad. In the UK, she had worked as a civil servant, youth worker and was a catering manager. Lou, a female in her 30s, taught dance and Feldenkrais movement in adult and community settings. She had been a part-time teacher of around five hours per week for five years. Lou was trained and qualified as a dancer at an HEI in England and a dance institution in Switzerland. After her training, she joined a dance company touring the Continent. Rich, a male teacher in his 50s, taught full-time at an FE college in the suburb of a large city in South East England. His main teaching discipline was information technology and art, and he had five years’ teaching experience. His learners like other learners in this sector were ethnically diverse and had not performed academically well at school. They enrolled at the FE college to stay in education with the view of progressing to higher education or occupation-related programmes. Before this role, he trained and practised as a graphic artist in Australia, Switzerland and the US before settling in the UK. Originally from Australia, he had lived and worked abroad. His other occupational training included palmistry, homoeopathy and reflexology. Finally, perhaps one needs to mention the researcher’s perspectives concerning the participants’ environments in this study (Hammersley, 1992; LeCompte and Preissle, 1993). The researcher in this study was a tutor to the previously mentioned volunteers while they were enrolled in the teacher-training provision. The researcher as a tutor had observed their teaching sessions over the two years on a regular basis and had taught in the FE sector himself on occupational provisions as well as had an occupational background, like the participants. He had lived abroad before settling in the UK. The similarities in
Teachers’ emotional ecology 13
the pedagogic, wider life and occupational backgrounds offered the researcher an insider’s perspective, which might have facilitated the close interaction and description of the participants’ emotional articulations. This narrative study used empirical data from qualitative and quantitative sources in the analysis for this chapter. The quantitative data from a questionnaire survey completed online by the eight purposive participants consisted of details relating to the teachers’ age, gender, years of teaching experience, types of employment, qualifications, non-pedagogic (occupational) experiences and relevant life experiences which impact teaching. The data from the qualitative methods included observations of the participants’ teaching sessions by the researcher/tutor, (including the types of learners and the teaching settings), semi-structured interviews which ranged from 45 minutes to 90 minutes, and supporting documents such as programme specifications and lesson plans. The lesson observations were carried out initially along with the gathering of the relevant documents. Documentary evidence such as lesson plan notes, programme specifications, informal conversations immediately after the lesson and related field notes were used as data. The questionnaire survey was administered after the completion of their teacher-training programme, and the interviews were subsequently arranged. The questioning during the interviews was based on an initial set of questions relating to their teaching and wider experiences that had relevance to their professional activities as teachers. The eventual questions for each participant were fine-tuned concerning their replies in the questionnaire survey. This was done so that the narratives arising from the interview were tailored to the participant’s specific subject/occupational area(s), teaching contexts such as learners and teaching settings, life experiences, and occupational experiences to ensure rich and textured discussions about her/his emotional ecology. The interviews were at mutually agreed locations and recorded on cassette tapes and later transcribed. The study was primarily focused on teaching knowledge, and how the participants interpreted the role as teachers and in its application to teaching; its secondary aims included emotional relationships between teachers and learners. The analysis of this was reported elsewhere (Loo, 2014). Furthermore, the study also identified an emotional dimension of these teachers (like in Hastings, 2004), which this chapter, using the data, did not identify previously. Before all the data sources could be used, the transcriptions of recorded interviews were re-examined several times to focus on the emotional aspects of the participants. As Miles and Huberman (1994) suggested, repetition of the analysis of the data from a grounded analysis process might offer different perspectives to the earlier ones. A re-examination of the data sources from the perspectives of teachers’ emotional ecology has produced significant findings. This re-analysis included the stages of Robson (2002) generating codes to the data from the data sources, identifying phrases, patterns, themes and triangulating the identified scenarios from the data sources. Furthermore, the stages included using the
14 Teachers’ emotional ecology
identified scenarios in the previous stage to generalise a set of typology, and linking the typology to the theoretical frameworks. The first stage of this re-analysis used coloured pens to identify codes to the empirical data from observations, notes arising from these observations and relevant documents (e.g. specifications, questionnaire survey and interview transcripts). The list of phrases, patterns and themes was then compared and evaluated over the eight transcripts to classify and cluster into smaller and more abstracted categories such as emotional knowledge of pedagogy, life/biography and occupational experiences. A data triangulation (Robson, 2002) was carried out based on the various data sources to prevent any possibility of the threats to validity. At least there was no possibility of contradictions in the data analysis process as the researcher was the only person involved in this process. However, the identified themes and patterns such as teachers’ beliefs and students’ needs and learning experiences needed to be consistent with the data sources.
Findings and discussion This section, drawing on the eight participants’ empirical data from the qualitative and quantitative research methods, is structured using Zembylas’s (2007) three types of emotional planes. The planes are individual, relational and socio- political to foreground the participants’ emotional ecology with their wider professional experiences of pedagogy, life and occupation (Table 2.2). Zembylas’s emotional planes are drawn from his four case studies of teachers: Scott, Lynn, Catherine and Jean. This section aims to distinguish new additions of and to explicate concurrences to the debates surrounding emotional planes and ecology. Individual
Ann had some negative experiences when she started teaching as experienced by those in the studies by Hastings (2004) and Trigwell (2012). In the case of Ann, she felt a fraud teaching journalism because she felt that she was not experienced enough in her occupational practice. This negative variety of pedagogic emotional knowledge was different from Hastings’s negative varieties such as disappointments, frustrations and anxieties, which were related to teacher educators’ feelings with their pre-service teachers. Ann’s feeling was related to her pedagogic and occupational forms of emotional knowledge. This feeling was inter-related between her teaching on the subject of journalism where she felt her lack of experience was preventing her from being a good teacher to her FE students on the one hand and her lack of occupational experiences which she might not be able to draw from on the other hand. Unlike Trigwell’s findings where the university teachers with negative experiences would apply teacher- centred approaches, Ann applied student-focused teaching approaches such as discussions and role-plays. Ann’s empathy with her learners accorded a different teaching approach by lecturers in Trigwell’s investigation.
Pedagogic
Emotional knowledge Life
Individual Ann – felt a fraud teaching journalism Ann – teachers needed to be with her relative inexperience aware of their intrapersonal and interpersonal weaknesses and suggested therapy before teaching – she had therapy after her parents died when she was a teenager – lived in Japan Chris – juggling teaching (e.g. creation Chris – juggling teaching, life (e.g. of ideal home as a theme for living with loved ones and on his learners), life and occupational own) and occupational practices practices Cori – confidence gained from teaching and dental hygiene practices Fran – teaching of learners (young Fran – life experiences (divorced and with disabilities) was affected parents, disabled sister and father by her life experiences as an artist) impacted her teaching approach Fred – pedagogic practices (i.e. Fred – experiences of homelessness exploratory) and value were and poverty while living abroad affected by her life experiences impacted her teaching approach Lou – teaching approach was Lou – experiences (e.g. disabilities, affected by her self-awareness (e.g. and class) impact her teaching disabilities and class) – adopted a generalised approach of strategies for specific teaching contexts
Emotional planes
Table 2.2 Emotional planes and emotional knowledge
(Continued)
Lou – dancing (as a performer and learner) experiences of lactic acid poisoning affected her teaching
Cori – confidence gained from teaching and dental hygiene practices
Chris – juggling teaching, life and occupational practices (e.g. in architecture and printmaking)
Ann – felt a fraud teaching journalism with her relative inexperience – worked for a private company in Japan (long hours and conditions like in a call centre)
Occupational
Pedagogic
Emotional knowledge
Ann – referred her work experiences to the social expectations of her students
Ann – intra- and interpersonal awareness of the social environment on teachers and learners Col – lived in South Africa
Lou – used her knowledge of lactic acid poisoning in her role as a dancer in Europe
Col – held positions of responsibility in mathematics teaching and training in South Africa
Rich – occupational experiences (e.g. attitudes to work) impact his teaching
Occupational
Rich – life experiences (e.g. notions of materialism) impact his teaching
Life
Col – frustration for not understanding learners at schools in England Fran – worked in adult and Fran – life experiences (e.g. sister community settings with young with learning issues) affected her teaching with her learners people and learners with disabilities Fred – students with life issues and Fred – her life experiences (of negative educational experiences poverty, homelessness and living affected her teaching approach abroad) affected her teaching disadvantaged adults Lou – awareness of her learners’ Lou – knowledge of lactic acid emotions (e.g. frustration and poisoning confinement in wheelchairs) – saw herself as a pushover with her adult learners – awareness of her dance teacher’s ignorance of lactic acid poisoning
Rich – adopted a student-c entred approach and vision to teaching based on his life and occupational experiences Relational All the eight teachers expressed their empathy with their learners using expressions like vulnerability, deprivation and low self-e steem Ann – learners’ unawareness of the social values
Emotional planes
Table 2.2 (Continued)
– adherence to professional standards
Cori – social expectations as a parent Cori – social expectations as a dental hygienist
Rich – referred to his life experiences Rich – drew on his lifelong learning (e.g. travels) to engage with his experiences in areas such as learners to support and motivate palmistry and homeopathy to their learning engage with his learners – used his occupational experiences to motivate his students to learn Ann – saw herself as a ‘social Ann – relationships of workplaces crusader’ and perceived social values.
Fred – used non-t raditional methods Fred – life experiences (e.g. learning of assessment for the types of adult issues and negative experiences learners including learning) informed her teaching – offered relevant content such as IT skills and curriculum vitae writing for her learners
Socio- Ann – impact of social values in her political teaching Col – held leadership positions in education in South Africa Cori – social expectations as a teacher – adherence to teaching content and delivery constraints
Rich – worked with his learners to help motivate them to engage in learning using ‘game-p laying’ approaches
18 Teachers’ emotional ecology
Ann’s inter-related pedagogic and occupational emotional knowledge is further supported by her life experiences where she felt that “teachers needed to be aware of their intrapersonal and interpersonal weaknesses and suggested therapy for those before teaching”. This belief or philosophy resonated with those found in Schutz et al.’s study (2006). Ann felt a close relationship and empathy with her learners and those teachers in responsible positions should know their strengths and weaknesses so that their pedagogic actions were in line with their belief system and respect for their learners. This philosophical approach is connected to Ann’s life experiences when her parents died while she was in her teens and she underwent therapy. This life experience gave her a greater awareness of herself and those around her. She used this negative life emotional knowledge to offer a positive educational approach to trainee teachers in the FE sector where students might be vulnerable and needing guidance more than in other educational sectors because of their diverse learning abilities. Chris’s three emotional knowledge forms are also intricately connected. Pedagogically, he used teaching themes such as the creation of ideal home to illustrate his juggling of teaching, life and occupational knowledge. Life emotional knowledge was explained as living with loved ones and on his own, and occupational as the use of architecture (e.g. home). This socio-relational perspective by Chris offers further insights into the study by Cross and Hong (2012) of US teachers. In the findings, emotional experiences of FE teachers included occupational ones in addition to pedagogic and life ones. Rich adopted a student-centred teaching approach in his teaching of IT and art based on his life and occupational experiences. His life experiences related to questioning of materialism and occupational experiences of positive attitudes to hard work were used in pedagogic approaches. In the case of materialism, he would set up learning scenarios with his IT students in getting them to question the value of branded goods and perceived perceptions to those around them. The connection between a teacher’s emotions to teaching approaches accord with Trigwell’s (2012) investigation. Rich’s positive attitude to hard work in industry adhered to O’Connor’s (2008) performative dimension where his motivational behaviour offered his learners a positive approach to learners in achieving their learning outcomes. The performative dimension offers insights into how Rich manages and maintains his professional relationship with students and its connection with his belief/philosophy. From the perspectives of similarities, the eight participants illustrated strong connections of their emotional knowledge between their pedagogic, life and occupational know-how. These connections were exemplified by the power of their narratives at different emotional planes. In these dimensions, the findings accorded with those by Zembylas’s (2007) four cases of teachers. Scott, an elementary school teacher, had attitudes to science teaching which were connected to his personal history, subject matter, and philosophy of teaching and learning. Lynn was uncomfortable with the institution’s use of labelling
Teachers’ emotional ecology 19
students with learning disabilities as it was in conflict with her approach to the creation of a supportive and caring learning environment. Catherine’s narratives as a science teacher were not in harmony with her educational philosophy and Jane had self-doubts as an English language teacher and her pedagogic struggles in reconciling wider social issues with her classroom deliveries. These four examples by Zembylas of the teachers’ emotional ecology illustrate the connectedness of the three emotional planes. From the perspectives of the individual emotional plane, Ann had teaching of journalism where she related her occupational experiences to her teaching and her inclusion of her life experiences such as living and working in Japan and the UK into her classroom delivery. Chris juggled teaching, living, and architecture and printmaking. Rich had a style of teaching that brought in his life experiences (e.g. travels) and varied occupational experiences (e.g. graphic art and palmistry). These are examples of the connections and diversity of the participants’ interrelationships of emotional knowledge. Regarding new additions from the findings to the literature on emotional planes and emotional knowledge, the most obvious one is the occupational experiences of the participating teachers. This factor is significant in the FE sector since the majority of the provisions are occupation related (Education and Training Foundation, 2014), and it is closely connected with the two dimensions of emotional planes and emotional knowledge as defined for the chapter (Table 2.2). This factor is also exemplified by an examination of the differences to other literature sources reviewed earlier in the chapter. From an individual emotional plane perspective, the differences are shown regarding the distinctive nature of the participants’ cases and the findings of other findings. On the surface, Jean’s negative emotions of self-doubt as a teacher may chime with Ann’s ‘feeling a fraud’ as an FE teacher, but the similarities end there. Ann’s distinctive cases of a) ‘feeling a fraud’ as a teacher due to her perceived occupational inexperience as a journalist (whereas Jean’s narrative does not have an occupational dimension), and b) her insistence of teachers who may have vulnerable learners to undertake therapy so that they have a greater self-awareness of their intrapersonal and interpersonal strengths and weaknesses are distinct from Zembylas’s examples. Similarly, different from Zembylas’s teachers’ narratives are Chris’s need to juggle his teaching (e.g. a creation of an ideal home as the pedagogic theme), his personal life of living on his own or with loved ones, and his occupational practices of managing an architectural project and practising as a printmaker. Also different are Lou’s approach to teaching dance to adult learners with disabilities; her life experiences involving disabilities, poverty and class-related issues; and her occupational experiences relating to lactic acid poisoning. Different too are Rich’s student-centred teaching approach, which is intricately connected to his life experiences of non-materialistic nature and his wealth of occupational experiences such as a homoeopath and an artist (of watercolour) in different countries (e.g. Australia, the US and Switzerland). Also, the dissimilar findings
20 Teachers’ emotional ecology
at the individual emotional plane dimension include Ann’s empathy with her learners and her adoption of a student-centred pedagogic approach despite her negative feelings ‘as a fraud teaching journalism’ diverge from Trigwell’s (2012) findings. Relational
In the relational emotional plane, the four publications in the FE sector are by Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004), Robson and Bailey (2009), Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008), and Jephcote and Salisbury (2009). These findings have a common theme of the lecturers’ strong emotional connections with their learners. The findings from this study offer specific emotional connections of a relational perspective of Zembylas’s (2007) framework. Col described his frustration after he came over from South Africa to teach in England at a secondary school where he found that he could not understand the students’ lack of motivation in learning. This negative emotion resonates with Hasting’s (2004) findings. The difference in Col’s case as opposed to Hasting’s findings is with himself rather than teacher educators’ frustration with the system or the pre-service teachers. Col channelled this frustration into enrolling in a teacher training qualification in his adopted country to try and understand the socio-cultural contexts surrounding the learners. He eventually found employment in an inner-city FE college and applied his new-found emotional knowledge to the learners. This newly acquired emotional knowledge was in contrast to his life experiences in South Africa where learners with deprived learning facilities were highly motivated to learn as opposed to those English secondary school learners with well-resourced learning environments. Relating to his contrasting life experiences in South Africa and England, he held positions of responsibility in mathematics teaching and training in his country of birth, where he implemented related education programmes – teaching and teacher education – in deprived townships. His success in the two areas of mathematics was in contrast to that in a secondary school in England. The three relational emotional knowledge of pedagogy, life and occupation offer insights into the investigations by Hastings (2004), Schutz et al. (2006), Cross and Hong (2012), and Trigwell (2012). Hastings’s findings on the negative emotion of frustration contrasted with Col’s decision to learn more about the socio-cultural contexts of learners in England by enrolling on a teacher education programme. The new-found knowledge was contrasted with his life, and occupational experiences in South Africa and his re-education was applied to his teaching in FE. The student-focused pedagogic activities such as group play and collaborative learner experiments were unlike Trigwell’s (2012) teacher-centred findings. His student-focused approaches supported his belief systems in trying to relate to his FE learners who had varied learning abilities (Schutz et al., 2006). His emotional need to engage with learners and to offer learning opportunities are in line with the FE sector. Col’s perspectives
Teachers’ emotional ecology 21
of pedagogy, life and occupation indicated earlier offer the reader a wider view of Cross and Hong’s (2012) socio-relational perspective. This perspective involved stakeholders such as teachers, managers, learners and teacher trainers, and educational contexts such as teaching settings and provisions. The emotional knowledge of Fran offers a contrasting example. She specialised in learning settings, adult and community, with young people and older learners with learning disabilities. Her life experiences (e.g. a younger sister with severe learning issues and educated in an ordinary school in England in the 1970s, which was unusual for the time) gave her first-hand experience and confidence to teach students with learning disabilities. This life experience along with her experiences of divorced parents of mixed heritage (Indian father and a Jewish mother from the former Czechoslovakia) and having lived abroad in a kibbutz in Israel affected her teaching approach. It also supported the findings by Cross and Hong (2012) of a relational stance where people and their environment interacted and impacted their teaching and learning. In contrast to Fran’s life experiences about teaching, Lou’s relational emotional plane is reflected in all three forms of emotional knowledge: pedagogic, life and occupation. She used her negative learning experience of lactic acid poisoning when she was a student of dance. Her dance teacher did not recognise the symptoms of forgetting recently learned dance movements and experiencing fatigue and body pains, and was unsympathetic to her condition. She then learned of this medical phenomenon from her friend in physical education who knew this condition. This negative learning experience provided Lou with relevant exercises to show her dance learners to prevent them from experiencing lactic acid poisoning. This form of negative emotion is different from Hasting’s (2004) findings as Lou experienced it from her learning rather than teacher educators with mentoring pre-service teachers. Lou used her negative emotion experience – frustration with the lack of learning support – to engage positively with her dance students. This pedagogic emotional knowledge is related to her life experience as a dance student and her interaction with her friend in physical education. It accords with Cross and Hong’s (2012) investigation of socio-relational perspectives. Concerning this study, it relates to pedagogic, life and occupational emotional knowledge. She used this knowledge to prevent lactic acid poisoning in her dance activities while being a member of a contemporary dance group touring in Europe. To achieve this, she had a routine of physical exercises before and after the dance activities. Like in Cross and Hong (2012), the resultant of this emotional experience, Lou’s beliefs as a dancer and teacher of dance changed regarding how she approached her dancing and teaching. Lou also adopted physical exercises as strategies to prevent lactic acid poisoning. From the relational emotional plane dimension, Zembylas’s teachers offer similarities to the cases in this chapter. The examples include Scott with his understanding the importance of knowing students’ emotional experiences for a more sympathetic engagement. Lynn’s awareness of her students’ learning
22 Teachers’ emotional ecology
issues and tailoring her pedagogic approaches to the learner’s needs, and Catherine honouring her students’ diversity. The participants’ testaments to and empathy with their diverse learners, some with learning issues (e.g. Fred’s students), underprivileged backgrounds (e.g. Ann’s learners) and disabilities (e.g. Lou’s wheelchair-bound participants) were present from all of them. These are illustrative of the relational emotional plane as delineated by Zembylas (2007). The teachers used expressions such as ‘vulnerability’, ‘deprivation’ and ‘low self-esteem’ to describe their learners in an emphatic light (Godar, 1990; Goldstein, 1999; Hastings, 2004). However, in detailing the narratives of the eight participants, there is distinctiveness of these cases. An example is Col’s challenging his frustration (and not with his learners) of the lack of understanding of the education system and school learners in England. He questioned his adopted country, and to enrol on another teacher training qualification to try and understand the socio-cultural differences between England and South Africa (his country of origin). Fran had her personal life complexities of divorced parents, mixed parental heritage (Indian father and Czechoslovakian/Jewish mother). Her younger sister had severe learning issues and was brought up at home, and an ordinary school in England in the 1970s, and Fran lived for a period at a kibbutz in Israel, all of which impacted her approach to teaching. Further distinctive cases are featured in Table 2.2. Additionally, Col’s negative emotion of frustration with his lack of understanding of the English education system and his school students led him eventually, after obtaining a teaching qualification in his adopted country, England, to use student-focused pedagogic activities. This finding is also different from the findings by Trigwell (2012). Lou’s negative learning experience while training to be a dancer is also different from Hasting’s (2004) findings, as she experienced it from her learning rather than Hasting’s teacher educators’ negative emotions. Socio-p olitical
Cori offers a socio-political emotional plane from the three forms of emotional knowledge: pedagogic, life and occupation. She viewed her teaching role in dental hygiene as of a higher status than that of her occupational role as a dental hygienist, and she was conscious of playing these roles at several levels. Institutionally (Zembylas, 2007), she taught at a higher educational institution on the first-degree programme of dental hygiene. She perceived this as of higher social standing than that of a dental hygiene practitioner in addition to the link to the curriculum to a professional body. Culturally (Zembylas, 2007), the difference in status of the two roles enabled her to ‘become’ the lecturer along with the perceived social status of a dental hygienist. However, there are pedagogic constraints. She indicated that the dental hygiene curriculum because of the wide coverage of disciplinary knowledge alongside the added dimension of a professional accreditation meant that the curriculum needed
Teachers’ emotional ecology 23
to satisfy the professional body’s regulations as regards the specified acquisition of knowledge, skills and experiences by the learners in addition to that of the programme offer. These constraints prevented her from offering more holistic learning experiences to her learners, who might otherwise be shown a wider curriculum, which may include interdisciplinary related know-how, both disciplinary and practical experiences. Due to the substantive coverage of the curriculum along with the professional requirements, she felt that certain pedagogic activities such as a discursive approach to acquiring and reflection on disciplinary knowledge and linking to occupational experiences might be curtailed due to time constraints. However, on a positive front, her parallel teaching and working in a dental clinic gave her confidence in her teaching duties, as she could draw upon her occupational experiences in her teaching. This symbiotic relationship offers a new dimension to the findings by Zembylas (2007). Turning to Cori’s life experiences, she provides another emotional dimension to that as a lecturer and dental hygiene practitioner. She recounted the time when she was waiting at the school gates to collect her child while conversing with other parents. Within the socio-cultural contexts of England, she felt that her role as a parent was different from that of a lecturer and a dental hygienist, as different perceptions were accorded for each of the three roles. Her role as a mother and parent was to provide emotional care and support to her child while attending school alongside providing extra-curricular activities such as swimming lessons. This social expectation of being a parent was different from those of a lecturer where one was accorded a certain social status and viewed as an expert in her field, which was science related. The social expectations of being a dental hygienist were different again from the other two, with a perceived lower professional status to a dentist but slightly of a higher standing to a person at the front desk from the perspectives of professionalism, financial rewards and level of disciplinary expertise. Nevertheless, Cori’s different socially constructed ways of being (Schutz et al., 2006; Cross and Hong, 2012) offer a wider dimension to those found by Schutz et al. and Cross and Hong, in which professional, life and occupational roles are featured. Regarding Cori’s occupational emotional knowledge, there is tension relating to her professional adherence as a dental hygienist on the one hand and offering her learners on a professionally accredited programme a wider curriculum and learning experience than that indicated in the professional standards on the other. O’Connor (2008) referred to this emotional tension as three dimensions: performative, professional and philosophical. In Cori’s case, the tension is inter-related, where her teaching activities as a lecturer are symbiotically related to her professional practices as a dental hygienist and the tension regarding her philosophical approach of a holistic pedagogical approach is intricately linked to the curriculum and its professional accreditation issues. These interrelationships offer a new dimension to O’Connor’s findings.
24 Teachers’ emotional ecology
Finally, Fred’s socio-political emotional plane offers insights into her pedagogical and life emotional knowledge types. She teaches life skills (e.g. IT skills and curriculum vitae writing) in adult and community settings to adult learners with learning issues and who have experienced life vicissitudes such as homelessness and substance abuses. In her pedagogic sessions, Fred uses non-traditional methods in her delivery as well as in assessments. Her delivery may include a discursive dialogical approach with a small group of adults. The assessment approaches include presenting curriculum vitae for job searches and recording of simulated interviews over a period of study and in a formative manner. This philosophical approach (Schutz et al., 2006) enables individual learners to reflect and contribute to a topic in an environment where drinks, such as coffee and tea, are available, and the traditional tables and chairs are dispensed with. This student-focused approach (Trigwell, 2012) of Fred’s offers the learners a safe and supportive learning environment amongst adults with similar life experiences. Her pedagogic approaches, besides being affected by her philosophical stance, are also intricately linked with her life emotional knowledge. This socio-relational perspective (Cross and Hong, 2012) may be explained by Fred’s early adulthood. She spent a period outside the UK and, due to personal circumstances beyond the remit of this study, she experienced homelessness and extreme poverty. These negative defining life experiences (Trigwell, 2012) have affected her pedagogic approach, which remains that of student-focused variety contrary to Trigwell’s findings. Her positive philosophical stance to teaching, in spite of her negative life experiences, offers another insight into Trigwell’s findings. Fred’s case also provides a socio- relational perspective indicated in the study by Cross and Hong (2012). Her pedagogical stakeholders (e.g. adult learners) and contexts (e.g. informal teaching environments, and experiences of living abroad and of some of the life’s vicissitudes) shape and affect her teaching and her emotional connection with her adult learners. From the socio-political emotional plane dimension, Zembylas’s teachers mentioned the impacts of socio-political factors on their pedagogic activities. These impacts involved reassessing their preferred pedagogic approach of a caring and empathetic teacher (in the cases of Catherine and Jean) and offering a supportive learning environment (in the case of Lynn). From the findings based on the eight participants, some of the distinctive cases include Cori’s roles as a practising dental hygienist, a lecturer at an HEI and a parent. Academically, she had to negotiate the pedagogic landscapes of a first-degree programme and one that was accredited by a professional body. She also acknowledged the positive feature of the symbiotic relationship between her occupational and teaching practices, which is new about O’Connor’s (2008) findings. One may also remember Fred’s connections with her adult learners who have learning issues and have experienced substance abuse and her own life experiences of living abroad, homelessness and poverty which shaped her teaching and emotional connections with her learners. Fred’s strong emotional narrative supports, on
Teachers’ emotional ecology 25
the one hand, the findings by Cross and Hong (2012) on the other offers a new case story to add to Cross and Hong’s rich textured findings. Finally, despite Fred’s negative personal experiences while living abroad, she uses a supportive and student-centred teaching approach, which is contrary to Trigwell’s (2012) findings.
Contributions and implications This study of the emotional landscapes of FE teachers in England has drawn on literature sources, especially Zembylas (2007), which are identified earlier. A contribution from the findings of the chapter relates to the inclusion of occupational experiences of teachers, and with the increasing offer of occupation-related provisions in the secondary sector in England and globally, this will add a significant dimension in researching teachers’ emotional knowledge. The other contributions include a conceptual framework for analysing teachers’ emotional landscapes via Zembylas’s (2007) two dimensions of emotional planes and emotional knowledge. Additionally, the emotional knowledge dimension offers a distinct typology of teacher’s pedagogic, life and occupational experiences (Table 2.2). The narratives discussed in the investigation support findings from existing literature sources as well as offering new perspectives to existing ones. No doubt more research is required to provide a further understanding of this area especially in the FE sector where a significant proportion of its provisions is occupation related. Similarly, the relevance and effectiveness of teachers’ biographies and their occupational experiences need to be further investigated concerning the teachers’ pedagogic activities. The findings have implications for the individual teachers to have a greater awareness of the relevance of their personal and occupational experiences in their teaching. One of the ways of facilitating this awareness is to offer continuous professional development in this area. At an institutional level, the potential impact of emotional ecology on teaching and learning will further put this area in the spotlight. The acknowledgement of emotional ecology and its inclusion in teacher training programmes will open up debates and investigations in this relatively new field. Finally, policymakers could assist in this area by its inclusion in the relevant professional standards of FE teachers, teacher education and teachers’ professional training. In so doing, this neglected area of research, professional development and teacher education would start candid debates of its significance in the sector.
References Cohen, L., Manion, L., Morrison, K. 2000 Research Methods in Education. London, RoutledgeFalmer. Connelly, M. F., Clandinin, D. J. 1988 Teachers as Curriculum Planners. New York, Teachers College.
26 Teachers’ emotional ecology Cross, D. I., Hong, J. Y. 2012 An ecological examination of teachers’ emotions in the school context. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28: 957–967. Day, C., Kington, A. 2008 Identity, well-being and effectiveness: the emotional contexts of teaching. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 16(1): 7–23. Denscombe, M. 1998 The Good Research Guide for Small-Scale Social Research Projects. Buckingham, Open University Press. Denzin, N. K. 1984 On Understanding Emotion. San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass. Derryberry, D., Tucker, D. M. 1994 Motivating the focus of attention. In: Niedenthal, P. M. and Kitayama, S. (Eds) The Heart’s Eye: Emotional Influences in Perception and Attention. San Diego, CA, Academic Press Limited, pp. 167–196. Education and Training Foundation 2014 Professional Standards for Teachers and Trainers in England: Initial Guidance for Users. London, Education and Training Foundation. Elbaz, F. 1992 Hope, attentiveness, and caring for difference: the moral voice in teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 8: 421–432. Frijda, N. H. 2000 The psychologists’ point of view. In: Lewis, M. and Havilland-Jones, J. M. (Eds) Handbook of Emotions. New York, Guilford Press, pp. 59–74. Frontier Economics 2016 Further Education Workforce Data for England: Analysis of the 2014– 2015 Staff Individualised Record (SIR) Data. London, Frontier Economics. Godar, J. 1990 Teachers Talk. Macomb, IL, Glenbridge Publishing. Goldstein, L. S. 1999 The relational zone: the role of caring relationships in the co-construction of mind. American Educational Research Journal, 36: 647–673. Hammersley, M. 1992 What’s Wrong With Ethnography? London, Routledge. Hargreaves, A. 1998 The emotional practice of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14: 835–854. Hargreaves, A. 2000 Mixed emotions: teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with students. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16: 811–826. Hargreaves, A. 2001 Emotional geographies of teaching. Teachers College Record, 103(6): 1056–1080. Hargreaves, A., Tucker, E. 1991 Teaching and guilt: exploring the feelings of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 7: 491–506. Hastings, W. 2004 Emotions and the practicum: the cooperating teachers’ perspective. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 10(2): 135–148. Isen, A. M. 1993 Positive affect and decision making. In: Lewis, M. and Haviland, J. M. (Eds) Handbook of Emotions. New York, Guilford Press, pp. 261–277. Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J. 2009 Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25: 966–972. Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Rees, G. 2008 Being a teacher in further education in changing times. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 13(2): 163–172. Kelchtermans, G. 1996 Teacher vulnerability: understanding its moral and political roots. Cambridge Journal of Education, 26: 307–324. La Porte, E. 1996 Teaching: getting it right. Cambridge Journal of Education, 26: 361–366. LeCompte, M., Preissle, J. 1993 Ethnography and Qualitative Design in Educational Research. London, Academic Press Limited. Lee, J. C-K., Huang, Y. X-H., Law, E. H-F., Wang, M-H. 2013 Professional identities and emotions of teachers in the context of curriculum reform: a Chinese perspective. Asia- Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 41(3): 271–287. Loo, S. 2014 Placing ‘knowledge’ in teacher education in the English further education sector: an alternative approach based on collaboration and evidence-based research. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(3): 337–372.
Teachers’ emotional ecology 27 Lortie, D. 1975 School Teacher: A Sociological Study. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Mesquita, B., Frijda, N. H., Scherer, K. R. 1997 Culture and emotion. In: Berry, J. W., Dasen, P. R. and Sarawathi, T. S. (Eds) Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology: Vol 2. Basic Processes and Human Development. Boston, MA, Allyn and Bacon, pp. 255–297. Miles, M. B., Hubermann, A. M. 1994 Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications. Mills, C. W. 1959 The Sociological Imagination. New York, Oxford University Press. Nias, J. 1989 Primary Teachers Talking: A Study of Teaching as Work. London, Routledge. Nias, J. 1996 Thinking about feeling: the emotions in teaching. Cambridge Journal of Education, 26(3): 293–306. Noddings, N. 1992 The Challenge to Care in Schools. New York, Teachers College. O’Connor, K. E. 2008 ‘You choose to care’: teachers, emotions and professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(1): 117–126. Parrott, W. G., Spackman, M. P. 2000 Emotion and memory. In: Lewis, M. and Haviland, J. M. (Eds) Handbook of Emotions. New York, Guilford Press, pp. 476–490. Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Titz, W., Perry, R. P. 2002 Academic emotions in students’ self- regulated learning and achievement: a program of qualitative and quantitative research. Educational Psychology, 37: 91–106. Pines, A. M. 2002 Teacher burnout: a psychodynamic existential perspective. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 8: 121–140. Prinz, J. 2006 The emotional basis of moral judgments. Philosophical Explorations, 9(1): 29–43. Robson, C. 2002 Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing. Robson, J., Bailey, B. 2009 ‘Bowing from the heart’: an investigation into discourses of professionalism and the work of caring for students in further education. British Educational Research Journal, 35(1): 99–117. Robson, J., Bailey, B., Larkin, S. 2004 Adding value: investigating the discourse of professionals adopted by vocational teachers in further education colleges. Journal of Education and Work, 17: 183–195. Schutz, P. A., Hong, J. Y., Cross, D. L., Osbon, J. N. 2006 Reflections on investigating emotion in educational activity settings. Educational Psychology Review, 18(4): 343–360. Sutton, R. E. 2000 The emotional experiences of teachers. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Sutton, R. E., Mudrey-Camino, R., Knight, C. C. 2009 Teachers’ emotion regulation and classroom management. Theory into Practice, 48(2): 130–137. Sutton, R. E., Wheatley, K. F. 2003 Teachers’ emotions and teaching: a review of the literature and directions for future research. Educational Psychology Review, 15(4): 327–358. Thomas, J. A., Montomery, P. 1998 On becoming a good teacher: reflective practice with regard to children’s voices. Journal of Teacher Education, 49: 372–380. Trigwell, K. 2012 Relations between teachers’ emotions in teaching and their approaches to teaching in higher education. Instructional Science, 40: 607–621. van den Berg, R. 2002 Teachers’ meanings regarding educational practice. Review of Educational Research, 72(4): 577–625. van Veen, K., Lasky, S. 2005 Emotions as a lens to explore teacher identity and change: different theoretical approaches. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21: 895–898. Woods, P., Jeffrey, B. 1996 Teachable Moments: The Art of Teaching in Primary Schools. Buckingham, Open University Press.
28 Teachers’ emotional ecology Yin, H-B., Lee, J. C-K. 2012 Be passionate, but be rational as well: emotional rules for Chinese teachers’ work. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28: 56–65. Zembylas, M. 2007 Emotional ecology: the intersection of emotional knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23: 355–367. Zembylas, M., Charalambous, C., Charalambous, P., Kendeou, P. 2011 Promoting peaceful coexistence in conflict-ridden Cyprus: teachers’ difficulties and emotions towards a new policy initiative. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27: 332–341.
Chapter 3
Teaching knowledge, professional identities and symbolic representations of qualified teachers with occupational experiences
Introduction The relevance and importance of teaching knowledge have been acknowledged regarding pedagogic activities and researched by investigators such as Shulman (1987), Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer (2001), and Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003), where the sources of knowledge are centred on teachers’ professional practices. However, fewer studies have focused on a wider spectrum of teaching knowledge, and in particular Clandinin (1985) offers from her ‘personal practical knowledge’, potential theoretical spaces for the inclusion of teaching knowledge from teachers’ personal lives and occupational/vocational knowledge and experiences. Studies on teachers’ sense of themselves were focused on ‘pedagogy-led’ identities. These identities are directly related to the nature of their work as teachers (Moore et al., 2002; Beijaard, Meijer and Verloop, 2004; Day et al., 2007). These professional identities include formation and characteristics, conflicts and marginalisation, and pragmatism aspects. Despite the wealth of studies on teaching knowledge and teachers’ identities, these two areas are viewed discretely. The aims of this chapter are first to offer a wider understanding of teaching knowledge, which includes teachers’ personal experiences and occupational know-how together with their pedagogic knowledge; and second to investigate the relationships between teachers’ knowledge and their professional identities. The empirical findings are based on a study of teachers who teach on vocational/occupational programmes in the further education (FE) sector in England. All the participating teachers in the study have occupational experiences. Occupational experiences are experiences that relate to non-pedagogic practices. These include professional practices in work-related areas such as dance, dental hygiene, health education, information technology (IT) and radio production. These experiences and practices may be gained before the participants entered teaching or in parallel with their teaching activities. Over 70 percent of the courses in this sector in 2014–2015 was related to occupational provisions (Frontier Economics Limited, 2016, Table 17) and so the necessity of including teachers’ occupational experiences in such investigations
30 Teaching knowledge, professional identities
is understandable. The study aimed to answer three research questions: the forms of professional knowledge; the relevance of these knowledge forms to teaching; and the relationships between teachers’ professional know-how and their identities. It uses a relational approach to understanding and identifying perspectives of professional knowledge sources with different types of identities as the research in these two areas have been unconnected. The study, in particular, draws on the participants’ symbolic representations as forms of articulations of their identities from the qualitative data. Even though the findings are from an English perspective, the paper is considered to be of interest to stakeholders in other countries where there are the teaching of occupational programmes and that the teachers include occupational practices as their non- teaching experiences.
