Paper presented at the 6th Annual Conference of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme, Warwick, 28-30 November 2005
in the
FE Mini-Conference 28/11/05 - Evidence Based Principles for FE Learning
Using Research to Enhance Professionalism in FE – what kinds of professionalism are available to FE practitioners?
Mark Goodrham – CalderdaleCollege
Draft paper – please do not cite without permission of the author
Introduction
This project aims to explore and better understand the relationship between practitioners’ own understandings of professionalism and their capacity to engage in ‘research’ in the further education (FE) sector. It originally aimed at identifying ways of better using research for the advancement of professional practice within FE. Other key objectives of the research were to suggest possibilities and approaches for the future utilisation of research in relation to new understandings of professional practice. Given that an identified historical lack of a research culture in FE (Elliott 1996) may have served to reinforce its ‘Cinderella’ status (Randle and Brady 1997) within UK education provision, the study determined to explore research engagement where it could be located in five general FE colleges located in the north and north east of England, in an attempt to understand how research and understandings of practitioner professionalism might be connected and how research engagement might help facilitate a rejuvenated practitioner professionalism. Research ‘enthusiasts’ were identified in colleges through Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) Learning and Skills Research Networks (LSRN) and through a wider sample in each college, comprising their colleagues and managers, their participation in ‘research activity’ in a broad sense was located within the context of their organisation and the wider FE sector. Participation in ‘research activity’ by FE practitioners was conceived of as indicating an engagement in professional understanding and development of practice and participants were encouraged to define ‘research’ in their own terms.
The primary fieldwork for this study was completed in April 2005 and although the process of analysis is continuing, some early messages have already been reported (Goodrham 2005), with respect to a) many participating practitioners’ certainty that FE practice is not a professional occupation and b) an observable decrease in their level of research engagement described by key participants (‘research enthusiasts’)in relation to their own activities over the course of the study. A cultural approach to understanding FE practice underpins the developing analysis of this study, with three scales of interconnectedness: at the micro level individual practitioner dispositions and biography, at the meso level the site of practice i.e. the institution and location within that institution and at the macro level the location of practice within the wider FE sector. If the imposition of levels appears to imply crude divisions between the individual and the wider milieus of their practice, this is not the intention as it is the interconnectedness of these that is of most interest in building understanding the complete picture of practice. A cultural approach, it is believed, will generate a more robust understanding of the complexities of practice than the technical rational approaches, which currently appear to underpin the dominant discourses in relation to teaching and learning in FE and the place of evidence and research in the sector.
The necessity for research evidence to inform ‘best practice’ in teaching and learning in FE can perhaps be traced to more general articulations at both policy level that research evidence could and should directly inform practice (Blunkett 2000) and from within the HE research community, where some commentators have for several years identified a paucity in the quality of educational research with respect to its direct application to improving practice (e.g. Tooley 1998), as inhibiting attempts to improve teacher performance across the UK educational landscape. Naturally, these assertions have not been uncontested. Hodkinson and Smith (2001), Bloomer and James (2001) and Frost (2001) have challenged the notion of ‘safe’, generalisable evidence and indicated the vulnerability of evidence based practice discourse to political exploitation. However, as Hodkinson (2005) has subsequently observed, there remains an observably widespread prioritising in educational discourse of teaching and learning with respect to an acquisition model that is simplistic, measurable and repositions teaching and learning practice in relation to audit, inspection and the standards raising agenda. The early signs in this project exploring conceptualisations and manifestations of ‘research activity’ in further education are that a ‘what works’, evidence and audit based approach to improving teaching and learning favours this acquisition model and while this is by no means uncontested at an individual practitioner level, it tends to dominate the discourse relating to ‘research activity’ in FE policy and the strategies employed by FE organisations to drive this improvement agenda. This is inevitably, I believe, linked to the stories that participants in this research project tell about how their work is organised and their understandings of what it currently means to be a ‘professional’ in FE.
This paper will consider with reference to the early analysis of case studies from the study how the organisation and structure of FE institutions subsume individualised understandings of practitioner professionalism in the colleges in this study. The paper will explore individual practitioner understandings of their professionalism in relation to their location within a particular site/organisation. It seems that while most if not all participants regarded their practice as necessarily informed by their own commitment to ‘professional’ values e.g. caring for students, working long hours etc., they simultaneously regarded their occupation as not truly professional. Within this context of (non)‘professional’ practice individual participants’ research engagement, often a source of job and personal satisfaction however it was envisaged, actually decreased during the course of the research. Research engagement has emerged from the data as a marginal activity and appears to depend significantly upon individual practitioner commitment. However, without some organisationally determined space for it to occur it became even less likely for participants in the study. At the same time the apparent prioritising of ‘research’ and development of practice in two of the sample colleges through organisationally determined structures suggested other significant insights about the relationship between the kinds of professionalism and ‘research’ activity available to practitioners in these particular FE institutions. For the purpose of this conference this paper will not explore these two latter features of the data. These are substantial issues that need to be considered in detail in later work and are likely to be prominent in the final analysis of the study. The paper will focus rather upon distinguishing between professionalism and ‘professionality’ (Hoyle and John 1995) in relation to FE practice and the importance of personal dispositions and position (i.e. the location of practice) for practitioners in determining what kinds of professional identities are available to them. In relation to the micro, meso and macro realities of individual practice, status appears to be important with respect to individuals’ dispositions to their work, the position that they occupy within their site of practice and the wider sector. In this context of status, research engagement, or rather its lack was important to practitioners delivering HE in an FE college and in this context it is briefly considered.
