The language of age in education: age aware but mixed age blind?

Pam Cole, University of Sheffield, UK

Paper presented at SCUTREA, 33rd annual conference, University of Wales, Bangor,

1-3 July, 2003

Introduction

The age of others and ourselves is one of the few things in our lives that we cannot change. In the world of education age can have enormous effect defining when we start and leave compulsory education, change from primary to secondary schools and so on. In the post compulsory sector individuals may only be eligible for some things, especially certain funding, depending on their age. Used in that way the language of age in education appears unambiguous. Yet further reflection produces a different understanding of the language of age in education (Cole 2002). My reflection on the language of ‘age’ in education, particularly the unstated assumptions, has been heightened by my involvement in research funded by the Learning and Skills Development Agency ‘Learning Together –Learning Relationships in Settings Shared by Young People and Adults’. (The Universities of Sheffield and Surrey are jointly delivering this.) One of the key findings from this research is, that although learning in post compulsory education often takes place in mixed age learning groups, there is little acknowledgement of this nor thought given to its implications. Many in further education (FE) appear to be ‘age aware but mixed age blind’.

Existing Knowledge

Learning interactions between young people and adults in mixed-age classes in further education appears to have received scant attention by researchers. There is a considerable literature on how adults in general learn, plus literature on youngsters but almost nothing on mixed age learning groups. Elder (1967) argued that the mixed age classroom would improve mutual understanding between adolescents, and that adult returners would emphasise the value of education and force ‘failing’ adolescents to reassess their prospects in adulthood. Darkenwald and Novak (1997) focused on statistical analysis of student grades and reached similar conclusions. However, both of these pieces of research were small scale and the authors of both call for more research. Preston and Hammond’s (2002) empirical research asserts that FE appears to be effective in developing social networks between people of different ages but it does not focus on mixed age learning groups.

In contrast to the implicit support for age-mixing, within the literature there are a number of calls for greater segregation of age groups. Some argue for a clearer separation between the provision of education for young people and for adults (Lucas, 2000). Others advocate an increase in the number of tailor-made programmes for older adults to encourage them to participate more fully in further education (Carlton and Soulsby, 1999; Gaskell, 1999). One such trend towards segregation on the basis of age is the establishment of the sixth form centre within general FE colleges (Morris and others, 1999).

Government Level

To what extent is the government ‘age aware but mixed age blind’? The government is certainly age aware – recently they have developed a new age category with their ‘14-19 agenda’ (DfES 2002). Yet maybe one of the reasons why people in the further education sector are ‘mixed age blind’ is that although some classes consist of people of different ages this is barely recognised at government level. When the further education colleges became independent in 1993,the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), which in 2001 became the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), demanded data from colleges about each individual student (ISR – Individual Student Record) which was linked to funding allocation. At first colleges struggled to provide such data but they have now improved their MIS systems and management and can routinely do this. However, the FEFC/LSC data collection concentrated on ‘input’ (did a student receive guidance prior to starting the course) and ‘output’ (did the student complete the course, gain the qualification etc) not how the learning took place. There was therefore no demand to know anything about class groups. This means that although it is possible to find out quite a lot of information about individual students from the FEFC/LSC data, it is not possible to find out about the learning groups in which they study. The government cannot therefore even know the percentage of learning groups which are mixed age.

Indeed its ‘mixed age blindness’ extends wider than this. The government gains useful insights into Further Education from the inspection reports. From 1993-2001 the FEFC had the legal duty to inspect individual colleges in England; since 2001 OFSTED has been responsible for the inspection of provision for 16-18 year olds and the Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI) for the 19+ age group. For our research we examined the FEFC, Ofsted and ALI inspection reports. The inspection reports make no systematic attempts to identify mixed age learning groups and comments about mixed age learning are extremely rare (Cole and Bathmaker 2002). Across all 600 FEFC college inspection reports only one reference was found to mixed age teaching groups:

Most (business) classes had a wide age and ability range which teachers drew on to good effect. Teachers catered well for the abilities and needs of all students. (East Yorkshire College, July 1994, p.8)

The government is indeed ‘mixed age learning blind’.