Theoretical frameworks This section follows on from the introduction by identifying the literature sources relating to teaching knowledge and how this may relate to the aims of this study. It then reviews the literature on teachers’ identities in line with the research questions and finally considers how the rich qualitative data reflect the participants’ symbolic representations in response to the investigation. Knowledge sources of teachers
Knowledge and experiences from pedagogic activities have been studied widely, and some of the main proponents include Shulman (1987), Buehi and Fives (2009), Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003) and Bernstein (1996). Shulman (1987) offers seven types of professional knowledge which are: pedagogical content knowledge, content knowledge, curriculum knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of learners and their characteristics, knowledge of educational contexts, and knowledge of educational values. His typology of professional knowledge provides a helpful checklist of the related pedagogic know-how, which is centred on explicit types. These explicit forms (especially content knowledge and curriculum knowledge) are relevant for inclusion in teaching-related curricula. He does infer that there may be tacit aspects of teaching know-how and studies by others such as Buehi and Fives (2009) provide a more comprehensive understanding of teaching knowledge with their inclusion of tacit and explicit knowledge, enactive experiences and self-reflection in their typology of six knowledge sources. This study, though still centred essentially on pedagogic activities, at least opens up tacit possibilities of pedagogic know- how in comparison with Shulman’s typology. Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003, p. 856) focus on the hidden aspects of teaching practices in their 12 ‘Principles of teaching quality learning’. They refer to the hidden aspects of teaching in areas such as sharing intellectual control with students, encouraging peer learning and raising learners’ awareness
Teaching knowledge, professional identities 31
of quality learning. Bernstein (1996) offers a binary knowledge classification. Vertical knowledge (i.e. disciplinary knowledge) is viewed as explicit forms that may be referenced to Shulman’s typology. Horizontal knowledge (i.e. the everyday forms of knowledge) is tacit and thus encompassing Buehi and Fives’s and Loughran et al.’s teaching knowledge typologies of the tacit and hidden varieties. This approach to understanding professional knowledge from the pedagogic perspectives (incorporating teachers’ and learners’ perspectives of the explicit and tacit forms) offers this chapter a means of engaging with teaching knowledge from a relational stance and thus enabling an investigation, which may include a wider definition of this topic. Critiquing teaching knowledge from a real-life perspective, Bernstein’s horizontal knowledge offers a theoretical space to include everyday experiences of teachers. Following on from Bernstein (1996), Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer (2001, p. 445) studied teachers’ practical knowledge, and they viewed knowledge as “all profession-related insights that are potentially relevant to the teacher’s activities”. Their definition offers additional space for including teaching knowledge, which is practical and is related to teaching though not necessarily posited in pedagogic activities. This wider form of teaching knowledge includes the real-life and the everyday practical experiences of teachers, which is helpful to teachers with experiences which are outside the pedagogic environment such as those teaching on occupational provisions. As one would expect of these teachers, they enter teaching at a later stage in their lives due to their wider life experiences. Thus the inclusion of teachers’ life experiences in their pedagogic activities is useful as these experiences may assist their learners in linking the disciplinary/subject knowledge taught in classroom settings to the everyday experiences. More explicitly, Clandinin (1985) advocated a connection between teachers’ personal and their professional experiences, which she termed ‘personal practical knowledge’. This way of investigating teaching knowledge offers this chapter legitimate space to include real-life experiences to the teachers’ pedagogic experiences. Clandinin, Downey and Huber (2009) viewed teachers’ personal practical knowledge as shaped by both their personal and social contexts. In defining teaching knowledge in this way, it allows a wider interpretation of teachers’ personal and social contexts by the inclusion of their occupational experiences. As the studies by Clandinin et al. were carried out in compulsory education sectors in North America, where teachers did not teach on occupational provisions or had related experiences, their teaching knowledge definition did not include occupational experiences. However, their studies allow a wider definition of professional knowledge in including teachers’ occupational know-how. This relational approach to investigating teaching knowledge enables three sources of teaching knowledge, which is related to the tacit and explicit forms of pedagogic activities, real-life experiences and occupational experiences to be used as a conceptual framework to studying the relationships with teachers’ professional identities. Additionally, Bernstein (1996) in his three rules of
32 Teaching knowledge, professional identities
pedagogic device suggested that teaching knowledge is connected to a teacher’s professional identity, which is featured in the next part. The three rules are ‘distributive rules’ (i.e. horizontal and vertical discourses), ‘recontextualizing rules’ (i.e. control the processing of certain pedagogic discourse/knowledge), and ‘evaluative rules’ (i.e. stakeholders transform pedagogic discourse via the recontextualizing rules). For Bernstein (1996, p. 73), “identity arises out of a particular social order through relations which the identity enters into with other identities of reciprocal collective purpose”. In his case, the collective purpose is in the enactment of the three pedagogic devices. The relationship between teaching knowledge and identities offers intellectual space for this investigation to operate in. Knowledge and professional identities of teachers
Following Bernstein’s connection with teachers’ identities, numerous studies have been carried out investigating teachers’ professional identities, which are related to their pedagogic activities. This pedagogy-led approach to understanding teachers’ identities includes a systematic review by Beijaard, Meijier and Verloop (2004), which focused on the formation and characteristics of teachers’ identities, and the teachers’ personal stories. Other studies on professional identities, and in particular to the further education sector, have focused on the areas of argumentative identities, conflicts and marginalisation, and pragmatism. In argumentative identities, subjects studied included cultural symbols and masculine images (Gleeson, 1994; Colley et al., 2003), and adoption of ‘adding value’, ‘sharing expertise’ and ‘protecting standards’ (Clow, 2001; Robson, Bailey and Larkin, 2004). Included too were ‘bad teaching’, funding and management demands (Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons, 2002), and trainee teachers’ identities (Bathmaker and Avis, 2007). In conflicts and marginalisation-related identities, areas investigated were rejection of identity (Hodges, 1998; Vahasantanen and Etelapelto, 2009; Vahasantanen, 2015) and differing trajectories (Viskovic and Robson, 2001). They also included marginalisation in teaching placements (Bathmaker and Avis, 2005), and personal, cognitive and emotional aspects of identities (Day et al., 2006; Day and Kington, 2008; Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees, 2008). Gleeson (1981), Shain and Gleeson (1999), and Moore et al. (2002) used ‘pragmatism’ as an area to study the different forms of compliance and non-compliance of teachers. It is the lenses of these literature sources that this chapter is focused on. The previously mentioned investigations offer differing versions of pedagogy- led identities that are directly related to teaching only. However, there were no attempts to include teachers’ life experiences or their occupational experiences. Nor were there studies which investigated the possible relationships between teachers’ identities with their professional know-how. This chapter offers distinct perspectives of teachers where their pedagogic and real-life and occupational experiences are viewed as relevant to their teaching knowledge
Teaching knowledge, professional identities 33
and that this definition of professional knowledge informs their professional identities. In studying these relationships, analysis of qualitative data, and specifically teachers’ narratives and their use of symbolism are used to understand the teachers’ descriptions of their professional know-how and identities. Knowledge and symbolic representations
As investigated earlier, teachers work in socio-cultural environments using their pedagogic, real-life and occupational experiences. They locate themselves in communities of practice, which enable them to develop their identities (Lave and Wenger, 1991) as well as Bernstein’s (1996) relationship between pedagogic discourses and teachers’ identities. In the cases of teachers of occupational provisions, these communities of practice might include related pedagogic communities such as informal networks with work colleagues outside of teaching settings; relevant life communities such as the areas and networks where they live; and their occupational communities, related occupational networks and professional associations. The resultant acknowledgement of a wider spectrum of teaching knowledge (and its probable relationship with teachers’ identities) as discussed earlier offers a wider network of possible communities of practice. These are the practices which will be discussed later in the chapter. The narratives of teachers are often taken for granted in research, though there are exceptions such as the study by Green (2015). Perhaps, this is because descriptions in the forms of narratives, symbolic representations and metaphors are viewed as inevitable parts of the qualitative methodological process. This process is to capture and analyse data; it recognises that they also occur naturally in the normal course of a conversation or an interview, and therefore these articulations are ignored in the analysis of research data. Teachers may articulate their sense of selves through symbolic representations or metaphors (Cameron, 2008) through a process of simplifying and clarifying complex ideas (Bullough and Stokes, 1994) and describing their tensions (Volkmann and Anderson, 1998). The empirical findings and analysis draw on the teachers’ articulation of their professional knowledge and identities concerning their pedagogic activities. Because of the complexities of their work such as integrating their know-how from three sources for their learners to engage with the occupational/subject matter, teachers use narratives, symbolic representations and metaphors in their classes too. For Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p. 5), “the essence of metaphors is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” and just as we seek out metaphors to highlight and make coherent what we have in common with someone else, so we seek out personal metaphors to highlight and make coherent our own pasts, our present activities, and our dreams, hopes and goals as well. (1980, p. 232–233)
34 Teaching knowledge, professional identities
The theoretical frameworks as described in this section use a relational approach to defining teachers’ professional knowledge from three related sources of pedagogic, real-life and occupational experiences concerning their professional identities via their symbolic representative, metaphoric and narrative forms of articulation. The three pedagogic areas of pedagogic knowledge, professional identities and teachers’ narratives are interconnected. It is through these pedagogic areas that this study is investigated.
Methods, data and analysis The empirical evidence used in this investigation was based on a project with funding from the Work-Based Learning for Education Professionals Centre at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE), University College London. The Higher Education Academy funded the centre. UCL IOE ethically approved the project, which adhered to the British Educational Research Association ethical guidelines. The research questions were discussed in the introduction. The eight volunteers were formerly trainee teachers on the Postgraduate Certificate of Education (Post-compulsory/FE) (PGCE) programme at the same institution during different periods. The researcher was a tutor on this teacher-training course. Five of the eight volunteers were former tutees of the researcher. The participants volunteered for this project after an email was sent to former PGCE students. Two types of methodologies were used: 1) a questionnaire to obtain information on qualifications, teaching and occupational experiences, age, gender and subject areas, and 2) one-to-one interviews to elicit rich qualitative data of articulations. The questionnaire was completed electronically. The questionnaire details of these volunteers are included in Table 3.1 and references to them in the following sections should be made to the table. The participants all had occupational experiences before they entered the teaching profession. They taught subjects from biology, dance, dental hygiene, health education, information technology and mathematics to radio production. Regarding the curriculum-related areas of occupational experiences, they also had professional experiences in areas such as architecture, civil service, community work, catering, EFL teaching, palmistry and homoeopathy. There were five females and three males. In terms of teaching, four participants were in full-time employment and the other four on part-time contracts with the wide variation of teaching experiences ranging from four to 28 years. Six of the eight teachers had worked or studied outside the UK. In the following discussions, these specificities serve to provide professional contexts. The in-situ one-to-one semi-structured interviews of varying length (45–90 minutes) were related to the three research questions of past and current professional know-how, identities and the contexts they worked in. These interviews were recorded and transcribed.
Dance and Feldenkrais movement
Further education college and business organisations Level 5
Adult and community Level 5
Lived and worked abroad
Dental hygiene, psychology and biology
Part-t ime (approx. 10 hrs/w k) 9 years Full-t ime 4 years (28 years including other education sectors) Part-t ime (approx. 5 hrs/w k) 5 years Part-t ime (approx. 4 hrs/w k) 20 years Full-t ime 9 years
Dental hygiene institution Level 5 Further education college Level 5 Adult and community Level 5
Health education and promotion
Printmaking, textiles, drawing and painting
Mathematics, physics and biology
Dental hygienist Lived and worked abroad with the Navy Lived and worked in South Africa
Painting and drawing
Part-t ime (4 hrs/w k) 6 years
Adult and community Level 5
C Male 40s D Female 50s E Male 50s F Female 30s G Female 50s H Female 30s
IT and art
Full-t ime 15 years
Community worker at a women’s centre on art projects and under-f ives project Civil servant, youth worker and catering supervisor Lived in Nigeria
Civil servant, information researcher and EFL teacher Worked and lived in Japan Graphic artist, palmist, homoeopath and reflexologist Worked and lived in Australia, Switzerland and the US Architect and artist
Radio production and journalism
Full-t ime 4 years
Further education college Level 5 Further education college Level 5
A Female 40s B Male 50s
Work/o ccupational experiences:
Curriculum areas:
Full-t ime/p art-t ime (no. Of teaching hours per week): Experience in FE:
Teaching settings: Level of education:
Participating teachers: Gender: Age:
Table 3.1 Details of teacher participants
36 Teaching knowledge, professional identities
The data from the two methodological approaches were triangulated and analysed using the stages of generating units of meaning; classifying, typologising and ordering the units of meaning; using narratives for richer descriptions; and interpreting the data (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2000). Each of these stages was applied to the two data sets where applicable. For generating units of meaning, the details from the completed questionnaires such as years of teaching experiences, curriculum areas, and real-life and occupational experiences were compiled and classified into the five headings in Table 3.1. From the interview transcriptions, words, phrases and longer passages (e.g. ‘manual dexterity’, ‘theoretical knowledge’, ‘angle of applying the instrument’) were analysed into groups with different meanings (such as knowledge, identities and symbolic representations). Typologies of certain groups relating to knowledge, identities and symbolic representations were created such as multi- identities, double life and hybrid from the ‘identities’ group. Longer passages of descriptions were also analysed for relevance to the typologies and these were included in Table 3.2. The quantitative details from the relevant participants were triangulated with the qualitative analysis of the related participants to check that there was coherence in the analysis of both data sets. The narrative analysis approach will also feature in the next two sections: ‘Results’ and ‘Discussion and forward’.
Results This section uses the analysed empirical data to explicate the relationships between the three sources of teaching knowledge and the articulations of three forms of professional identities via symbolic representations. Unlike the previous research on further education teachers’ professional identities where teaching knowledge and occupational experiences and practices were not included, this investigation offers new insights and identities. This ongoing iconography is a sense of therapy such as dealing with loved ones, living on my own and the impact on how I view the world, ongoing psychological state as an artist where one uses Freud’s notion of dreams to feed my art and how these experiences feed into my teaching. (Teacher C) Teaching motivates me, gives me a sense of purpose and making a difference as well as informs my occupational practices, e.g. creation of an ideal home as a theme with students, parents and teachers as a way of managing art, architecture and teaching. These pedagogic activities beg questions of home, displacement and identity, which I can link to my art (print work) and architecture activities. (Teacher C)
Pedagogical
Professional knowledge
Professional identities
“We never felt like parents – felt like that when I first taught and had taken a while to grow into that. Identity grows with you. One is given a label as a professional (dental hygienist) and one acts this out. I don’t consider myself clever and now as a teacher, whom I consider as clever, and so I grow into it”. Teacher D
“This ongoing iconography is a sense of therapy such as dealing with loved ones, living on my own and the impact on how I view the world. Ongoing psychological state as artist where one uses Freud’s notion of dreams to feed my art and how these experiences feed into my teaching”. Teacher C
“from learner driver to teacher practitioner to advanced teacher practitioner” Teacher A
Multi
Table 3.2 Professional identities and knowledge
“It is difficult to teach manual dexterity as you need to be like a detective by being able to look into somebody’s mouth, describe what you see and be able to say why it is different and work out provided they (the learners) have the theoretical knowledge and that they are able to apply it to the situation. There are transitional stages where the students can apply their theoretical knowledge, each of them to detect and identify deposits on the teeth and how to remove it and having the confidence to remove them. Students are afraid to harm the patient, which it should be but experienced tutors know the amount of pressure to use and perhaps the angle of applying the instrument. That itself is quite hard to impart”. Teacher D
“The transition from practice (as a dental hygienist) to teaching is easier if I practice regularly to keep my confidence level and speed up”. Teacher D
“Teachers should undergo therapy as their pastoral roles include support of and empathy with their learners. In these two aspects, there are similarities with the roles of counsellors”. Teacher A
Double
(Continued)
“Whatever I have experienced in South Africa and I have taught some tough students there, nothing has prepared me once I came into teaching in the UK”. Teacher E
“I’ve been a student and lecturer for the past ten years so my experiences have been on both sides of the fence and in homeopathy as a student and seeing how different teachers cope. Invariably, my experiences as a teacher and as a student always apply in my teaching, as I am a perpetual student. My approach to teaching is not to use a big stick and not dumb down to primary and secondary levels but work on delivery and start from learners’ world. I believe that my extensive life and work experience gained from living and working in Australia, Switzerland and the US as well as here in the UK has given me a tolerant and curiosity-focused approach to the education process”. Teacher B
Hybrid
Real life
Professional knowledge
Professional identities
Table 3.2 (Continued)
“We never felt like parents – felt like that when I first taught and had taken a while to grow into that. Identity grows with you. One is given a label as a professional (dental hygienist) and one acts this out. I don’t consider myself clever and now as a teacher, whom I consider as clever, and so I grow into it”. Teacher D
“My pedagogic knowledge becomes more generalised in the sense it becomes images which are wider than principles that guide my behaviour in teaching scenarios. There are strategies from these generalised knowledge, which are filaments or strands of similarities which can be contextualised to a specific scenario”. Teacher F “This ongoing iconography is a sense of therapy such as dealing with loved ones, living on my own and the impact on how I view the world. Ongoing psychological state as artist where one uses Freud’s notion of dreams to feed my art and how these experiences feed into my teaching”. Teacher C
Multi
Double
“Whatever I have experienced in South Africa and I have taught some tough students there, nothing has prepared me once I came into teaching in the UK”. Teacher E
“I’ve been a student and lecturer for the past ten years so my experiences have been on both sides of the fence and in homeopathy as a student and seeing how different teachers cope. Invariably, my experiences as a teacher and as a student always apply in my teaching, as I am a perpetual student. My approach to teaching is not to use a big stick and not dumb down to primary and secondary levels but work on delivery and start from learners’ world. I believe that my extensive life and work experience gained from living and working in Australia, Switzerland and the US as well as here in the UK has given me a tolerant and curiosity-focused approach to the education process”. Teacher B
Hybrid
Occupational
“We never felt like parents – felt like that when I first taught and had taken a while to grow into that. Identity grows with you. One is given a label as a professional (dental hygienist) and one acts this out. I don’t consider myself clever and now as a teacher, whom I consider as clever, and so I grow into it”. Teacher D
“This ongoing iconography is a sense of therapy such as dealing with loved ones, living on my own and the impact on how I view the world. Ongoing psychological state as artist where one uses Freud’s notion of dreams to feed my art and how these experiences feed into my teaching”. Teacher C
“It is difficult to teach manual dexterity as you need to be like a detective by being able to look into somebody’s mouth, describe what you see and be able to say why it is different and work out provided they (the learners) have the theoretical knowledge and that they are able to apply it to the situation. There are transitional stages where the students can apply their theoretical knowledge, each of them to detect and identify deposits on the teeth and how to remove it and having the confidence to remove them. Students are afraid to harm the patient, which it should be but experienced tutors know the amount of pressure to use and perhaps the angle of applying the instrument. That itself is quite hard to impart”. Teacher D
“The transition from practice (as a dental hygienist) to teaching is easier if I practice regularly to keep my confidence level and speed up”. Teacher D
“Teaching motivates me, gives me a sense of purpose and making a difference as well as informs my occupational practices e.g. creation of an ideal home as a theme with students, parents and teachers as a way of managing art, architecture and teaching. These pedagogic activities beg questions of home, displacement and identity, which I can link to my art (print work) and architecture activities”. Teacher C
“I’ve been a student and lecturer for the past ten years so my experiences have been on both sides of the fence and in homeopathy as a student and seeing how different teachers cope. Invariably, my experiences as a teacher and as a student always apply in my teaching, as I am a perpetual student. My approach to teaching is not to use a big stick and not dumb down to primary and secondary levels but work on delivery and start from learners’ world. I believe that my extensive life and work experience gained from living and working in Australia, Switzerland and the US as well as here in the UK has given me a tolerant and curiosity-focused approach to the education process”. Teacher B
40 Teaching knowledge, professional identities
The “ongoing iconography” and “teaching motivates me” quotations provide connections with pedagogic knowledge as Teacher C used his experiences of “home, displacement and identity” to inform his teaching approaches. These approaches included using the experiences as themes for his learners to motivate them to express their real-life experiences in artistic activities. Teacher C’s teaching experiences also, in turn, motivated his occupational activities in printmaking and architectural practices. His artistic activities might include themes such as “the creation of an ideal home”. The relationship between his pedagogic knowledge and architectural (occupational) practices is different from that of his printmaking activity. One may suggest that the former is of a more professional variety whereas the latter is of an artistic dimension. However, one might also suggest that creative dimension could exist in a discipline like architecture. These two forms of occupational knowledge were related to his pedagogic experiences, which included interactions with his learners and their real-life experiences (i.e. adults who were mainly in their retirement homes or with some form of learning disabilities) in informal teaching settings such as libraries and care homes. This knowledge about learners has strong resonance with Shulman’s (1987) ‘knowledge of learners and their characteristics’. In addition to the two types of knowledge, Teacher C’s quotations also provided insights into his use of real-life experiences with his references to home life, his relationships, his reflections on living on his own, and dreams to connect with his pedagogic and two occupational experiences. Turning to the relationships between professional knowledge and identities, Teacher C offers an example of multi-identities as he refers to the multiple roles within and outside of teaching practices. Teacher C viewed his personal life (relationships with loved ones, solitary living and perceptions of life) as a fluid and ever-changing mental state that affected his approach to his art and teaching. His mention of interpretation of dreams is beyond the focus of this study. However, his willingness to be open to his ‘psychical activities’ (Freud, 1999, p. 63) to possibly resolve conflicts from pedagogic, personal, occupational or societal-related issues indicates his openness to sources for potential applications to his teaching and artistic endeavours. He also perceived a strong linkage of his personal and occupational experiences to his pedagogic practices, which he called ‘labour of love’. The forms of professional knowledge relate to ‘hidden aspects’ of teaching (Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell, 2003), and ‘enactive experiences’ (Buehi and Fives, 2009), which cannot be codified. ‘Enactive experiences’ are lived experiences of teachers that enabled them opportunities to construct meaning regarding their pedagogic activities. These experiences may relate to personal life experiences, and professional (both teaching and occupational) experiences (Buehi and Fives, 2009). Teacher C used his pedagogic experiences (as a teacher to adults in the areas of painting and drawing where his learners may have disabilities such as physical and psychological issues), personal biography (as an individual living on his own), and occupational experiences (as architect and artist) to reflect and apply the
Teaching knowledge, professional identities 41
knowledge sensitively in his teaching. This mixture of pedagogic, personal and occupational interactions exemplifies the complexity of this teacher’s multi- identities. Thus multi-identities may be defined as the need to juggle various jobs for non-financial reasons that can affect a teacher’s sense of identity. These jobs might include taking on various teaching roles (e.g. tutor to several groups, a teacher in several disciplines, mentor to trainee teachers, manager of a department and trade union representative for the institution) and non- teaching roles (e.g. occupational ones). These roles require different skills and capacities of colleagues, learners and management, and with these conflicting identities. For Viskovic and Robson (2001), multi-membership identity means the vocational teachers belong to several communities of practice such as those in the vocational professions (e.g. engineering or hairdressing) and teaching. Their definition of multi-membership identity is posited in the occupation and pedagogy-related communities. Whereas multi-identities in this contribution offers a wider perspective of the teachers’ identities that may include personal, occupational and pedagogic interactions, and the related roles include knowledge, experiences, capacities and skill sets within the social environments that they work in. Teacher C’s articulations offer another possible type of identity a double life where a teacher juggles between teaching and occupational workloads for reasons such as financial. This identity is more prevalent in the current economic climate. Some of the project participants worked as teachers and professionals in their occupational disciplines, which was an advantage because these ongoing occupational experiences boosted their confidence. This symbiotic relationship is illustrated by his use of pedagogic knowledge (such as him as a teacher using teaching materials and strategies and the manner in which students and other stakeholders relating to the learning process) and his application of occupational/theoretical knowledge (from his occupational know-how). From the pedagogical point of view, knowledge might include these typologies. They are ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ and ‘curriculum knowledge’ (Shulman, 1987), ‘raising students’ awareness of the nature of quality learning’ (Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell, 2003) and ‘formal preparation’ (such as knowledge gained from teacher education) (Buehi and Fives, 2009). Regarding the occupational knowledge, this might be related to: ‘formal and informal theories’ (Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer, 2001), ‘formal bodies of information’ (such as books, academic chapters and the Internet) and ‘enactive experiences’ (Buehi and Fives, 2009). Like Teacher C, Teacher D offers articulations which relate closely to her teaching knowledge (pedagogic, real life and occupational) and her professional self of multi-identities and double life: The transition from practice (as a dental hygienist) to teaching is easier if I practice regularly to keep my confidence level and speed up. . . . It is
42 Teaching knowledge, professional identities
difficult to teach manual dexterity, as you need to be like a detective by being able to look into somebody’s mouth, describe what you see and can say why it is different and work out provided they (the learners) have the theoretical knowledge and that they are able to apply it to the situation. There are transitional stages where the students can apply their theoretical knowledge, each of them to detect and identify deposits on the teeth and how to remove it and have the confidence to remove them. Students are afraid to harm the patient, which it should be and that experienced tutors know the amount of pressure to use and perhaps the angle of applying the instrument. That itself is quite hard to impart. . . . We never felt like parents – felt like that when I first taught and had taken a while to grow into that. Identity grows with you. One is given a label as a professional (dental hygienist), and one acts this out. I don’t consider myself clever and now as a teacher, whom I consider as clever, and so I grow into it. Teacher D Teacher D saw herself not only as a dental hygienist and a lecturer but also as a parent. She connected teaching (pedagogic), and parenthood (real life) with her perceived notions of professional status or statuses of dental hygiene (occupational). She referred to 1) her time in a then-new role as a parent to enable her to learn to be a parent, and 2) her identification of the professional role of a dental hygienist as of lower professional status. Indeed, to Teacher D, there were social expectations of how a dental hygienist should be, and she was aware that she was being coerced into playing the expected role. Her becoming a teacher meant to her that she was more competent in other areas and this impacted her identity and her changed self-perception reflected the change in social expectation. Thus, the teacher’s knowledge and self-reflection of the socio-cultural forces affect her sense of professional identity regarding the pedagogical (as a teacher), the personal (as a parent) and the occupational (as a dental hygienist) dimensions. This example of Teacher D shows another example of multi-identities. Teacher D also offers a double-life identity. This identity might be viewed from her pedagogic role as a lecturer on the undergraduate programme and the attitude/predilection of her occupation work as a dental hygienist as denoted by the first part of the articulation. These teaching attitudes and experiences are not distinct from her occupational perspectives (Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer, 2001; Buehi and Fives, 2009) but are very much inter-related. This symbiotic relationship is reflected in her pedagogic and occupational practices in the earlier example where the teaching of manual dexterity to her learners is based on her personal experiences and insights as a teacher and practitioner. Her previous teaching experiences made her aware of her learners’ need to understand the theoretical/occupational knowledge and the need for them to contextualise it to the relevant work context. In this learning situation, she drew on her teaching and occupational experiences through the ‘detective’ analogy
Teaching knowledge, professional identities 43
to disseminate her pedagogic and occupational know-how to the learners in the area of ‘oral history taking’ session. She did this so that they have a better understanding of the dental activity. In carrying out this activity, she was bounded by pedagogic and professional practices and knowledge (the course was accredited by the dental hygiene professional body), which were related to the course and professional specifications, relevant pedagogic approaches, and teaching contexts such as environment and time. She worked in a teaching institution where a specific organisational system and culture existed (Lave and Wenger, 1991), which she and her teaching colleagues were aware of. Finally, the next articulation from Teacher B indicates the connections between teaching and learning, and the ‘hybrid’ form of professional identity: I’ve been a student and lecturer for the past ten years, so my experiences have been on both sides of the fence and in homoeopathy as a student and seeing how different teachers cope . . . invariably, my experiences as a teacher and as a student always apply in my teaching, as I am a perpetual student. My approach to teaching is not to use a big stick and not dumb down to primary and secondary levels but work on delivery and start from learners’ world. I believe that my extensive life and work experience gained from living and working in Australia, Switzerland and the US as well as here in the UK has given me a tolerant and curiosity-focused approach to the education process. Teacher B From the teaching knowledge perspectives, his thirst for learning also subscribes to the teacher’s continual professional development after completing his teaching education. The notion of teacher and learner becoming integrated adds an extra dimension to the teacher’s continuous professional learning. He used his personal experiences as a learner (Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer, 2001) to understand what it felt like to be a learner and as a pedagogic approach of relating to his students. Students, according to him, have different learning experiences and thus their understanding of a subject also varies. This socio- constructivist approach to learning meant that he was sensitive and alert to an individual learner’s ability, recognising that it was dependent upon her/his previous disciplinary knowledge, life experiences and learning experiences. Teacher B’s perception of the compulsory education systems in England also informed his pedagogical approach. Teacher B created a learning environment during his teaching practice, which enabled him to understand his learners better. This included knowing where the learners started with regarding knowledge and experiences (Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell, 2003; Shulman, 1987), and relating this knowledge to relevant pedagogic activities (e.g. asking questions and group work). Turning to the final professional identity – hybrid – Teacher B’s quest for learning throughout his working life serves to exemplify the notion of a
44 Teaching knowledge, professional identities
lifelong learner (OECD, 1996; EU Commission, 2000) on the one hand and a professional teacher on the other. ‘Hybrid’ may be termed as a combination of learning elements as a teacher and as a learner and from the perspective of her/ his learners such as interacting and motivating them. The notions of teacher and learner become integrated with the added dimension of the teacher’s continuous professional learning. Further examples of the relationships between teaching knowledge (pedagogic, real life and occupational) and teachers’ professional identities (multi, double life and hybrid) resulting from the data analysis are found in Table 3.2.
Discussion and forward The results discussed earlier illustrated some of the complexities of teaching knowledge and teachers’ professional identities. Three are identified: one area of complexity relates to the fluidity of knowledge sources, the other to the connections between the three professional identities, and the third to the interrelationships between the two areas. Taking the fluidity of the three knowledge sources first, the quotations from Teacher C from the previous section on the symbiotic relationship between teaching and occupational practices, and Teacher D on the explicit and tacit natures of theoretical/occupational knowledge (architecture and printmaking) serve to illustrate the inter-connectivity of the three knowledge sources. In the review of the ‘Knowledge sources of teachers’ section, professional knowledge was defined as widely incorporating tacit and explicit elements and knowledge, abilities, and experiences of pedagogy, real life and occupations. Like with the other reviewed typologies, this classification merely served as a conceptual approach to understanding professional knowledge. In reality and from the discussions in the previous section, it is more difficult to delineate such distinctions. The amorphous nature of knowledge and in this case professional/ teaching knowledge can be observed in the inter-changeability of pedagogic and occupational knowledge (Teacher C’s comments) and the mutability and issues of teaching theoretical knowledge in both its explicit and tacit forms (Teacher D’s comments). Perhaps the clue to this mutable dimension of professional knowledge may be found in the critique by Loo (2014) of Bernstein’s distinctive and simplistic knowledge classification of the vertical and horizontal forms in which explicit and tacit, and theoretical and real-life, dimensions can be inter-related. In real life, whether professional knowledge is classified as pedagogic, real-life knowledge or occupational/disciplinary, this is not permanent, and it can change according to specific contexts and its application. In other words, teachers’ perceptions of their professional knowledge change through time and as a result of their experiences. The second complexity relates to the connections of the professional identities. This connection is illustrated by Teacher C’s ‘ongoing iconography’ and ‘juggling teaching and occupational practices’, and by Teacher D’s ‘teaching
Teaching knowledge, professional identities 45
of dental hygiene skills’ and ‘being a parent, teacher and professional’ descriptions. Teachers C and D identified with the professional identities of ‘multi- identities’ and ‘double life’. Teachers, as exemplified in this study, may have more than one professional identity depending on the specificity of their differing professional contexts. The final complexity is the combination of these two complexities. The specific nature of each ‘case’ is relevant to having a better understanding of the relationships between professional knowledge and identities. Therefore, this chapter seeks to highlight the richness of the investigation. There are caveats to this investigation. The participants may not be representative of teachers with occupational experiences, and the sample size may not be generalisable for research purposes. Despite the careful analysis of both data sets, there is a heavier reliance on qualitative data, and though the reasons were indicated at the start, one may still be cautioned on the degree of reliability of such analysis. However, it is worth emphasising the contributions concerning the research questions. The chapter has shown that teaching knowledge should be defined more widely and should include related pedagogic, life and occupational experiences as a theoretical framework for understanding professional knowledge. The sources are interconnected. The complex relationships between teachers’ know-how and their professional identities were identified. These identities included multi-, double-life and hybrid forms. These forms were shown to be amorphous and context specific. These findings indicate that teaching (especially those in occupational provisions) as an activity is complicated. The concept of teaching knowledge may be envisioned to a broader range of stakeholders; that is, those who are involved in both teaching and occupational/ professional practices such as clinicians, accountants and architects in a variety of teaching and learning settings such as educational institutions and workplaces. Similarly, the typology of professional identities linking with teaching know-how may apply to the same stakeholders. Bearing in mind the specificities of the social contexts these two findings may be applied; their implications have international and national relevance.
References Avis, J., Bathmaker, A-M., Parsons, J. 2002 ‘I think a lot of staff are dinosaurs’: further education trainee teachers’ understandings of pedagogic relations. Journal of Education and Work, 15: 181–200. Bathmaker, A-M., Avis, J. 2005 Becoming a lecturer in further education in England: the construction of professional identity and the role of communities of practice. Journal of Education for Teaching, 31(1): 47–62. Bathmaker, A-M., Avis, J. 2007 Is that ‘tingling feeling’ enough? Constructions of teaching and learning in further education. Educational Review, 57(1): 3–20. Beijaard, D., Meijier, P. C., Verloop, N. 2004 Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20: 107–128.
46 Teaching knowledge, professional identities Bernstein, B. 1996 Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research and Critique. London, Taylor and Francis. Buehi, M. M., Fives, H. 2009 Exploring teachers’ beliefs about teaching knowledge: where does it come from? Does it change? The Journal of Experimental Education, 77(4): 367–408. Bullough, Jr. R. V., Stokes, D. K. 1994 Analyzing personal teaching metaphors in preservice teacher education as a means for encouraging professional development. American Educational Research Journal, 31(1): 197–234. Cameron, L. 2008 Metaphor in the construction of a learning environment. In: Berendt, E. A. (Ed) Metaphors for Learning: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 159–176. Clandinin, D. J. 1985 Personal practical knowledge: a study of teachers’ classroom images. Curriculum Inquiry, 15(4): 361–385. Clandinin, D. J., Downey, C. A., Huber, J. 2009 Attending to changing landscapes: shaping the interwoven identities of teachers and teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 37(2): 141–154.Clow, R. 2001 Further education teachers’ constructions of professionalism. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 53(3): 407–420. Cohen, L., Manion, L., Morrison, K. 2000 Research Methods in Education. London, RoutledgeFalmer. Colley, H., James, D., Tedder, M., Diment, K. 2003 Learning as becoming in vocational education and training: class, gender and the role of vocational habitus. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 55(4): 471–498. Day, C., Kington, A. 2008 Identity, well-being and effectiveness: the emotional contexts of teaching. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 16(1): 7–23. Day, C., Kington, A., Stobart, G., Sammons, P. 2006 The personal and professional selves of teachers: stable and unstable identities. British Educational Research Journal, 32(4): 601–616. Day, C., Sammons, P., Stobart, G., Kington, A., Gu, Q. 2007 Teachers Matter: Connecting Lives, Work and Effectiveness. Maidenhead, Open University Press. European Union Commission (EU) 2000 Memorandum on Lifelong Learning. Brussels, EU. Freud, S. 1999 The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by Joyce Crick. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Frontier Economics 2016 Further Education Workforce Data for England: Analysis of the 2014– 2015 Staff Individualised Record (SIR) Data. London, Frontier Economics. Gleeson, D. 1981 Communality and conservatism in technical education: on the role of the technical teacher in further education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2: 265–273. Gleeson, P. 1994 Cultural differences in teachers’ work: an ethnography. South Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 22: 5–18. Green, A. 2015 Teacher induction, identity, and pedagogy: hearing the voices of mature early career teachers from an industry background. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 43(1): 49–60. Hodges, D. 1998 Participation as dis-identification with/in a community of practice. Mind, Culture and Activity, 5: 272–290. Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Rees, G. 2008 Being a teacher in further education in changing times. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 13(2): 163–172. Lakoff, G., Johnson, M. 1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Lave, J., Wenger, E. 1991 Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Loo, S. 2014 Placing ‘knowledge’ in teacher education in the English further education sector: an alternative approach based on collaboration and evidence-based research. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(3): 337–354.
