Serving different research agendas in adult learning and teaching: A New Zealand story
Nick Zepke and Linda Leach
Massey University, New Zealand
Paper presented at SCUTREA 34th Annual Conference, University of Sheffield, UK. 6-8 July 2004
Introduction
This paper examines the current policy context of adult learning and teaching in New Zealand and tells one story of (re)generating research in that context. It illustrates the tensions between a government funding practical research to achieve its agenda, and researchers who want to meet the terms of research contracts, while researching with a more critical or emancipatory intent. In the first part of the paper we outline the New Zealand tertiary education policy context and identify some tensions for researchers. In the second part we tell a story of how we experienced these tensions in one project and discovered potential for (re)generating research. In the third part we explore ways of (re)generating research by intent. We draw on our experiences in one study to propose ways to engage in research that both meets government policy requirements and serves researchers’ emancipatory purposes.
Some tensions in adult learning and teaching research
In New Zealand, ‘tertiary education’ stands for ‘adult education’. It applies to all post-school adult learning and teaching activities, whether formal or non-formal. Since 1999 the tertiary education landscape in New Zealand has been reshaped by policies based on two key ideas. One is sourced to the 1997 Hamburg Declaration and its associated policy document, the Agenda for the Future (Labour Party, 1999). The Hamburg Declaration offers a broad definition of adult education:
… the entire body of ongoing learning processes, formal or otherwise, whereby people regarded as adults by the society to which they belong develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, and improve their technical or professional qualifications or turn them into a new direction to meet their own needs and those of their society (Sussmuth, 1997, p.1).
The Agenda for the Future offers policy ideas adapted later by the New Zealand government. These include calls for a new partnership between the state and civil society, greater equity through universal rights to education, literacy and basic education, increased competencies in labour market skills, environmental sustainability and improving access to and quality of education. It is the last policy idea that is the primary subject of this paper.
However, it is simplistic to suggest that a supranational document could be the sole generator of policy ideas for tertiary education in New Zealand. Indeed, Government policy, including education policy, has been formulated within a philosophical framework, often called the Third Way. This tries to avoid extremes of both market liberalism and the welfare State by emphasising ‘social inclusion, pluralism, and democratic involvement within an active civil society that supports a market economy’ (Codd, 2002, p.32). In summarising the main tenets of Third Way politics, Giddens (2001) highlights the tightrope balances to be achieved. There is an active state, but it cannot interfere with responsible capitalism. Rights and responsibilities are carefully balanced so that neither is privileged. Egalitarianism and full employment are pursued vigorously, but welfare provisions are reformed while the state practices fiscal probity and engineers flexible labour markets. Most importantly, perhaps, there is no vision as to how these balances are to be maintained. The Third Way is not a developed philosophy, but a pragmatic response to needs: ‘what counts is what works’ (Giddens, 2001, p.5).
These two underpinning ideas have been drawn into a national Tertiary Education Strategy (TES), comprising six individual strategies. One of these concerns research. According to the TES (Ministry of Education, 2002, p.52) the tertiary system will provide ‘a research base for new government policy initiatives … and for a more inclusive approach to economic transformation’. Universities have a key role in economic transformation through research. To achieve this strategy the government has introduced a variety of funding pools. One of these funds research into learning and teaching. The Government has tended to favour two kinds of educational research: one taps into international research by funding literature reviews; the other funds empirical research within the New Zealand context. Both are contestable and research briefs emphasise the need to meet national goals and inform practice.
This practical, instrumental framework for research could create tensions for researchers. While some are happy to create knowledge that services current agendas, others want to create knowledge to change rather than maintain existing social arrangements. We belong to this second group. We relate to the radical philosophy of adult education described by Elias and Merriam (1995). We share a vision with people like Marx, Gramsci, Habermas, Bourdieu and Freire, of more democratic society that enables currently disempowered groups to challenge the status quo. So we research from a critical perspective, seeking knowledge that has emancipatory potential. Both ‘critical’ and ‘emancipatory’ are slippery concepts. Each has a multiplicity of meanings. By ‘critical’ we mean research that identifies how ‘considerations of power undergird, frame and distort so many adult learning processes and interactions’ (Brookfield, 2000, p.39). We use ‘emancipatory’ to describe research that aims to discover processes that help to redress unequal power balances within society, including tertiary classrooms (Cervero and Wilson, 2001).