College Management

To what extent is college management age aware and mixed age blind? Gaining their independence from the Local Education Authorities in 1993, plus FEFC funding linked to high growth targets, inevitably led to colleges becoming more market orientated and ‘customer aware’. Phrases like ‘market segmentation’ crept into college ‘management speak’ and senior managers talk about their ‘brand strategy’. This has made colleges very ‘age aware’. One assistant principal in our research talked about the college having five brands:

  • 16-19 but becoming more and more 14-19
  • Higher Education
  • Lifelong learning (adults)
  • International brand (overseas students)
  • Workbased solutions - commercial activity

However, only as she talked to us did she gradually realise the true extent of age separation and the unplanned knock on effect of the reduction in mixed age learning groups. She sounded surprised as she said:

Indirectly through our brand policy we have had discussion (of age) but in terms of actual teaching and learning I don’t think we have had that (mixed age learning) debate. This (interview) just makes you think about it, and why haven’t we, because actually it can be quite significant. You do think about it in terms of adults having different needs, but not in terms of any mixing or the effects of that.

She then further reflected:

Possibly it’s because we don’t actually plan for it. Sometimes it happens but we don’t go out and say this is going to be a mixed age course. There are classes where it happens every year so we sort of plan for it but it’s not something we actively think about.

This was not an isolated example of college ‘age awareness but mixed age blindness’, it reflected our wider findings. Colleges had difficulty identifying learning groups by age for us. For the second phase of our research we wanted to observe mixed age learning groups and interview the staff and students involved. Identification of the groups has been a headache. For instance one college assured us that they had now improved their MIS and that this year it would be easy for them to identify mixed age groups. However, after lengthy delays with few groups identified, a member of staff in the college used her long experience to ‘guess’ where there might be mixed age classes. In another college a senior member of staff informed us that they had improved their MIS systems so that they could now ‘drill down’ to obtain data on age mix. However, when we requested a whole college picture of mixed age classes this was met with a look of horror as ‘drill down was possible but time consuming and could not be done on that scale’.

Subsequent interviews with heads of department revealed that they could only guess which classes might be mixed age. It was not that colleges did not have class registers that included students’ dates of birth – they did. What they did not do was use this to identify an age profile for each class. One reason for this became apparent on an observation visit. When the researcher requested the class age breakdown she was given a copy of the register with students’ dates of birth. Then the tutor and researcher had to manually work out how many students were in the different age categories.

College staff

College staff, especially lecturers are very aware of the age of the students in their classes, and the age range of students in a class they are teaching. In this sense they are both ‘age’ and also ‘mixed age’ aware. What were their views on mixed age learning groups?

Generally staff prefer to teach mixed age groups. One tutor felt that the mixture of ages gave her the best of both worlds:

I admire the older ones, and the younger ones make me laugh.

Staff particularly welcomed age mixing if this avoided having groups of just 16-17 year olds. It was felt that older students had a positive effect on behaviour. This might be by making the misbehaving youngsters feel juvenile:

There are enough mature students in this group for them (misbehaving youngsters) to probably feel a bit silly. (English GCSE tutor)

or by the older students verbally ‘thumping’ the students. (This was not said in a nasty way.)

The older students have got a way of addressing the younger students that teachers can’t do. The ones we would like to thump, well the older students have got a way of verbally thumping them. (Engineering tutor)

Another tutor outlined how:

A woman in her 40’s sat at the front and complained because the younger element in the class took longer tea breaks… she took 20 minutes and they took 30 minutes. She had ‘a word with them’ and the next week they came back in after tea break on time. (Accountancy Tutor)

Staff also talked about the older students setting a positive example by wanting to learn. They felt that this was especially useful for those youngsters who came straight from school onto a fulltime course and knew nothing beyond the world of full time education.

The 16-18s are still drifting and haven’t got a clear goal, they also want to conform more with their peers – unfortunately this conformity is not usually to work harder.(Head of Business)

If they are all 16 they still think they are at school and act that way. When there is an age mix they actually see other people who want to come on courses who are more mature and it gets them interested’ (Hairdressing tutor)

Staff felt that in mixed age learning groups the younger students gained more than the older ones. However, some felt that there were benefits for the mature students too.