Teaching knowledge, professional identities 47 Loughran, J., Mitchell, I., Mitchell, J. 2003 Attempting to document teachers’ professional knowledge. Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(6): 853–873. Moore, A., Edwards, G., Halpin, D., George, R. 2002 Compliance, resistance and pragmatism: the (re)construction of schoolteacher identities in a period of intensive educational reform. British Educational Research Journal, 28(4): 551–565. Organisation for Economic and Co-Operation and Development (OECD) 1996 Lifelong Learning for All. Paris, OECD. Robson, J., Bailey, B., Larkin, S. 2004 Adding value: investigating the discourse of professionals adopted by vocational teachers in further education colleges. Journal of Education and Work, 17: 183–195. Shain, F., Gleeson, D. 1999 Under new management: changing conceptions of teacher professionalism and policy in the further education sector. Journal of Education Policy, 14: 445–462. Shulman, L. S. 1987 Knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1): 1–22. Vahasantanen, K. 2015 Professional agency in the stream of change: understanding educational change and teachers’ professional identities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 47: 1–12. Vahasantanen, K., Etelapelto, A. 2009 Vocational teachers in the face of a major educational reform: individual ways of negotiating professional identities. Journal of Education and Work, 22(1): 15–33. Verloop, N., Van Driel, J., Meijer, P. 2001 Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5): 441–461. Viskovic, A., Robson, J. 2001 Community and identity: experiences and dilemmas of vocational teachers in post-school contexts. Journal of In-Service Education, 27: 221–236. Volkman, M. J., Anderson, M. A. 1998 Creating professional identity: dilemmas and metaphors of a first-year chemistry teacher. Science Education, 82(3): 293–310.
Chapter 4
Professional identities in the further education sector A systematic literature review
Introduction Teaching is viewed as an important educational activity from a national perspective in England (Department for Education, 2010; Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2012) and internationally (Tatto, 2013). The significance of teaching practices suggests a relationship between teachers’ work and their professional identity. Systematic literature reviewers have investigated this relationship. The aim of this contribution is to use the systematic literature review approach to study the professional selves of staff in the further education (FE) sector. This sector in England offers a distinct perspective of education from the other education sectors such as the early years, primary and secondary. The FE sector, also known as post-compulsory and lifelong learning, includes diverse teaching settings. These include FE colleges, voluntary and community sector organisations, commercial organisations and independent training providers, adult and community learning providers, industry, specialist colleges, armed and uniformed services, prisons and offender learning institutions, and other public-sector organisations (Education and Training Foundation, 2014). The range of learners is from the 16-plus to adult and lifelong students who have a wide range of learning abilities. In England, this sector offers the learners additional chances of education compared to those in the compulsory education sectors. In addition to the diverse teaching settings and learner types, the sector offers a significant percentage of work-related or vocational provisions. Overall, 71.3 percent of the programmes are work related (Frontier Economics Limited, 2016, Table 17), based on the estimated number of teachers (total of 35,438) in the subject listing in the academic year 2014–2015. The top five subjects regarding the estimated percentage number of teachers are visual and performing arts and media (11.5); foundation programmes (9.2); health, social care, and public services (9.2); business administration, management and professional (8.0); and hospitality, sports, leisure and travel (7.8). The teachers in the five vocational subjects account for 45 percent of the total estimated teachers or 71.3 percent of the total vocational teachers. The other vocational subjects include ICT, engineering, technology and manufacturing, construction,
Professional identities in further education 49
hairdressing and beauty therapy, retail, customer service, and transportation, and land-based provision. These are significant figures relating to vocational teaching in comparison to the other compulsory sectors even though vocational offers are beginning to exist in the secondary sector. By implication, the deliverers/lecturers/teachers will have the requisite vocational/occupational experiences. It is acknowledged that the higher education sector has work- related provisions, though, in England, there is a tacit agreement to dissociate these offers including professional education from the pre-university or FE programmes (Loo and Jameson, 2017). From a global perspective, the FE vocational programmes are known as technical and vocational education and training (TVET) (UNESCO, 2012). By extension, this investigation intends to examine this vocational characteristic of the sector and ascertain whether the researchers on professional identities have taken into this into their investigations, as vocational provisions constitute a very substantial pedagogic activity in this sector. The research questions in this systematic literature review are: 1 What are the characteristics of the sector’s professional selves/identities? 2 To what extent has the vocational dimension been included and, if so, in what forms? Using previous systematic literature reviews by researchers such as Beijaard, Meijier and Verloop (2004), Trede, Macklin and Bridges (2012), and van Lankveld et al. (2017) as starting bases, this chapter focuses on the FE or post- compulsory sector concerning professional identities. It uses research methodological literature sources such as Gough (2004), Petticrew and Roberts (2006), Boland, Cherry and Dickson (2014), and Earley (2014) as guidance in the application of this research method. By approaching the study in this manner, it ensures academic rigour regarding the past investigative area of professional identities and the methodological input. The eventual number of relevant publications relating to FE and identities came to 29. These publications were textually analysed concerning the research questions. This chapter is structured into four sections. The first introduces the study, and the second section delineates the methodological approach. The approach is one of a systematic literature review drawing on previous reviews within the confines of teachers’ identities in other education sectors. The next section offers the findings and discussion. The first sub-section examines the characteristics of the FE sector as identified in the 29 studies (Table 4.1, towards the end of the next section). This section relates to the first research question. The next sub-section relates to the second research question on TVET and professional identities. Finally, the conclusion section delineates the contributions and discusses the implications of this study from the stakeholders’ perspectives.
Description of the study and research aims
Theoretical underpinnings
Methodology
Significant findings
Vocational dimension
1 Alexaidou (2001) This paper explored It includes studies by There is virtually no From two FE colleges in Three identities were found. 1. ‘Responsive Management the identities of Casey (1995) on coping emphasis on the England, 20 interviews manager’ with a pragmatic approach to identities in managers in FE strategies of managers, vocational nature of were conducted: 11 the ‘market’ environment and attention of transition: a colleges in England. Ozga and Deem (2000) the sector except senior and 9 middle educational values. 2. ‘Pro-active manager’ case study from It studied their ‘optimism’ of the for its definition of managers. Its aims are to accepts the marketisation of the sector responses to the corporate college. the sector in the further education illicit their experiences and the tailor the pedagogic discourse discourses of footnote. of changes and their to this environment. 3. ‘Entrepreneurial ‘managerialism’ identity constructions. manager’ is concerned with the growth of and the ‘market’. the college as a business and generating Managers were learning demand. responsible for strategy and operations of the institution. Majority of these managers had been lecturers earlier. 2 Avis (1999) This paper investigated The concepts included This was a conceptual Three themes came out of this paper: The term ‘vocational’ Shifting identity: the experiences proletarianisation, delineation of ideas lived experiences, new relationships, appeared twice as an new conditions of lecturers in the de-skilling and which were applied to and teaching and learning. The lecturers economic interest and the sector. It argued intensification of labour the sector. experienced loss of control, labour and in curriculum. transformation that a pedagogic that transformed teaching intensification, more administrative of practice – transformation was and learning in the sector, duties, less teaching and more stress on teaching within occurring due to which the author called performance indicators. New relationships post-compulsory economic forces ‘re-professionalisation’. in terms of managerialism, neo-Fordism, education and resulted in new learning (rather than know-how), and forms of practices markets. Teaching and learning refers and identities for to a more collegiate approach with a lecturers. more transparent and surveillance-style approach in the classroom.
Author, year and title
Table 4.1 Tabular review of the characteristics of professional identities in further education
4 Bathmaker and Avis This study examined The project used Lave & Like in study 3, it was (2005a) Becoming the pedagogic Wenger’s communities based on 43 full-time a lecturer in culture of trainee of practice and legitimate trainee teachers at a further education teachers for FE. It peripheral participation HEI on an FE education in England: the used this backdrop to study the trainees’ programme for the construction to study the identities. academic year 1999– of professional trainees’ identities. 2000. It used a survey, identity and focus group interviews the role of and diaries to capture communities of the data. practice 5 Bathmaker and This study focused References to notions of As in studies 3 & 4, Avis (2005b) on the changing teacher professionalism the study was based Is that ‘tingling constructions of of critical pedagogies on full-time trainee feeling’ enough? pedagogic practice and transformative teachers on a teacher Constructions in the FE sector in democratic practices training course at a of teaching England viewed from were made. HEI in England for the and learning in trainee teachers. academic year 2001– further education 2002. 10 trainees were used.
The article studied the These included knowledge This is based on 43 3 Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons trainee teachers’ and skill formation, and trainee teachers at a (2002) “I think understanding teaching and learning as a HEI in England. It used a Lot of Staff of their roles process. questionnaire, 3 focus are Dinosaurs”: concerning groups and diary sheets Further Education pedagogic, curricula in the academic year Trainee Teachers’ and policy context 1999–2000. Understandings of FE. of Pedagogic Relations
The trainees’ perspectives were studied in relation to three themes: personal educational careers, ‘visions of their practice’, and their experiences while on their FE college placement. Sub-themes of past teachers’ concern, positive engagement with their learners and the varying pedagogic cultures in the FE college placement.
(Continued)
Six of the 10 trainees were in vocationalrelated areas (e.g. art & design, dance, HRM, travel and law). The discussion of the data was focused on the generic themes and not on the trainees’ vocational nature.
Tensions were highlighted in the FE trainee The project included 11 teachers focusing on disciplinary knowledge, vocational teachers. skills and pedagogic practices.The emphasis However, there was appeared to be on learning as a process and no discussion of the knowledge acquisition was secondary. vocational knowledge Notions of good/bad teachers in terms of nor were there paper work, and onerous workload (by comments concerning qualified teachers, who were not featured in the pedagogic the methodology section). Notions of good/ practices by the bad students were discussed. No typology of trainee teachers in FE. pedagogic relations was delineated. Using themes of ‘us and them (qualified The study acknowledged staff)’, and comparisons of existing and vocationalism in the earlier practices, the findings offered FE sector as one of insights into the pedagogic practices. the characteristics Contrary to the Lave & Wenger’s of FE. However, notions, the trainees felt marginalised the findings and at the college placement. This reality discussions on the of alienation was contrary to their trainees’ identities expectations. did not include vocationalism.
Description of the study and research aims
Theoretical underpinnings
Methodology
Significant findings
Vocational dimension
6 Briggs (2007) The project focused Theoretical notions of the The empirical data were Findings were structured along the This study identified Exploring on the professional changing contexts of FE part of a larger study stated research questions. The middle with the policies professional identities of middle since its incorporation in 2001. It involved leadership structure had a vast range of concerning vocational identities: middle leaders in FE in 1992 and its 4 FE colleges in the identities with issues of resourcing, pay education by middle leadership in colleges in England managerialism grip on Midlands and London. and professional conditions between leaders in areas further education from the context of the colleges. It used The data were drawn colleges and schools. Historic tensions of of curriculum. colleges 14–19 learners, who Robson’s definition of from interviews of vocational and academic division existed Professional straddled FE and professionalism of values, senior managers, group and the educational provisions would formation from a schools. location and role to interviews of 45 middle differ between FE colleges and schools vocational perspective analyse the data. managers and a survey with the former with emphasis on the was not captured. of 288 team members. learners’ needs. The three research questions related to values, location and role, modelling of professionalism, and the implications for 14–19 provisions. 7 Brown and This study centred Concepts and related This was an ethnographic The three groups problematised a specific There was no clear Humphreys on three types literature on identity, study of 75 formal semicollege site to symbolise their cognitive association with the (2006) of workers at FE. place, hegemony and interviews between and emotional responses. The findings vocational nature of Organisational Identities were resistance were used in 2002 to 2003. Other showed the varied conflicting narratives of the FE sector. identity and place: used to locate the anchoring the discussion. forms of captured data the College’s identity. The senior managers A discursive college as place to included unspecified could not square the conflicting issues exploration of construct identities, number of informal of pedagogical concerns with managerial hegemony and the relevance to interviews, observations targets. Despite the restructuring of the resistance local actors and of staff meetings, and College, it was labelled as ‘failing’. Perhaps, identifications by supporting documents. the scapegoating of the College was a college staff as a means of disassociating with the institution. place of struggle.
Author, year and title
Table 4.1 (Continued)
(Continued)
Even though this was a This study examined It used the three main This is a theoretical The teachers had mixed feelings from study of vocational the identities of discourses of industrial delineation of vocational the new perceived constructions. They teachers’ and technical and FE skill development, teachers’ identities. viewed their professional identities from identities, it did not teachers in Australia. liberal education and places of work education. However, the offer new forms It argued that the public service as a new economic order required them to but merely argued recent changes backdrop to studying be entrepreneurial as well as for the the new lack of impact knowledge the new identities. The colleges. Colleges, unlike businesses, had discursive spaces for and skills for the ‘new vocationalism’ dissimilar values that related to societal teachers, and as of business input to and educational ones. The business exploration. a result created curriculum development, imperatives did not offer discursive spaces identities. and the marketisation of for the teachers to re-construct their education served to focus professional identities. this study. 9 Clow (2001) This study examined The model on Empirical data of two FE The findings were typologised into six This study had a Further education the various professionalism for colleges were used. varieties of professionalism: ex-officio, significant input teachers’ perspectives of lawyers and clinicians A layered sampling vocational professional standards, of vocational constructions of professionalism in by Millerson (1964) was process was undertaken segmented, holistic, professional elements. These professionalism the FE sector. It used with contextual with a questionnaire judgement and emancipatory. These included engineering, argued that due to emphasis on skills as survey, 12 interviews delineations of professionalism might not hairdressing, IT, the diverse nature theoretical knowledge and ‘describe an be pure identities but the findings offered art and design, of the sector, the and competence, a code incident’ report. The an added dimension to professional construction, teachers would of conduct, as a public focus of the data identity, which added more varieties health and social find it difficult to good and establishment capture was on the to Millerson’s model. These included care, media studies, have a cohesive of a professional perceptions of teachers’ vocational professional standards, and and hospitality. view of themselves. organisation. professionalism. Semiemancipatory. These vocational This incoherent structured interviews inputs impacted view might lead to were used. the definitions of exploitation of the professionalism. workforce.
8 Chappell (2001) Issues of teacher identity in a restructuring Australian vocational education and training (VET) system
Description of the study and research aims
Theoretical underpinnings
Methodology
Significant findings
Vocational dimension
10 Colley et al. This study focused It used a concept of This was from a larger The findings emphasised the importance This study offered a (2003) Learning on three vocational ‘vocational habitus’ Transforming Learning of vocational culture that underpinned major delineation of as Becoming case studies of to explore learning Cultures in FE (TLC) practice and ideas of ‘sacrificial femininity’ vocational learning in Vocational childcare, healthcare and identity. Using the project. The data drew (in the caring occupations), and moral of students in three Education and and engineering in Bourdieusian idea of on the first cohort rectitude. Engineering culture focused on vocational areas. It Training: class, English FE colleges. habitus, the study focused from 2001–2003. The male-rational orientation which privileged used the concept gender and the specifically on gender, cohort enrolled on logical thinking, technological innovations of habitus to define role of vocational family background, level 3 course in the and non-emotional judgements. Students’ identity of vocational habitus and locations within a three vocational areas. learning was centred on orientation to a learners regarding working-class backdrop. It used a survey to specific identity of ‘the right person for gender, background all students, repeated the job’, alongside values, attributes and and locations. interviews with six beliefs. Tensions were explicated such as students and one tutor, the caring and emotional dedication to observations and tutors’ the healthcare roles, and the reality of reflective journals. detachment to cope. In engineering, it was The sample sizes the rationalist and logical view versus the were not explicated ‘emotional comfort of belonging’. In this except for the student vocational habitus, two developments were interviews. The larger found: ‘sense’ of belonging in the workplace, project consisted of 16 and the significance of emotional aspects researchers. of learning. 11 Colley, James and This study analysed It used Lave & Wenger’s This study like in 10 The findings included the two tutors The authors explicitly Diment (2007) the dynamics ‘communities of practice’ was part of a larger who viewed their learners as part of a chose generic subject Unbecoming concerning being and Bourdieu’s ‘habitus project – TLC – on community. They were non-compliant areas in FE to study teachers: and becoming a and field’ to critique the learning cultures in FE. with the roles and identities as imposed the agencies of towards a more professional teacher engagement of teachers In this study, it used two by the sector. They drew on moral and individual, institutional dynamic notion in the FE sector. with their sense of tutors from 24 as case political ideas, and sought external cultures. and policy dimensions. of professional professionalism. studies drawn from the Florence, the French tutor, resisted participation 17 learning sites. the college’s work conditions and was marginalised.
Author, year and title
Table 4.1 (Continued)
13 Gleeson and This paper examined Shain (1999) the roles of ‘middle Managing managers’ resulting ambiguity: from the 1992 between market reforms in markets and the FE sector. In managerialism – a particular, it studied case study of the buffer between ‘middle’ managers teaching staff and in further senior managers. education
12 Gleeson (1981) This study examined Commonality and the roles of Conservatism technical teachers in Technical in FE and their Education: On occupational status. the Role of the It questioned Technical Teacher the industrial in Further relationship Education between teacher and apprentice.
She left and taught in more amenable teaching environments in adult education and higher education. The authors felt that ‘communities of practice’ were absent in the sector and that Bourdieu’s idea of ‘field’ would offer insights into the individual’s ‘objects or properties’ and ‘position and power’. They termed this as ‘conduct unbecoming’ and ‘conscientious objection’. The study referred to This was a theoretical The study used thematic headings of concepts concerning exploration using ‘teaching as a job’ and ‘ legitimation’ trades, crafts and supporting literature of to discuss the transition of technical/ technicians to argue that technical teaching in FE. vocational teachers from occupational these teachers initially identity to an educational one. However, identified with industrial pedagogic tensions were identified status and, in time, related between pragmatism and the fragmented more to teaching. nature of the industrial and education worlds. The teachers actively sought ‘order’ to integrate their pedagogic practices with their previous industrial world. Using conceptual This study was based on a The findings were divided into two frameworks relating larger ESRC project that categories: mediating change and to managerialism, and involved five colleges responses to change. With the first marketisation, the study in three Midland category, there were sub-categories of related these business counties in England. ‘caught in the middle’ between senior orientations to the It occurred over an managers and teaching staff, managing sector since the 1992 18-month period from ambiguity, the need to put policy into Incorporation Act. January 1997. The data practice and the threat of redundancy. used in this paper were With the next category, the subcategories were ‘willing compliance’ with
Repeat semi-structured interviews with teachers, students and managers, observations, tutor shadowing, student survey and teachers’ journals were used to gather data.
(Continued)
This study focused on the mid-level managers such as course staff in FE. It did not relate to the vocational nature of the sector.
This focus on ‘education’ as technical education offered a conflicted role of the disparate forces of education and industrial environments.
Description of the study and research aims
Theoretical underpinnings
14 Gleeson, Davies This study centred on This study was located on and Wheeler the practitioners’ neo-liberal reform of the (2005) On the professional FE and HE Act 1992 and making and taking constructions the increasing marketof professionalism resulting from the oriented push to view in the further marketisation of the the sector as one of education FE sector. business-making rather workplace than a social good. The dualism of this business orientation and the sector as creative agents informed this study.
Author, year and title
Table 4.1 (Continued) Significant findings
identification with the college’s aims, 31 interviews with ‘unwilling compliance’, and ‘strategic ‘middle’ managers, compliance’ as a pragmatic approach to lecturers, and heads of reconciling professional and managerial schools, departments, interests. etc. The questions covered role, position, experience and perceptions. The data were drawn from The findings might be viewed from three the TLC_FE project main perspectives. First, teaching staff 2001–2005. It used data with past occupational experiences were from 16 tutors following challenged due to the paradigm shifts to their interviews, specialisations and the ‘polycontextual journals, meetings environments’. Tensions resulted in and observations. the worsening working conditions and The project questions strong commitment to the students. centred on professional Second, related to pedagogy and constructions, and inclusion, learners were given additional the impact of current opportunities traditionally. Tensions were developments on their highlighted between accountability and identities. performativity and supportive learning. Third, the issue of professionalism was raised that went beyond regulation. Without an existing community of practice in FE and with the then-current changing landscape, it was difficult to professionalise the FE staff.
Methodology
This study touched on the academicvocational divide. However, the findings precluded any input in this area of the FE sector.
Vocational dimension
16 Gleeson (1994) Cultural Differences in Teachers’ Work: An Ethnography
The related frameworks were the contestations of market managerial reforms and the constructions of the teaching staff’s professional identities.
This study, like the previous two (13 and 14), utilised parts of a larger data set. 16 tutors were interviewed regularly (no mention of the number of interviews). Other data included log books, observations and sessions with researchers.
(Continued)
The following themes were identified: becoming This study used the a practitioner, professional dispositions academic-vocational and practices, compliance, mediation and divide as a backdrop resistance, and being a professional in a to critiquing the learning culture. Sub-themes included traderapid transformation offs between flexibility in being a professional of the teaching and commitment to learners from the first staff’s professional theme. The second theme related to the dispositions. disillusionment due to worsening work conditions and professional status. The third theme concerned the multiplicity of identities and responses to external pressures from degrees of compliance to resistance. The final questioned the existence of a community of practice and the issues in developing one in a diverse sector which was undergoing dramatic transformations. This paper studied the The supporting sources of It used an ethnographic The findings were structured into the This empirical study trade teachers in education, skills, attitudes approach across three following headings: trade teachers’ work centred on vocational Australia. They had to teaching, work and technical institutions over practice, trade teachers’ attitudes and teachers in Australia. previous industrial gender, and the teaching a year. Captured data from trade teachers’ work environment. The It focused on the experiences. environment were used 36 males who both fully teachers maintained their industrial identity formation Specifically, it to critique this era of qualified in their trades and identity because of their protected work resulting from their explored the nature technical delivery in the teaching (bar four) were environment. As a result, there was a work settings and of work practices state of Victoria, Australia. used. Also included in the pedagogic division between the trade beliefs, which set and identities, project were students teachers and the rest. This division was them apart from the attitudes to work from two classes at one a result of the separate interests and rest of the teaching and gender, and the institution. The related functions of work practices, entrenched staff in their teaching technical schools’ trades of the learners attitudes and teaching environments. site. environment. included motor vehicle, sheet metal, woodwork, fitting and machining, and electrical practices.
15 Gleeson and This study focused James (2007) on the impact of The paradox of market reforms on professionalism the FE sector from in English Further the perspective Education: a of practitioners’ TLC project dispositions. perspective
Description of the study and research aims
Theoretical underpinnings
Methodology
Significant findings
Vocational dimension
17 Jephcote, This paper studied The theoretical frameworks The data were based on The findings included the significant impact of There was no clear Salisbury and the negotiation used in studying teachers’ a two-year project the teachers’ students and their emotional distinction between Rees (2008) of teachers in FE identities included funded by the ESRC. connections with their learners. The the academic and Being a teacher in colleges in South Wenger’s (1998) concept It studied 27 FE teachers stressed the intensification of vocational divide, and further education Wales. It recognised of learning, Vygotsky’s deliverers using semitheir workload and the impact on their this divide acted as in changing times the effects that ‘zone of proximal structured interviews teaching. The ongoing external pressures a backdrop to the changing landscapes development, and at the start and end of of the managers and policymakers, and study. The identities of FE had on Bloomer Hodkinson’s the project, journals ever-demanding learners, affected their and narratives of teachers and the (2000) learning careers and observations; of teaching towards a facilitative learning vocational teachers resulting tensions and idea of studentship. the 27 participants, style. However constraints existed and were included with created as a result The authors viewed 10 took part in an these included the academic-vocational the others. that impacted on teachers’ identities autobiographical writing divide and institutional culture. The their identities. as ongoing, relying on of ‘becoming and being’ teachers showed a variety of identities their experiences, and a teacher. from acquiescence to criticality of the responding to external system. There appeared to be a lack of forces’ institutional and a language of articulation. Despite the policy demands. tensions, the teachers were strongly committed to their learners. Altogether, the teachers felt conflicted by forces and that the teaching process was more important than subject knowledge. 18 Jephcote and This paper focused on The related frameworks This study drew on a The findings from Mary, an animal care The vocational teaching Salisbury (2009) the construction referred to the changing larger ESRC/TLRP teacher, Deb, a sociology lecturer, and of Emma was used to Further education of FE teachers’ FE landscapes of project as in the Emma, an art teacher, offered insights create an overall view teachers’ professional economics, politics and previous article for into their identities. The sector did not of the socialisation accounts of their identities, their society. They critiqued the the period 2005–2007. have a professionally organised body of the teachers’ professional interactions with lack of research in the Three case studies of FE and the entry routes, educational and professional identities, identities learners and their sector on teachers’ work, teachers were chosen occupational backgrounds. especially with their work conditions. learners.
Author, year and title
Table 4.1 (Continued)
19 Leathwood This paper studied (2005) ‘Treat the constructions me as a human of FE female staff’s being – don’t identities. look at me as a woman’: femininities and professional identities in further education
for investigation here from the captured data from several research methods.
It drew on feminist studies The study was based on of professionalism empirical data from on female staff in 50 interviews/group managerial, teaching and discussions across two administrative roles. FE colleges in the late Race and gender-related 1990s in the UK. Those literature was also used female participants in to investigate this issue in managerial positions the sector. were interviewed individually due to their high visibility. All the qualitative data were captured by the researcher.
their professional identities and professionalisation.
(Continued)
The endless changes in the sector, demands of a performative culture and external monitoring of teachers created undue pressure on the three deliverers. Emotional labour (with their learners) became a coping device. They identified with the need to offer their disadvantaged learners another educational opportunity to participate in society. They tended to exercise their own agency in privileging the needs of their learners rather than the institutional demands. This privileging centred on students’ contexts and learning processes. It was via the social interactions with their students that the teachers’ identities were formed. The findings from the female administrators, This study focused on lecturers and managers concerning issues related to gender, race and class affect their gender, race and class. professional identities. The structural inequalities also impacted the identity constructions. These female staff felt undervalued, not confident and that their ‘feminine’ values were not appreciated in the workplace. The admin staff was lowly paid and had low status in the feminised section of the FE sector. At the management level, opportunities were there for female members, but the system related to them as holders of ‘people and process’ skills.
Vocational dimension
The study covered the major areas of vocational identities concerning teaching know-how, wider experiences and deliverers’ narratives. It offered a typology, using a range of occupational areas. This empirically based project advocated an expansion of know-how and wider knowledge sources. The findings regarding the dual identities Vocational training was as trainees/students and teachers at the viewed as learning to same time might be categorised into three be teachers in the FE parts: perspective of teacher educator, workplace. Despite college experience and expectations, and the occupational teacher and teaching. Supportive structure background of the of managers and colleagues helped in the trainees, it was shaping of the trainees’ identities. They excluded from the viewed pedagogic theories as separate findings regarding entities to teaching. Even though the teacher training. college expected them to integrate into the system, insufficient time was given to the trainees to teach. They had to learn to cope.
Significant findings
The findings relating to their knowledge, The empirical data experiences and narratives offered three were based on eight occupational deliverers professional identities of multi-identities, in the areas of double life and hybrid. It argues for a architecture, community wider definition of teachers’ professional work, catering, dental knowledge, and identification of three hygiene, IT and radio knowledge sources. production. It used survey to fine-tune the semi-structured interviews to capture data.
Methodology
21 Orr and This paper investigated It utilised theoretical This paper used empirical Simmonds (2010) the dual identities constructions of workdata in 2009 of two FE Dual identities: of trainee teachers based learning by Eraut colleges in northern the in-service in the FE sector in (2004) and communities England. Using semiteacher trainee England. This dual of practice by Lave and structured interviews, experience in the identity referred to Wenger (1991) in identity two human resource English further the participants as construction. managers, four teacher education sector a trainee and a paid educators and 20 employee in a FE trainee teachers college. participated in the project. The trainees included a range of vocational areas such as health
The study focused on The investigation used the relationships frameworks of between teaching teaching knowledge, knowledge, professional identities in pedagogic and education and symbolic occupational representations of experiences, and the teachers’ narratives to vocational teachers’ posit the findings. professional identities in the FE sector in England.
20 Loo (2019) Teaching knowledge, professional identities and symbolic representations of qualified teachers with occupational experiences
Theoretical underpinnings
Description of the study and research aims
Author, year and title
Table 4.1 (Continued)
(Continued)
and social care, IT, art and design, performing arts and public service provisions. 22 Robson (1998a) This study centred on It used literature on This study of a trainee The findings were viewed from four This study offered a Exploring the a trainee teacher’s teacher’s resistance, teacher’s professional professional perspectives: control generic study of professional professional classroom experiences socialisation used an and management of learners, learning, shifting identities socialisation development while and Bloomer’s idea of ethnographic case study administration, and approaches to for FE teachers with of teachers in on the teacher ‘agency’. of a trainee student pass on knowledge and experiences. past professional further education: education course. with business and IT Over time, her views changed from a experiences. Sadly, a case study experiences. Research professional role to being a teacher. Her the past occupational methods included resistance to a teaching role precipitated experiences were not interviews, observation in her leaving teaching. She felt that her extensively examined. and supporting previous professional identity was less documents. important. She moved to a more generic area like sociology. There were issues of adjustment to a teaching career, and its impact on professional identity. 23 Robson (1998b) This paper studied This study used supporting This was based on a The findings featured the non-mandatory This study critiqued A profession the impact of the literature sources relating desktop research need to have a teaching qualification, the generic aspects in crisis: status, Further and Higher to the nature of FE work approach of literature. ‘thin’ culture, diverse entry points and of teachers’ culture and Education Act 1992 practices, college cultures backgrounds of teachers, the erosion and identities rather identity in the with a drive towards of Becher’s (2989) and weakening of professional boundaries, than focusing on the further education managerialism from Tipton’s (1973), and control by external forces and central staff’s occupation-al college the professional managerialism by Elliott agencies, the diverse cultures in colleges, expertise. view of the FE (1996) and Avis (1996). the lack of support for the development Vocationalism was teachers. Their of teaching as a second profession, and included as teaching. occupational the emphasis on managerialism prohibited experiences, status the formation of a professional identity as teachers, diverse for staff in the sector. roles
24 Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004) Adding Value: Investigating the Discourse of Professionals Adopted by Vocational Teachers in Further Education Colleges 25 Robson and Bailey (2009) ‘Bowing from the heart’: an investigation into discourses of professionalism and the work
Author, year and title
Theoretical underpinnings
Methodology
Literature sources 22 vocational teachers include those around from five FE colleges professionalism by in England took part Becker (1970) and in semi-structured Furlong et al. (2000). interviews. The areas Specifically, they relate to of expertise were in teacher professionalism engineering, health and around social values, social care, hospitality autonomy, curriculum, and catering. expert knowledge and occupational allegiances. This study centred It provided contextual 19 participants consisting on the emotional factors regarding the of 9 teachers and discourses of FE opening-up of the sector 10 learning support teachers since the and the impact of staffing. workers (LSW) were incorporation of the Literature concerning interviewed in 2004. sector in 1992. caring as a professional discourse was reviewed. These
and experiences as teachers, and the lack of requirement to have a teaching qualification stymied the emergence of a professional identity. This study focused on vocational FE teachers’ professional development.
Description of the study and research aims
Table 4.1 (Continued)
This was a major study of vocational teachers in FE about their know-how, empathy with learners and connection to their first professions.
The vocational elements of FE were not emphasised.
Findings related to the two groups of staff. LSW were seen positively in having one-to-one relationships with students. LSW teachers were caring, adaptable, empathetic and dedicated. However, they ‘do too much’ and it’s difficult to draw professional
Vocational dimension
Findings were categorised into four themes of ‘adding value’, ‘protecting standards’, ‘sharing expertise’ and ‘knowing how’. They viewed themselves as autonomous by giving value and going beyond the syllabus. Know-how was related to occupational and tacit forms rather than pedagogic ones. The close interaction with their learners was important. They resisted the competence-based awards.
Significant findings
of caring for included emotional boundaries. As for teachers, they were students in intelligence and seen as busy, stressed, distant and in further education emotional labour. authority. 26 Shain and This project studied Sources relating to The study was based on Findings related to teachers’ identities Gleeson (1999) the impact of managerial practices an ESRC project of 5 FE included resistance, rejection, compliance Under New incorporation of and their effects on FE colleges in England from and strategic compliance. Tensions of Management: the sector on staff staff were highlighted. 1997 to 1998. Semiprofessionalism existed from being Changing and argued that The work conditions structured interviews flexible in complying with the new work Conceptions its members were impacted staff’s identities of all levels of staff were conditions, and committing to learners’ of Teacher de-professionalised and professionalism. conducted. quality of learning. Professionalism due to adverse and Policy in working conditions. the Further Education Sector. 27 Vahasantanen This study focused on It used sources relating to Focusing on one Findings included their views of the reform, and Etelapelto vocational teachers interplay between agency institution in Finland, and in relation to their backgrounds (2009) Vocational in Finland and and workplace practices 16 VET teachers were and social affordances. Concerning the teachers in the their relationships where teachers’ identities interviewed in 2006. The reforms, they ranged from resistance, face of a major between their were negotiated. Their topics concerning their ambiguity and approval. Regarding their educational identities and the strategies and responses narratives of career, selves, these were shaped by their reform: curriculum reforms. were studied. identity, education professional selves, their prior working individual ways reforms, community experiences, expectations about the of negotiating and the future were future, and the practices concerning the professional explored. courses and institutions. identities
(Continued)
This study of VET teachers in Finland offered varieties of identities and professionalism regarding the education reforms, working and social contexts.
This project focused on the work conditions rather than the vocational practices.
Description of the study and research aims
Theoretical underpinnings
29 Viskovis and Robson (2001) Community and Identity: Experiences and Dilemmas of Vocational Teachers in PostSchool Contexts
This study offered insights into VET teachers in New Zealand and the UK regarding their identities from vocational areas to teaching.
It used Lave & Wenger’s communities of practice to study professional identities.
28 Vahasantanen This study on Finnish It used professional agency (2015) educational reforms as a means to delineating Professional used VET teachers the VET teachers’ work agency in the to investigate their practices and views on stream of change: professional agency. the educational reforms Understanding and their impact on educational identities. change and teachers’ professional identities
Author, year and title
Table 4.1 (Continued) Significant findings
Vocational dimension
The themes which arose from this study This study offered included the reforms that influenced further development their work practices from weak to strong of Finnish VET agency; teachers’ involvement varied teachers’ identities. from weak to strong agency; professional A theory of identity varied from ‘maintainable’ to professional agency ‘trans-formative’ agency. Regarding social in relation to and individual resources, their views educational reform of the reforms were related to their was offered. backgrounds and VET courses. Also their agency was intertwined with the past, the present and the future. Lastly, teachers’ agency was significant in shaping their professional identity. It used four ‘pen pictures’ The five themes from the findings were This ‘abstracted’ study of teachers that participation, multi-membership, location, on VET teachers reflected the diversity temporal dimension and wider contexts offered major insights of VET teachers in the that affected teachers’ identities. There of identities. two countries. The VET were issues concerning full participation areas were hairdressing, in the teaching community relating to the IT, motor vehicle and five variables. graphic design.
This was a longitudinal study of the previous 2006 cohort of 16 VET teachers and, in 2007, 14 of these were re-interviewed. The five narratives were explored.
