British Educational Research Association

BR_DJA_PUB_12.09.02

BRITISH EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION

Annual Conference, 12th – 14th September 2002

University of Exeter

David James

Reader and Director of Academic Professional Development programmes

Faculty of Education

University of the West of England, Bristol

Frenchay Campus

BRISTOL BS16 1QY

Telephone 0117 344 4215

For use as a conference paper only. The author regards this as work-in-progress. Constructive criticism is most welcome. Please consult author before quoting or citing.

Introduction

This is an exploratory paper, envisaged as the first of several within the Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education[i](TLCFE) project as a whole to focus on one important strand of methodological and theoretical work. It begins with a sketch of arguments for putting culture at the centre of the study of learning, then describes in brief terms one of the sixteen learning sites that are the focus of much of the fieldwork in the project. This description is followed by a short interpretation of some of the qualitative data, framed by learning culture as a heuristic device, and some concluding thoughts about implications for change of the approach taken.

The broad case for culture in the study of learning

From the outset, the TLCFE project had a strong collectively-held view of the need to approach the study of learning culturally and a declared intention to develop the concept of learning culture so as to maximise its utility for understanding in the FE context. With a wish to develop practical knowledge and a design that facilitates practitioner engagement, the project seeks ultimately to “…identify aspects of learning cultures that are amenable to intervention and change and to determine which types of intervention contribute to positive transformations in learning, and under what conditions they do so” (Project Proposal, section 19)

There are many arguments for putting a concept of culture in pole position, and also some dangers. For present purposes, it is worth spending a moment on the kinds of arguments that may be advanced to support this view. Here I make brief mention of three, perhaps the most important, of these. They are arguments about interdisciplinarity, the cultural capital argument, and the community of practice argument.

Interdisciplinarity arguments

The term culture is used by some contemporary theorists to refer to academic endeavour that seeks to understand cultural activity (such as the production of meaning) whilst also avoiding the arguably negative consequences of becoming locked in to particular academic disciplinary traditions. A powerful example of this would be the case made by James Wertsch at the beginning of a book that lays out the need for socio-cultural theory, where it is argued that if we wish to understand learning we must develop explanations that cross, link or disrupt disciplinary boundaries (Wertsch, 1998, p. 5). Another example, this time from the Cultural Studies field, suggests that a move away from disciplinary thinking amounts to a paradigm shift away from a naïve categorisation of things and processes in the world as either ‘normal’ or ‘pathological’ cases:

Objects of analysis are not what they used to be. Once, so the history of social science tells us, they were secure, fixed, a matter of definition and not in question. Now they are in doubt, problematic, under erasure and without foundation. This does not signify a fundamental change in the social structure. Both the natural and social worlds have always been complex and discursively constituted. We have just been very effective at convincing ourselves that the world is simple, atomistic, a collection of empirical regularities …it is the adoption of a closed system of analysis of the social which has served to shore up the social science disciplines (Smith, 2000, p. 111).

Smith sees his line of reasoning as having radical promise, going on to suggest that

It is not only the way we locate people in categories that must be challenged. We should destabilize the classificatory systems responsible for pathologies; classification systems are negotiated and are not fixed inventories

and

The problems created by converting culturally specific values into classificatory practices which remain tacit will not go away. We should not assume that the word ‘culture’ can act as a magic wand; it is what we do with it that counts (Smith, 2000, pp. 132-3).

Whether or not we go along with the kind of argument that Smith is making – and his portrayal of academic disciplines may be overdrawn – it is nevertheless clear that there is an important difference between approaching learning as a set of practices to be understood, explained or transformed, and (on the other hand) approaching it as, say, an instance of information-processing, or an instance of policy implementation. This is not to say these things won’t remain relevant, just to say they are not at the core of the approach.

The cultural capital argument

The TLCFE project has from its inception signalled a wish to make use of theoretical tools derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. At the time the project was first designed this was still something of a rarity, though there were exceptions (such as Hodkinson et al 1996; James, 1995; Reay, 1995). It is now more common, thanks to work like that of Ball et al (2000), a series of further analyses from Reay (eg. Reay 2000) and a number of others. In one sense all of Bourdieu’s work concerns itself with ‘culture’ (Grenfell and James, 1998; Robbins, 2000). Yet there are some specific senses in which the concept is used and they are important for what they might help us to do. As was described in an earlier paper related to the project (James and Bloomer, 2001), Bourdieu’s theory of practice was built from a critical engagement with regard to subjectivist and objectivist readings of culture:

A range of conceptual tools are on offer to help us investigate the social world within this theory of practice, which also claims to be a theory-as-method. They include habitus and field: the former, a durable but transposable set of dispositions, representing the physical and mental embodiment of the social but at the same time offering choices, played out in what Bourdieu terms strategy; the latter, a structured system of social relations at micro and macro level, rather like a field of forces in which positions are defined relationally, that is, in relation to each other. Usually there are particular and discernable forms of capital at stake in a field, commonly economic, social or cultural or some combination of these. Conceptual tools such as these provide the researcher with a “way of thinking and a manner of asking questions” (Mahar et al, 1990, p.3) and promise to help them avoid constructing reified ‘types’ and ‘categories’ in the way that much social science does (talking of “the adult learner”, “the mature student” or “the disaffected learner” and the like). Bourdieu's approach holds out the possibility of producing descriptions, explanations and understandings of complex social practices without reducing them to either mentalistic or social variables. It also counsels against the tendency to obscure social practices by seeing them only as manifestations of a particular theory or model (e.g., rational choice theory): to do so is, in Bourdieu's terms, to confuse “the model of reality with the reality of the model”. The approach is furthermore characterised by a radical notion of reflexivity, wherein the background and interests of the investigator, and in particular their relation to the object of study, are of primary concern (James and Bloomer, 2001, p.5)

One of the effects of being informed by this is that it encourages us to question some fairly ingrained categories and distinctions. The most fundamental is the structure/agency distinction. However, the disciplinary thinking that has held sway in the study of learning also gives us the intrinsic/ extrinsic motivation distinction, the conscious/unconscious distinction, and the separation of knowledge, understanding and doing as separate domains (a recent development of this would be the distinction between academic and non-academic outcomes [eg Falchicov, 2001]). A Bourdieuian approach teaches us to be sceptical about the authority of such distinctions – partly on the grounds that they may represent disciplinary interests, and partly because their utility is diminished by concepts like habitus. The conscious/unconscious distinction is of little utility if we are using a concept of habitus, because a person’s habitus amounts to a durable but flexible toolkit of dispositions that are the embodiment of socially-generated meanings and categories, which that person then contribute to maintaining. The notion of misrecognition further undermines the conscious/unconscious distinction. Arguably, people tend to misrecognise social inequality, seeing it as only a product of individual differences in a meritocracy; they tend to treat academic educational credentials at face value (knowing there are clear status hierarchies but carrying on as if they were about other things, such as pure preferences). But rather like the experience of being moved by an actor’s performance (despite knowing that “it’s really only a play/film”), misrecognition is neither a conscious nor an unconscious process, but both at once. This is another way of saying that the distinction is not necessarily a helpful construction.

However, the major effect of thinking with Bourdieu is to frame the interest in learning in broad terms. For example, the TLCFE project is to some extent interested in the learning styles of students and the teaching strategies that may maximise efficient recall of information, but not as primary objects of study in those terms. It is interested in the extent to which these and other competing sets of assumptions prevail in certain learning situations. It is interested in whether and how they inform the practices of tutors, students, managers, employers and others; it is interested in whose interests are served, and of course whether as sets of ideas they have any transformatory potential. It is interested in the extent to which conventional or institutional definitions of learning activity (such as those drawing on human capital ideas, or which incorporate a technical-rational approach to decision-making) are articulated or adequate, and for whom. Getting a grasp of all this includes finding out about such things as individuals’ backgrounds as well as their experiences and expectations. It includes looking at the ingrained and changing practices of courses, institutions or subjects, and the way particular “modes of delivery” operate. It also involves making reasoned arguments about actual and potential transformations of people and practices. It requires a focus on the everyday (doxa) more than on the exceptional. It is an examination of the production of meanings, which is one common definition of culture.

Community of practice argument

Interdisciplinarity was one of the motivators for activities that led up to the publication of Etienne Wenger’s landmark book Communities of Practice. As is now quite well-known, this offers a social theory of learning. Here, “…in spite of curriculum, discipline, and exhortation, the learning that is most personally transformative turns out to be the learning that involves membership in these communities of practice” (Wenger, 1998, p. 6).

Wenger’s treatment of agency and constraint is in some ways quite close to Bourdieu’s. There is an insistence that “Living meaningfully implies…an active process of producing meaning that is both dynamic and historical” and “Meaning exists neither in us, nor in the world, but in the dynamic relation of living in the world” (Wenger, 1998, pp. 53 and 54. Emphasis added). Similarly, “(P)articipation in social communities shapes our experience, and it also shapes those communities; the transformative potential goes both ways…” (p. 56-7). This begs the question of why it is that we have got so used to thinking that we must isolate causal variables and that they must come down on the side of agency or cultural determinism.

For Wenger, the concept of participation conveys the “profoundly social character” of learning. It’s partner concept is reification, which refers to the

…process of giving form to our experience by producing objects that congeal this experience into “thingness”. In doing so we create points of focus around which the negotiation of meaning becomes organized” (p. 58).

Interestingly, Wenger wishes to preserve the slightly pejorative connotation of reification in all this. In other words, reification is the usual and necessary process of making cultural things – the tools, concepts and objects that accompany practice/participation – but it also refers on occasion to a making too much of something (“excessive concreteness and projected reality”). The status of the things is not always warranted, they become more real than they deserve to be.