Actually, they (matures) do like to pass on information that they’ve learnt. They will take somebody under their wing and ‘Yeah, I’ll bring you on and show you what to do’….It gives them a feeling of self-worth. (Construction Tutor)

The young ones benefit the older ones. There’s the IT in particular because they’re so experienced with it and some of the older ones that haven’t studied for a while are quitedaunted by the prospect of using IT, and tackling essays and things like that. I think the younger ones maybe communicate to the older ones that it’s really not that much of a serious issue. (Business Tutor)

One tutor found teaching her mixed age group very difficult and now regularly splits the group by age and sets one group work while she teaches the other. However, this was a group with many problems and she was the only tutor to experience such difficulty. Other tutors were fairly neutral. Many qualified their answers by the percentage of students in the different age groupings within a class. Some qualified their answers by: subject, full or part time, and day or evening classes. Nevertheless although when asked to define a mixed age learning group, staff often talked about a range of different age groupings, in their answers it was clear that they saw youngsters straight from school as having the most noticeable effect in a mixed age learning group.

Did having mixed age learning groups affect the way staff teach? None of the staff said that they had had any training in working with mixed age learning groups. Most felt that mixed age should not affect their teaching:

All of our students are in post compulsory education so we should treat them all as adults. (English tutor)

Some felt that they probably did treat the older and young ones differently but they tried not to. Others regarded having the mixture as positive and drew upon the relevant experience of the students. For instance older ones often had contributions to make from their own work/life experience. Younger ones might be more up to date, especially in subjects like hair and beauty.

Clearly there was considerable mixed age awareness amongst the college staff. However, this was in answer to our direct questions about ‘mixed age’. In spite of this many staff interviewees would digress and start to talk about youngsters or older students in general rather than the mixed age learning group. It would appear that often staff saw students as primarily old or young, rather than as part of a mixed age learning group. Staff reported rarely discussing age mix at college meetings or informally.

The students

The students were age aware and it had never occurred to many of the younger ones that they might be in mixed age learning groups at college. However, despite some initial concerns about learning with students of a different age, most of the younger students who were interviewed seemed to have a preference for mixed-age groups. The reasons for this echoed those expressed by the staff. Many focused on improved behaviour and learning:

If we were all the same age, like at school, we’d be more stupid, we would have a laugh…. But having more mature people in the class makes you more responsible. (hairdressing student aged 17)

Some of the older students were more ambivalent about the age mix and did not have a preference for either mixed-age groups or classes comprised solely of ‘older’ learners (although several thought that the courses they were interested in were unlikely to be economically viable if they were age-segregated).

When asked explicitly whether they would recommend that their college move towards age-segregation of learning groups, almost all the students thought that this would be a bad idea. Nevertheless, in many of the groups that were observed, there were clear social divisions by age. Even in groups in which both older and younger students were enthusiastic about the advantages of age-mixing there were divisions by age in terms of the students’ seating arrangements in class and who they socialised with during breaks. The students are certainly age aware but their attitude towards mixed age is muddled – many can see its value but they rarely demonstrate it in practice.

Conclusion

Despite the increasing focus on age demarcation to meet the needs of further education students, many students actually spend part (or all) of their time in mixed age learning groups. Currently the government makes little attempt to study this, college management too appears to regard it as something which is sometimes an economic necessity but not something for which it plans. Yet despite this most college teachers, and many students who have experienced it, feel that it enhances learning. ‘Mixed age blindness’ is not satisfactory; it is time more light was shed on this. Many interviewees supported this:

I think it’s really interesting research. It’s one of those things where we have assumptions but never test them out. (General Studies Head of Department)

Acknowledgement – This paper comes out of the work of the LSDA funded project ‘Learning Together? Learning and teaching in settings shared by young people and adults’. The project is being jointly delivered by teams from the Universities of Sheffield and Surrey. Gareth Parry, Pam Cole, Ann-Marie Bathmaker, Colin McCaig, Alec Thompson, Louise Ritchie, Laura Davis and Margaret Lewis are members of the Sheffield Team. Stephen McNair, Steve Woodfield, Jan Shepherd and Rachel Brooks are members of the Surrey team.