Methodology
Professional identities in further education 65
Methodological approach This systematic review of the literature on professional identities in the FE sector is based on earlier reviews in the compulsory sectors. These include Beijaard, Meijier and Verloop (2004), Trede, Macklin and Bridges (2012), and van Lankveld et al. (2017). They offered insights not only into this research method but also the width and depth of research on identities. This study of identities in the FE sector again illustrates the lack of research capabilities in comparison to the other education sectors, as this appears to be the first of its kind. Sources such as Foster and Hammersley (1998), Pettigrew and Roberts (2006), Gough (2004), and Gough, Oliver and Thomas (2017) informed the methodological processes of this systematic review of the literature concerning the topic. The processes included the formulation of the review questions, conceptual framework and inclusion criteria; the search for the appropriate publications; and the description, assessment and synthesis of the chosen studies. The stages relating to ascertaining the relevant publications are indicated in the following list: 1 The search for the literature resources covered the search engines of ERIC, Google Scholar, InformaWorld, Sage, Taylor and Francis, and Web of Science. The titles that were searched included further education, identities, managers, professionalism, professionalising, staff, technical and vocational education and training, teachers, trainee teachers, vocational, and vocational education and training. The duration of the publications covered up to January 2018 and known publications relevant to this topic were included. Publications such as conference proceedings, postgraduate dissertations and theses, digital blogs, articles and think pieces, and self-publications were excluded. Included were those articles from peer- reviewed articles that were published in international academic journals especially those from impact factored ones. Also included were chapters in edited research monographs from academic publishers. The rationale for this approach was to gather academically credible publications for the investigation that adhered to the two research questions mentioned earlier. 2 The list of suitable publications was then crosschecked between two sources such as journals and Google Scholar to verify their academic credibility. 3 The titles, abstracts and complete texts of individual publications, where possible, were checked for suitability concerning the aims of this investigation. The list of references in the publications was also screened to identify any suitable publications for inclusions. 4 The final list of 29 publications was drawn up which related to the two research aims and the criteria as mentioned earlier. 5 Table 4.1 was drawn up to reflect the research questions. The headings include (from left to right) in landscape orientation the author, year of publication and title of the publication. The second column features the description of the study and research aims (either in descriptive form or as
66 Professional identities in further education
questions where given). The third column covers the theoretical underpinnings employed in the publication and the next one includes details of the methodology. The fifth column indicates the salient details of the findings and the sixth column covers the vocational dimensions of the publication. The first research question of this investigation is covered by the details in the second, third and fourth columns. Later, in this section, the details of the publications’ methodological aspects will be delineated. The delineations of the second research question are featured in the last column. Table 4.1 covers nearly 6,000 words. 6 Notes on the identified publications were also used to assist in the analysis and synthesis of the two research questions. The notes covered nearly 9,000 words. They offered additional information on the salient details about the publications such as abstracts, definitions and discussions relating to the sector, professionalism and identities, and vocational education and training/technical/trades. These notes specifically included the relevant pages, which could then be referenced in the chapter write-up. 7 Using the information from Table 4.1 and the notes mentioned previously, two lists of publications were drawn up. The first was related to the non-vocational related publications where particular foci on the FE, identities or professionalism, and vocational or technical or trades contexts were ascertained. Those with insignificant, minor and major significance regarding vocational/technical inputs were included in the second list. These two lists gave the researcher overviews of the 29 publications. 8 Based on the 29 chosen publications, these were further analysed and synthesised based on the two research questions and the supporting data indicated previously. The synthesised data were delineated in the next section. The related methodological dimensions employed by the 29 publications covered the following methodological approaches, funding by major research projects, research methods (quantitative and qualitative) and research sites. The studies by Gleeson (1994), Robson (1998a) and Brown and Humphries (2006) employed an ethnographic methodological approach. The data capture included interviews, observations and supporting documents. The publications by Gleeson (1981), Robson (1998b), Avis (1999) and Chappell (2001) used a theoretical approach to investigating professional identities. The study by Viskovic and Robson (2001) employed an interesting ‘pen pictures’ methodological approach that reflected the diversity of vocational teachers. These descriptions were abstracted narratives of teachers in the sector. The rest of the 21 publications resorted to studies that were empirically based. Of the 21 studies, eight were derived from major funders or projects such as the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) or Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC). The studies were by Gleeson and Shain (1999), Shain and Gleeson (1999), Colley et al. (2003), Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005), Colley, James and Diment (2007), Gleeson and
Professional identities in further education 67
James (2007), Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008), and Jephcote and Salisbury (2009). From the same 21 studies, eight employed quantitative surveys in combination with other qualitative research methods. They were by Clow (2001), Colley et al. (2003), Colley, James and Diment (2007), and Loo (publish in 2018, 2019) with eight, Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002) and Bathmaker and Avis (2005a, b) with the same sample size of 43 trainee teachers, and Briggs (2007) with 288 participants. Some of the surveys like that by Loo (2019) were used to fine-tune the data capture for the qualitative research methods such as interviews. Qualitative research methods were more popular than the quantitative research method – survey or questionnaire. Of the various qualitative methods, interviews were by far the most commonly used. Twenty publications applied interviews. These studies included, alphabetically, Alexaidou (2001) with 20 interviews, Briggs (2007) with 45, Brown and Humphreys (2006) with 75, Clow (2001) with 12, Colley et al. (2003) and Colley, James and Diment (2007) with seven and two, respectively, Gleeson and Shain (1999) with 31, Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005) with 16, Gleeson and James (2007) with the same 16 participants, Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008) with 27, Jephcote and Salisbury (2009) with three, Leathwood (2005) with 50, Loo (2019) with eight, Orr and Simmonds (2010) with 26, Robson (1998a) with one, Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004) with 22, Robson and Bailey (2009) with 19, Shain and Gleeson (1999) with 31, Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009) with 16, and Vahasantanen (2015) with 14. Scripts by Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002), and Bathmaker and Avis (2005a, b) employed focus group interviews. Publications by Robson (1998a), Colley et al. (2003), Colley, James and Diment (2007), Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005), Brown and Humphrey (2006), Gleeson and James (2007), Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008), and Jephcote and Salisbury (2009) used observations. Journals, diaries and records of meetings were employed to capture qualitative data. They were by Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002), Colley et al. (2003), Colley, James and Diment (2007), Bathmaker and Avis (2005a, b), Gleeson et al. (2005), Brown and Humphrey (2006), Gleeson and James (2007), Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008), and Jephcote and Salisbury (2009). Clow (2001) used ‘incident reports’ to capture qualitative data of pedagogic activities. The research sites were of colleges. The studies that included these teaching institutions were Gleeson (1994) based on three, Gleeson and Shain (1999) on five, Shain and Gleeson (1999) on five, Alexaidou (2001) on two, Clow (2001) on two, Colley et al. (2003) and Colley, James and Diment (2007) on 17, Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004) on five, Leathwood (2005) on two, Briggs (2007) on four, Robson and Bailey (2009) on five, and Orr and Simmonds (2010) on two. The breakdown of the methodological approaches offered a diverse picture of the 29 publications regarding the theoretical and empirical, quantitative and qualitative, funding and research sites.
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Findings and discussion This penultimate section is divided into two parts. The first offers findings and discussion concerning the first research question on the characteristics of the FE sector’s professional identities of the staff and their relevant contexts surrounding this sector. The second part delineates the second research question on the import and findings of TVET. Characteristics of the FE sector
This part focuses on the nature of the FE sector as delineated by the publications. The characteristics include the managerial and market-oriented environments, class and gender, countries of an investigation, and the types of FE staff. Also, the perceptions of the FE sector and delineations of professionalism and identities are discussed. Of the 29 publications, the earliest by Gleeson (1981) was published in the 1980s, and six further ones (Gleeson, 1994; Robson, 1998a, b; Avis, 1999; Gleeson and Shain, 1999; Shain and Gleeson, 1999) in the 1990s. In the next decade was the most prolific regarding publications, with 20. These included Alexaidou (2001), Chappell (2001), Clow (2001), Viskovic and Robson (2001), Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002), Colley et al. (2003), Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004), Bathmaker and Avis (2005a, b), Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005), Leathwood (2005), Brown and Humphreys (2006), Briggs (2007), Colley, James and Diment (2007), Gleeson and James (2007), Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008), Jephcote and Salisbury (2009), Robson and Bailey (2009), Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009), and Orr and Simmonds (2010). The current decade features two publications, and they are Vahasantanen (2015) and Loo (2019). This chronological ordering of the relevant publications may offer insights into the issues and concerns that focused the researchers. The earliest was in the early 1980s by Gleeson, who was concerned about the industrial relationship of technical/vocational teachers with their apprentices. He, perhaps, was the forerunner of acknowledging the uniqueness of these lecturers who entered teaching from technical practices, which were different from those teaching on academic provisions such as Advanced (A) and General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) levels. The next decade saw six publications, which again featured studies by Gleeson. Gleeson and Shain (1999) and Shain and Gleeson (1999) were concerned about the impact of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act on the employment conditions of FE staff. Robson (1998b) and Avis (1999) used marketisation of the sector following the 1992 Act to understand the unsupportive climate such as the non-mandatory requirement to have a teaching qualification for teachers’ professional development, and the teachers’ ‘re-professionalisation’ resulting in the transformation of their teaching, respectively. Robson (1998a) focused on the trainee teacher’s
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professional development while on a teacher training course. Gleeson (1994), whose research was located in Australia, studied the teaching practices of male teachers with technical experiences in the gender-dominated trades such as motor vehicle and sheet metal. Perhaps, the last theme – marketisation – was a universal concern. The 2000s featured the most number of publications concerning this contribution with 20. The 1992 Further and Higher Education Act created a more market-oriented sector in further education. This move from a public sector value-driven approach to a managerial and business-driven one offered researchers an area for investigation, especially those publications which dated from 1999 and 2009. They included Robson (1998b), Avis (1999), Gleeson and Shain (1999), Shain and Gleeson (1999), Alexaidou (2001), Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005), Briggs (2007), Gleeson and James (2007), and Robson and Bailey (2009). The Act had an impact on the professional identities of all levels of FE staff, which included managers and lecturers. Class and gender were also investigated. Gleeson (1994) studied the trade teachers, who were predominately males in the motor vehicle, sheet metal, woodwork, fitting and machining, and electrical practices. Colley et al. (2003) focused on vocational teaching and the emotional aspects of learning. Leathwood (2005) investigated the female administrators, lecturers and managers regarding the structural inequalities and impact on their professional identities. Another characteristic of the 29 publications on professional identities related to the countries of the investigation. Two studies by Gleeson (1994) and Chappell (2001) focused on professional identities in Australia. Wales was the country of the investigation by Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008) and Jephcote and Salisbury (2009). Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009) and Vahasantanen (2015) targeted the teachers’ professional identities in Finland, which were affected by the educational reforms. Viskovic and Robson (2001) theorised the teachers’ identities in New Zealand from the perspective of ‘pen pictures’ scenarios as delineated earlier. In addition to studies specific to countries, educational reforms, class, gender and government policies, emotional discourses of FE teachers were also investigated. The publications by Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008), Jephcote and Salisbury (2009), and Robson and Bailey (2009) investigated the last area. The types of staff in the sector were heavily featured in the 29 publications. Trainee teachers were the foci of studies by Robson (1998a), Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002), Bathmaker and Avis (2005a, b), and Orr and Simmonds (2010). Managerial staff was investigated by Gleeson and Shain (1999), Shain and Gleeson (1999), Alexaidou (2001), Leathwood (2005), Brown and Humphrey (2006), and Briggs (2007). The largest group of interest fell to the lecturers/teachers in the sector regarding their professional identities. The publications were by Gleeson (1981, 1994), Robson (1998a, b), Avis (1999), Shain and Gleeson (1999), Chappell (2001), Clow (2001), Viskovic and Robson (2001), Colley et al.
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(2003), Colley, James and Diment (2007), Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004), Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005), Leathwood (2005), Brown and Humphrey (2006), Gleeson and James (2007), Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008), Jephcote and Salisbury (2009), Robson and Bailey (2009), Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009), Vahasantanen (2015), and Loo (2019). So far, the issues of the researchers have been discussed. However, other aspects of the FE sector require further investigation. They are the perceptions of the sector, and the delineations of professionalism or identities. The publications referred to in this part will only be non-vocational ones, as the TVET- related publications will be studied in the next section. The researchers viewed the sector, one might argue, differently from the compulsory sectors (primary and secondary) and higher education sector. One common theme was the academic and vocational division of the sector. The other was the marketisation of the sector since the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act. The earlier section, especially from a chronological perspective, has charted this phenomenon. This policy had a major impact on the sector. Specifically, it affected the culture of these teaching institutions. This review is structured chronologically and, where relevant, page references are included. Avis (1999), using an economic backdrop, suggested that staff in the sector experienced an intensification of labour, loss of control, increase in administration, deprofessionalism, and new styles of teaching and learning. In short, he argued that a transformation of teaching and learning had occurred. Gleeson and Shain (1999) also emphasised the 1992 Act and managerial imperative. They studied middle managers. Some felt they were caught in between senior managers and teaching staff, and others were willing to comply with the institution’s demands. Other managers were unwilling, and the final group of middle managers was strategically compliant. Shain and Gleeson (1999), using the marketisation and managerial lens, classified the lecturers’ responses as resistant, compliant and strategic compliant. For them, the last type of response offered the best way forward for rethinking professionalism in the sector. Alexaidou (2001) explored the responses of the managers and typologised them into ‘responsive manager’, ‘pro-active manager’ and ‘entrepreneurial manager’. The functioning of these types of managers would impact the other staff in the college. Here, one could envisage the different effects on pedagogic activities. A ‘responsive manager’ though adhering to the changing political landscape, would be guided by pedagogic concerns, whereas a ‘pro-active manager’ would tailor the teaching and learning activities to the new market- led demands. An ‘entrepreneurial manager’ would seek to increase the number of learners, thereby creating tensions of quality and quantity and resulting in issues concerning the quality of learner’s experience. Bathmaker and Avis (2005a) underlined the pedagogic transformation where the trainee teachers felt they were marginalised in their teaching placements and that their own experiences did not match the hopes and expectations of working in the sector. Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005) researching under the neo-liberal reforms
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argued for a transformative approach to professionalise teachers through a combination of agency and structure. Leathwood (2005) interestingly centred her research on female staff in the sector. She examined the discourses of femininity and suggested that the sector did not appear to have “resulted in any notable challenge to the gendered, racialised and classed FE labour market” (p. 387). Brown and Humphreys (2006) studied the recently merged FE colleges from the lens of organisational identity. They argued that there were different groups with distinct histories and professional identities where, for some staff members, ‘place’ as a resource to develop themselves was an important focus. The researchers also equated the organisational identity phenomenon to leadership and managing staff’s sense of themselves and place in the institution might be challenging. Colley, James and Diment (2007) highlighted the exodus of lecturers from the sector. They suggested that this might be the result of privileging economic goals, targets and performativity over pedagogical relationships. Gleeson and James (2007) acknowledged the lack of data concerning this sector. They explored the cultures of learning that enhanced and restricted the deliverers’ professional development. Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008) studied the FE landscape in Wales and connected with the English researchers concerning the endless policy changes with no apparent resolution to resolving the intractable issues in FE. They focused on the emotional labour of the deliverers and, despite all the conflicting demands levied on them, they stoically privileged the needs and interests of their learners. Robson and Bailey (2009) focused on learning support workers and their relationships with teachers from the context of emotional labour. They suggested that the two groups were positioned differently due to their different employment conditions, roles and emotional stance to the learners. The previously mentioned concerns of the researchers highlighted the impact of the marketisation and ever-changing policies on the sector. The impact could be felt in almost every facet of the sector. This impact involved all staff from managers, lecturers, learning support workers to administrators. The ultimate impact was on learners from the changes of staff in response to the external and internal demands of the FE teaching institutions. Responses from staff were varied from support to resistance. These responses had consequences on the staff’s development as professionals might they be viewed from the perspectives of gender, race or class. Finally, we turn to the researchers’ investigations of professionalism and identities. Of the 12 publications that were reviewed concerning the FE sector previously, the following perceived professionalism or identities as follows. Avis (1999) used Grace’s (1987, p. 208) definition of professional as “the licensed autonomy of the classroom embedded in the ethics of legitimated professionalism has been disrupted and been replaced by one of greater visibility”. Gleeson and Shain (1999) carried out a literature review of the subject, but no distinct definition was used (p. 465–467). Shain and Gleeson (1999) used a range of sources of professionalism from one based on teacher’s autonomy,
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complacency to self-serving and monopolistic forms (p. 447–449). Like in the earlier study, Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005) had a literature review of professionalism (p. 446 and 449). Leathwood (2005) offered a succinct definition of professional identities: I use the term ‘professional identity’ to refer to the constructions of a ‘professional’ lecturer, manager or administrative support worker in FE. The use of ‘professional’ rather than ‘work’ or ‘occupational’ identity is in recognition of the dominance of discourses of professionalism in the current FE context, and it locates the discussion within both the contemporary attempts to redefine professionalism and the historical classed, gendered and racialised constructions of ‘profession’ noted above. (Leathwood, 2005, p. 390) Brown and Humphreys (2006) reviewed the literature on organisational, individual and collective identities (p. 5). They viewed these forms of identities as “hegemonic ‘moves’ in an ongoing struggle for control over the organisation as a discursive space” (p. 1). Colley, James and Diment (2007) used the participants – Florence Denning and Ruth Merchant – to study the professionalism in FE. They applied Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept of communities of practice (p. 175–176). Gleeson and James (2007) referred to Johnson’s (1997) definition as a social science view of professionalism. It had two approaches. One is a functionalist/consensus approach of shared attributes, and the other an ideological/conflict approach to achieving occupational dominance. Lastly, Robson and Bailey (2009) approached professionalism from an altruism perspective. They defined professionalism as representing a collective symbol. For them, the key ideas that underpinned contemporary notions of professionalism included a range of different and sometimes competing themes such as altruism and care for others (p. 102). Having discussed the characteristics of the sector and the issues and topics that the researchers focused on, we next turn to TVET and professional identities. TVET and professional identities
This section intends to categorise the relevant studies into definable groups by first delineating the definitions of vocational education and training (VET), and then analysing the relevant publications. The section finally offers an interpretive framework to understand the primary drivers of the most pertinent group of studies in VET. Definitions of VET are critiqued in this section, as these are the publications that relate to the second research question (in alphabetical order and page references are included where appropriate). The first group of publications barely mentioned VET. They are Avis (1999), Alexaidou (2001),
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Brown and Humphreys (2006), Colley, James and Diment (2007), and Robson and Bailey (2009). The second group had references to vocational education. Robson (1998a) referenced General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) as a vocational programme that was delivered by Alex, one of the participants. He worked as a business consultant in a bank previously (p. 46). Gleeson and Shain (1999) merely mentioned ‘more vocationally relevant curriculum by Esland’ (p. 465). Shain and Gleeson (1999) referenced the establishment of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs; p. 447). Chappell (2001) delineated the Australian policy contexts of the technical and further education (TAFE) sector. Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002) indicated the existence of vocational subjects as part of the survey and in table II. Bathmaker and Avis (2005a) acknowledged VET as a characteristic of the FE sector. Bathmaker and Avis (2005b), along with mentioning the academic and vocational division in the sector (p. 4), also referenced vocational courses, qualifications and table 1 of trainee teachers with vocational subjects such as art and design and tourism. Gleeson, Davies and Wheeler (2005) acknowledged the academic-vocational divide and mentioned NVQ. Leathwood (2005) acknowledged the existence of technical provisions in the sector (p. 388). Briggs (2007) referenced the academic-vocational divide (p. 472) with its parallel debates in Australia, and the ‘transformation of vocational expertise into an academic discipline’ (p. 478). Gleeson and James (2007) again acknowledged the academic-vocational division and that the participant, Paul, was a photographer (p. 454). Jephcote, Salisbury and Rees (2008) similarly mentioned the division and VET as part of the policy changes (p. 164). Jephcote and Salisbury (2009) acknowledged the existence of vocational subjects in the FE sector in Wales. Orr and Simmonds (2010) indicated the existence of the trainee teachers’ previous occupational experiences, but they viewed these as a form of social learning. The final group offers substantial references to VET. Gleeson (1981) defined technical teacher (p. 265–266) as one with an ambiguous role in the education system. The teacher is “not simply premised upon his existence as a craftsman, but also upon his experience of industry and his intimate knowledge of, who his students are and what they need to know”. Gleeson (1994) defined trade teachers (p. 6–7) as predominately male and older, with few of them participating in higher education, and all had experienced working as manually skilled workers. They shared three characteristics: industrially formed work practices, shared attitudes and physically isolated communities. Robson (1998b) delineated the historical developments of vocational provisions such as General Studies, NVQs and GNVQs. Clow (2001) related the teachers’ vocational practices as examples in identifying professional types. Colley et al. (2003) offered a literature review of VET (p. 473) and defined it as “it expresses the original sense of the term ‘vocation’ as a ‘calling’ ” (p. 492). They also drew on three vocational areas of childcare, healthcare and engineering in critiquing ‘vocational habitus’ to study gender, family background and specific locations within the working
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class. Viskovic and Robson (2001) viewed vocational teachers as bounded with their industrial and commercial experiences and wanted to retain links with their industrial past while remaining a teacher (p. 222–223). Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004) defined VET (p. 187–188) as teachers with “established and experienced as professionals of some kind (e.g. as surveyors, designers, child care workers, or hairdressers) prior to entering teaching”. Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009) reviewed the VET policy changes in Finland from an initial school-base system until 2001 to local-based vocational institutions (p. 15). Vahasantanen (2015) examined the VET system in Finland (p. 2). Finally, Loo (2019, p. 36) defined vocational as “occupational experiences that relate to non- pedagogic practices”. These include professional practices in work-related areas such as dance, health education and radio production. Turning to categorising the relevant studies into definable groups, we borrow the terminology ‘significance’ from other disciplines such as accountancy. As with any attempt of classification, one may argue that the process is open to interpretation and debate. And so is the case with the categorisation. However, by doing this, this investigation allows us to identify the different importance of TVET studies regarding professional identities in the FE sector. ‘Significance’ differs from ‘materiality’ where the latter has a numerical attachment whereas the former offers a descriptive element (Street, Nichols and Gray, 2000). For this investigation, there are three variations of significance concerning TVET and professional identities. The first – ‘insignificance’ – refers to studies where vocationalism is used as a backdrop to investigating professional identities. The FE staff members’ occupational practices and experiences were excluded in the investigation and had no significance attached to the formation or development of their professional identities. ‘Minor significance’ relates to studies where vocational education and training contexts are represented, and after further synthesis, there is a significant input on professional belief/identities. However, the study does not represent a major impact on the formation and development of the staff’s professional identities. The final category is ‘major significance’, as it offers a major understanding of vocational education and training concerning the professional development and formation of the FE staff’s professional identities. The further synthesis by the researchers offers possible inclusions of typologies, conceptual frameworks and critical findings that relate to pedagogic and occupational practices. Referring to Table 4.1, discussions regarding the three types of TVET and professional identities follow. Robson (1998a), Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002), Bathmaker and Avis (2005b), Briggs (2007), Jephcote and Salisbury (2009), and Orr and Simmonds (2010) offered ‘insignificant’ impact. Robson (1998a) referenced GNVQ programmes being taught by Alex in the ethnographic case study. Professionalism or identity of the trainee teacher was not defined. Instead, the focus was on his professional development from four perspectives of control and management of learners, learning, administration and approaches to pass on knowledge and experiences.
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Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002) mentioned vocational subject areas as part of the survey. Table II on the subject areas taught indicated 11 vocational areas amongst the participants, who were trainee teachers in the FE sector. However, there was no discussion concerning the significance of the vocational knowledge. Neither were there any discussions regarding the pedagogic practices by these trainee teachers. There was no attempt to define professionalism or identities as this study focused on “trainee teachers’ understanding of the lecturer’s role within the pedagogic, curricular and policy contexts of FE” (p. 181) from a social justice perspective. Bathmaker and Avis (2005b) indicated vocational as a characteristic of the sector (p. 4), and in Table 4.1 on the details of trainee teachers, vocational subjects such as art and design, tourism, etc. were listed. However, these vocational aspects were not delineated in the discussion section. Professionalism or identities were not its focus, but rather the changing constructions of the pedagogic practice of trainee teachers. Briggs (2007) discussed the FE reform in the 1990s and the academic and vocation division (p. 472). He used the Australian VET experience of the lack of unity in professional identity (p. 476) to suggest a similar situation in the UK and further delineated the transformation of vocational expertise into an academic discipline (p. 478). Other than this, VET as a significant phenomenon in the FE sector was not referred to. There was no attempt to nail down professionalism or identities. Instead, the professional location of these middle leaders lies in the subject-knowledge itself and in how it is applied in an educational context (p. 478–479). In other words, Brigg’s concept of professionalism is constructed from the professional know-how and the skills demanded by its use in the college. Jephcote and Salisbury (2009) indicated the provision of vocational subjects in the FE sector in Wales (p. 967) and acknowledged that the participants were teaching on vocational programmes (p. 970). Otherwise, themes such as emotional labour were given greater prominence. This study explored the construction of professional identities (and defined on p. 966) using the FE teachers’ work, and their interactions with learners. Orr and Simmonds (2010) investigated the ‘dual identities’ (a conflation of the ‘dual professionalism’ notion from Robson, Bailey and Larkin [2004]) of trainee teachers using conceptual frameworks on work-based learning and communities of practice. Interestingly, identities of trainee teachers were referred to using literature sources. They subscribed to Holland’s (1998) definition (p. 81). This ‘insignificant’ type of TVET and professional identities related to publications that, on the one hand, acknowledged the existence of VET in the FE sector and, on the other, focused their research on other aspects of the education sector. These other aspects included disciplinary knowledge and skills and pedagogic practices of trainee teachers by Avis, Bathmaker and Parsons (2002), especially where teacher-training programmes offered generic pedagogic approaches
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rather than subject-specific training (Loo, 2014). For Robson (1998a), it was one trainee teacher’s professional development while on a teacher training programme. For Bathmaker and Avis (2005b), they focused on the changing constructions of pedagogic practices of trainee teachers. For Briggs (2007), it was identities of middle leaders in FE colleges. The other aspects chosen by Jephcote and Salisbury (2009) were the socialisation of the three case studies of FE teachers’ identities. Orr and Simmonds (2010) viewed teacher training in the FE sector as work-based learning and as a social form of learning. Unfortunately, the vocational or occupational practices and experiences of the trainee teachers were not the foci of their study. In summary, these publications acknowledge that VET was a phenomenon in the sector. However, the vocational elements of staff were excluded and did not play a significant part in the formation or development of their professional identities. Where there is ‘minor significance’, this characteristic is featured in the studies by Gleeson (1981), Robson (1998b), and Chappell (2001). Gleeson (1981) focused on the technical education of teachers who offered both industry and pedagogic experiences, which he referred to as a ‘special relationship’. However, the FE conditions prevented these teachers to create a community of practice, and they adopted teaching strategies that legitimise the teachers’ training ‘function’. Characteristics of technical teachers are highlighted as “the technical teacher enjoys a distinct but ambiguous role within the educational system. Unlike many other teachers in schools and colleges his experience of industry or commerce constitutes the basis upon which he has been recruited into teaching” (Gleeson, 1981, p. 265). Robson (1998b) in profiling the FE workforce observed the relevance of its workforce to keep in touch with their vocational backgrounds and its relation to teaching vocational disciplines. This desktop research highlighted the impact of managerialism and the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act on the generic aspects of the teachers’ identities where their vocational/occupational experiences were excluded. However, it offered a historical sweep of VET. It offered one definition of professional identity by Bucher and Stelling (1997) as “the perception of oneself as a professional and it is closely related to the knowledge and skills one has, the work one does, and the work-related significant others or the reference group” (Robson, 1998b, p. 586). Chappell (2001) examined the policy contexts of the Australian technical and further education (TAFE) teachers. He argued that TAFE teachers had specialised vocational knowledge in a trade or occupation and that the changing economic climate added to the discourse of VET and industrial skill development. These factors created tensions between teaching on the VET courses in educational institutions and industrial workplace, which affected identity constructions. Teachers’ identities were defined and discussed (p. 25) concerning “any explanation concerning the construction of TAPE teachers’ identities must look to both the historical and contemporary discourses that circulate within the institutional life of the organisation”.
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These three publications engaged with the issues surrounding VET with sufficient input and synthesis on professional beliefs or identities. However, the studies did not represent a major impact on the formation and development of the teachers’ professional identities. Finally, we come to the third and final category where ‘major significance’ is featured. The studies were by Gleeson (1994), Clow (2001), Viskovic and Robson (2001), Colley et al. (2003), Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004), Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009), Vahasantanen (2015), and Loo (2019). ‘Major significance’ is defined as a study that offers a critical understanding of the further synthesis of VET. The study may refer to the professional development and formation of FE staff’s professional identities. It may also include typologies, conceptual frameworks, and evaluative findings that relate to pedagogic and occupational practices. Gleeson (1994) investigated trade teachers with previous occupational experiences in Australia. This study focused on the teachers’ work practices, identities and attitudes to work and gender. The main themes were trade teachers’ work practices, their attitudes and their work environment. Their industrial identity was maintained due to the protected work environment, which created a division between their trade teaching and with the rest of the teaching staff. Identities, for Gleeson, were bounded with pedagogic, life and occupational experiences and knowledge (p. 6–7). Clow (2001) focused on vocational teachers’ professionalism. The study offered six types: ex- officio, vocational professional standards, segmented, holistic, professional judgement and emancipatory. Though the focus was not on professional identities, nevertheless the typology of professionalism lent an added dimension to identity formation and development. It further developed Millerson’s (1964) model for lawyers and clinicians. However, there was no attempt to define professionalism from this model. Eventually, she did use one source – Carr (1992) – to define professionalism (p. 411–412) as the “four dimensions of educational professionalism to be found within school teaching”. The study by Colley et al. (2003) centred on the significance of vocational culture in the sector especially from the perspectives of class and gender that underpin practice. It used the caring professions such as childcare and healthcare, and engineering. The two professions offered contrasting cultures. The caring professions showed signs of ‘sacrificial femininity’ and moral rectitude. The engineering profession was male-oriented which privileged logical thinking, technological innovations and non-emotional judgements. Here, students oriented towards specific identities related to ‘the right person for the job’, along with values, attributes and beliefs. The engineering profession was viewed as rational and logical whereas the healthcare professions offered the ‘emotional comfort of belonging’. Professionalism or identity was not subjected to critique, as its focus was on the ‘vocational habitus’ from the perspectives of gender and class. Viskovic and Robson (2001) drew from abstracted ‘pen pictures’ of vocational teachers in New Zealand and the UK concerning their identities. The
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five themes were participation, multi-membership, location, temporal dimension and wider contexts. They used identity as part of the community of practice. For them, identity is a becoming and the work of identity is not simply confined to one period of our lives, as some theories of socialisation might suggest. Nor is it confined to specific settings. Our membership of communities gives the formation of identity a fundamentally social character. Furthermore, since we reconcile our various forms of membership into one identity, identity can be viewed as a ‘nexus of multi-membership’ . . . Finally, identity is an interplay between the local and the global; we define who we are by negotiating local ways of belonging to broader constellations. (Viskovic and Robson, 2001, p. 225) The investigation by Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004) centred on FE vocational teachers’ professional development (in the areas of engineering, health and social care, hospitality and catering). It identified four themes. They are ‘adding value’ (saw themselves as teachers giving value and going beyond the syllabus), ‘protecting standards’, ‘sharing expertise’ and ‘knowing how’ (occupational and tacit forms). The close interaction with their learners was important, and they resisted the competence-styled provisions. This publication reviewed professionalism beginning with a generic definition (p. 184–187) to teacher professionalism as socially valued. Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009) focused on vocational teachers in Finland, specifically their identities and curriculum reforms. The teachers’ responses to the educational reforms ranged from resistance to ambiguity to approval. Their professional selves, prior working experiences, future expectations, and practices relating to the courses and institutions shaped their professional identities. Professional identities were delineated (p. 17) as a teacher’s actual professional identity describable as the life history and experience-based sense of the subject’s own professional orientations and commitments. Professional identity also involves the teacher’s understanding of the goals and meaning of education as well as one’s actual values, moral obligations, beliefs regarding teaching and learning, and orientations to the future. The researchers also carried out a literature review. Vahasantanen (2015) drawing from the previous study investigated the professional agency of VET teachers’ teaching practices, education reforms and impact on their identities. The themes concerning the education reforms and their work practices varied from weak to strong agency. Their identities ranged from ‘maintainable’ to ‘transformative’ agency. Their views of the reforms were affected by their backgrounds and the VET courses. Their agency was
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affected by the past, the present and the future, and their identities were influenced by the agency. As the focus of this study was on teacher’s agency, there was no attempt to delineate teacher professionalism or identity. Loo (2019) focused on teachers with vocational or occupational practices and experiences, who also delivered work-related courses. The study used teaching knowledge, occupational and life experiences to offer three types of identities: multi-, double-life and hybrid forms. He uses Bernstein (1996, p. 73) as a platform to discussing teacher identity and knowledge where identity “arises out of a particular social order through relations which the identity enters into with other identities of reciprocal collective purpose”. He followed this up with a literature review of the related publications from the compulsory and post-compulsory sectors (Loo, 2019, p. 39). It would be useful to synthesise the previously listed publications of ‘major significance’. Clow (2001) and Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004) may be viewed as one category because they focused on professionalism rather than identity. The nuances of professionalism and identity have been discussed earlier. Clow provided us with six types and Robson et al. with four. However, there are overlaps between the two classifications of professionalism. Clow’s ‘vocational professional standards’ professionalism has resonances with Robson et al.’s four professionalism themes. Clow viewed professional standards of the teachers’ occupations of hairdressing, trowel trades, art and design as a focal point in addressing their teaching activities and using their professional experiences to relay to their learners industrial standards and practices. Even though the description of this professionalism type was not expansive, by inference, there are overlaps with Robson et al.’s four types of professionalism. ‘Adding value’ refers to giving something extra to learners from an industrial standpoint such as employment prospects, over and above pedagogic know-how. One might suggest that Clow’s type refers to the industrial standards and values that are useful for gaining employment in that sector. ‘Protecting standards’ (Robson, Bailey and Larkin, 2004) refers to teachers of engineering and catering where their occupational skills and practices are critical in the sectors. Clow’s ‘vocational professional standards’ professionalism type deals with these occupational skills and practices. ‘Sharing expertise’ (Robson, Bailey and Larkin, 2004) refers to using the teachers’ occupational practices and experiences in their teaching. Again, Clow’s ‘vocational professional standards’ type of professionalism relates to the pedagogic negotiations of these teachers with their learners and to make these relevant to their students. ‘Knowing how’ (Robson, Bailey and Larkin, 2004) refers to the explicit and tacit types of knowledge, skill sets and, by inference, related capacities for the related occupation. Here, there are similarities with Clow’s type of professionalism, wherein the deployment of these vocational standards for teaching: the teachers would refer to the teachers’ occupational knowledge and expertise like those from Robson et al.’s teachers. One may argue that Robson et al.’s study expands on Clow’s professionalism type, ‘vocational professional standards’.
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Turning to the eight publications of ‘major significance’ regarding identities, these may be classified into four groups initially. Colley et al. (2003) focused on gender and class concerning identities. Gleeson (1994) studied the issues surrounding pedagogic practices, teachers’ attitudes and their work environment concerning their identities. Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009) and Vahasantanen (2015) both used the curriculum reforms in Finland to research the teachers’ identities and agency. The fourth group by Viskovic and Robson (2001) and Loo (2019) is perhaps more of a typology of professional identities, and in some ways similar to Clow’s and Robson et al.’s classifications of professionalism in that they all offer forms of identities or professionalism. The types of identities offered by Viskovic and Robson (2001) have resonances with Loo’s (2019), especially with ‘multi-membership’ and ‘multi-identities’, respectively. For the former researchers, it meant the tensions in negotiating from occupational to a pedagogic community. However, for the latter researcher, this type of identity is wider than the occupation-teaching communities. Teacher C (Loo, 2019) referred to his personal life such as relationships with loved ones, solitary living and perceptions of life, which he perceived as fluid and with an ever-changing mental state that impacted his art and teaching. For Teacher C, he saw the links between his personal and occupational practices to his teaching, which he called ‘labour of love’. For Viskovic and Robson, multi-membership identity concerned the tensions surrounding pedagogic and occupational practices. For Loo, multi-identities are about the tensions regarding juggling various occupation-related jobs and personal needs (mainly for non-financial reasons) with a portmanteau of teaching roles. These activities involve knowledge (relating to occupations, life and teaching), capacities and skill sets that might create conflicting identities. For the eight publications, one can deduce common factors to offer a conceptual framework of teachers’ professional identities. Chappell (2001, p. 25) emphasised that “any explanation concerning the construction of [TAPE] teachers’ identities must look to both the historical and contemporary discourses that circulate within the institutional life of the organisation”. Four dimensions may be involved in the construction of VET teachers’ professional identities. The first dimension relates to social, cultural and economic dimensions that affect the findings. Viskovic and Robson (2001) stressed the lack of funding and support from governments from the UK and New Zealand, and from teaching institutions. Clow (2001) was critical of the lack of collective action by the governments, institutions and unions. Colley et al.’s (2003) study on gender and class points to the socio-cultural dimensions of England in the early part of 2000. Gleeson’s (1994) investigation highlighted the male- dominance of certain trades in Australia, which again was a reflection of the society at the time. The studies by Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009) and Vahasantanen (2015) specifically focused on the Finnish government’s education reforms. Thus, all the eight publications offer insights relating to the social, cultural and economic dimensions of a location or country. They also offer a
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country or national dimension regarding policy-making as exemplified by the studies by Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009) and Vahasantanen (2015). The national factor is the second dimension. Similarly, at a closer perspective, institutions especially teaching ones also influenced teachers’ professional identities, as evidenced by the eight publications (i.e. the third dimension). Finally, as regards the teachers themselves, resulting from these three dimensions, they, in turn, have their forms of professional identities (i.e. the fourth dimension). These four levels of professional identity dimensions may be structured as four decreasing concentric rings from the first and largest dimension – social, cultural and economic factors – to the fourth and smallest dimension – types of FE teachers’ professional identities. These four dimensions interact with each other as the teachers’ perceptions of their professional selves are affected by the wider social, cultural and economic factors surrounding their teaching and employment conditions. Policies such as government regulations (e.g. the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act) and institutional environment about funding, systems and procedures impact the teachers’ work conditions, delivery and perceptions about themselves as professionals.