The tension is further heightened by pressure to gain research contracts and produce research outputs. Within the last year the Government has decreed that a proportion of tertiary education funding be based on research outputs. The Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) increases pressure on academic staff to produce tangible research outputs. In addition, institutions wish to increase incomes through externally funded research. Government, essentially, is the only funder of research into tertiary learning and teaching. Researchers must satisfy the Government’s research agenda, meeting requirements of contract briefs and selection criteria. This compounds the tensions with our own research agendas. We have found, however, that Government and emancipatory agendas are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It has been possible to (re)generate research so that both the Government’s research agenda and our critical, emancipatory intent are satisfied. We now tell the story of two research contracts we have won. The first focused on gathering international research information via a literature review. Here we discovered the potential for (re)generating research. In the second, an empirical project conducted in the New Zealand tertiary context, we intentionally shaped the proposal to achieve critical and emancipatory potential.
Discovering the potential for (re)generation
In one of its recent initiatives the Government announced its intention to allocate a proportion of institutional funding based on rates of student completion (Ministry of Education, 2001). To support this policy it put out for tender a contract for a best evidence synthesis of research literature on tertiary student outcomes. The tender document clearly stated the Government’s intention to ‘develop evidence-based policy advice on the tertiary sector’ (Ministry of Education, 2002a, p.1). MasseyUniversity bid for this contract. We were members of the project team that won the contract. We took responsibility for researching one aspect of the project, the effect of student support services on student outcomes.
We found a voluminous student outcomes literature. Major syntheses have been published over several decades, primarily in the USA, (Tinto, 1975, 1988, 1993; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991; Astin, 1993, 1997) but also in Australia (McInnis et al, 2000a). We synthesised the results of 146 studies. Two separate discourses surfaced. One, the dominant, was based on the idea that student outcomes improve where institutions integrate them into their academic and social cultures. This serves the Government’s interests. The other discourse was based on the notion that, in a time of great social change and increasing diversity, student outcomes improve when institutions adapt their cultures to the diverse needs of students. This emerging, adaptation discourse, we welcomed as potentially critical and emancipatory.
The integration discourse is based on the work of Vincent Tinto who has developed an integrative theory and a sequence of student departure models. These have achieved a dominance called almost hegemonic (Braxton, 2000). Tinto’s 1993 model of student departure has six progressive phases. Two focus on students’ social and academic integration into their institution. Much student retention research is based on these phases. Studies used in our literature review tested various Tinto constructs (Cabrera et al, 1992; Braxton, Vesper and Hossler, 1995; Padilla et al, 1997; Braxton and Lien, 2000). Although many aspects have been validated by empirical research, results have been uneven. Braxton and Lien (2000), for example, tested his academic integration construct and found quite different levels of support for it in multi-institutional and single institution studies.
We discovered ten key ideas feeding the integration discourse (Zepke and Leach, in press). The first suggests that institutional behaviours, environment and processes should be welcoming and efficient (e.g. Berger, 2001-2002). This highlights the importance, for example, of the clarity and accessibility of information about the institution and programmes, the impact of enrolment processes, effectiveness of advice about course changes, the flexibility of timetabling and ease of early contact between institution and students. The second idea holds that outcomes are improved where institutions provide opportunities for students to establish social networks, for example, through clubs, cultural groups and sporting activities (e.g. Saenz et al, 1999). A third idea is that academic counselling and pre-enrolment advice need to be readily available, to ensure that students enrol into appropriate programmes and papers (e.g. Yorke, 1999). A surprising number seem to enrol in wrong courses and even wrong institutions. A fourth idea suggests that where teachers are approachable and available for academic discussions, inside and outside the classroom, outcomes improve (e.g. Walker, 2000). The fifth proposes that where students experience good quality teaching and manageable workloads they are more likely to succeed. Student workload is regarded as a key factor in influencing students’ outcomes (e.g. McInnes et al, 2000b).
Sixth, outcomes improve where orientation/induction programmes are provided to facilitate both social and academic integration (e.g. Braxton et al, 1995). Evidence is very strong that orientation programmes provide anticipatory socialization, whereby individuals come to anticipate correctly the values, norms and behaviours they will encounter at university. The seventh is founded on the idea that students working in academic learning communities have good outcomes. In one major American study a sense of community was one of only four significant persistence factors identified by students (Bailey et al, 1998). According to the eighth idea, outcomes improve where institutions provide a range of support services and facilities, such as child care, English language support, financial aid, counselling, health service, library support, women’s resource centre, student housing and employment services, study skills assistance, student clubs, sports facilities and cafeteria (e.g. McInnes et al, 2000b). The ninth idea introduced Supplemental Instruction as a useful approach to improving student achievement in difficult subjects (e.g. Etter et al, 2001). The final idea recognises that the peer group is the strongest single source of influence on cognitive and affective development and that peer tutoring and mentoring improve student outcomes (e.g. Dixon and Gudan, 2000).