Wenger asks that we use these two concepts – participation and reification – together. This is explained via an excellent example of relational thinking:

…participation and reification are both distinct and complementary… (t)he reification of a Constitution is just a form; it is not equivalent to a citizenry. Yet it is empty without the participation of the citizens involved. Conversely, the production of such a reification is crucial to the kind of negotiation that is necessary for them to act as citizens…(p.62)

Participation and reification come as a pair. “Given one, it is a useful heuristic to wonder where the other is” (p. 62)

The work of Lave, Wenger and collaborators is helpful on a number of fronts, including the powerful idea that transformation is cultural – that is, it is both a personal and a situational or structural process. The title of our research project (Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education) is intended to reflect just such a double meaning. Lave and Wenger’s work also reminds us that some of the most pervasive and widely-held characterisations of learning may actually reflect ossified institutional conveniences, or ideological tram-lines in our thinking, rather than being necessarily useful for understanding. Let us be in no doubt about the relevance of this for the task in hand. In FE, as in other sectors, there are some strong and collective views about good and bad teaching which rest on popular dichotomies more than they do on professional experience or even research. I am not making this up: at a recent conference, sponsored by a state agency, I heard one presentation that equated the efficiency of learning with examination passes at GCSE; another that accepted uncritically, as the outcomes of “research”, employer’s views that it was the state’s responsibility to deal with low levels of literacy amongst their workers[ii]; and another that suggested that pedagogic research could soon show us all exactly which methods to use so as to teach most effectively, across the board. Again, there is a parallel with Bourdieuian thinking. The relevant question is “what interests are served by this or that practice”?

Learning culture in a learning site

On the face of it, if we wish to explore the utility of learning culture as a conceptual tool it would seem safest to take a group of learners who spend a lot of time together on a course with a strong vocational identity. Indeed this is already the core concern of some of the TLCFE cross-project work. A number of people in the team are working together, comparing different sites to look at processes of vocational becoming, or the creation of vocational habitus, paying particular attention to gender dimensions. However, here I wish to introduce one of the learning sites in the project that is quite far removed from this picture, in that it involves a tutor and a number of isolated and relatively isolated individuals. The methodological sub-text here is to see whether the notion of learning culture is useful for developing an understanding in less-favourable circumstances.

The learning site in question is ostensibly a series of assessment activities. It comprises work-based assessment for National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) in the fields of: Business Administration; Customer Service; Using IT; Call Handling Operations. The provision is part of the Faculty of Administration, Business and Technology in a large college. Assessment is at levels 2 to 4 in the NVQ framework. Most of the “students” remain in their workplace whilst signed up, and although there are opportunities for them to attend college-based workshops as well, very few of these are taken up: the college is physically and mentally remote, and the student’s contact with the college is via Gwen, the tutor. Several said that for them “Gwen is the college”, and this phrase was also used, independently, by Gwen’s line manager. The provision is planned on six to twelve month periods, with scope for extension where necessary.

The organisations concerned tend to be large public and private organisations in the immediate region (including a local authority, a building society, part of a civil service department, a higher education college, and an information technology manufacturing company) and the provision is negotiated as a “package” with these organisations. There is a formal agreement between the college and the organisation with regard to financial arrangements. A minority of students fund themselves. A programme of study will typically begin with a tutor-led induction session followed by a series of one-to-one meetings between the tutor and each student, spread over the six to 12 months. One-to-one meetings will typically last 60 to 75 minutes, will begin with tea of coffee and an informal chat, followed by a review of tasks carried out since the last meeting and a preliminary tutor judgement about their suitability, then a conversation about how various work practices could be identified and described so as to provide evidence for further elements of competence, and an agreement about what to do next.

Each student currently generates ten hours of tutor work, though according to both the tutor and her line manager, in reality the amount of work is often greater, particularly at level 2. (Towards the end of the 2001-02 academic year, dramatic reductions in contact time were being discussed in the Faculty – more on this below.). Each day the tutor may meet with up to seven students in different organisations around the city, visiting them at their desks or in a nearby room within the workplace. There is wide variety in the students’ ages (they are in their 20s to their 50s) though most are in their 20s. Their educational and employment backgrounds also vary greatly. Completion rates are above 90%, in contrast to many of the modern apprenticeship students on programmes that include work-based learning and NVQs, whose completion rates are around 50% and in some cases much below (College Ofsted report)

One of the first things to strike the researchers was an apparent fault-line in the interview data around how to describe activity. On the one hand, a line manager and some college documentation (and indeed some student accounts) described the activity as one of assessment only. That is, the NVQ process here was said to consist of a student and an assessor working together to identify and record examples, incidents or episodes that demonstrated competence in accordance with a specification. The tutor’s role would sometimes include using a tape-recorder to gather evidence (where, for example, a student found it difficult to write about some aspect of their work). It would also include the ever-present need to explain elements of the language of the specification in ways that the students would find accessible.