Conclusion This chapter studied the publications of the FE sector concerning professionalism or identities and TVET. There are four main points. The first relates to the characteristics of the sector. The teaching staff has dual experiences of vocational/occupational and pedagogic. There is also a division between the academic and vocational strands, which has been researched and debated, and is still unresolved. The backdrop to these dimensions was the 1992 Act, which opened up the sector to market forces. This major policy development created a wealth of studies concerning staff identities and professional development. Staff included managers, lecturers, learning support workers, administrators and trainee teachers. The effects of their activities, work conditions, emotional labour and, for some teachers, exiting from the sector were also explored. Class and gender of the staff were studied. The countries included were Australia, England, Finland, New Zealand and Wales. Learners, though not the foci of this study, were the main recipients of these effects. The second point relates to the investigations of the sector, professional identities and TVET. There are variations of delineating the researched topics. Without naming the publications, they include a complete lack of acknowledgement of the subjects, recognition of the existence of an area such as vocational provisions and participants’ vocational experiences, and the use of one literature source. Others include a historical delineation of the topic, a review of the relevant literature sources, and a definition of the topic such as vocational or identity. Some publications employed a combination of these. Details of these discussions are included in the previous section. Perhaps, one might refer to Coffield’s (1998) criticality of the research in
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the sector in which areas of investigation were not defined or contested as if there were tacit agreements amongst the academic fraternity (as mentioned in Chapter 1). This systematic review of the literature has to an extent supported his observation. The exception regarding FE and professional identities was Leathwood (2005), who provided clear definitions of both areas. With the studies of TVET and professional identities, they included Viskovic and Robson (2003), Robson, Bailey and Larkin (2004), Vahasantanen and Etelapelto (2009), and Loo (2019). The third point which was pertinent to researching FE was the lack of usable data (Gleeson and James, 2007) and the fact that only as recent as 2014 onwards has relevant data by the Education and Training Foundation been available (Loo, 2019). The fourth point concerns the findings resulting from TVET and professional identities publications. The areas covered were broad ranging, from social, cultural and economic factors to government policies to teaching institutions to teachers. Contributions of this chapter include the identification of three types of TVET and professional identities studies of insignificance, minor significance and major significance. The chapter offers a conceptual framing of four dimensions that relates to the studies on TVET and professional identities. It also highlights the research opportunity to use a systematic review of literature as a research method in the FE sector. Lastly, this investigation offers delineations of the sector, professionalism, identities and TVET. There are implications. One relates to opening up a possible area of study via the use of the methodological approach of a systematic literature review. One wonders why there is a dearth of this approach. Perhaps a closer look at the teaching of research methodology at the doctoral level might be the first step towards solving this issue. Offering a better understanding of FE, professional identities and TVET might start at the teacher education provisions and, to that end, enable FE staff to have a better understanding of the three areas. Stakeholder institutions (colleges and higher education institutions) should support research in furthering these areas with the view of being critical, as suggested by Coffield (1998). For policymakers, better-informed research in these areas might facilitate more applicable and implementable policies in aiding this diverse and mysterious sector.
References Alexaidou, N. 2001 Management identities in transition: a case study from further education. The Sociological Review, 49(3): 412–435. Avis, J. 1999 Shifting identity: new conditions and the transformation of practice – teaching within post-compulsory education. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 51(2): 245–264. Avis, J., Bathmaker, A-M., Parsons, J. 2002 ‘I think a lot of staff are dinosaurs‘: further education trainee teachers’ understandings of pedagogic relations. Journal of Education and Work, 15: 181–200.
Professional identities in further education 83 Bathmaker, A-M., Avis, J. 2005a Becoming a lecturer in further education in England: the construction of professional identity and the role of communities of practice. Journal of Education for Teaching, 31(1): 47–62. Bathmaker, A-M., Avis, J. 2005b Is that ‘tingling feeling’ enough? Constructions of teaching and learning in further education. Educational Review, 57(1): 3–20. Beijaard, D., Meijier, P. C., Verloop, N. 2004 Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20: 107–128. Bernstein, B. 1996 Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research and Critique. London, Taylor and Francis. Boland, A., Cherry, M. G., Dickson, R. (Eds) 2014 Doing a Systematic Review: A Student’s Guide. London, Sage Publications. Briggs, A. R. J. 2007 Exploring professional identities: middle leadership in further education colleges. School Leadership and Management, 27(5): 471–485. Brown, A. D., Humphreys, M. 2006 Organizational identity and place: a discursive exploration of hegemony and resistance. Journal of Management Studies, 43(2): 231–257. Bucher, R., Stelling, J. 1997 Becoming Professional. Beverley Hills, Sage Publications. Carr, D. 1992 Four dimensions of educational professionalism. Westminster Studies in Education, 15: 19–31. Chappell, C. 2001 Issues of teacher identity in a restructuring Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Vocational Education Research, 9(1): 21–39. Clow, R. 2001 Further education teachers’ constructions of professionalism. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 53(3): 407–420. Coffield, F. 1998 A fresh approach to learning for the learning age: the contribution of research. Higher Education Digest, 31: 4–6. Colley, H., James, D., Diment, K. 2007 Unbecoming teachers: towards a more dynamic notion of professional participation. Journal of Education Policy, 22(2): 173–193. Colley, H., James, D., Tedder, M., Diment, K. 2003 Learning as becoming in vocational education and training: class, gender and the role of vocational habitus. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 55(4): 471–498. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) 2012 Professionalism in Further Education: Final Report of the Independent Review Panel. London, DBIS. Department for Education (DfE) 2010 The Importance of Teaching. Cm 7980. London, The Stationery Office. Earley, M. A. 2014 A synthesis of the literature on research methods education. Teaching in Higher Education, 19(3): 242–253. Education and Training Foundation (ETF) 2014 Professional Standards for Teachers and Trainers in England: Initial Guidance for Users. London, ETF. Foster, P., Hammersley, M. 1998 A review of reviews: structure and function in reviews of educational research. British Educational Research Journal, 24: 609–628. Frontier Economics 2016 Further Education Workforce Data for England: Analysis of the 2014– 2015 Staff Individualised Record (SIR) Data. London, Frontier Economics. Furlong, J., Barton, L., Miles, S., Whitty, G. 2000 Teacher Education in Transition. Buckingham, Open University Press. Gleeson, D. 1981 Communality and conservatism in technical education: on the role of the technical teacher in further education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2: 265–273. Gleeson, D., Davies, J., Wheeler, E. 2005 On the making and taking of professionalism in the further education workplace. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 26(4): 445–460.
84 Professional identities in further education Gleeson, D., James, D. 2007 The paradox of professionalism in English further education: a TLC project perspective. Educational Review, 59(4): 451–467. Gleeson, D., Shain, F. 1999 Managing ambiguity: between markets and managerialism – a case study of ‘middle’ managers in further education. The Sociological Review, 47(3): 461–490. Gleeson, P. 1994 Cultural differences in teachers’ work: an ethnography. South Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 22: 5–18. Gough, D. 2004 Systematic research synthesis. In: Thomas, G. and Pring, R. (Eds) Evidence- Based Practice in Education. Buckingham, Open University Press. Gough, D., Oliver, S., Thomas, J. 2017 An Introduction to Systematic Reviews. London, Sage Publications. Grace, G. 1987 Teachers and the state in Britain. In Lawn, M. and Grace, G. (Eds) Teachers: The Culture and Politics of Work. London, RoutledgeFalmer. Holland, D., Lachicott, W., Skinner, D., Cain, C. 1998 Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J. 2009 Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25: 966–972. Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Rees, G. 2008 Being a teacher in further education in changing times. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 13(2): 163–172. Johnson, T. 1997 The Professions and Power. London, Collier Macmillan. Lave, J., Wenger, E. 1991 Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Leathwood, C. 2005 ‘Treat me as a human being – don’t look at me as a woman’: femininities and professional identities in further education. Gender and Education, 17(4): 387–409. Loo, S. 2014 Placing ‘knowledge’ in teacher education in the English further education teaching sector: an alternative approach based on collaboration and evidence based research. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(3): 337–354. Loo, S. 2019 (publish in 2018) Teaching knowledge, professional identities and symbolic representations of qualified teachers with occupational experiences. In: Loo, S. (Ed.) Further Education, Professional and Occupational Pedagogy: Knowledge and Experiences. Abingdon, Routledge. Loo, S., Jameson, J. 2017 Introduction: vocationalism in the English context. In: Loo, S. and Jameson, J. (Eds) Vocationalism in Further and Higher Education: Policy, Programmes and Pedagogy. Abingdon, Routledge. Millerson, G. 1964 The Qualifying Associations; a Study in Professionalization. London, Routledge. Orr, K., Simmons, R. 2010 Dual identities: the in-service teacher trainee experience in the English further education sector. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 62(1): 75–88. Petticrew, M., Roberts, H. 2006 Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing. Robson, J. 1998a Exploring the professional socialisation of teachers in further education: a case study. Teacher Development, 2(1): 43–58. Robson, J. 1998b A profession in crisis: status, culture and identity in the further education college. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 50(4): 585–607. Robson, J., Bailey, B. 2009 ‘Bowing from the heart’: an investigation into discourses of professionalism and the work of caring for students in further education. British Educational Research Journal, 35(1): 99–117.
Professional identities in further education 85 Robson, J., Bailey, B., Larkin, S. 2004 Adding value: investigating the discourse of professionals adopted by vocational teachers in further education colleges. Journal of Education and Work, 17: 183–195. Shain, F., Gleeson, D. 1999 Under new management: changing conceptions of teacher professionalism and policy in the further education sector. Journal of Education Policy, 14: 445–462. Street, D. L., Nichols, N. B., Gray, S. J. 2000 Assessing the acceptability of international accounting standards in the US: an empirical study of the materiality of US GAAP reconciliations by non-US companies complying with IASC standards. The International Journal of Accounting, 35(1): 27–63. Tatto, M. T. 2013 Changing trends in teacher education policy and practice: international perspectives and future challenges for educational research. Research Intelligence, 121: 16–17. Trede, F., Macklin, R., Bridges, D. 2012 Professional identity development: a review of the higher education literature. Studies in Higher Education, 37(3): 365–384. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization (UNESCO) 2012 Building skills for work and life. 3rd UNESCO TVET Congress, Shanghai, 16 May. Vahasantanen, K. 2015 Professional agency in the stream of change: understanding educational change and teachers’ professional identities. Teaching and Teacher Education, 47: 1–12. Vahasantanen, K., Etelapelto, A. 2009 Vocational teachers in the face of a major educational reform: individual ways of negotiating professional identities. Journal of Education and Work, 22(1): 15–33. van Lankveld, T., Schoonenboom, J., Volman, M., Croiset, G., Beishuizen, J. 2017 Developing a teacher identity in the university context: a systematic review of the literature. Higher Education Research and Development, 36(2): 325–342. Viskovic, A., Robson, J. 2001 Community and identity: experiences and dilemmas of vocational teachers in post-school contexts. Journal of In-Service Education, 27: 221–236.
Chapter 5
Reconceptualising teacher education as part of a strategic approach to broadening and advancing research in the field of widening participation
Introduction Widening participation (WP) as a field of research has been studied and contested for over two decades. Related international reports by the Council of Europe (1996) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (1998) focused on access to higher education. In the UK, WP may also include the further education sector, as exemplified by the Kennedy Report (Further Education Funding Council, 1997). WP has been described as a portmanteau concept (Watson, 2007) and it is this concept that has encapsulated a diverse range of investigations. They include determinants such as barriers to access (Cole, 1955; Rosen, 1956; Stodtbeck, 1961; Allen, 1971; Gordon, 1981; Thomas, 2001; Chowdry et al., 2013), socio-cultural locations (Hall and Glass, 1954; Dale and Griffith, 1965; Flude, 1974; Crozier et al., 2008), and learners’ experiences (Reay, Ball and David, 2002; Jones, 2006). These learner experiences cover trauma (Lacey, 1970; Parr, 2000), initiatives and strategies (Connor, 2001; Thomas, 2001; Woodrow and Yorke, 2002; Stuart, 2012), and learners’ identities (Gallacher et al., 2002; Hockings et al., 2009). WP investigations encompass curriculum issues (Young, 1971; Ryan and Connolly, 2000), ethnicity and gender (Coffield and Vignoles, 1997; Crozier et al., 2008), and age (Crozier et al., 2008). Finally, WP studies include finance and decision-making (Callender and Jackson, 2004), political discourse and neo-liberal policies (Archer, 2007), teaching approaches (Craft, Chappell and Twining, 2008), and tutor engagement (Macdonald and Stratta, 2001). Following these areas of research on WP with its foci on disadvantaged learners and equal opportunities of access to higher education, lamentably little has been researched on the duality of learning and teaching. Judging from the earlier document by Kennedy (FEFC, 1997, p. 13–14), of the 18 points in “The Agenda for Change”, the foci were on learners, learning, employers and a unitised system for progression but no emphasis on teaching especially quality teaching. The UK government has emphasised the importance of quality teaching (Department for Education, 2010). The consultation publications,
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‘Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice’ (Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), 2015), and the White Paper, ‘Success as a Knowledge Economy: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice’ (BIS, 2016) explicitly linked teaching and improving social mobility of learners. “Teaching excellence matters, not only for students and taxpayers, but also for those who care about social mobility, since we will not truly begin to reduce inequality unless more students fulfil their aspirations and progress on into their chosen careers” (BIS, 2016, p. 13). The listed intentions of the 2016 White Paper are taken at face value though others may question such supporting evidence for the increase in social mobility and the reduction of inequality. The recent government report on social mobility (Social Mobility Commission, 2017) was so damning in its summary of a worsening situation despite the rhetoric of the 2016 White Paper and earlier reports that all the members of the committee resigned. In this chapter, it argues that the connectivity of learning and teaching offers a starting basis for broadening and advancing the research possibilities of the WP field. Kettley (2007, p. 343) argued for a re-conceptualisation of the WP field. Grounded in a holistic approach, he involved empirical research in studying the “social processes shaping higher learning ranging from those that promote (bridges) to those that inhibit (barriers) differential participation in, progression through and outcomes from HE for certain individuals and social groups”. This statement provides this investigation with intellectual spaces to explore a potential bridge to the research of WP via quality teaching. The chapter argues that learning cannot be divorced from quality teaching as learning and teaching are significant variables in the educational equation. Projects such as the Economics and Social Research Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme in England (Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2006) and Australia by Crosling, Heagney and Thomas (2009) featured these pedagogic variables. One may suggest that these WP learners without the social and cultural advantages require quality teaching support to try and level the playing field regarding access to relevant programmes irrespective of their ages (lifelong learning) and progress in their lives (outcomes). This chapter offers the following aims. It needs to be a reconceptualising of WP by broadening this remit of research from those indicated earlier to include learners’ lifelong learning and related work outcomes as part of its long-term objective. Furthermore, learning and outcomes need to include learners’ perspectives, but also an important conduit to the pedagogical equation is teaching and in particular quality teaching. Quality teachers are needed to motivate and engage with disadvantaged students to become independent lifelong learners and eventually, participants of work. This pedagogical emphasis has two strands. The first strand relates to a quality curriculum where the relevant content/specification is essential for learners to progress. With the recent emphasis on apprenticeships as an educational pathway to work, the training of teachers who are ably equipped to deliver creatively such
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vocational/occupation-related courses is important. These (occupation-related) teachers would very likely have the relevant work experiences to deliver these courses with over 70 percent of them are occupation related (Frontier Economics Limited, 2016, Table 17) in the post-compulsory/further education (FE) sector. FE in England includes a diverse range of teaching settings. These include FE colleges, voluntary and community sector organisations, commercial organisations and independent training providers, adult and community learning providers, industry, specialist colleges, armed and uniformed services, prisons and offender learning institutions, and other public-sector organisations (Education and Training Foundation, 2014). Included in the understanding of teaching activities would be a wider definition of teaching knowledge, which consisted of occupational know- how – knowledge and experiences. The second strand relates to a pedagogical solution to offer quality teacher education where pedagogical and disciplinary or occupational know-how are intertwined to produce quality teaching on occupational programmes. The chapter is structured into five sections following the introduction. The second section investigates the theoretical frameworks relating to the teaching knowledge typologies that are necessary for a relevant curriculum and the application of this know-how to improving teaching through the use of multimodality and reflective peer review. The third section offers a methodological approach, which is based on the re-evaluation of two sets of empirical data from two projects. The first project is part of a larger investigation on occupational pedagogy covering pre-university/further education, higher education (first degree) and professional levels. The empirical findings from the further education programmes are used for this chapter. The second project is a study of a pedagogical solution. The fourth section focuses on a discussion of the two strands – quality curriculum and pedagogical solution in the delivery of the curricula to enhance teaching quality – using teaching standards and specifications in equine studies and the aviation industry (travel and tourism). The final section delineates the contributions of the findings concerning the broadening of the WP field and encompassing quality teaching and reflects on the implications for researchers of WP, teachers, delivering institutions and policymakers.
WP and conceptual frameworks Following on from the previous section, which argues for a broadening of the WP field to include quality teaching, this section investigates the related theoretical frameworks. For quality teaching to take place, there needs to be a clear idea of what constitutes teaching know-how (i.e. knowledge and experiences) and this may be applied by teachers in their pedagogic activities to facilitate WP learners in their learning and outcomes. So, theoretical frameworks of teaching knowledge and recontextualization are discussed. Furthermore, it is imperative that teachers are offered pedagogic solutions to put their know-how and
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understanding of its application into practice via the concepts of multimodality and reflective peer review. Teaching knowledge includes disciplinary knowledge and Becher (1994) and Smeby (1996) offer typologies of the significant areas such as biology, physics and mathematics that are found in higher education. These typologisations of disciplinary areas are relevant to our discussion as in the FE sector, occupation-related courses such as fashion and textiles, gas fitting, equine, and travel and tourism (in particular the airline industry) need to refer to their relevant disciplinary knowledge as a starting basis for teachers and their learners. In the cases of gas fitting and the airline industry programmes, the know-how of physics, mathematics and geography would be relevant for the respective courses. The teacher also needs to be aware of the relevant academic level of disciplinary knowledge that is required for a vocational level 3 programme (at pre-university level). Winch (2015) offered an arbitrary rule of equivalences, a level that is below the ‘academic equivalent’. In this example, it is disciplinary knowledge at level 2. In a latter part of this section, how the knowledge is selected and relocated for teaching purpose is discussed. Shulman (1987), Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003), Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer (2001), Clandinin (1985) and Loo (2012, 2014) offer different perspectives of teaching knowledge, though these are by no means an exhaustive or comprehensive list of researchers in this area. What they provide are salient concepts of teacher knowledge on which this chapter may be built on. Shulman (1987) offers seven categories of teacher knowledge. His studies were carried out in the US and the compulsory education sectors (primary and secondary). Even though the project is conducted in another country and non-FE sectors, the typology offers important insights for WP. The typology consists of teacher knowledge relating to content (knowledge and skills for learning), curricula (‘tools of the trade’ such as know-how of teaching materials) and general pedagogy (strategies and rules around classroom management). It also comprises of pedagogical content (content and teaching are organised, represented and adapted to a specific cohort of students), and learners, educational contexts and value. For example, a teacher needs to have a good understanding of her/his learners, their previous learning experiences, level of know-how concerning the programme area, and their learning issues. Knowledge of the learners is especially pertinent for WP as this may ultimately inform the pedagogic strategies in facilitating their learning. In the occupation-related courses such as gas fitting, the teacher might use pedagogical content knowledge. This knowledge might be a physics topic relating to gas (e.g. Boyle’s Law) at the appropriate academic level to explain to the learners the relevance of its understanding regarding the fitting of a gas boiler in a customer’s house from a health and safety aspect. The lecturer may draw from her/his occupational experiences to provide examples of critical incidents involving health and safety issues. Shulman’s seven categories of teaching knowledge provide a starting basis for delineating this topic from the perspectives of WP.
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Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003, p. 856) investigated teachers’ professional know-how with the 12 ‘Principles of teaching for quality learning’, which facilitated teachers to “identify and articulate important and hitherto hidden aspects of their practice”. Some of these principles centred on learners and learning such as sharing intellectual control with them, encouraging peer learning and raising their awareness of the different aspects of quality learning. These principles have obvious relevance to WP learners who may or may not have the maturity, motivation and abilities to assist and support each other in their learning where the outcomes of the occupation-related courses and specifications have direct applications to areas such as gas fitting. Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer (2001) provide six types of teacher knowledge on the subject matter, students, student learning and comprehension, purposes, curriculum and instructional techniques. These categories are helpful for teachers of WP learners to analyse their interactive cognitions from the point of choosing the relevant teaching strategies for a specific session. Enabling a coherent and relevant session may motivate these WP learners. Clandinin (1985) coins ‘personal practical knowledge’ to examine the connections between teachers’ personal and professional experiences, which she argues has emotional and moralistic dimensions. This perspective of teacher knowledge is particularly helpful in delineating teacher knowledge because it allows articulative possibilities to include their non-teaching and teaching experiences in thinking about their professional know-how. This notion offers significant purchase for WP deliverers as they can utilise their previous occupational and real-life experiences to engage with their WP learners in the vocational subject. The learners would hopefully see the relevance and applicability of the experiences to the subject. Clandinin’s typology is particularly significant as it enables Loo (2012, 2014) to develop along with the aforementioned typologies to include teachers’ occupational know-how (knowledge and experiences) in the discourse of teaching knowledge. He suggested three forms of teaching knowledge from sources of pedagogy, occupation and life, and that there was a complex and symbiotic relationship between the three forms (Loo, 2012). The expansion of teaching know-how can be viewed as relevant to WP learners as know-how relates not only to theoretical but experiences that include past occupational, pedagogic and life experiences that have purchase to their learning. In summary, these typologies have relevance on the delineation of teaching know-how of teachers for their WP students, and in particular those with occupational experiences and teaching on vocational courses. A clearer concept of teaching knowledge is helpful, and a better understanding of how it may be applied in WP teaching will facilitate a more holistic perspective of quality teaching. Recontextualization offers a means of understanding how teaching knowledge may be applied in teaching. Bernstein (1990, p. 185) views this process as “not only the selection, sequence, pace and relations with other subjects but also the theory of instruction from which the transmission rules are derived”. It also, “selectively appropriates, relocates,
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refocuses and relates other discourses to constitute its own order and orderings” (Bernstein, 1990, p. 184). For Bernstein, this recontextualization process offers insights into how (i.e. transmission) aspects of the curriculum (or the ‘what’) may be chosen, ordered and using strategies to deliver to the learners. In the case of teaching a fashion and textiles course to WP students, a teacher may select a specific part of the course such as types of textiles (curriculum). S/he delivers it by demonstrating the choices of materials for different applications such as a dress, handbag or a jacket (transmission) in a logical sequence. The learners can relate to a) the aspect of the curriculum concerning the overall programme and b) its relevance to the possible outcomes in fashioning the different textiles to specific requirements. This explicit approach offers a direct connection between the subject matter and the WP learners. Barnett (2006) further develops the recontextualization concept in his study of vocational teaching. The two types of recontextualization processes are re- classificatory and pedagogic. Re-classificatory recontextualization is seen as a ‘toolbox of applicable knowledge’ where teachers can draw from and rely upon such as their previous occupational experiences in the sector. Pedagogic recontextualization is seen as a bridge between ‘vocational pedagogy and disciplinary knowledge’ (Barnett, 2006, p. 147). These two classifications are helpful at least in offering some insights into vocational teaching to WP learners. However, he was unclear as to a detailed explanation of a ‘toolbox of applicable knowledge’ and ‘vocational pedagogy’, and its relationship with disciplinary knowledge. It does, however, allow intellectual space for further development in occupational pedagogy. Evans et al. (2010) further developed Bernstein and Barnett’s concepts into four types of recontextualization. These include content (where the appropriate theoretical knowledge is selected to make it accessible for WP students), and pedagogic (where the explicit/disciplinary and the tacit experiences, e.g. vocational practices are included in curriculum modules and teaching activities). They also include workplace (where mentoring and other support strategies to facilitate learning in work settings that are appropriate for these WP learners) and learner (where students who may have learning issues apply their strategies to combine theoretical and work-related knowledge). These four types of recontextualization provide deeper insights into how WP students learn in different settings. Loo (2012, p. 721) in his studies on how teachers learn to teach, offers three recontextualization approaches – specific, metaphoric and generic based on “specific examples of the teachers’ use of their knowledge, [past experiences and abilities] in their pedagogic and occupational work settings”. The specific recontextualization approach relates to specific examples of occupational teachers in pedagogic, occupational and life settings that may be tailored to WP students. The second approach uses metaphors or analogies of the teachers’ teaching, occupational and life experiences to exemplify their relevance to their WP teaching activities and, with the third approach, generic examples about the three experiences are highlighted for WP teaching (Loo, 2012). He also identifies a form of recontextualization,
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which he calls ‘ongoing recontextualization’ (Loo, 2014, p. 352) where there are two types. The first type relates to disciplinary knowledge between subject areas such as gas laws in physics and circumference in mathematics used in gas fitting. The second type relates to disciplinary/theoretical knowledge and everyday (tacit) experiences such as geography knowledge of countries and cities in relation to holiday (life) experiences in a travel and tourism programme. Finally, for Young and Muller (2013), knowledge plays a significant part in the content of teacher education in ways that offer generalisations to specific teaching contexts and apply research methods to create new knowledge and insightful declarations. He calls this ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young, 2013) to emphasise the importance of knowledge as content in the curriculum. Its significance is not lost on this chapter as teaching knowledge as defined in the wider sense of encompassing pedagogic, occupational and life experiences of teachers should be included in a curriculum relating to the training of occupation-related teachers who teach vocational courses. Its inclusion will not only widen the definition of teacher knowledge but also broaden the WP argument towards an offer of quality teaching, which is part of the duality of learning and teaching in the educational equation. Two concepts, multimodality and reflection peer review, are discussed next to support the quality teaching of WP learners. Multimodality is shaped by socio-cultural contexts (Jewitt, 2009; Kress, 2010), and in the case of this study, these may relate to the teachers, learners, employers and policymakers of occupation-related programmes. Multimodality is constructed by different modes such as gestures, imagery, music, room environment and speech, which all create meanings in teaching settings, and these are used to analyse the various modes of teaching. This concept was initially used in digitally recorded English and science sessions for secondary school learners in England (Kress, 2010). But, it can also be used to WP teaching of occupation-related teaching where there is an added complexity of relating teaching activities to the wider contexts of work-related experiences and how these may be reflected in a pedagogic setting using teaching approaches such as demonstrations. This multi-modes approach can also focus on the learners’ needs and the choices of appropriate learning strategies. These forms of analysis offer greater authenticity of teaching and learning for the teachers and WP learners. Particular attention may be accorded to how WP learners use learning strategies to engage with the subject. Specific knowledge of learners’ needs as subscribed by Shulman (1987) could be viewed as one of the multi-modes of foci concerning their learning strategies to a specific subject. As part of the analysis of multimodality, a reflective peer review approach may be used where deliverers are encouraged to reflect on their individual as well as their peers’ professional teaching and work/occupation-related practices. Pollard et al. (2008, p. 49) argued that “critical reflection and systematic investigation” were crucial to a teacher’s professional development. In applying this approach to a supportive peer review structure, it attested to Pollard’s ‘an
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enquiry of classroom practice’ (such as an analysis of multi-modes of teaching) and ‘techniques of enquiry’ (using digitally recorded teaching sessions and investigating them in a supportive environment) (Loo, 2013). The teachers’ reflections could highlight their awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, which can be targeted towards the teaching of their WP learners. Ways of being supportive of the students’ learning would only facilitate their learners’ motivation to engage with the subject. These conceptual frameworks on the definitions of teaching knowledge and their applications via recontextualization processes enable a greater understanding of the importance of the knowledge in quality teaching and the relationship to a curriculum from the perspective of WP. The use of multimodality and reflective peer review offer pedagogical solutions to fine-tuning quality teaching, which when the concepts are taken as a whole, facilitate an enhancement of teaching in the delivery of occupational programmes in WP. These pedagogical solutions and the broadening concept of teaching knowledge (definitions and applications) offer a significant supportive bridge to the field of WP research.
Methods In the investigation of how teachers of pre-university level programmes (i.e. further education) may be trained to deliver and enhance their teaching on these programmes, a case study approach is used. This approach uses empirical studies of this phenomenon of real-life participants who have both teaching and occupation-related know-how from quantitative and qualitative sources of evidence (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2011; Robson and McCartan, 2016). To do this, it draws on two projects. The first study relates to a larger study of 21 teachers of occupational programmes. The aim is to study teaching knowledge and its application in pedagogic contexts (Loo, 2015). For this chapter, the data relate to seven of the participants from FE. The second study offers a structured approach to enhancing the deliverers’ pedagogies who have occupation-related experiences in addition to their teaching experiences. It uses digitally recorded teaching sessions (Loo, 2013). In both studies, the research methods include quantitative and qualitative research methods in which questionnaire surveys are used to capture details of the teachers’ age, gender and experiences (teaching, occupation and life). The first project uses semi-structured interviews, which are dictated by the participants’ questionnaire details to capture rich and nuanced data along with supporting documents such as programme specifications, professional guidelines and accreditation requirements. The second project uses a similar questionnaire survey to ascertain the participants’ salient details, which are then used to focus the semi-structured interviews together with three recordings of teaching sessions of the same student cohort by each of the six participants. Relevant documents such as programme specifications are also obtained.
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Regarding the specificities of the teachers in the two studies, with the seven participants in the first study, they have teaching experiences in art, fashion and textiles, gas servicing, equine, health and social care, and travel and tourism (in the airline sector). Participants in the second study have teaching experiences in art (such as painting, printmaking and drawing), dental hygiene, health and social care, information technology, and life skills. As participants in both studies have pedagogic and occupation-related experiences and teaching qualifications, the use of these two studies offers this article a strong degree of compatibility. Additionally, the researcher and author of this paper also have similar experiences, and these shared experiences may have facilitated the close interaction and description of the participants’ articulations (LeCompte and Preissle, 1993). The data collected from the interviews were transcribed in both projects and later re-examined concerning the aims of this study. The re-evaluation process offers different perspectives to the earlier ones (Miles and Huberman, 1994). The captured data from the first study focused on the characteristics of pedagogic activities in occupation-related courses from the perspective of teaching know-how. The re-evaluation of the data led to the identification of teaching knowledge for the training of teachers. From the second project where the data were used to study the application of digital teaching recordings as an approach to reflective peer review for teaching enhancement, the re-evaluation has led to the application of the findings for the training of teachers on occupational courses in the FE sector. The re-evaluation process included the various stages with the specific aims of this chapter in mind. The stages were the generation of codes, the identification of terms and phrases, patterns and themes, the triangulation of identified scenarios from the data sources, and linkage of these scenarios to the theoretical frameworks of teaching know-how, multimodality and reflective learning discussed in the previous section (Robson and McCartan, 2016).
Discussion This section has two parts. The first draws on the perspectives of three participants (Ann, Lou and Rich), who are teachers of journalism, dance and IT, respectively. Their experiences and insights offer ideas for inclusion into the curriculum for the teaching of WP learners. The second part offers pedagogic insights to deliverers of FE courses with particular foci on WP learners. It does this by using a peer review reflective approach with the aid of multimodality framework to improve the lecturers’ teaching. Ann is a lecturer in journalism and radio production at an FE college. She came from a modest background and attended Oxford University for her first degree. She lost her parents when she was a teenager. Ann worked in the private sector in the hotel industry in Japan and England, and in the public sector as a civil servant. She has a keen awareness of her WP learners’ social
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environments. She recounted the time when they had to complete their curriculum vitae with the view of finding employment. She was struck by their lack of established social values. Her learners were including ‘watching films’ as interests whereas she stressed that a potential employer would want to know much more than a generic hobby. An employer would be looking for more substantial areas such as volunteering for a specific charity, etc. Not in a dissimilar way, she felt that this ‘social disparity’ was similar to Bernstein’s (1990) elaborated and restrictive codes where the former resided with the middle classes, and the latter with those from the ‘working classes’. Ann sees herself as a ‘social crusader’. She uses her modest background, academic experiences, and occupational experiences from the private and public sectors to engage with her learners from similar backgrounds to try and make them more aware of the established social values by which they will be judged in areas such as employment. Lou teaches dance at an adult and community institution. She qualified as a dancer and worked with a touring group of contemporary dance in the continent. As someone who has physical disabilities, she is very conscious of the perspectives of some of her students with physical and mental issues. Her teaching approaches are informed by her own experiences of dance, life and physical issues. She recounted the time when she was a student of dance and her teacher’s lack of awareness of lactic acid poisoning as this condition affected her dance ability. Her teacher’s lack of disciplinary know-how had a positive impact on her teaching. She used this know-how to include stretching exercises to prevent this phenomenon in her dance classes along with her awareness of the learners’ emotions such as frustration and confinement in wheelchairs to approach her teaching strategies. Rich teaches information technology and art at an FE college. He trained and practised as a graphic artist, palmist, homoeopath and reflexologist. He came from Australia and worked in Switzerland and the US before settling in the UK. Rich works with his disadvantaged learners of IT to help them motivate themselves with his ‘game-playing’ approach. This approach includes gently offering them time to engage with their learning in bite size and to get them to reflect on their materialistic perspectives such as consumption of branded products. By using real-life and occupational experiences, Rich slowly shifts his learners’ perception of learning and wider social contexts. These three ‘case studies’ of Ann, Lou and Rich have purchase concerning curriculum development and delivery. They draw on their own life, occupational and pedagogic experiences (Clandinin, 1985; Loo, 2012, 2014). They also require a strong affinity with and knowledge of their WP learners (Shulman, 1987; Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer, 2001; Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell, 2003). The know-how is recontextualized to help Ann, Lou and Rich to relate pedagogically (Bernstein, 1990; Barnett, 2006; Evans et al., 2010; Loo, 2014) with their disadvantaged learners using the appropriate teaching strategies. The wider perspectives of teaching knowledge are helpful
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in curriculum formation not only in the inclusion in the course specifications but also serve as an acknowledgement of the relevance and importance of the deliverers’ wider experiences to informing and improving teaching and their relationships with their learners. This wider approach to viewing teaching know-how has utility for curriculum formation in teacher education in the FE sector in England. Its current form is the ‘Teaching and Training Qualifications for the Further Education and Skills Sector in England’ (Learning and Skills Improvement Service, 2013). Even though this programme is non-mandatory, it offers theories of learning, teaching approaches/strategies and pedagogic knowledge relating to areas of assessments, students and pedagogic settings. The document has 38 pages consisting of an overview, a description of the qualifications, explanation of the implications of the changes to the qualifications and examples of an effective teacher training programme. It also offers three levels of generic qualifications together with specialist diplomas in the areas of literacy and ESOL. The credits in this document relate to ‘the study of underpinning theories, frameworks and research into effective teaching and learning alongside the development of practical teaching skills’ (LSIS, 2013, p. 18). The credits also include knowledge and application of theory and teaching principles and the use of technologies. There is an effort to integrate knowledge into teacher education though little is made in defining teaching knowledge, its related typologies or sources, nor any mention of the significant proportion of the occupational/vocational programmes that are offered in the sector and related to these courses, the relevance of the teachers’ occupational experiences and knowledge. The wider descriptions of teaching knowledge as exemplified by the ‘three case studies’ would enable a more comprehensive coverage in teacher education since the foci of the LSIS document are on the generic aspects of teacher education. Despite the wide coverage of courses and disciplines, a more critical approach to defining, typologising and sourcing of teaching knowledge may assist those training to be teachers in the sector, particularly concerning the wider relevant occupational and life experiences of these teachers for the facilitation of WP teaching. The earlier literature sources on disciplinary knowledge (Becher, 1994; Smeby, 1996), teaching knowledge (Clandinin, 1985; Shulman, 1987; Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer, 2001; Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell, 2003), and occupation and related life experiences (Loo, 2012, 2014) support a WP teacher’s conceptualisation of her/his sense of teaching knowledge. A broadening of teaching knowledge will need to be applied eventually to pedagogic activities via the processes of recontextualization. From the perspectives of teachers, the recontextualization of ‘what’ aspects of the curriculum may be used via teaching strategies in a sequence of lessons alongside with the pacing of these chosen aspects (i.e. the ‘how’, Bernstein, 1990). Evans et al.’s ‘content recontextualization’ offers insights into how fragments of the teacher training specifications may be taught. Their ‘learner recontextualization’ offers
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understanding of how the teacher uses her/his strategies to relate the theoretical concepts such as learning theories with the work-related know-how such as negotiating the classroom environment regarding WP learners, room structure, and the use of technologies. Finally, Loo’s ‘ongoing recontextualization’ process offers additional understanding into how teachers negotiate the disciplinary knowledge between subject areas such as psychology in health and social care and between disciplinary knowledge and the everyday experiences such as related concepts of psychology in relating to patients with mental issues. These examples offer supporting strategies for WP teaching. The second part of this section focuses on a pedagogical solution that draws from the re-evaluated empirical data of Project 2. Using reflective peer review as a way of refining teaching in a collaborative and supportive manner and applying multimodality to critique the digitally recorded teaching observations, these two approaches facilitate teaching quality (Loo, 2013). The two themes that are relevant to this chapter consist of the ‘Opportunities to review the course’ and ‘Learning from peer review interaction’. The first theme that relates to the ‘Opportunities to review the course’ emerged from the analysis of the reflections from the peer group after having watched the recorded digital teaching session on ‘Taking History’. I feel, talking to my line manager coming out of this project [Project 2] that the students need more help in an effective speaking role because they [the dental hygiene students] have to do this role play. I’m looking into setting up a new module next term where we video students doing this role play to try and get them over this. The other thing they have to do is to get tutors to act as patients and fire questions at them and to talk to the tutors like their patients. Currently, they have huge problems when they know that know quite a lot about gums but trying to put the information across to a patient who may know nothing about it and to be able to talk in patient language. (Cori) This quotation was about the peer review discussion of the digitally recorded teaching session by Cori on ‘Taking History’ (Loo, 2013). It showed in the recording Cori and her dental hygiene learners, who were first-year candidates of a professionally accredited programme. The tutor qualified as a teacher on a PGCE (post-compulsory) programme where she chose due to the occupational feature of her teaching activities, which were compatible with similar programmes in the FE sector. The participants highlighted some multi-modes (Kress, 2010) of pedagogic interests such as communication skills of the learners in a role-play situation where they were assigned in pairs and working on taking the oral history of the ‘patient’ in individual cubicles which were equipped like in a dental clinic. This simulated learning environment was also discussed in the peer review alongside the students’ disciplinary knowledge and
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how the technical know-how was conveyed in the simulated environment. These multi-modes of discussions led Cori to reflect on and to take action by suggesting to her line manager that a new module focusing on the aspects of interactions with patients and their use of the appropriate language with the patients would be beneficial to their learning. This example of improving the quality of teaching along with students’ learning and related outcomes offers insights into the possibilities of quality pedagogic engagement concerning WP learners. It offered additional space and time to reflect on their delivery (Jewitt, 2009; Lemke, 2009; Kress, 2010), which might not have been noticed by Cori in a real-life session (Edwards, Jones and Murphy, 2007). The video replay offered her and her peers’ fresh insights which might not have been identified otherwise and thus this digitally recorded approach served as a useful tool to reflect, both individually (Polanyi, 1966) and collectively (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), to have a better understanding of the pedagogic activities. The other theme relevant to this investigation relates to ‘Learning from peer review interaction’. The following quotations were a result of after watching the dental hygiene digitally recorded session: This approach [review of the digital recording of the dental hygiene teaching session] allows you to see how others deal with pedagogic situations and can then compare to how I deal with my teaching situation that may be similar. A discussion is so important, but it should not replace a live observation. I think the value of the camcorder is for fine-tuning. Once you have been down the line of doing teaching and having been observed, you can then improve your teaching by watching. The actual hands-on of a teacher coming into the classroom and seeing the whole class atmosphere is also relevant. However, there is a place for the videoing of the sessions. (Lou) I think it is really useful how other colleagues [not the teacher educator as expert] teach. I could have done with more subject specialist feedback, especially in specific contexts. The use of video recording can be used to adjust this lack of live subject specialist observation. (Lou) One can slice this approach [peer review of the digitally recorded teaching session] in different ways such as issues with body contact or people who are too verbose, etc. After watching the recordings and debriefing, one can remember so much. (Rich) Lou as a dance teacher reflects on the relevance as a non-specialist observer in a dental hygiene session where the emphasis might be on generic pedagogic practices rather than discipline-related issues. This approach of video recording
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might offer richer insights of teaching, but this might not preclude the relevance of a real-life observation by a specialist observer. In fact, one may suggest the use of the video recordings offers the possibilities of being ‘observed’ by a generalist and a specialist of dance in this example thus facilitating quality teaching and a 360-degree evaluation. The previous quotations also centred on discussions relating to the multi-modes of teaching. They include teaching know-how propounded by Shulman (1987) on general pedagogical knowledge, Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer (2001) on curriculum and instructional techniques, and Clandinin (1985) on professional experiences. They also featured Becher (1994) and Smeby (1996) on disciplinary knowledge, and Loo (2012, 2014) on occupational (dance in this example) experiences. The quotation by Rich exemplified the comments from other peers regarding the potential richness of watching and reviewing the recordings (Tripp and Rich, 2012) where quite often it was easier to watch a recording and discuss it rather than put into a codified format like in a formal observation feedback. He suggested that a lot of the pedagogic activities could not be easily codified or explicated in the textual format like an observation feedback sheet. Also, he suggested that there might be other ways of demonstrating pedagogic incidents through visual aids, use of analogies and metaphors to facilitate the understanding of the subtleties and nuances (both tacit and explicit) of teaching (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Polanyi, 1966). In summary, the widening of teaching knowledge to encompass sources from pedagogic, occupational and life experiences offers greater insights of what knowledge teachers of occupation-related courses use in their WP sessions. Additionally, how they apply these sources in their teaching via the recontextualization processes offer an additional understanding of this complex pedagogic process. This pedagogic activity can be fine-tuned using multimodality and reflective peer review.