These ideas, based on Tinto’s theory and models, align readily with the Government’s pragmatic agenda as they can be implemented relatively easily and quickly. Such ideas generate one research story. But this is not the only story, as we found that Tinto’s model has its critics. These fall into two broad groups – those who wish to revise and improve Tinto’s theories (Cabrera et al, 1992; Braxton, 2000) and those who propose entirely new theoretical directions (Berger, 2001-2002; Kuh and Love, 2000; Rendon et al, 2000; Tierney, 2000). In our view, those revising Tinto’s model retain his integrative intent, fitting the student to the institution. However, those developing new theoretical directions modify integration to include adaptation, where institutions change to accommodate diverse students. In this adaptation discourse student departure is influenced by their perceptions of how well their cultural attributes are valued, accommodated and how differences between their cultures of origin and immersion are bridged (Cabrera et al, 1999; Berger, 2001-2002; Walker, 2000; Thomas, 2002). We see this emerging discourse as (re)generating the dominant research story by enabling a more critical and emancipatory intent.
We found three key ideas in the literature that supported the adaptation discourse. First, where students feel valued, fairly treated and safe regardless of, for example, gender, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, domicile and employment status, their outcomes are improved. As student diversity increases, institutions must create climates that welcome, accept, respect, affirm and value diversity, creating ‘an accepting culture’ or ‘ethos’ (e.g. Cabrera et al, 1999). A second idea is that institutional processes that cater for diversity of learning preferences, lead to better outcomes.This idea suggests that students expect institutions to fit their lives enabling them to stay connected with their outside worlds (e.g. McInnes, 2001).
Finally, and possibly most importantly, where institutional cultures, social and academic, welcome diverse cultural capital and adapt to diverse students’ needs, students prosper. The studies found that tertiary students arrive at an institution with particular cultural capital. Where this is not valued or accepted they are more likely to experience acculturative stress. They found that where institutional cultures are accepting of difference and facilitate a greater match with students’ personal identity, higher rates of student retention and success are achieved (e.g. Berger, 2000; Walker, 2000; Thomas, 2002). We were really excited to discover the emerging discourse in the literature. It eased the tensions inherent in funded research as it alerted us to the critical, emancipatory potential of this contract. We began to see the (re)generative possibilities and decided to explore these in another Government funded research initiative.
(Re)generating research by intent
The best evidence synthesis of literature generated considerable interest both in government circles and in the academic community. We delivered several keynotes, wrote papers for both New Zealand and international journals and presented at conferences. We were invited to write a Ministerial briefing paper and to conduct further research in the area. While we always gave space to the integration discourse, we emphasized the potential of the adaptation critical and emancipatory discourse.
Most important, however, in our story of (re)generating research is the advent, in 2003, of the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI), a major government fund to support research into learning and teaching. This initiative is an example of empirical research in the New Zealand context, the second type of research funded by the government. Ignited by the adaptation discourse we located in our literature review, we submitted a proposal that ‘will focus on how institutions and teachers can use the second, the adaptation approach, to improve student outcomes but will not exclude relevant data from the assimilation approach’ (Zepke, Leach and Prebble, 2003, p.1). Through this proposal we want to realise a critical and emancipatory potential by investigating how institutions and teachers might change their policies and practices, their cultures, to improve retention and achievement outcomes for diverse students.
However, the research brief overtly required proposals that meet the Government’s strategic, research and practice values. Our proposal attempted to fit snugly into these. We offered to survey second year students who had considered withdrawing from study to find out what enabled them to stay; to survey teachers and administrators about their adaptation practices; to synthesise this information and develop guidelines for adaptation practices to improve student outcomes. Our proposal satisfied the Government’s pragmatic requirements as our project was one of 13 selected for funding out of 180 expressions of interest. But it also satisfied our desire to conduct research that had critical and emancipatory potential.
Our story continues. We have started the research and in the small amount of data analysed so far it seems that both the Government’s objectives and our own may be met. For us this indicates an easing of tensions between its agenda and ours. Our story suggests that it may be possible to (re)generate research in adult learning and teaching to meet both instrumental and critical and emancipatory agendas.
References
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Astin A (1997) ‘The changing American college student: thirty year trends, 1966-1996’, The Review of Higher Education, 21, 2, pp.115-135.
Bailey B, Bauman C and Lata K (1998) ‘Student retention and satisfaction: the evolution of a predictive model’. Paper presented at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Minneapolis (ERIC ED 424 797).
Berger J (2001-2002) ‘Understanding the organizational nature of student persistence: empirically-based recommendations for practice’, Journal of College Student Retention, 3, 1, pp.3-21.
Braxton J (ed) (2000) Reworking the student departure puzzle,Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press.
Braxton J and Lien L (2000) ‘The viability of academic integration as a central construct in Tinto’s interactionalist theory of college student departure’ in J Braxton (ed) Reworking the student departure puzzle,Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, pp.11-28.
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