Conclusion This chapter argued that learning could not be divorced from quality teaching especially where WP learners entered education with social and cultural disadvantages. One aspect of levelling the educational playing field is to offer quality teaching to these learners. This contribution suggested that a broadening of the WP field of research was needed and that the focus should also be on the teaching side of the educational equation to promote lifelong learning and work-related outcomes for these WP learners. The widening of the WP field of investigation included the reconceptualisation of teaching knowledge especially from the perspectives of deliverers of and with occupational courses in the FE sector, where a majority of these offers are located. The reconceptualisation of teaching know-how included pedagogic, occupation and life-related experiences of those teachers of vocational courses and recontextualization processes to understand how these sources
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of knowledge might be applied. It offered a pedagogical solution for analysing digital recordings of teaching sessions using multimodality, and reflective peer review approaches to enhance the teachers’ understanding of their own and their peers’ pedagogic activities. The contributions of this chapter consist of an intellectual space to a widening of the WP field of research away from the traditional focus on learners and offer a broadening study of the teaching aspect of the pedagogical equation. By focusing the attention on quality teaching to enhance the WP learners’ (lifelong) learning and outcomes, this investigation offers a fresh impetus in conceptualising the WP field. It also broadens the notion of teaching knowledge (its definition and application) especially from the teaching perspectives of the vocational/occupational programmes, which adds towards a better understanding of the complexity of occupation-related teaching. Lastly, the investigation offers a pedagogical solution to improving teachers’ pedagogic activities individually, collaboratively and tangentially, encouraging a sense of a community of professional practitioners. The implications arising from this study may affect the individual teachers regarding their professional development but also in their initial teacher training by having a clearer concept of teacher knowledge and its applicability. It also provides teacher educators, managers and teaching institutions a clearer notion of what constitutes teaching know-how and how supportive conditions may be created not only for deliverers and hopefully the eventual learners. Finally, policymakers and researchers in the WP field may use the contributions from this study to incorporate them into curricula (teacher education and subject specifications) and related educational documents such as professional standards and government reports.
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Reconceptualising teacher education 101 Clandinin, J. 1985 Personal practical knowledge: a study of teachers’ classroom images. Curriculum Inquiry, 15(4): 361–385. Coffield, F., Vignoles, A. 1997 Widening participation in higher education by ethnic minorities, women and alternative students. Report 5 for the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education. London, HMSO. Cohen, L., Manion, L., Morrison, K. 2011 Research Methods in Education. Abingdon, Routledge. Cole, G. D. H. 1955 Studies in Class Structure. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Connor, H. 2001 Deciding for or against in higher education: the ways of young people from lower social class backgrounds. Higher Education Quarterly, 55: 204–224. Council of Europe 1996 Project on Access to Higher Education in Europe: Working Report. Part 1 Synthesis and Recommendations. Strasbourg, Council of Europe. Craft, A., Chappell, K., Twining, P. 2008 Learners reconceptualising education: widening participation through creative engagement? Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 45(3): 235–245. Crosling, G., Heagney, M., Thomas, L. 2009 Improving student retention in higher education: improving teaching and learning. Australian Universities Review, 51(2): 9–18. Crozier, G., Reay, D., Clayton, J., Colliander, L., Grinstead, J. 2008 Different strokes for different folks: diverse students in diverse institutions – experiences of higher education. Research Papers in Education, 23(2): 167–177. Dale, R. R., Griffiths, S. 1965 Down Stream: Failure in the Grammar School. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) 2015 Fulfilling Our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice. London, BIS. Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) 2016 Success as a Knowledge Economy: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice. London, BIS. Department for Education 2010 The Importance of Teaching. London, The Stationery Office. Education and Training Foundation (ETF) 2014 Professional Standards for Teachers and Trainers in England: Initial Guidance for Users. London, ETF. Edward, M., Jones, S., Murphy, F. 2007 Hand-held video for clinical skills teaching. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(4): 401–408. Evans, K., Guile, D., Harris, J., Allan, H. 2010 Putting knowledge to work: a new approach. Nurse Education Today, 30(3): 245–251. Flude, M. 1974 Sociological accounts of differential educational attainment. In: Flude, M. and Ahier, J. (Eds) Educability, Schools and Ideology. London, Croom Helm, pp. 15–52. Frontier Economics 2016 Further Education Workforce Data for England: Analysis of the 2014– 2015 Staff Individualised Record (SIR) Data. London, Frontier Economics. Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) 1997 Learning Works: Widening Participation in Further Education. Coventry, FEFC. Gallacher, J., Crossan, B., Field, J., Merrill, B. 2002 Learning careers and the social space: exploring the fragile identities of adult returners in the new further education. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 21(6): 493–509. Gordon, A. 1981 The educational choices of young people. In: Fulton, O. (Ed) Access to Higher Education. Guildford, Society for Research into Higher Education, pp. 122–147. Hall, J. R., Glass, D. V. 1954 Education and social mobility. In: Glass, D. V. (Ed) Social Mobility in Britain. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 291–307. Hockings, C., Cooke, S., Yamashita, H., McGinty, S., Bowl, M. 2009 ‘I’m neither entertaining nor charismatic . . . ‘ negotiating university teacher identity within diverse student groups. Teaching in Higher Education, 14(5): 483–494.
102 Reconceptualising teacher education Jewitt, C. 2009 An introduction to multimodality. In: Jewitt, C. (Ed) The Routledge Handbook of Multimodality Analysis. London, Routledge, pp. 140–150. Jones, K. 2006 Valuing diversity and widening diversity: the experiences of access to social work students in further and higher education. Social Work Education, 25(5): 485–500. Kettley, N. 2007 The past, present and future of widening participation research. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(3): 333–347. Kress, G. 2010 Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London, Routledge. Lacey, C. 1970 Hightown Grammar: The School as a Social System. Manchester, Manchester University Press. Learning and Skills Improvement Service 2013 Teaching and Training Qualifications for the Further Education and Skills Sector in England (2013): Guidance for Initial Teacher Education Providers. Coventry, LSIS. LeCompte, M., Preissle, J. 1993 Ethnography and Qualitative Design in Educational Research. London, Academic Press Limited. Lemke, J. 2009 Multimodality, identity and time. In: Jewitt, C. (Ed) The Routledge Handbook of Multimodality Analysis. London, Routledge, pp. 140–150. Loo, S. 2012 The application of pedagogic knowledge to teaching: a conceptual framework. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 31(6): 705–723. Loo, S. 2013 Professional development of teachers: using multimodality and reflective peer review approaches to analyse digitally recorded teaching practices. Teacher Development: An International Journal of Teachers’ Professional Development, 17(4): 499–517. Loo, S. 2014 Placing ‘knowledge’ in teacher education in the English further education sector: an alternative approach based on collaboration and evidence-based approach. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(3): 355–372. Loo, S. 2015 Reconceptualising vocational/occupational pedagogy: terminology, scope and framework. Paper presented at the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults (SCUTREA) Conference, University of Leeds, Leeds, 7–9 July. Loughran, J., Mitchell, I., Mitchell, J. 2003 Attempting to document teachers’ professional knowledge. Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(6): 853–873. Macdonald, C., Stratta, E. 2001 From access to widening participation: responses to the changing population in higher education in the UK. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 25(2): 249–258. Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M. 1994 Qualitative Data Analysis: A Sourcebook of New Methods. Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications. Nonaka, I., Takeuchi, H. 1995 The Knowledge Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York, Oxford University Press. Parr, J. 2000 Identity and Education: The Links for Mature Women Students. Aldershot, Ashgate. Polanyi, M. 1966 The Tacit Dimension. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pollard, A., Anderson, J., Maddock, M., Swaffield, S., Warin, J., Warwick, P. 2008 Reflective Teaching: Evidence-Informed Professional Practice. London, Continuum. Reay, D., Ball, S., David, M. 2002 ‘It’s taking me a long time but I’ll get there in the end’: mature students on access courses and higher education choice. British Educational Research Journal, 28(1): 5–19. Robson, C., McCartan, K. 2016 Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons. Rosen, B. C. 1956 The achievement syndrome: a psychocultural dimension of social stratification. American Sociological Review, 21: 203–211.
Reconceptualising teacher education 103 Ryan, A. B., Connolly, B. 2000 Women’s community education in Ireland: the need for new directions toward ‘really useful knowledge’. In: Thompson, J. (Ed) Stretching the Academy: The Politics and Practice of Widening Participation in Higher Education. Leicester, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, pp. 94–110. Shulman, L. S. 1987 Knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1): 1–22. Siraj-Blatchford, I., Sammons, P., Taggart, B., Sylva, K., Melhuish, E. 2006 Educational research and evidence-based policy: the mixed-method approach of the EPPE project. Evaluation and Research in Education, 19(2): 63–82. Smeby, J-C. 1996 Disciplinary differences in university teaching. Studies in Higher Education, 21: 69–79. Social Mobility Commission 2017 State of the Nation 2017: Social Mobility in Great Britain. London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Stodtbeck, F. L. 1961 Family integration, values and achievement. In: Halsey, A. H., Floud, J. and Anderson, C. A. (Eds) Education, Economy and Society: A Reader in the Sociology of Education. New York, Free Press, pp. 315–347. Stuart, M. 2012 Collaborating for Change? Managing Widening Participation in Further and Higher Education. Leicester, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. Thomas, L. 2001 Widening Participation in Post-Compulsory Education. London, Continuum. Tripp, T., Rich, P. 2012 Using video to analyze one’s own teaching. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(4): 678–704. UNESCO 1998 Higher education in the 21st century: vision and action. Final Report of the World Conference on Higher Education, Paris, 5–9 October. Paris, UNESCO. Verloop, N., Van Driel, J., Meijer, P. 2001 Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5): 441–461. Watson, D. 2007 Briefing paper: how to think about widening participation in UK higher education. Discussion paper for HEFCE. Seminar Series on Mass Education in UK and International Contexts, Surrey, 29–30 May. Winch, C. 2015 Towards a framework for professional curriculum design. Journal of Education and Work, 28(2): 165–186. Woodrow, M., Yorke, M. 2002 Social Class and Participation: Good Practice in Widening Access to Higher Education. London, Universities UK. Young, M. 1971 Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education. London, Collier Macmillan. Young, M. 2013 Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge-based approach. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(2): 101–118. Young, M., Muller, J. 2013 On the powers of powerful knowledge. Review of Education, 1(3): 229–250.
Chapter 6
The pedagogic implications of occupation-r elated teaching professionals in higher education
Introduction This chapter focuses on the teaching of professional education in higher education institutions (HEIs). In particular, it highlights the pedagogic issues concerning teachers or deliverers of clinical training for general practitioners (GPs) and emergency medicine (EM) physicians. The pedagogic issues relate to the sources and forms of knowledge that are necessary for curriculum formation or development, and how these may be applied for teaching (i.e. curriculum implementation). In England, there is no mandatory requirement for deliverers at HEIs to obtain teaching qualifications. However, they are encouraged to undergo a degree of teacher training. The extent of this encouragement varies from institution to institution. This might include obtaining sufficient credits or enrolling in a teacher education programme. However, the publication of the ‘The Teaching Excellence Framework’ (House of Commons, 2016) may encourage HEIs to up their teaching requirements of their lecturers as the spotlight will be on the institutions’ teaching expertise especially if students view themselves as ‘customers’ and expect teaching value for their tuition fees. On the other hand, as an academic in the HEIs with an eye on improving or maintaining their research profiles, s/he will need to juggle the conflicting demands of teaching and carrying out research and publishing (i.e. The Research Excellence Framework). The increasing demands of government policies to make teaching activities more transparent to fee-paying customers on the one hand, and also to ensure the high profiling of research activities on the other, an academic may feel greater pressure to juggle these two professional activities over the coming years. Currently, the Higher Education Academy (HEA) (2011), an independent and non-profit organisation, offers the ‘The UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education’ document. This document offers guidance to pedagogic activities in the higher education sector. It is eight pages long, and it encourages HEI deliverers to improve their teaching abilities. ‘Core knowledge’ is used as a term to denote subject material, methods for teaching, learning and assessment, students’ learning,
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application of technologies, evaluation of teaching and quality assurance (HEA, 2011). This document will be referred to later in this investigation. HEA will be merged with the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (LFHE) from August 2018. Its work on the professional teaching standards will not be affected. The empirical findings are from a project that covers three academic levels of teaching and learning, which are pre-university, higher and professional education (Loo, 2018). The research questions covered the definition of occupational or work-related pedagogy and the acquisition and application of teaching know-how on the related programmes. In total, there were 21 purposive participants, and seven teachers with the relevant occupational or work-related experiences were sought from each of the three academic levels. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered which included salient details of the participants’ teaching and professional experiences from a questionnaire survey, and rich and textured descriptions of their teaching and professional practices from one-to-one semi-structured interviews (Table 6.1). Supporting
Table 6.1 Details of participants Participant: Teaching Gender: institutions: Age: Level of academic qualifications:
Full-t ime/ Disciplinary areas: part-t ime: Years of teaching experience:
Occupational/l ife experiences:
P1 Female 30s
HEI Level 5
Full-t ime 8 years
Working as a general practitioner
P2 Male 40s
HEI Level 5
Full-t ime 10 years
P3 Male 40s P4 Male 30s P5 Female 40s
HEI Level 5
Part-t ime
Emergency medicine
HEI Level 5
Full-t ime 1 year
Emergency medicine
HEI Level 5
Full-t ime 2 years
Clinician (on the undergraduate medical education)
Clinician (on the undergraduate medical education) Emergency medicine
Working as a consultant in Accident and Emergency Working as a locum in Accident and Emergency Working as a trainee in Accident and Emergency Working as a strategic business analyst in the banking sector, a director in a mobile communications company and as a general practitioner (Continued)
106 The pedagogic implications Table 6.1 (Continued) Participant: Teaching Gender: institutions: Age: Level of academic qualifications:
Full-t ime/ Disciplinary areas: part-t ime: Years of teaching experience:
Occupational/l ife experiences:
P6 Male 40s
HEI Level 5
Part-t ime 7 years
Vascular surgery
P7 Female 30s
HEI Level 5
Part-t ime 8 years
General practice
Working as a surgeon in several hospitals including in Accident and Emergency Working as a general practitioner partner in a medical centre and in Accident and Emergency
documents such as programme specifications were also amassed. The data were analysed using the generation of codes, identification of phrases, patterns and themes, triangulation of identified scenarios, a generalisation of typology, and linkage of typology to theoretical frameworks (Robson and McCartan, 2015). The chapter is structured into four sections. After the introduction, the relevant theoretical concepts of teaching knowledge and curriculum formation are reviewed and supported by empirical data. The third section focuses on how teaching knowledge is applied concerning the implementation of course specifications and teacher education/training. Similarly, this discussion will be supported by the relevant empirical data. It needs to be stressed that the chapter does not intend to comprehensively review the literature surrounding this area of investigation but review supporting literature. The final section offers by way of a conclusion the contributions and implications of this study from the perspectives of the users such as deliverers, institutions and policymakers.
Knowledge and curriculum formation This section delineates the sources and types of knowledge for both the clinical and pedagogic practices along with the content of the curriculum and specifications for the two practices. The sources that the seven participants (P1–P7 in Table 6.1) mentioned in both the questionnaire survey and interviews are diverse. P7 indicated that her completion of the Teaching Improvement Programme System Course (TIPS), a teaching offer that is tailored to clinicians who were involved in teaching, enabled her to acquired pedagogic theories. These included learning concepts, planning and choosing the appropriate teaching approaches for clinical
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education. Other formal sources included medical degrees/qualifications, and masters programmes in clinical education as espoused by P1 and P5 jointly. The seven participants included informal sources such as medical texts and guidelines, Internet sources and continuous professional development sessions (both formal and informal). These sources also included discussions with colleagues (via face-to-face and social media), participation and attendance at conferences, experiential learning and reflection, and learning from students, patients and colleagues (e.g. formally from peer observation, and informally). Finally, they comprised of experiences from working both as clinicians and teachers in organisations, role modelling from peers, peer support/mentoring, and business and management literature. These sources may be classified into disciplines of clinical and education. They can also be viewed as formal and informal sources. Similarly, the sources may be viewed as centred on people, institutions/organisations or society. Finally, these sources may relate to artefacts and technology. Regarding the types of knowledge, the analysis of the questionnaire survey and interviews data indicated that these might be typologised as clinical, practical, professional, leadership and management, and educational. Clinical knowledge includes those from anatomy, biochemistry, pathology, pharmacology, physiology and therapeutics. These areas may be termed basic medical science subjects. P5 ventured to distinguish these subjects from basic human science area such as clinical epidemiology, communication skills, ethics and law, medical statistics, psychology and sociology. Practical know-how includes clinical skills and knowledge of roles of stakeholders and systems in an organisation. Professional knowledge includes team working, advocacy, professionalism and situational judgement. For leadership and management know-how, they include quality improvement, monitoring and control of costs and budgeting, and cash flow forecast. Concerning educational knowledge, these may include teaching, learning, assessment, course design and student support. P1 went further and specified some educational areas that she was interested in. Education know-how is evidence-based teaching methods, educational pedagogy, strategies for learning in the clinical environment, current clinical hot topics for general practitioners and medical students, the structure of GP, and the appropriate areas for teaching. Other types of know-how are an understanding of curriculum development and formation, feedback and evaluation of learners, and research capabilities especially in qualitative research methods (such as focus groups, interviews) and data analysis. The eclectic types of knowledge as identified by the seven clinicians require synthesis to make coherent sense of them. Bernstein (1996) offers a way of looking at knowledge. He classified knowledge or discourses as vertical and horizontal. Bernstein (1996, p. 170) views horizontal knowledge as a “form of knowledge usually typified as everyday, oral or common-sense knowledge” with characteristics of “local, segmented, context- dependent, tacit, multi- layered, often contradictory across contexts but not within contexts”. From a
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teaching perspective, horizontal knowledge may refer to taking an oral history of a patient, and this can then be used by the trainee clinicians to discuss the possible medical issues as a case study. Bernstein (1996, p. 172) defines vertical knowledge as “specialised knowledge are not segments of localised activities, but specialised, explicitly assembled, symbolic structures”. Thus this knowledge is not segmentally organised nor does it become social units of acquisition. From an EM perspective, vertical knowledge refers to knowledge of disciplines like anatomy, which does not rely on localised activities such as a specific teaching institution or hospital. Also, the knowledge may be referred to by clinicians teaching anywhere in which the know-how is required for the diagnosis of a patient. Bernstein (1996, p. 172) differentiates vertical discourse or knowledge further into two forms of structures: hierarchical and horizontal. The former refers to “an explicit, coherent, systematically principled and hierarchical organisation of knowledge as in the natural sciences”. Again, using GP and EM teaching, this type of vertical discourse may include anatomy, biochemistry, pathology, pharmacology, physiology and therapeutics as indicated by the seven participants. P1 and P7 viewed these as basic science knowledge. The latter type of vertical discourse – horizontal vertical discourse structures – gives “rise to a series of specialised languages, each with its own specialised modes of interrogation and specialised criteria as in the humanities and social sciences” (Bernstein, 1996, p. 172). Education as part of the social sciences, according to Bernstein, offers a specialised language for articulating its area. It also borrows concepts from other disciplines such as business management, psychology and sociology. The clinician deliverers straddle more than one discipline – education and clinical areas of GP and EM, from this study. As Bernstein has indicated, education is part of his ‘horizontal vertical discourse’ structures. Also, one may argue, using his definition, that the two clinical areas with their specialised languages of articulation and their modes of interrogation such as diagnosis of a patient’s health are also part of the ‘horizontal vertical discourse structures’. However, the two fields diverge, with further classification as shown next. Even within the horizontal vertical discourse structure, Bernstein divides the structure into strong and weak grammars. Strong grammar is related to “explicit formally articulated concepts, relations and procedures as in economics and linguistics” and for the weak grammar, “relations and procedures are less formally articulated as in sociology and social anthropology” (Bernstein, 1996, p. 174). The weak grammar is transmitted through explicit or tacit forms; in the former, learners are informed of the specific part of the curriculum for learning, and in the latter learners are not told of the part of the curriculum that is transmitted. He acknowledges that certain crafts (e.g. pottery) may be viewed as specialised know-how with their mode of transmission such as via apprenticeships (Bernstein, 1996). This development of the horizontal vertical discourse structures provide traction concerning education as a field of sociology, and for
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Bernstein, this is part of the weak grammar typology. However, clinical studies are seen as strong grammars in the hierarchical vertical discourse structure. Bernstein’s delineations of the two forms of vertical discourse are helpful for this investigation since he offers insights into the areas of education and clinical practices. He also lays the ground to use recontextualization as a process whereby vertical forms of know-how may be adapted through ‘relocation, selection and refocus’ (Bernstein, 1996). For Bernstein (1996), the rules of recontextualization offer an understanding of how knowledge may be re-used in different contexts. Thus, the basic disciplinary knowledge of anatomy may be re-used in the teaching of clinical practices of GP or EM. The anatomical know-how is relocated to the clinical areas, selected from the relevant curriculum and specifications, and refocused to a specific activity such as a patient’s dislocated arm. For him, only vertical knowledge may be recontextualized. This idea will be re-visited later in this section. Bernstein (1996) offers three modes of the process: singular, regions and generic. Singular mode of recontextualization includes disciplines such as “physics, chemistry, history, economics and psychology” (Bernstein, 1996, p. 65). These disciplines have been mentioned by our seven participants of clinical practices. This singular mode relates to know-how that is found in academic disciplines. And the know-how is related to Bernstein’s hierarchical knowledge structures and the strong grammar of the horizontal knowledge structures (Bernstein, 1996). The disciplinary knowledge also has resonances with Becher’s (1994) hard-pure disciplinary grouping where he classifies disciplines into four groups for teaching approaches in the higher education sector. The hard-pure disciplinary group comprises of the pure/natural sciences such as physics and chemistry. The characteristics of this knowledge, according to Becher, include cumulative and atomistic, is concerned with universals, and results in discovery and explanations. Regions are a result of the recontextualization process of the singular mode of know-how. They operate in the intellectual disciplines such as engineering, medicine and architecture (Bernstein, 1996). This mode of Bernstein’s is helpful for this chapter as it offers an understanding of the clinical practices of GP and EM, where the singular knowledge such as anatomy and physiology is recontextualized for the two clinical practices in the study. However, he appeared to view the recontextualization process as one and in the later parts of this section; we will investigate the pertinent developments of the process by the post-Bernsteinian researchers such as Barnett (2006), Evans et al. (2010), and Loo (2014). The third mode advocated by Bernstein is the generic mode where the knowledge is derived not from the academic or applied academic disciplines (as from the first two modes) but on recent constructions of know-how. He identified four types, and they are ‘recontextualizing location’, ‘focus’, ‘location’ and ‘misrecognition’ (Bernstein, 1996). He defines the first type as external and
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independent of pedagogic recontextualizing fields. The second type is directed to extra-school experiences such as work and life experiences, and the third type relates to the curricula based on competence, which he argues may be located in the further education sector. The fourth type is a result of “functional analysis of what [was] taken to be the underlying features necessary to the performance of a skill task, practice or even area of work” (Bernstein, 1996, p. 66–67). The four generic modes of recontextualization using vertical knowledge have a common feature, which is ‘trainability’ where the emphasis is on “something which the actor must possess for that actor to be appropriately formed and re- formed according to technological, organisational and market contingencies” (Bernstein, 1996, p. 73). This definition of the generic modes is divergent from his research on compulsory schooling. They offer theoretical spaces for relating work-related or occupational/vocational education and to use recontextualization as a process to understanding how vertical knowledge may be applied in teaching and learning. He also infers through his phrase “appropriately formed and re-formed” the possibility of more than one type of recontextualization. As mentioned earlier, Barnett (2006), Evans et al. (2010) and Loo (2014) have developed further the types of this process to relate to the pedagogic activities of occupational curriculum and work activities in work-related areas. Barnett (2006) offers a significant development of the recontextualization process as it is posited in work-related setting and not, like Bernstein, in compulsory education. He suggests two types of processes: re-classificatory recontextualization and pedagogic recontextualization. With the former process, it involves strategies that are derived from the occupation/professional practice which are not related to teaching or learning (Barnett, 2006). This means that this process concerns the occupational practices in the way occupational knowledge is selected and used for work. The second process is similar to Bernstein’s concept of recontextualization as it relates to the teaching and learning for the specific work discipline such as GP and EM in our study. This project is significant as it uses recontextualization for work-related teaching and learning and to acknowledge the relevance of adapting occupational know-how to the pedagogic activity. However, the two processes are not clearly explained and not sufficiently contextualised to a specific occupational curriculum to gain a deeper understanding. Loo (2018) offers detailed delineations of the two concepts. Evans et al. (2010) develop further Barnett’s dual recontextualization processes with an offer of four types of recontextualization. They are related to content, pedagogy, workplace and learner (Evans et al., 2010). With content recontextualization, codified knowledge is ‘selected and recombined’ for application in curriculum and teaching activities, and pedagogic recontextualization relates to how the chosen knowledge is applied in the classroom including assessment. Workplace recontextualization is concerned with how knowledge is selected and adapted for the workplace, and learner recontextualization
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focuses on how a student may acquire the necessary knowledge. The researchers offer a nuanced approach to featuring how knowledge may be selected and adapted for different contexts through the four forms of recontextualization. Perhaps, what is not entirely clear from the researchers is how tacit knowledge is featured in the four processes and if the processes involve the possible interactions between explicit/vertical and tacit/horizontal forms of knowledge. In these two aspects, they appeared to have adhered closely to Bernstein’s dualistic classification of knowledge. Loo (2014) offers a development that Evans et al. do not address. He uses ‘ongoing recontextualization’ to indicate the selection and re-focus of both explicit and tacit knowledge where a teacher of occupational provisions with pedagogic, occupational and related life experiences (and related practices) interact on an ongoing basis whenever the required activity – pedagogic or occupational – is called upon. His use of a wider definition of knowledge has resonances with Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995), Eraut’s (2004) and Winch’s (2014) definitions of occupational know-how. Loo’s (2014) recontextualization offers further development of Bernstein’s fine distinction of horizontal discourses/knowledge and weak grammar of horizontal knowledge structures (a form of vertical discourse). Bernstein (1996, p. 174), indeed, acknowledged the “possibility of confusion between horizontal discourses and horizontal knowledge structures”. These delineations of the types of recontextualization offer this chapter a rich resource to draw on in our understanding of how forms of know-how may be applied in pedagogic settings. These examples will be featured in the ‘Curriculum implementation’ section using curricula from GP and EM. The other significant concept that has purchase concerning occupational pedagogy is ‘capacity’. He defines this as: The outcome of a specialised identity and this precedes ability to respond effectively to concurrent and subsequent retraining . . . This identity arises out of a particular social order through relations which the identity enters into with other identities of reciprocal collective purpose. (Bernstein, 1996, p. 73) The three recontextualizing modes of Bernstein’s offer this study insight of relating occupational teaching and learning. In particular, the regions mode appears to be the ‘best fit’ for clinical practices where the knowledge from the singular mode such as biology and physiology is recontextualized for clinical activities. The third ‘generic’ mode also enables the development of more than one type of recontextualization process, and the inclusion of skill sets and capacity in work-related activities. In short, his modes are helpful in creating intellectual spaces to include clinical work, wider definitions of knowledge to encompass skill sets and capacities, and the development of types of recontextualization process. Recontextualization may be viewed as a means
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of adapting knowledge for different purposes in teaching and occupational practices. To date, we have been discussing the sources of knowledge that are relevant to the deliverers of the clinical curriculum such as GP and EM. The types of knowledge are also delineated using analysed data from the seven participants. These types of knowledge are related to teaching and clinical practices, and so pedagogic and occupational knowledge types are studied. Furthermore, Bernstein’s classification of vertical and horizontal discourses/knowledge and the process of recontextualization featuring the relocation, selection and refocus of vertical knowledge are examined about clinical teaching and practice. These conceptual notions have purchase in this chapter as they allow theoretical developments of pedagogic and occupational knowledge to include wider definitions to encompass skills, capacities, work and life experiences, and types of recontextualization. The remaining part of this section delineates the explicit and tacit forms of knowledge and wider forms of know-how that are relevant to occupational practices. The teaching knowledge relating to teaching, learning, learners, assessment, course design, feedback and research capabilities may be explicit or tacit. Shulman (1987, p. 8) offers seven types of teaching knowledge. They are content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge (comprising of principles and strategies of classroom management and organisation), curriculum knowledge (comprising of resources and course specifications), pedagogical content knowledge (combination of content and pedagogy), knowledge of learners, knowledge of educational contexts (e.g. team members, teaching organisations and policy-making), and knowledge of educational aims and values. For Shulman, pedagogic activities require recording, organising and analysing to establish standards of practice. These may be viewed as explicit types of teaching knowledge as they are recorded and thus codified. Other teacher researchers such as Clandinin (1985), Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer (2001), Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003), and Loo (2012) provide a more tacit stance to teaching know-how. Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003) were interested in the ‘perspective and voice of the teacher’ as they acknowledged the tacit elements of teaching practice alongside the explicit ones. They also allowed a language of articulation to understand how teachers in the compulsory education sector in Australia perform their roles. Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer (2001) focused on developing the tacit dimension of teaching with their six categories of teachers’ practical knowledge and beliefs. This project was based in the Netherlands with secondary school teachers. The findings showed the cognitive dimensions of the teachers via their learning, and applications of their professional knowledge are helpful for this study. This finding allows the chapter to understand how clinicians link occupational activities and experiences with pedagogic ones. These insights can offer greater understanding in their delivery of the occupational curriculum. Clandinin (1985, p. 362) uses ‘personal practical knowledge’ to include
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teachers’ “personal experiential history, both professional and personal” into the teaching knowledge equation. This wider inclusion of a teacher’s experiences is useful for the chapter as one can draw on the clinical teachers’ pedagogic, occupational and life experiences. Loo (2012) focused his attention on further education teachers in England who have occupational experiences before entering into teaching. They also deliver to work-related programmes. His findings offer an explicit acknowledgement of the teachers’ occupational know-how (such as knowledge and experiences including life experiences) in a post-compulsory education sector. To date, the teaching knowledge may include explicit and tacit types of teaching knowledge. The tacit varieties may be focused on an individual teacher (Polanyi, 1966; Collins, 2010) or in a collaborative setting such as with a group of teaching colleagues (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Collins, 2010). Teaching knowledge may also include pedagogy-related know-how and non-pedagogy ones such as occupational knowledge, occupational and life experiences. Turning to occupational knowledge, the seven participants mentioned clinical, practical, professional, and leadership and management-related know- how as forms of clinical know-how. The clinical know-how includes not just explicit know-how that is derived from disciplinary knowledge, or as Bernstein (1996) calls it vertical discourses, or Becher (1994) calls it hard-pure disciplinary type, but tacit types of knowledge too. Practical know-how such as clinical skills and knowledge of the roles of stakeholders is more likely to be tacit to some degree. Similarly, for professional knowledge such as team working, advocacy, professionalism and situational judgement require a degree of non-codified knowledge. There may be two generic forms of tacit knowledge: individually based (Polanyi, 1966; Collins, 2010) and collaboratively focused (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Collins, 2010). Polanyi’s version of tacit knowledge is science related, and so the clinical knowledge is particularly relevant, whereas Collins’s individual tacit form is more generic which appeal more to thinking about pedagogic knowledge. However, Collins’s collaborative tacit knowledge is equally relevant to teaching and clinical practices, whereas Nonaka and Takeuchi’s collaborative know-how is posited in business entities. One may advocate that education is becoming a business concern with its import of business and management concepts (e.g. budgetary costing, Just-In- Time and financial viability criterion). Wider perspectives of occupational knowledge are advocated by Eraut and Winch. Eraut (2004) refers to disciplinary knowledge that professional and vocational courses require. He also includes occupational practice where skill workshops and simulated learning occur in teaching. In his typology, it also includes methodological knowledge (e.g. procedural principles and theoretical aspects), practical skills and techniques (e.g. workshops and laboratory work), and generic skills (e.g. IT, numbers and interpersonal communication). For Eraut, knowledge is theoretical or codified varieties including knowledge
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resources (e.g. Internet). For tacit types, they are skill sets, decision-making and judgement, and understanding of situations, contexts and stakeholders. Winch (2014) developed his ‘professional knowledge’ typology. It has a wider range than Eraut. It includes systematic knowledge (i.e. a theory that is used in occupational settings), technique (which is procedural), skill (which is used in specific contexts unlike technique) and transversal abilities. These abilities consist of planning, coordinating, controlling, communicating and evaluating activities. It also includes project management abilities and individual characteristics (e.g. patience and self-discipline), and occupational capacity (which is awareness of the occupation’s impact on the wider society). Winch’s typology is wider than Eraut’s, as it includes knowledge, skill sets, techniques, abilities, capacities and societal impact. These delineations of occupational knowledge offer an even more eclectic definition of teaching knowledge. The wider definition is useful because it draws on know-how, experiences, human abilities, and capacities and skill sets which cover the breadth and depth of occupational practices such as GP and EM in this chapter. The societal impact resonates with the two medical fields, where its impact on a society’s health and well-being is obvious. We started with our dual definitions of knowledge from Bernstein and even from his constrained definitions he offered theoretical spaces to enable a wider collection of know-how to include skill sets, capacities, and work and life experiences. He provided conceptual accommodation of work-related structures, which was pertinent to this study of clinical teaching and practices. Eraut and Winch with their ‘professional knowledge’ further developed Bernstein’s weakness of a dual definition of knowledge. Finally, Barnett, Evans et al., and Loo expanded Bernstein’s singular view of recontextualization to adapt teaching know-how to teaching, learning and work. Having argued for wider definitions of teaching and occupational know-how, we turn next to how these knowledge types are implemented for the education of occupational provisions using the mechanism of recontextualization.
Curriculum implementation This penultimate section focuses on two curricula from the GP and EM clinical fields to investigate the current provisions regarding a wider definition of teaching know-how (incorporating pedagogic and occupational knowledge). Using empirical findings from the seven participants, the implementation approaches of the two curricula will be investigated. In the introduction, The UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education (HEA, 2011) was studied. This non-mandatory framework has references to knowledge as ‘core knowledge’. However, it is defined as knowledge that is related to subject materials, teaching and learning methods, assessment, students’ learning, and the relevance of technology in the delivery of provisions, evaluations and quality assurance
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(HEA, 2011). Shulman (1987) and Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003) have researched these pedagogic areas in their teacher knowledge typologies. These knowledge types may on the surface be explicit and codified, but there are areas where tacit elements play a part. An example of tacit know- how is assessment where not everything can be assessed, and there are also tacit elements in the marking of these assessments. Lecturers on professional programmes will subscribe to the ‘non-exact science’ of any grading exercise despite having onerous grading criteria. These amongst other reasons were why Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003) chose to focus on both explicit and tacit aspects of teaching know-how. Though the specifications of a pedagogic area are helpful for deliverers of professional education, the HEA standards only offer generic discussions of teaching know-how, and as such it merely serves as a framework to thinking about teaching knowledge. An investigation into curriculum provisions relating to GP and EM provisions might offer deeper insights into teaching knowledge and its implementation. The first two years of the clinical curriculum of the GP provision that P5 teaches on cover the salient areas. These areas include a summary of the year programme, course information for medical students, GP tutors and seminar leaders, and aims and objectives of the provision. The other areas include details of the sessions for coverage for the period and administrative details such as timetables, guidance for ‘responsible learning’, feedback (evaluation) forms and reflective models/frameworks that are applied on this programme. The programme specifications for each of the two ‘theoretical’ years of a medical student offer comprehensive details for the related stakeholders such as medical students, tutors, seminar leaders and administrators. From the pedagogic knowledge perspective, the authors of this clinical curriculum attempted to codify as much as possible the clinical know-how, the learning aims and frameworks, objectives of the provision and teaching sessions, and related coverage of the specifications for the related stakeholders; nevertheless there are still the tacit elements. These tacit elements (Polanyi, 1966; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Collins, 2010) exist even in a clinical offer as professional/occupational experiences, and related practices offer additional insights into learning. The participants would argue it would be unthinkable for a deliverer without the relevant qualifications and occupational experiences to deliver this programme. They (such as P1, P5 and P7) view teaching know- how as the combination of medical knowledge, clinical experiences along with pedagogic ones. Sitting alongside these are abilities, capacities and skill sets relating to communication, confidence to apply theoretical knowledge in occupational practice, leadership, and management as espoused by Eraut (2004) and Winch (2014). The wider definition of teaching know-how in a clinical provision offers a comprehensive view of the eclectic combination of disciplinary knowledge, professional know-how, occupational and pedagogic experiences, abilities, capacities and skill sets that are required.
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Turning to EM education, the College of Emergency Medicine (CEM) and ‘shop-floor’ training at a designated hospital as described by P2 are reference points. CEM1 offers salient details for those wanting to be emergency physicians. It describes the nature of EM, the training programme of three parts: primary examination, intermediate examination and final fellowship examination, literature relating to foundation training, as a student, academic and sub-specialty training in areas of paediatrics, pre-hospital, intensive care medicine and others. CEM also offers Clinical Standards for Emergency Departments.2 They cover areas ranging from asthma, dislocated shoulder, head injury in adults and mental health to spontaneous pneumothorax in adults. These standards “are evidence-based where possible or developed by consensus from Emergency Physicians with relevant expertise and with input from other stakeholders” (CEM, 2014, p. 3). In each of the areas, definitions, standards and references are given to its users. These standards are based on clinical evidence or agreed professional best practice and as such are relevant and contextualised to EM. Behind these standards is disciplinary know-how such as anatomy and physiology, and that the know-how is made relevant to EM through a process of content recontextualization (Evans et al., 2010). For an emergency physician to put these standards into practice in an accident and emergency (A&E) department of a hospital, the physician needs to use the relevant occupational/ professional know-how to a specific clinical context such as an unconscious person with severe bleeding. From a recontextualization perspective, a further process of occupational recontextualization is required. This process enables the relevant standard and know-how to be applied to the specific patient. One may suggest that though the know-how and standards are generic, the specific application is distinct to that emergency physician. Over time, the clinician will amass her/his distinctive occupational experiences and know-how. This ongoing recontextualization (Loo, 2014) suggests that a practitioner uses the relevant know-how (occupationally and pedagogically) to perform her/his occupational activities. In time, the ongoing re-combinations of know-how (such as theoretical and occupational knowledge, experiences, abilities, capacities and skill sets that are explicit and tacit) will become instinctive or subconscious and conscious. The perspectives of the know-how for the practitioner will evolve which is distinctive to her/him. Turning to the teaching of EM, P2, an EM consultant, offers insights. In the teaching hospital where he works, a ‘medical student passport’ is issued to a trainee. It explains the principles of EM, objectives of the department, professional guidance for medical students, expectations of the students and identification of components for assessment. Also, it is a record of the learner’s progress, whether s/he is a junior doctor or someone preparing for finals of EM. A list of competencies ranging from wound dressing, plastering to cannulation is provided. Each learner is expected to carry out project work of her/his choice, finishing with an accessed presentation. The training involves seminar and practical sessions on a subject such as chest pain, sepsis and poisoning,
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and with spaces for monitoring cases. It includes flowcharts of life support and guidance on patient care/experience. The passport, in short, is a source of clinical knowledge, professional experiences and a learning resource. This resource comprises of explicit and tacit know-how where the former includes basic sciences knowledge that is made relevant to EM and the latter clinical experiences. Examples of clinical experiences are a sufficient amount of pressure in placing a cannula to a patient’s vein to facilitate the administering of fluids, medications, etc. For a student, learner recontextualization (Evans et al., 2010) is required in connecting and adapting the necessary know-how to a specific occupational context. Regarding implications for delivering these training provisions, I have divided the next section into three themes. These themes are related to the theoretical frameworks as delineated in the previous section, and the pedagogic implications from the GP and EM disciplines. The first is a reference to the knowledge requirement for teaching and learning. The second refers to the complex interaction of utilising know-how to teaching in the form of strategies for learning. This relates to the final type of recontextualization –integrated applied recontextualization (IAR) – where the teaching and professional/ occupational practices are combined to offer insights into how appropriate teaching strategies are chosen for a particular teaching session. The final theme uses the participants’ perspectives to explain the complexities of integrating know-how from two dimensions – teaching and professional practice. Often, deliverers may conflate these processes of selection, relocation and re-focus (Bernsteinian terminologies). Perhaps, this resulted in difficulties for researchers to tease out the complex sequences of recontextualization processes. These processes may involve curriculum formation and development to the choice of appropriate teaching strategies for a particular discipline at a specific academic level, the certain part of the curriculum, to a distinct cohort of learners, and in a precise teaching environment. The first theme refers to the knowledge requirements for teaching and learning. P5, the deliverer on undergraduate medical education, and with previous professional experiences in the banking and mobile communications sectors, explains the knowledge requirements: Medicine is a difficult subject as students need to acquire a lot of factual knowledge, which is efficiently tested through multiple choice [MCQ]. It is a way of ‘broadcast teaching’, which is an efficient way for students to acquire knowledge. However, they also need life skills, communication skills and learn to be leaders and managers. So they need a wide variety of knowledge. At the same time, and this is a conflict in higher education institutions, how to learn to reflect and so, essay writing is used. That is why we have home visits, and they need to write about situations relating to questions such as what strike you, are there any worries and other deeply emotional issues. They need to describe why they feel those emotions.
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My clinical and practical knowledge informs my teaching content. My professionalism knowledge is used to support and access students. My educational knowledge is used to inform my teaching methods. My leadership and management knowledge are used to examine, analyse and improve my teaching, e.g. quality improvement/action research methodologies. This quotation illustrates the range of teaching know-how that is needed in clinical teaching (as theorised by Eraut (2004) and Winch (2014). Part of this range includes know-how by the teacher researchers such as Clandinin (1985), Shulman (1987), Bernstein (1996), Verloop, Van Driel and Meijer (2001), Loughran, Mitchell and Mitchell (2003), and Loo (2012)). Clinical know- how also encompasses the psychological know-how, and the clinicians’ abilities to relate and empathise with the patients are part of the comprehensive approach to understanding the know-how. The deliverers’ tasks are to facilitate their learners’ acquisition of the know-how (learner recontextualization). The deliverers’ know-how might be viewed as a dual track of teaching and occupational practices. The second theme is the complex interaction of utilising know-how to teaching in the form of strategies for learning. Here, I start with strategies employed by P2 in his emergency medicine teaching specifically for improving decision-making. He listed 13 educational strategies, which might be classified into five categories. The first category relates to communication and includes the presentation to show contrasts between diseases (Mandin et al., 1997), and use of narratives as a way of integrating complex stories across the curriculum (Ryan and Higgs, 2008). The second category refers to cognition methods. They are training to improve reasoning (Croskerry, 2000a), translating knowledge from evidence-based medicine into practice (Yeoh, 2009), ‘cognitive autopsy’ of learning from incorrect decisions (Croskerry, 2000a) and reflective practice where clinicians share their professional experiences (Schön, 1983). The third type refers to case studies. These include problem-based learning where knowledge is learnt through solving of case-based issues (Norman and Schmidt, 2000), case-based learning to deepen understanding of professional contexts (Rivett and Jones, 2008), and simulation to improving team performance in communication, collaboration and decision-making (Ker and Bradley, 2007). The fourth category involves guidance. It consists of guidelines and algorithms for decision-making and improving patient safety (Croskerry, 2000b), coaching in real-life situations to share clinical expertise (Rashotte and Carnevale, 2004), and feedback to assist in calibrating clinical thinking (Lavoie and Croskerry, 2009). The final category uses technology, such as software for clinical decisions for improvement of performance and to heighten awareness of rarer diagnoses (Croskerry, 2009a).3 In addition to the educational strategies for decision-making in EM, the other participants, P1, P5 and P7 with pedagogic experiences in the delivery of
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GP provisions, also mentioned other teaching approaches. These approaches included debates, quizzes, games, role-playing, small group discussions, supervision of single or a pair of learners (for history taking and examination with patients), supervision of a project or research tasks, and symposiums. The traditional ‘broadcast teaching’ is still applicable in addition to those mentioned earlier. P5 and P7 (who has professional experiences as a GP and an EM physician) offer their respective perspectives: learning and teaching in Years 1 and 2 are didactic to cover the theoretical knowledge, and in Year 3, the students find learning very difficult, as they then need to start putting it into practice. The students move gradually from purely theoretical knowledge [such as the ones indicated previously] to a more applied form from pure anatomy in years 1 and 2 to applied anatomy in clinical contexts during their final year where we introduce a ‘Practice in Medicine strand’. There are different teaching strategies for different groups of learners, e.g. FY2 medical students (qualified). We use problem-solving strategies such as case studies and descriptive teaching approaches, and for registrars, they are more informal such as we sit down and use power point presentation slides, interactions with online modules but these are structured and with a clear focus. With these sessions, there are normally 5 in the group, and we also bring in outside speakers with specialist knowledge and have discussions. However, there may be tensions in teaching GPs and EM clinicians as their professional experiences may be different and perhaps EM clinicians tend to investigate more than GPs. After saying that, there are commonalities too such as interests in the treatment of chest pains. The completion of the Teaching Improvement Programme System (TIPS) has helped me to structure my teaching. They are aware of the pedagogic needs of students from different academic levels such as Year 1 and Year 3 and the need to apply theoretical know-how to professional contexts. The processes of using disciplinary knowledge to the application points require two recontextualization processes. Content recontextualization helps us to understand how disciplinary knowledge is made relevant for clinical understanding in areas such as anatomy. The application of professional knowledge in occupational contexts such as in the A&E department requires occupational recontextualization where the relevant occupational know-how is selected and adapted to a specific clinical setting for an application. The pedagogic strand also involves two recontextualization processes. Content recontextualization allows medical teachers to adapt pedagogic knowledge such as learning theories of social constructivism and behaviourism to the relevant medical field such as emergency medicine. The knowledge needs then to be applied to teaching practice via pedagogic recontextualization where parts
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of the curricula are selected and planned for a specific teaching session. The teaching of the two clinical areas in this study has their tensions, as mentioned by P7. One possible way of overcoming it on a teaching programme (resource permitting) is to offer separate medical field sessions to focus on the delivery of the chosen field such as general practice. The third theme refers to the participants’ descriptions of this complex professional pedagogy offered by P2 and P1, respectively: I have changed the way I talk to people, reflect and work things through with them (e.g. the numerous stakeholders in this collaborative role in EM). When I am on the shop floor, I try to say to myself when I do not have the theoretical knowledge; I need to be constructive in discussions where colleagues may be critical and careful how to speak to other trainees and colleagues. One needs to bear in mind the organisational culture of being in a hospital where interactions and negotiations with other departments such as renal and CT scans are necessary. My secretary who is in her 70s has built up a tremendous network for this. An example of teaching and occupational practice coming together is in the teaching of the communication skills module where students are trained in the breaking of ‘bad’ news such as deaths and results of cancer diagnosis where the communication of clinical information [occupational knowledge and experiences] may be required in ways that the relevant family members/friends can relate. These are employed together with teaching, which comprises of educational concepts such as Brigg’s surface and deep learning [theories], learning in clinical environments [setting], research skills and pedagogic knowledge, which is developed from my teaching practices such as the appropriate use of small group learning strategies. I have to listen to my inner voice to check myself and to let my students do more of the work such as the tasks allocated to them in class. The final theme offers deep insights into how the two practice strands of teaching and occupation come together for pedagogic activities. Here, the final process of selection, re-focus and adaption are the integrated applied recontextualization (IAR), where the teaching and occupational know-how is combined in addition to work know-how. The work know-how consists of two forms – teaching and occupational – that involves organisational know-how such as the specific organisation system, mentoring and support structures, and knowledge of the related stakeholders. IAR offers this complex combination of the three forms of know-how that enables deliverers to ascertain the appropriate teaching strategies to the specific cohort at a determined level and medical field from a selected part of the curricula. P1 gave weight to her ‘inner voice to check’ her teaching performance and offered her learners learning opportunities to engage in their learning.
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Conclusion This chapter on teaching implications for deliverers of clinical provisions argued for a more eclectic definition of teaching know-how to include disciplinary knowledge; pedagogic and occupational/ professional knowledge; related pedagogic and professional practices and experiences; and relevant abilities, capacities and skill sets. It also offered a deeper insight into how these forms of know-how, which might be explicit or tacit, were applied in teaching contexts via the recontextualization processes. The varieties of recontextualization included content, occupational, pedagogic and IAR. The relevance of the two concepts (teaching know-how and recontextualization processes) was delineated concerning curriculum formation and the application to teaching. The contributions of the findings include a wide perspective of teaching know-how for deliverers of professional programmes, who bring with them their occupational practices and experiences. It further legitimises the significance of the varied forms of teaching know-how such as explicit and tacit knowledge; theoretical and professional knowledge; pedagogic and occupational know-how, abilities and skill sets; and leadership and management know-how. Another contribution relates to the understanding of how the teaching know-how is utilised to their teaching settings, whether they might be formal or informal, and action-centred or cognitive learning. The ongoing recombination and relocation of teaching know-how offer insights into how a lecturer relates to her/his explicit and tacit know-how at both the conscious and unconscious levels and a temporal dimension. Concerning the implications and strategies for the relevant stakeholders from a curriculum implementation perspective, a deliverer can legitimately utilise her/his array of related teaching know-how and offer real-life professional (both occupational and pedagogic) practices and experiences in teaching. By doing this, the sessions will be more engaging and relevant to the students’ learning and understanding of the realities and issues of clinical practices. Innovative ways might be explored in helping learners after their years of theoretical input to connect with professional practice. One of the ways, as indicated earlier, was to use work placements to help trainee doctors to see the real-life contexts and connect the theoretical with professional aspects. This parallel approach to learning and professional practice is preferable to a front-loaded approach of amassing theory before practice. The parallel approach offers opportunities of recontextualizing theory with practice to offer a deeper learning engagement. Suitable structures (e.g. a mentoring system) are needed for ethical and health and safety reasons. Concerning curriculum development, the inclusion of wide teaching know- how will also make the required know-how more explicit and relevant to the stakeholders such as deliverers and learners. In turn, the more explicit curricula will offer deliverers less of a mystery in converting the chosen part of the specifications to lesson planning and appropriate choices of teaching strategies to a
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cohort of learners at a targeted academic level. The easier facilitation from curriculum development to teaching strategies may line up with the evaluative/ assessment activity. This continuous throughput of pedagogy might be used to plan not just a one-year programme but throughout the clinical period of GP or EM training. Concepts such as a spiral curriculum using a social constructivist approach might offer curriculum developers a coherent and planned learning provision for the whole duration of a learner’s clinical training. Managers could facilitate this process by offering coordinated and supportive structures such as group planning sessions, which include curriculum developers and teaching staff across the whole programme. Professional bodies such as the CEM might encourage such good practices in their training policies. This coordinated approach will also encourage closer collaboration between practitioners, deliverers, teaching institutions (e.g. HEIs and clinical organisations), work practices (e.g. general practices), professional bodies, policymakers and other related stakeholders.
Notes 1 The website is www.collemergencymed.ac.uk. Accessed 21 February 2018. 2 The website is www.rcem.ac.uk/docs/Clinical%20Standards%20and%20Guidance/Clinical% 20Standards%20for%20Emergency%20Departments.pdf. Accessed 21 February 2018. 3 My grateful thanks to P2 for allowing me to use his list of 13 educational strategies for improving decision-making in EM from his MA dissertation. The five categories are my synthesis.
References Barnett, M. 2006 Vocational knowledge and vocational pedagogy. In: Young, M. and Gamble, J. (Eds) Knowledge, Curriculum and Qualifications for South African Further Education. Cape Town, Human Sciences Research Council Press, pp. 143–158. Becher, T. 1994 The significance of disciplinary differences. Studies in Higher Education, 19: 151–161. Bernstein, B. 1996 The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse: Class, Codes and Control. London, Routledge. Clandinin, J. 1985 Personal practical knowledge: a study of teachers’ classroom images. Curriculum Inquiry, 15(4): 361–385. College of Emergency Medicine (CEM) 2014 Clinical Standards for Emergency Departments. London, CEM. Collins, H. 2010 Tacit and Explicit Knowledge. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Croskerry, P. 2000a The cognitive imperative: thinking about how we think. Academic Emergency Medicine, 7: 1223–1231. Croskerry, P. 2000b The cognitive autopsy: gaining insight into diagnostic failure. In: Croskerry, P., Cosby, K. S., Schenkel, S. M. and Wears, R. L. (Eds) Patient Safety in Emergency Medicine. Philadelphia, PA, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Croskerry, P. 2000c A universal model of diagnostic reasoning. Academic Medicine, 84: 1022–1028. Eraut, M. 2004 Transfer of knowledge between education and workplace settings. In: Rainbird, H., Fuller, A. and Munro, A. (Eds) Workplace Learning in Context. London, Routledge, pp. 201–221.
The pedagogic implications 123 Evans, K., Guile, D., Harris, J., Allan, H. 2010 Putting knowledge to work: a new approach. Nurse Education Today, 30(3): 245–251. Higher Education Academy 2011 The UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education. York, HEA. House of Commons and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee 2016 The Teaching Excellence Framework: Assessing Quality in Higher Education. Third Report of Session 2015– 16. London, The Stationery Office Limited. Ker, J., Bradley, P. 2007 Simulation in Medical Education. Edinburgh, ASME. Lavole, C., Croskerry, P. 2009 Outcome feedback and patient safety. In: Croskerry, P., Cosby, K. S., Schenkel, S. M. and Wears, R. L. (Eds) Patient Safety in Emergency Medicine. Philadelphia, PA, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Loo, S. 2012 The application of pedagogic knowledge to teaching: a conceptual framework. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 31(6): 705–723. Loo, S. 2014 Placing ‘knowledge’ in teacher education in the English further education teaching sector: an alternative approach based on collaboration and evidence based research. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(3): 337–354. Loo, S. 2018 Teachers and Teaching in Vocational and Professional Education. Abingdon, Routledge. Loughran, J., Mitchell, I., Mitchell, J. 2003 Attempting to document teachers’ professional knowledge. Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(6): 853–873. Mandin, H., Jones, A., Woloschuk, W., Harasym, P. 1997 Helping students learn to think like experts when solving clinical problems. Academic Medicine, 72: 173–179. Nonaka, I., Takeuchi, H. 1995 The Knowledge Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York, Oxford University Press. Norman, G. R., Schmidt, H. G. 2000 Effectiveness of problem-based learning curricula: theory, practice and paper darts. Medical Education, 34: 721–728. Polanyi, M. 1966 The Tacit Dimension. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rashotte, J., Carnevale, F. A. 2004 Medical and nursing clinical decision making: a comparative epistemological analysis. Nursing Philosophy, 5: 160–174. Rivett, D. A., Jones, M. A. 2008 Using case reports to teach clinical reasoning. In: Higgs, J., Jones, M. A., Loftus, S. and Christensen, N. (Eds) Clinical Reasoning in the Health Professions. Philadelphia, PA, Elsevier. Robson, C., McCartan, K. 2015 Real World Research: A Resource for Users of Social Research Methods in Applied Settings. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Ryan, S., Higgs, J. 2008 Teaching and learning clinical reasoning. In: Higgs, J., Jones, M. A., Loftus, S. and Christensen, N. (Eds) Clinical Reasoning in the Health Professions. Philadelphia, PA, Elsevier. Schön, D. A. 1983 The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York, Basic Books. Shulman, L. S. 1987 Knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1): 1–22. Verloop, N., Van Driel, J., Meijer, P. 2001 Teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. International Journal of Educational Research, 35(5): 441–461. Winch, C. 2014 Know-how and knowledge in the professional curriculum. In: Young, M. and Muller, J. (Eds) Knowledge, Expertise and the Professions. London, Routledge, pp. 47–60. Yeoh, M. J. 2009 Knowledge translation. In: Croskerry, P., Cosby, K. S., Schenkel, S. M. and Wears, R. L. (Eds) Patient Safety in Emergency Medicine. Philadelphia, PA, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Chapter 7
Working and learning of creative workers Implications for a knowledge-d riven curriculum
Introduction This chapter centres on the work and learning of a certain type of practitioners in the knowledge economy. These practitioners are known as the creative knowledge workers (Loo, 2011, 2017) because they use their creativity, knowledge, capacities and personality attributes towards the eventual production of goods – products and services – in the knowledge economy. They use the information, communications and electronic technologies (ICET) to facilitate their work (Castells, 2000). In this focus, the paper relates to the changing role of higher education that embraces work and learning. In this contribution, the work and learning dimensions of these highly specialised knowledge workers will be investigated as regards how curricula in higher education may facilitate these workers in their work and learning activities. It is not the intention of this chapter to study the working and learning of these creative workers from the three angles. The first refers to other forms of delivering institutions such as professional societies that offer accreditation. The second is the acquisition of knowledge, explicit and codified, via non-traditional pathways such as YouTube. And the third is to investigate the acquisition of knowledge in work settings. The constraints placed on this investigation are merely to focus on curriculum provision in HEIs and should not be viewed as privileging the status of HEIs or knowledge, as it is viewed eclectically and in an interdisciplinary manner. This study is drawn from a wider empirical project of 31 semi-structured interviews of practitioners and related academics. These participants are from three developed countries – England, Japan and Singapore – and from two related sectors of the knowledge economy – advertising and information technology (IT) software. In particular, two roles from each of the two sectors are investigated: copywriting and creative directing, as well as systems software developing and software programme managing. The lines of argument of this chapter include a) the conventional notions of work and learning require revising as these activities are not dichotomic but are interconnected, and b) a robust interdisciplinary approach to curricula
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is needed for these specific knowledge workers to acquire and apply their know-how and creativity in work settings. To this end, a ‘powerful knowledge’ curriculum approach (Young and Muller, 2013) is proposed. Additionally, notions of lifelong learning, formal and informal learning, ‘externalising’ (which is defined for this chapter as non-traditional curricula strategies that facilitate learners to make the transition between knowledge acquisition and its application), and tacit and explicit learning. This chapter offers insights into how higher educational institutions (HEIs) may act as a bridge between work organisations and creative knowledge workers before and while at work. The chapter is structured into four sections following the introduction. The second section reviews the supporting literature sources of work and learning, and the next section provides insights into the methodological aspects of this study. The penultimate section focuses on the findings and discussion of these specific creative knowledge workers, especially drawing on the enculturation findings from the practitioners and related academics. The fifth and final section provides some implications for stakeholders such as aspiring creative knowledge workers, HEIs deliverers, and managers and policymakers.
Literature review This chapter is drawn from a wider research project on creative knowledge work. It is predicated on an interdisciplinary and relational approach (Guile, 2010) in which literature reviews from business and management, economics, sociology and psychology (creativity) are used to ascertain eclectic definitions of knowledge, knowledge work and creativity within the perspectives of knowledge/digital economy. The connected themes arising from the literature reviews are included in the conceptualisation of theoretical framework of creative knowledge work (Figure 7.1). As the focus of this chapter is not on the theoretical framework but the higher education institutions’ curricula implications of creative working and learning, further discussions on the framework are avoided. Instead, the literature reviews are on the appropriate education offers at the higher education levels for aspiring learners of creative work. This chapter draws on the literature surrounding curricula – its content and delivery that are relevant to these specific learners and the forms of learning that they may require in the acquisition and application of these forms of know-how (i.e. knowledge and experiences). Curriculum researchers may loosely be classified into two camps: intellectualists and fluency theorists. The former view knowledge as content as all important as ‘knowing that’ and its relevance in its application (i.e. ‘knowing how’). The latter group suggested that the knowledge was embodied, tacit and exercised fluently (i.e. ‘know-how’ without the need for cognitive processing) (Young and Muller, 2014). In other words, the intellectualists view knowledge as all-important where teachers/lecturers are authorities in their fields/subjects
126 Working and learning of creative workers STYLES OF WORKING Individually
Single
C O N T E X T S Multi
Collaboratively
Amplifications of work approaches: Technologists (Drucker, 1993) Informated workers (Zuboff, 1988) Geeks & shrinks (Reich, 2001)
Amplifications of work approaches: Specialists & operators (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)
Amplifications of creative descriptions by: Gardner (1999) von Hippel (2006)
Amplifications of creative descriptions by: Csikszentmihalyi (1988) von Hippel (2006) 1
2
Amplifications of work approaches: Technologists (Drucker, 1993) Geeks & shrinks (Reich, 2001)
Amplifications of work approaches: Engineers & officers/leaders (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)
Amplifications of creative descriptions by: Gardner (1999) von Hippel (2006)
Amplifications of creative descriptions by: Csikszentmihalyi (1988) Sternberg et al. (2004) von Hippel (2006) 4
3
Figure 7.1 A theoretical framework of creative knowledge work
of specialism. The fluency theorists come from a learner-centred approach where learners are trusted to learn informally and have emancipatory capacities (Young, 2013). The aim of a curriculum is to transmit past knowledge but also to build on this knowledge through the creation of new ones (Young, 2013). For him, curriculum starts not from the learner but the learner’s entitlement to have access to knowledge and thus it injects a social justice dimension. This type of knowledge for Young (2013) is ‘powerful knowledge’ where it is both specialised with boundaries between disciplines and subjects and not general knowledge, and it is differentiated from the learners’ everyday experiences. In this regard, he adheres to Bernstein’s knowledge typology of the vertical (theoretical and explicit) and the horizontal (the everyday) (Bernstein, 1990). He also uses Bernstein’s recontextualization process for knowledge transmission. Bernstein (1990, p. 184) argues that pedagogic discourse “is a principle which removes (de-locates) a discourse from its substantive practice and
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context, and relocates that discourse according to its own principle of selective reordering and focusing”. He (Bernstein, 1990, p. 184) offers a “recontextualizing principle, which selectively appropriates, relocates, refocuses and relates other discourses to constitute its own order and orderings”. This process regulates not only “selection, sequence, pace, and relations with other subjects, but also the theory of instruction from which the transmission rules are derived” (Bernstein, 1990, p. 185). The settings where this process may occur include university departments and he calls this the ‘pedagogic recontextualizing field’ (Bernstein, 1990, p. 192). Young and Muller (2013) view science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects as ‘powerful’ as they can provide predictions and explanations that go beyond that which can be derived from everyday thinking. From the perspectives of this chapter, the IT software sector may rely on the STEM subject knowledge. They equate social sciences such as education with similar characteristics since they can generate facts that are grounded in objective methods from their subject communities. The authors also include the arts as part of this ‘powerful knowledge’ discourse as they have conventions (or boundaries) that explicitly seek to be subversive and go against the conventions of society. From the perspective of this chapter, the knowledge that is required in the advertising sector may be referred to as from the arts. In this sense, “the arts speak to the universal in particular, and can enable people to feel part of a larger humanity” whereas the “sciences speak to the particular from the general” (Young and Muller, 2013, p. 246). Barnett (2006, p. 147) uses re-classificatory recontextualization to develop further insights into “how the knowledge of professions such as engineering and medicine are assembled” which he calls a ‘toolbox’ of applicable knowledge. Barnett develops this notion further by incorporating work-related elements where a further process – pedagogic recontextualization – is required where disciplinary knowledge, vocational pedagogy and situated knowledge (codified non-tacit) are conjoined. From a curricular perspective, Hordern (2016) offers three models of recontextualization for higher education. These relate to a) pure disciplines into pure curriculum form such as physics and sociology, b) professionally or occupationally oriented curriculum in which knowledge from a variety of disciplines is applied in vocational practices (as denoted by Barnett as ‘reclassifcatory recontextualization’), and c) in newer and less well-regarded professions such as early childhood professions and ‘corporate professions’ where non-disciplinary knowledge may be more prominent possibly due to their closer relationships with the need for greater profitability and efficiency. This manner of classifying higher education curricula offers discursive possibilities for this chapter concerning the two sectors under investigation: IT software as an example of the second model and advertising of the third. Turning to learning by aspiring creative workers, these forms of learning may include formal and informal learning and lifelong learning. Due to the
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eclectic and complex nature of this specific type of work, a comprehensive approach is used to offer as broad an all-encompassing definition of learning as delineated by Jarvis (2009): The combination of processes throughout a lifetime whereby the whole person – body (genetic, physical and biological) and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, meaning, beliefs and senses) – experiences social situations, the context of which is then transformed cognitively, emotively or practically (or through any combination) and integrated into the individual person’s biography resulting in a continually changing (or more experienced) person. (p. 25) ‘Lifetime’ refers to throughout the life of a creative knowledge worker and that genetic and environment play an integrated role in knowledge working (as advocated by Csikszentmihalyi (1988), Bruner (1996), and Gardner (1999)). ‘Mind’ refers to the cognitive applications of knowledge, skills, personality related talents, and life and work experiences that inform a person’s belief, values, meaning, emotions and senses (as suggested by Zuboff (1988), Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), and Reich (2001)). ‘Social situations’ are types of work setting either in groups, individually, in organisations or outside of them and aided by ICET. The writers investigated in the lead up to the conceptual framework of creative knowledge work (Figure 7.1) referred to these social settings. The processes of ‘transformation’ and ‘integration’ require the acquisition of knowledge, which may be tacit, explicit, informal or formal, that may result in the creation or innovation of knowledge products or services. In short, knowledge acquisition and creative working has implications for how people learn. ‘Lifetime’ learning may also be construed as lifelong learning, and this may be viewed as: Lifelong learning offers an appropriate framework for addressing these issues. The new idea underpinning ‘lifelong learning for all’ goes beyond providing a second or third chance for adults and proposes that everyone should be able, motivated and actively encouraged to learn throughout life. This view of learning embraces the individual and social development of all kinds and in all settings – formally in schools, vocational, tertiary and adult education institutions and non-formally at home, at work and in the community. The approach is system-wide; it focuses on the standards of knowledge and skills needed by all regardless of age. (OECD, 1996, p. 15) This concept of learning during one’s life is a useful precursor to workers in the age of knowledge economy. The document referred to some of the dimensions of the knowledge economy (except in namesake). They are “information
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technologies, globalisation, trade liberalisation, changing nature of work, and use of knowledge and skills” (OECD, 1996, p. 15) as espoused by sociologists such as Castells (2000). One of the discernible trends of writings on the various forms of learning especially by transnational organisations and governments is the work/occupational dimension where individuals are encouraged to embrace learning to increase their skills and knowledge for the economic betterment of themselves and their countries. This interaction of learning and the economy is a continuation of the Callaghan speech at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1976 (Guardian Newspaper, 2010). In these aspects, there are resonances for creative knowledge workers’ learning. Learning can happen formally or informally, at universities or at work, and from work or life experiences. Advocates of informal and formal learning include Greenfield and Lave (1982), EU Commission (2000), and Colley, Hodkinson and Malcolm (2003). Formal learning may include professional and academic qualifications as required by the IT software workers. Informal ones such as knowledge of popular culture may be learnt via accessing current and past trends, reading and participating in cultural activities. These informal learning approaches may be useful for those in the advertising industry. Acquisition of tacit knowledge as discussed by Zuboff (1988) and Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) regarding work and life experiences has also be investigated by writers such as Polanyi (1966), Goleman (1995) and Damasio (1999). loaded learning In this discussion and from the empirical data, a front- approach (Clarke and Winch, 2004) is assumed where the acquisition of knowledge is carried out via usually a formal qualification before working. This approach is in contrast to Hager’s (2004) argument that learning can occur while working. However, from the 31 participants’ learning experiences, all of them across the three countries of England, Japan and Singapore had a front- loaded learning approach. The traditional approach might be partly related to the ‘newer’ developed economies of Japan and Singapore. This traditional learning approach was more prevalent in the IT software than in the advertising sector. And even in the advertising industry, one could argue that creatives like copywriters and creative directors had some form of related knowledge acquisition in the arts (e.g. graphic design) and humanities (e.g. English literature). However, there were in-house or external training while the creative workers were working and these activities might be viewed as continuous professional development. With this brief discussion on the empirical data, the next section offers salient details of the methodological aspects.
Methodology This contribution draws from a wider project of creative working in the knowledge economy where an interdisciplinary and relational approach (Guile, 2010) is used in developing a theoretical framework of creative knowledge working and a case study methodological approach.
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This methodological approach is used as “a strategy for doing research which involves an empirical investigation of a particular contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context using multiple sources of evidence” (Yin, cited in Robson, 2002, p. 187). The ‘strategy’ refers to the two methodological approaches of ‘co-configuration’ (Victor and Boynton, 1998), where it studies the two-way relationship between producers and users of knowledge goods, and ‘epistemic cultures’ (Knorr Cetina, 2005), where the use of technology is applied to circulate and apply knowledge. ‘Research’ is viewed as an investigation including analysis and evaluation into creative work focusing on two sectors of advertising and IT software. The empirical investigation of a particular contemporary phenomenon refers to the specific case of creative application of knowledge in the three countries of England, Japan and Singapore and two sectors of the knowledge economy. The rationale for choosing the three developed countries was to study the hypothesis that, in the knowledge economy, businesses were globally networked and not ‘nationally bound’ (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger, 2002, p. 909). Thus, the commercial activities within national boundaries would be less significant in comparison to industry/sector global activities (Castells, 2000; Reich, 2001). The three countries were used as guides to study non-generic approaches to creative knowledge work on a global scale. The ‘real-life context’ refers to the creative productions of knowledge goods in the new economy. ‘Multiple methods of evidence’ might include empirical evidence from interviews (professionals and related academics) but also from literature sources of business and management, economics, sociology and psychology. The relevant research questions about this chapter relate to the definition of knowledge for creative knowledge work and the necessary contexts for this type of work. The other main research questions refer to the nature of knowledge work; the manner in which this work is understood by key actors in the two sectors; and the importance of creativity. The interviews were carried out with experts in their fields to obtain their perceptions and opinions of creative application of knowledge towards the production of knowledge goods within and between sectors and the impact of it on workers’ cultures. Details of the interviews included: 16 in the advertising sector and 15 in the IT sector; and of the total of 31 interviews, 18 were professionals in the two sectors and 13 were academics in higher education institutions. The use of academics in related fields was justified on three grounds: 1) a balanced view of the public and private sectors, 2) for triangulation purposes, and 3) academic perspectives. The data triangulation relied on data from both sectors advertising and IT software, two types of interviewees (practitioners and academics) as well as the in-depth literature review of both sectors. The interviewees were selected by their seniority and prominence in their field of expertise. Those who had an established a name in their field would be recognisable by accolades (for those in the industry), awards or prizes in the advertising sector, or by the quality of journals where research was published (for the academics).
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The interviews were carried out in situ, recorded and later transcribed along with a post-interview written summary of the salient points. The following stages of analysis were carried out: generating units of meaning; classifying, typologising and ordering the units of meaning; using narratives for richer descriptions; and interpreting the data (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2000). In particular, the empirical findings provide nuanced insights into the workings of jobs of copywriting and creative directing (in advertising), and systems software developing and software programme managing (in the IT software sector).
Findings and discussion As mentioned earlier, this investigation is a wider study of creative knowledge working in the knowledge economy, and the methodological stance is based on an interdisciplinary and relational approach (Guile, 2010). This approach is reflected in its eclectic definition of knowledge for this specific type of work. It draws from literature reviews of business and management, economics, sociology and psychology about the knowledge economy and knowledge work. The salient sources include Bell (1973), Zuboff (1988). Drucker (1993), Lash and Urry (1994), Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), Castells (2000), Reich (2001), Quah (2002) and Knorr-Cetina (2005). Aside from the creative processes, abilities and skills, which are significant to knowledge work, workers also require an understanding of various forms of knowledge (Loo, 2011, 2017). These are related to disciplines such as those from the humanities (e.g. literature), and the creative arts such as paintings and music (e.g. popular and classical varieties). Creative knowledge workers also require technical-related knowledge such as mathematics and computer sciences (e.g. software engineering) and physical sciences (e.g. physics), though there are distinctions in the two sectors. Becher (1994) and Smeby (1996) classify these disciplines from a higher education perspective. Bernstein (1990) may view these forms of knowledge as vertical knowledge and Young (2013) as powerful knowledge. This notion of multi-disciplinary know-how was reflected by the creative director of an advertising agency in London (SL2). She commented that it was necessary “to be a general sponge” and to acquire “knowledge and things that inspire from films and people you hear and things that you see and places that you visit”. An IT software professor, SL26, at a university in Tokyo with experiences in Silicon Valley and a professorship in the US, explained: Until ten years ago, there was only one level. Now there are 2/3 levels of jobs, which are concerned, not with the knowledge of physics (which is unchangeable) but changeable laws/systems which may impact on society by changing people’s attitudes. What is needed now is deep knowledge in at least three levels, and so an IT developer needs to be multi-disciplined.
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These forms of disciplinary knowledge (Bernstein, 1990; Young, 2013) take time to access and acquire, and a higher education qualification offers a short window of opportunity to become a creative knowledge worker, depending on the roles/functions and the sector. In the IT software sector, technical knowledge of software languages is especially significant for programmers as ascertained in the findings. However, the degree of technical expertise may be less for a programme manager, as only knowledge of the relevant software language is necessary to understand the issues for communicating with the team of developers and testers. The technical know-how for a creative director relates only to the understanding of the possibilities of technologies (such as graphics and typography) to capitalise on the technical wizardry. The technical specialists are then required to execute the creative director’s vision. These professional activities may be termed as a second model whereas those of advertising as a third model (Hordern, 2016). These types of disciplinary knowledge may appear in explicit formats, which can be learnt from formal programmes at teaching institutions such as higher education and professional institutions (e.g. British Computer Society and the American Society for Quality and the International Software Testing Qualification Board). Other skills and abilities relating to presentation, communication and team working may also be learnt. The disciplinary knowledge might in the traditional pathways be acquired at institutions such as HEIs especially when it comes to technical knowledge such as software languages of Java and C+++. However, in the digital economy, this knowledge (e.g. C+++) may also be acquired via routes such as YouTube and DukeDollars which may be explicit and codified information and even financially free. For creative directors accessing knowledge about popular cultures such as the arts and films, traditionally this might be done outside of the formalised HEI pathway. In short, the acquisition of knowledge in the digital/knowledge world may be done informally and not via a formalised taught programme. This does not mean that teaching institutions become defunct but that there are more pathways to the acquisition of knowledge. The other more obvious one, which is outside the remit of this chapter, is the work settings where knowledge may be acquired and applied individually (Polanyi, 1966) or collaboratively (Nonanka and Takeuchi, 1995). From the perspective of an HEI curriculum, this is a challenge especially for advertising-related offers and the more obvious areas for acquisition may be related to technical know-how. As ascertained in the empirical findings, there was another non-disciplinary knowledge, which was not explicit but tacit. Interviewees mentioned tacit experiences from their past work and life experiences, which they used to draw upon in performing their creative knowledge work. This form of knowledge was harnessed collectively as a team (of an advertising campaign or a software programme) (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). This collaborative approach to working, especially with roles such as creative directing and software programme managing, requires tacit knowledge of the strengths, weaknesses,
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needs and wants of the related team members (knowledge of psychology). This form of working may occur within the organisation, as a standalone group for a specific project in the organisation or as a sub-contracted team outside the organisation. Within this role, creative knowledge workers may perform their activities individually and collectively as part of their contribution to the project. The findings also brought out some characteristics of collaborative working such as the varieties of stakeholders such as sub-contracted groups, and the indirect relationships between clients, workers (of an ad agency) and consumers. In addition to the previously described definition of knowledge from the perspectives of creative working in the knowledge economy where knowledge of more than one discipline or multi-disciplines is needed, the other relevance to curricula in higher education institutions are the commonalities of the two sectors of advertising and IT software. Advertising as a chosen sector in this study reflects the arts and humanities in the disciplinary spectrum whereas the IT software relates to the STEM aspect of the spectrum. The commonalities as indicated from this study relate to two types: emotional connections and aesthetic sensibilities. From the advertising sector, a copywriter uses words/texts for an advertising medium such as television and video games, which will enable connection with the audience; and so the ability to write and the willingness to learn to write are crucial for the job. A creative director has to produce a commercial, usually on film, which must be viewed through a camera lens. In both these creative roles, their abilities to form emotional connections between the consumer and the product are important. Participants have described these connections as “the aura a brand gives off is emotional” (SL1), “general sponge” (SL2), “social chameleon” (SL12) and “in tune with the current zeitgeist” (SL8). In video gaming, part of IT software, the ability of the software developer and manager to be able to emotionally connect with their audiences/players via the architecture of the game is as relevant to those in the advertising sector. The IT software participants use the term “sensitivity” (SL24, SL25 and SL28) to describe the need to take into account the needs of the users/consumers and other stakeholders about the specifications of the project. The other commonality relates to aesthetic sensibilities. Lash and Urry (1994) viewed this form of sensibility as the appreciation and sensitivity to beauty and good taste and is intricately connected to branding and adding value to a product. In the case of a copywriter (e.g. SL12), it is her/his job to translate it into a suitable medium such as television where the writing will have an impact on the commercial. This sensibility not only needs to move the audience but also needs to be an ear for what resonates with the customers. The creative director’s (e.g. SL1) aesthetic eye is in the form of envisioning and producing visual imagery via camera lens that is true to the original idea. From the IT software perspective, one interviewee (SL27) used the term “the power of expression”. It described the ability to indicate to like-minded software
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developers the aesthetic beauty of the programme (e.g. Linux software, and ‘Mario’ and ‘World of Warcraft’ games) and to share in the beauty of what they have achieved or found (von Hippel, 2006). From these discussions, different forms of knowledge are needed together with an interdisciplinary approach to acquiring them along with the two forms of connections – emotional connection and aesthetic sensibilities – between the advertising and IT software industries. These findings have implications for deliverers in the higher education institutions, especially for those aspiring creative workers in the IT software industry. They require the relevant technical know-how such as programme languages (e.g. Java and C+++) and the arts and humanities. For copywriters and creative directors, the education routes are less defined, as most of the 16 participants did not have degrees, unlike the IT software participants. Their know-how relates to technical knowledge of digital technologies and platforms. For creative directors, technical knowledge of graphics, typography and related digital media are used and these may be called disciplinary knowledge. This may be explicit and can be acquired through formal education such as courses. It may also be tacit and attained through work-based experiences of using and applying knowledge gained in specific contexts. These contexts may require different solutions, which are added to a creative worker’s tacit knowledge. The tacit know-how of past advertising experiences may also be used together with the ability to understand how technologies may be realised in a commercial (e.g. Levi’s ‘Twist’ Jeans campaign). For these advertising creatives, knowledge of literature (books and magazines), films, visual art, travel and related areas (in short, popular culture) are relevant along with technical know-how. As participant SL2 indicated, “knowledge and things that inspire from films and people you hear and things that you see and places that you visit”. This form of knowledge acquisition is informal and usually tacit (Polanyi, 1966; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Finally, complex creative knowledge work needs a supportive environment. One such environment relates to supporting the technical base. Based on the findings, ICET is viewed as an organisational tool, a source of ideas (such as the Internet) and a way of modelling a concept. It may also be applied to inter-sectoral activities such as software for cross-disciplinary applications. This organisational tool enables creative knowledge workers to devote their energies to multifaceted activities such as analysis of huge data sets and the enabling of new jobs such as web page designing. ICET enables workers to spend more time on advanced activities, which leads to the intensification of creative applications. Lastly, it was noted from the findings that a supportive environment centred on training, work environment and education, and it is this environment that is the focus of this chapter. This section focuses on the implementation policies of HEI curricula where multi-disciplinary know-how and the two commonalities of the diverse sectors are featured for aspiring creative knowledge workers. As viewed from the
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present findings, the types of knowledge required for creative working in the sectors of advertising and IT software are multi-disciplinary with commonalities in emotional connections and aesthetic sensibilities. Also, there are differences in know-how. For aspirants of copywriting and creative directing jobs, formal routes via higher education programmes appeared not to be the norm, as participant SL4, a course leader of the Postgraduate Diploma in Advertising in England and who had worked in the industry, explained: If somebody comes in as a creative, a degree is still not essential [as we are] still looking at people’s creativity. You have to have a book of work – a portfolio – and in there you put examples of your work, a cross-section of your work, it doesn’t have to be work that has been published, it’s your ideas to show you have ideas and that is how they will judge you. And this quality could equally come from somebody who hasn’t got any academic background. I used to teach on the copywriting course and one of the best students I ever had – he worked in a fairground – somebody who jumps on the dodgems and takes the money. He always wanted to write. He turned out to be very good. Some of the top creative people of today probably work their way up from absolute nothing. The ‘trainees’ creative skills might be fine-tuned as they gained in experiences working on various campaign projects. This informal training approach also had its downsides. Participant SL4 also indicated that getting constructive feedback in the industry was difficult and having a supportive mentor was not common. As there are no rules to creative advertising, having the tenacity and confidence to bounce back were considered important characteristics for a creative knowledge worker. With a wider engagement with the sector, SL4 also set up advisory panels as a means to further involve relevant stakeholders. These panels included advisors from industry (e.g. creative directors from advertising agencies) and related organisations (e.g. Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) to track and reflect requirements of work trends in her accredited programmes. This further involvement of relevant stakeholders offers another perspective of the co-configuration methodological approach, where a wider network of people and organisations (other than producers and users) form learning and teaching hubs for aspiring workers. As regards some of the necessary skills, the interviewees suggested: presentation, communication skills, team working, and technical skills relating to production and design. Some of the interviewed academics advocated sessions on fine-tuning skills, which may be used in collaborative working to improve communication and team working skills. Opportunities to present ideas or projects could improve presentation skills and occasions to research from a given advertising brief, and the use of case studies could improve analytical, problem-solving and strategy-making skills. These advertising-related courses might also cover the wide range of activities required in the industry
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such as visual and digital related media, as well as account planning. Industry placements could also provide real experience of the business. Turning to the IT software education, the emphasis on knowledge acquisition from the cutting-edge research was emphasised by SL25, a Japanese professor: Of course, a university has a mission to teach fundamental technology especially undergraduates, and even in graduate school, even in this university we teach very fundamental knowledge and basic technology but now I’m trying, like other leading HEIs, we are trying to add new programmes. Our Economics School has been slow in adapting to new ideas similarly in the Law Schools. Nowadays, in the world, Engineering Schools have to teach advanced technology because it has been rapidly changing and most advanced technology has not been published. Thus, my university has tried to establish case study class just one/two years ago for the graduates in the main but also include undergraduates – I asked leading technology companies to participate. I also asked why are they developing new technologies. There are many pathways. Technological developments have many disciplines such as marketing, engineering, commercial (business), intellectual property rights, etc. We (academics) don’t have such backgrounds. Without knowledge of such backgrounds, even if we were to develop these technologies, they cannot be utilised, as we do not have the commercial, legal and other expertise. Even the professors [like SL25] in the technical schools have to know these disciplines/backgrounds. Bearing in mind that creative application requires knowledge in the first instance, one may ask, how can these be taught? From the micro descriptions of software developing and managing earlier, these creative applications include: solving problems, using anticipatory imagination, realising power of expression, envisioning and having ideas. Perspectives on creativity and approaches to teaching abilities such as problem-solving required in creative knowledge work are included in the following descriptions by SL31, an IT software professor at a university in Singapore: Creativity is something, which is very difficult to impart. Even when we transfer knowledge: explicit and implicit. Explicit knowledge transfer is very easy to learn using rules, formulae, and by example, etc. Implicit knowledge is something, which is very difficult to pass onto students. So all we could do is to give them more projects, which are relevant to this industry . . . There are two approaches one can go – as broad as you can or as specialized as you can. XXX is going as broad as possible. Twenty-five percent of our undergraduate modules must come from outside this faculty, e.g. from engineering, business, arts and social science faculties, etc. during their undergraduate studies. Most of the common modules in this faculty which we open up to students from other faculties emphasize creative
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thinking, problem-solving, etc. Of the six core modules, two are focused heavily on problem-solving. We are training our students to be programmers and project managers. Also, we have an emphasis on logic before we teach students to do programming. The other twenty-five percent of the modules offered by our IT faculty related to the programme specifications, e.g. information system, information technology, computer science, computer engineering, e-commerce, and information and communication management. The programmes are very structured: twenty-five percent on university requirement, twenty-five percent on faculty requirement, twenty-five percent on programme and the remaining twenty-five percent elective within the faculty. This broad approach hopefully will enable our students to adjust to the outside world and job market. Another academic (SL30) offered further insights into the strategies policies in his HEI programme: Now we design the curriculum in such a way that we have a certain number of enrichment modules as opposed to discipline-specific modules, for example, a science graduate may take a language, one of the subjects on the sciences, business school etc. Thus they have to earn a certain number of credits. Students now have to be decision makers, and the programmes are modularized. In the engineering programmes, they have one of the highest numbers of contact hours (the mid-20s per week and humanities in the high teens), but the impact on the students is tremendous with the follow-up they need to do as homework. We try to reduce the number of formal contact hours and allow more projects and assignments to encourage independent learning rather than rote learning. The result is that the continuous assessment component is rising compared to summative assessment. Also, we design the curriculum for the students to come up with mini or micro products to earn points. In engineering, a student has to gather sufficient points to graduate by the submission of reports, entering competitions (and points are earned if they win certain ones), assignment based etc. There are also incentives for students to be entrepreneurial, and inventive, e.g. getting funding. Bernstein (1990) and Young (2013) discuss the content of curricula especially with the latter as ‘powerful knowledge’ regarding disciplinary know-how and that the selection, pacing and ordering of parts of the curricula are essential qualities of a cogent education programme. These descriptions offer insights into how an HEI curriculum may be furnished regarding the types and sources of knowledge and the manner in which a multi-disciplinary approach is enacted. Especially significant is the creative dimension where school-based educationists (such as Bernstein (1990) and Young (2013)) have perhaps underplayed in their research.
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Conclusion This chapter has provided evidence of the complex dimensions of working and learning of a certain type of workers – creative knowledge workers – where their creativity, knowledge, abilities and talents are used in fashioning innovative goods – products and services – in the knowledge economy which is reliant on ICET infrastructure. In so doing, the findings have highlighted the eclectic nature of knowledge in two sectors of advertising and IT software, the commonalities (i.e. emotional connections and aesthetic sensibilities) and the differences in the forms of know-how required in creative working. It has also implicitly shown that the activities of learning and working are not disconnected but intricately related, and they offer a challenge for HEIs in fashioning their curricula for aspiring creative workers. Learning and work may be viewed as intricately linked and that HEIs are viewed as a bridge for these learners between knowledge acquisition and application to the eventual workplaces. These findings have implications for not only learners but also programme deliverers, curriculum providers, institutional managers and policymakers. Greater awareness of the complexities of learning and working before work and at work exist and that the multi-disciplinary approach to envisioning knowledge (of explicit and tacit, and formal and informal forms) are necessary if these creative workers are to be nurtured and supported in fashioning innovative goods for a vibrant digital economy. For learners, the relevant provisions by HEIs to facilitate multi-disciplinary learning are necessary along with the clear connections between learning and work so that the appropriate know-how is acquired in readiness for work. Programme deliverers need to be aware of the significance of multi-disciplinary know-how which aspiring creative workers require for their knowledge work. These learners also require the choices of curricula contents logically, pacing of these sessions and the manner in which these sessions are taught either sequentially or in parallel. Similarly, the employment of appropriate teaching strategies for the learners to acquire and apply their know-how is important. For curricula providers, they have to address the relevance of the content in their curricula about the needs of the aspiring creative workers where a multi-disciplinary and connected (regarding learning and work) programme is offered. Institutional managers should provide the supporting educational structure for their deliverers and curriculum managers to offer coherent and relevant programmes to the learners. An example of the structure relates to the ability to offer multi-disciplinary modules from diverse subject-related departments. For policymakers, the establishment of a supportive infrastructure such as ICET and adequate funding for the delivery and research in the relevant fields so that the stakeholders such as HEIs can offer the relevant curricula for knowledge work in this globalised knowledge economy. Concerning areas for further research, I have intimated these in the theoretical section. This relates to researching the acquisition of knowledge while
Working and learning of creative workers 139
working as opposed to the conventional front-loaded approach. By exploring the acquisition of relevant know-how for creative practices in a working environment, a more holistic picture of the learning and working processes can be comprehended. Obviously, a wider data gathering of varied creative work in the knowledge economy sectors such as architecture, artificial intelligence and robotics will offer a more comprehensive picture of creative working in the new economy. In short, this micro-perspective of creative working provides a relatively new area of research.
References Barnett, M. 2006 Vocational knowledge and vocational pedagogy. In: Young, M. and Gamble, J. (Eds) Knowledge, Curriculum and Qualifications for South African Further Education. Cape Town, Human Sciences Research Council Press, pp. 143–158. Becher, T. 1994 The significance of disciplinary differences. Studies in Higher Education, 19: 151–161. Bell, D. 1973 The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York, Basic Books. Bernstein, B. 1990 The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourses: Class, Codes and Control. London and New York, Routledge. Bruner, J. S. 1996 The Culture of Education. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Callaghan, J. 1976 Towards a national debate. Guardian Newspaper. Available at: http:// education.guardian.co.uk/thegreatdebate/story/0,9860,574645,00.html @ 24/06/2010. Castells, M. 2000 The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Volume 1 the Rise of the Networked Society. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing. Clarke, L., Winch, C. 2004 Apprenticeship and applied theoretical knowledge. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Incorporating ACCESS, 36(5): 509–521. Cohen, L., Manion, L., Morrison, K. 2000 Research Methods in Education. London, RoutledgeFalmer. Colley, H., Hodkinson, P., Malcolm, J. 2003 Informality and Formality in Learning. London, Learning and Skills Research Centre. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1988 Society, culture, and person: a systems view of creativity. In Sternberg, R. J. (Ed) The Nature of Creativity. New York, Cambridge University Press. Damasio, A. R. 1999 The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness. London, Vintage. Drucker, P. 1993 Post-Capitalist Society. Oxford, Butterworth Heinemann. European Union Commission 2000 Memorandum on Lifelong Learning. Brussels, European Union. Gardner, H. 1999 Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. New York, Basic Books. Goleman, D. 1995 Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. London, Bloomsbury. Greenfield, O., Lave, J. 1982 Cognitive aspects of informal education. In: Wagner, D. A. and Stevenson, H. W. (Eds) Cultural Perspectives on Child Development. San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass. Guile, D. 2010 The Learning Challenge of the Knowledge Economy. Rotterdam, Sense Publishers. Hager, P. 2004 Front-loading, workplace learning and skill development. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Incorporating ACCESS, 36(5): 523–534.
140 Working and learning of creative workers Hordern, J. 2016 On the making and faking of knowledge value in higher education curricula. Teaching in Higher Education, 21(4): 367–380. Jarvis, P. 2009 Learning to Be a Person in Society. London, Routledge. Knorr Cetina, K. 2005 Culture in global knowledge societies: knowledge cultures and epistemic cultures. In: Jacobs, M. D. and Hanrahan, N. W. (Eds) The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture. Malden, MA/Oxford/Carlton, Vic, Blackwell Publishing. Knorr Cetina, K., Bruegger, U. 2002 Global microstructures: the virtual societies of financial markets. American Journal of Sociology, 107(4): 905–950. Lash, S., Urry, J. 1994 Economics of Signs and Space. London, Sage Publications. Loo, S. 2011 A re-assessment of knowledge from the perspective of the knowledge economy. The International Journal of the Humanities, 9(2): 111–120. Loo, S. 2017 Creative Working in the Knowledge Economy. Abingdon, Routledge. Nonaka, I., Takeuchi, H. 1995 The Knowledge Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York, Oxford University Press. Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) 1996 Lifelong Learning for All. Paris, OECD. Polanyi, M. 1966 The Tacit Dimension. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Quah, D. 2002 Digital Goods and the New Economy. London: Centre for Economic Performance. London School of Economics. [Online]. Available at: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/ download/dp0563.pdf. Reich, R. B. 2001 The Future of Success: Work and Life in the New Economy. London, William Heinemann. Robson, C. 2002 Real World Research. Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishing. Smeby, J-C. 1996 Disciplinary differences in university teaching. Studies in Higher Education, 21: 69–79. Sternberg, R. J., Kaufman, J. C., Pretz, J. E. 2004 A propulsion model of creative leadership. Creativity and Innovation Management, 13(3): 145–153. Victor, B., Boynton, A. C. 1998 Invented Here: Maximizing Your Organization’s Internal Growth and Profitability. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press. von Hippel, E. V. 2006 Democratizing Innovation. Cambridge, MA, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Young, M. 2013 Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge-based approach. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(2): 101–118. Young, M., Muller, J. 2013 On the powers of powerful knowledge. Review of Education, 1(3): 229–250. Young, M., Muller, J. 2014 From the sociology of professions to the sociology of professional knowledge. In: Young, M. and Muller, J. (Eds) Knowledge, Expertise and the Professions. London, Routledge, pp. 3–17. Zuboff, S. 1988 In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power. Oxford, Heinemann Professional Publishing.
Chapter 8
Reflections on the further education, professional and occupational landscapes
The first chapter gave the overall aims of this research monograph, inspirations and salient details of the contributions. This final chapter offers a recap of the contributions regarding the findings. It also provides overall contributions and implications concerning the work-related topics that are explored in this monograph. Following the caveats of the chapter findings, the chapter reflects on the possible stakeholders who may utilise the findings. Chapter 2 offered a new conceptualisation of FE teachers’ emotional ecology through the two dimensions of emotional planes and emotional knowledge. It created an additional area of research in the FE sector, which provided a bridge to those in the other education sectors. Chapter 3 explored three types of FE teachers’ professional identities – multi, double life and hybrid – and the complex interactions between the teachers’ pedagogic, life and occupational experiences. These identities are amorphous and context specific. The findings also highlighted new ways of envisaging professional selves. Chapter 4 was concerned with the systematic review of literature of professional identities. The review revealed the characteristics of the sector, and despite the significance of TVET, more research was needed to take this dimension into account, especially the teachers’ previous occupational practices and experiences. This finding has implications for the training of teachers, teachers’ know-how and their pedagogic practices, the teacher education curriculum, and the know-how of the teacher educators. This research approach opens up a new research area in the FE sector. Chapter 5 added a new factor in the WP equation where the focus might not always be on the learners but on the teachers and their contributions and impact on engaging with a wider audience of learners with different learning requirements. In that sense, this chapter provided another area of research in thinking about WP. Chapter 6 provided insights into how teaching and curriculum might be delivered in HEIs for those teaching on clinical provisions. It also encouraged research into this area of work-related practices.
142 Reflections on further education
Chapter 7 highlighted insights into how potential creative workers might be taught in HEIs with implications for their learning (formal and informal, explicit and tacit, and at work and non-work settings), types of know-how on offer, curriculum formation, and engagements with work organisations. There are commonalities of contributions and implications from the standalone contributions. They include a wider re-think of teachers’ know-how. In Chapter 2 on the emotional landscapes of FE teachers, their personal and occupational experiences were reflected in the three emotional planes (individual, relational and socio-political), and the three types of emotional knowledge (pedagogic, life and occupational). Chapter 3 on the three FE teachers’ professional identities – multi, double life and hybrid – has found the interconnections between the identities and the teachers’ professional knowledge of pedagogical, real life and occupational. Included in these interconnections were the symbiotic relationship between teaching and occupational practices, and the explicit and tacit natures of occupational and pedagogic practices. Chapter 5 on improving teaching quality for widening participation in the sector called for a more inclusive perspective of teaching know-how to include pedagogical, occupational and life-related experiences. Chapter 6 on the pedagogic implications of clinicians in HEIs evidenced that teaching know-how should include disciplinary knowledge; pedagogic and occupational knowledge; related pedagogic and professional practices and experiences; and relevant abilities, capacities and skill sets, which could be explicit and tacit. Chapter 7 on the education of creative workers for the knowledge economy evidenced the close connections between learning and working where know-how such as knowledge, abilities and talents were applied creatively. In addition to a wider definition of knowledge and in particular teaching knowledge, the chapters also illustrated the close connections between teaching, learning and professional practices across the academic levels and occupations (including teaching and other professions). These contributions impact on how continuous professional training, teacher education/training, institutional and policy-making approaches may be developed and implemented. Concerning caveats and areas for further research, one is always cautious about the applicability and transferability of a project’s findings to different and wider contexts; the sample size may be an issue regarding reliability and validity, the purposive sampling approach may also skew the findings, and so on. Certainly, empirical research has its relevance, but awareness of its potential pitfalls can only heighten a researcher’s role in using the findings to address real- life scenarios. However, this is not to say that there is no place for a theoretical or a reflective disposition, but they are different delineations. Nor am I saying that textbooks on a sector or a topic are unsuitable. They too have relevance in facilitating stakeholders to understand, learn and utilise the know-how that is relevant to them. On the plus side, the chapters in this research monograph are empirically based and not theoretically and reflectively approached. Each of the contributions included theoretical delineations and empirical evidence to support the findings.
Reflections on further education 143
With these caveats in mind, there is a need for such as a book, as there is a lacuna of research monographs which deal specifically with deliverers/teachers/ lecturers in the FE, higher and professional sectors and their activities with an emphasis on their occupational experiences (alongside their pedagogic and life experiences). The potential stakeholders include (research) students, teachers and academics, who in various combinations are studying, researching, delivering and managing provisions in the sectors, which cover professional learning and teaching. The students are likely to include those on education-related courses such as undergraduate, postgraduate (e.g. masters and doctoral) and teacher training/education. Other readerships include policymakers, managers and related deliverers – that is, teacher educators of programmes who may have associations with vocational, occupation-related and professional areas of education. The book may be of interest also to those working in relevant educational networks such as the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, City and Guilds Awarding Body, Pearson Education Limited, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (technical vocational education and training). In addition to the aforementioned interested parties, potential readers include those at the centres of teaching and research excellence such as the CETTs in post-compulsory education, lifelong learning and higher education. Other centres include Frank McLoughlin’s Commission on Adult Vocational Training and Learning (CAVTL) and the related centre for vocational education and training, the Education and Training Foundation. The relevant interested networks include the Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association, the British Educational Research Association, the Further Education Research Association, the Higher Education Academy and the Higher Vocational Education and Pedagogy network in England. Other networks are the Learning Skills Research Network, Teacher Education in Lifelong Learning, the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning, the Society for Research into Higher Education Post-Compulsory, Higher Education Research Network and the Work Foundation. Depositories such as university and think tank libraries may also be buyers of this research monograph.
Index
advertising 124 Alexaidou, N. 50, 68 – 81 American Society for Quality 132 Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) (currently known as National Education Union (NEU)) 143 Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association 143 Avis, J. 32, 50 – 51, 68 – 81 Barnett, M. 91, 95, 110, 127 Bathmaker, A-M. 32, 51, 68 – 81 Becher, T. 89, 96, 99, 131 Beijaard, D. 32, 49, 65 Bell, D. 131 Boland, A. 49 Bernstein, B. 30 – 33, 44, 90 – 91, 95 – 96, 107 – 111, 118, 126 – 127, 132, 137 Briggs, A.R.J. 52, 68 – 81 British Computer Society 132 British Educational Research Association 2 Brown, A.D. 52, 68 – 81 Buehi, M.M. 30 – 31, 40 – 42 Bullough Jr., R.V. 33 business and management 125 Cameron, L. 33 Castells, M. 124, 129 – 131 Chappell, C. 53, 68 – 81 City and Guilds Awarding Body 143 Clandinin, D.J. 31, 95 – 96, 99, 112, 118 Clarke, L. 129 clinicians 141; emergency medicine 104 – 123; general practitioners 104 – 123 Clow, R. 32, 53, 68 – 81 Coffield, F. 1, 3, 81 – 82 Cohen, L. 9, 131 College of Emergency Medicine (CEM) 116
Colley, H. 32, 54, 68 – 81, 129 Collins, H. 113 Council of Europe 86 creative workers 124 – 141; findings and discussion 131 – 137; literature review 125 – 129 Croskerry, P. 118 Crosling, G. 87 Cross, D.I. 4, 8, 20 – 21, 23 – 25 Csikszentimihalyi, M. 128 curriculum 125, 141; fluency 125; formation 106 – 114; implementation 114 – 120; intellectualists 125 Damasio, A.R. 129 Day, C. 4, 32 Denscombe, M. 9 Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 48, 87 Department for Education 48, 86 Derryberry, D. 5 Drucker, P. 131 Duke Dollars 132 Earley, M.A. 49 economics 125 Economics and Social Research Council 87 Education and Training Foundation 5, 48, 88, 143 Edwards, M. 98 Elbaz, F. 4 emergency medicine (EM) physicians/ clinicians 104 – 123 emotional ecology 4 – 28, 141; contributions and implication 25; definition 5, 8; findings and discussion 14 – 25; individual 14 – 20; knowledge (see knowledge); methodology 9 – 14; planes (individual,
Index 145 relational, socio-political) 14 – 24; relational 20 – 22; socio-political 22 – 25; theoretical framework 6 – 9 England 1, 124, 129 Eraut, M. 113, 118 European Union Commission 44, 129 Evans, K. 95, 109 – 111, 116 experiences 1; life 4 – 28; occupational 4 – 47, 142 Foster, P. 65 Frank McLoughlin’s Commission on Adult Vocational Training and Learning (CAVTL) 143 Freud, S. 40 Frijda, N.H. 4 Frontier Economics Limited 5, 29, 48, 88 further education 1, 2, 4 – 28, 48 – 85, 142; characteristics 68 – 72 Further Education Funding Council 86 Further Education Research Association 143 Gardner, H. 128 General practitioners (GPs) 104 – 123 Gleeson, D. 32, 55 – 57, 68 – 81 Gleeson, P. 32, 57, 68 – 81 Godar, J. 4 Goldstein, L.S. 4 Goleman, D. 129 Gough, D. 49, 65 Greenfield, O. 129 Guile, D. 125 Hager, P. 129 Hammersley, M. 12 Hargreaves, A. 4 Hastings, W. 4, 6 – 7, 14, 20 – 22 higher education 1, 3, 104 – 123, 141 – 142 Higher Education Academy (HEA) (currently known as Advance HE) 104, 114 Higher Education Research Network 143 Higher Vocational Education and Pedagogy network 143 Hodges, D. 32 Hordern, J. 127 House of Commons 104 identities see professional, identities information, communications and electronic technologies (ICET) 124 information technology (IT) software 124
International Software Testing Qualification Board 132 Isen, A.M. 5 Japan 124, 129 Jarvis, P. 128 Jephcote, M. 4, 20, 32, 58, 68 – 81 Jewitt, C. 92, 98 Kelchtermanns, G. 5 Ker, J. 118 Kettley, N. 87 Knorr Cetina, K. 130 – 131 knowledge 1; abilities 115; applied 118; C+++ 132; capacities 115; clinical 115, 118; core knowledge 104, 114; disciplinary 115, 118, 132, 134; emotional (life, pedagogic, occupational) 14 – 24, 142; explicit 115, 126; horizontal discourse/knowledge 107 – 108, 126; Java 134; know-how 115, 120 (occupational 120; teaching 120); medical 115; occupational 115; pedagogic 115; personal practical 112; powerful 125 – 126, 137; practical 118; professional 36 – 45, 104 – 123, 142; professionalism 118; skill sets 115 (communication 115; confidence 115; leadership 115, 118; management 115, 118); sources of teachers 30 – 32; symbolic representations 33 – 34; tacit 115; teaching 29 – 47, 112; technical 132; theoretical 119, 126; vertical discourse/knowledge 108, 126 (hierarchical vertical discourse 108; horizontal vertical discourse 108; strong grammar 108; weak grammars 108); work 120 knowledge economy 1, 3, 124 – 140 Kress, G. 92, 98 Lakoff, G. 33 La Porte, E. 4, 5 Lash, S. 131 Lave, J. 33, 43 Lavoie, C. 118 learning 124 – 140; lifelong 128 Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) 96 Learning and Skills Research Network 1, 143 Leathwood, C. 59, 68 – 81 LeCompte, M. 12, 94
146 Index Lee, J. C-K. 4 Lemke, J. 98 life experiences see experiences Loo, S. 2, 3, 44, 60, 68 – 81, 89 – 93, 95 – 97, 105, 109 – 112, 116, 118, 124 Lortie, D. 4 Loughran, J. 30, 40 – 43, 89 – 90, 95 – 96, 112, 115, 118 Mandin, H. 118 medical student passport 116 Mesquita, B. 4 Miles, M.B. 13, 94 Moore, A. 32 Nias, J. 4 Noddings, N. 5 Nonaka, I. 98, 113, 128 – 129, 131 Norman, G.R. 118 occupational experiences see experiences occupational-related teaching see professional O’Connor, K.E. 4, 7, 18, 24 ‘ongoing iconography’ 40 ‘oral history taking’ 43, 97 Organisation for Economic and Co-operation and Development (OECD) 44, 128 – 129 Orr, K. 60, 68 – 81 Parrott, W.G. 5 Pearson Education Limited 143 pedagogy/pedagogic 1, 4 – 28, 104 – 123 Pekrun, R. 5 Pettigrew, M. 65 Pines, A.M. 4 Polanyi, M. 98, 113, 129 Pollard, A. 92 post-compulsory education 1 professional: education 1; knowledge and professional identities of teachers 32 – 33; identities 29 – 85, 141 (discussion and forward 44 – 45; results 36 – 44; theoretical frameworks 30 – 34); teaching (see teaching) psychology 125 Quah, D. 131 Rashotte, J. 118 recontualization 109, 126 – 127; content 110, 119; generic mode 109 (focus type
109; location type 109; misrecognition type 109; recontextualizaing location type 109); integrated applied recontextualization (IAR) 117, 120; learner 110; ongoing 92, 97, 111, 116; pedagogy 110, 119; re-classificatory 127; regions mode 109; singular mode 109; workplace 110 Reich, R. 130 – 131 Research Excellence Framework 104 Rivett, D.A. 118 Robson, C. 9, 94, 130 Robson, J. 4, 20, 32, 61 – 62, 68 – 81 Ryan, S. 118 Schon, D.A. 118 Schultz, P.A. 6 – 7, 18, 20 Shain, F. 63, 68 – 81 shop-floor training 116 Shulman, L.S. 30, 40 – 43, 89, 92, 99, 115, 118 Simon, B. 1, 3 Singapore 124, 129 Siraj-Blatchford, I. 87 Smeby, J-C. 89, 96, 131 Society for Research into Higher Education Post-Compulsory 143 sociology 125 Sutton, R.E. 4 symbolic representations 29 – 47 systematic literature review 48 – 85, 141; findings and discussion 68 – 81 (Characteristics of the FE sector 68 – 72; TVET and professional identities 72 – 81); methodological approach 65 – 67; tabular review of the characteristics of professional identities in further education 50 – 64 Teacher Education in Lifelong Learning (TELL) 143 teachers/teaching 4 – 47, 104 – 123; ‘broadcast’ 117; professionals 104 – 123 (curriculum implementation 114 – 120; knowledge and curriculum formation 106 – 114); reconceptualising teacher education 86 – 103 (see also widening participation); strategies 117 Teaching Excellence Framework 104 technical and vocational education and training (TVET) 72 – 82, 141 Thomas, J.A. 4 Treder, F. 49, 65
Index 147 Trigwell, K. 4, 7, 14, 18, 20, 24 Tripp, T. 99
Volkmann, M.J. 33 von Hippel, E.V. 134
UK Professional Standards Framework 104, 114 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 49, 86, 143 Universities Association for Lifelong Learning 143 Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers 143
Watson, D. 86 widening participation 86 – 103, 141; discussion 94 – 99; WP and conceptual frameworks 88 – 93 Winch, C. 89, 113, 118 Woods, P. 4 Work-Based Learning for Education Professionals Centre 34 Work Foundation 143 working 124 – 140
van den Berg, R. 5 Vahasantanen, K. 32, 63 – 64, 68 – 81 van Lankveld, T. 49, 65 van Veen, K. 4 Verloop, N. 31, 41 – 43, 89 – 90, 95 – 96, 99, 112 Victor, B. 130 Viskovic A. 32, 41, 64, 68 – 81 vocational education and training 1; see also systematic literature review, TVET
Yeoh, M.J. 118 Yin, H-B. 4 Young, M. 92, 125 – 127, 132, 137 YouTube 132 Zembylas, M. 2, 3, 5 – 6, 8, 18 – 22, 25 Zuboff, S. 128 – 129, 131