The paper will firstly examine the notion of professionality as distinct to professionalism in relation to FE practice before exploring case study material from the research to demonstrate the significance and the interconnectedness of disposition and position in practitioners’ accounts of the kinds of practice that were available to them at the time of the fieldwork. Finally the paper will attempt to draw some conclusions with respect to how the very struggle for some of the sample practitioners to balance individualised dispositions towards their practice and understanding of the sector in relation to institutional and sector priorities might be linked to their dispositions towards research engagement. In this concluding section a brief attempt will also be made to link research activity to the material presented i.e. in relation to practitioners’ individual dispositions to their professionality, their work and the possibility of an extended professionality for the sector. Several as yet unanswered question, which underpin the inception of the research are permitted to re-emerge in anticipation of what the study is likely to tell us about the relationship between practice and research in the FE sector. It is the careful exploration of these relationships that will dominate the final analysis of this study.
Professionalism and ‘professionality’
Hoyle and John (1995) distinguish between the highly ‘contested’ notion of a profession and the attributes of teacher professionality in a way that is useful to both the theoretical underpinning of this study and the analysis of FE practitioners’ accounts of their dispositions towards their work. ‘Professionality’ refers specifically to practices associated with professional performance rather than the extensive controversy surrounding the professions and professionalism. In an earlier paper Goodrham and Hodkinson (2004) attempted to locate FE practice in relation to research literature, which had contributed directly to exploring the changing role of practice in the sector, within the context of wider reformulations of professionalism across public services. It was concluded that FE practitioners were typically positioned between two competing sets of tensions i.e. internal/dispositional and external/organisational which were not always directly in conflict but which inevitably connected individual practice to the location of that practice. It was argued that the balance between these tensions appeared to have become increasingly uneven, with an observable acceleration in the pace and scope of external demands upon practice having significantly impacted upon professionals in the FE sector.
For Stronach et al (2002) the negotiation of the individual in managing the tension between internalised ‘ecologies of practice’ and external ‘economies of performance’ lies at the heart of a professionalism that is always ‘in flux’. They too warn that despite attempting to envisage practice beyond simplistic oppositions of agency and structure, an excessive imbalance between individuals’ ecologies and organisational economies may prove too much for some practitioners to sustain. The notion of ‘professionality’ may help define these ecologies with respect to those aspects of practice that reflect individuals’ dispositional commitment to their jobs and it allows us here to avoid engaging with the extensive literature concerning definitions and understandings of the professions and professionalism and the position of teaching within that body of work. It is possible therefore to focus specifically upon aspects of teacher professionality without rehearsing the history of the professions and acknowledge that while perhaps inevitably in this research participants did not see FE practice and perhaps teaching in general as a ‘true’ profession, they did identify important and highly personalised aspects of their roles as inherently ‘professional’. Their accounts also identified the tensions underpinning their work with respect to Hoyle and John’s (1995:18) characterisation of teacher professionality comprising teacher’s knowledge, the importance of some degree of autonomy for ‘effective practice’ and the values and attitudes at the heart of ‘responsibility’.
Also helpful to understanding practitioners’ accounts with respect to their individual dispositions towards their work and the significance of location, both of which are explored in the main part of this paper below, is the distinction in Hoyle’s (1974) earlier theorising between ‘restricted’ and ‘extended’ professionalities (Hoyle and John 1995:123). In summary the notion of a ‘restricted’ professionality refers to a technical, classroom aptitude and might be envisaged in relation to a more technicist view of teaching and learning (alluded to in the introduction to this paper), although it should be noted that Hoyle and John (1995:123) do not suggest that restricted performance represents anything less than a ‘high level of skill’. ‘Extended’ professionality nevertheless represents a broader professionality with collaboration and participation in multiple professional development activities including ‘small scale research projects’. While Hoyle and John (1995) were certain that for schoolteachers this was the norm, for FE practitioners in this study an extended professionality may depend rather more on location within a particular institution and perhaps also upon location within particular parts of the FE sector.
Individuals and structure in FE: professionality, disposition and position
Background – change in the sector
Previous work exploring the conditions of FE practitioner professionalism has noted features of change and continuity (Goodrham and Hodkinson 2004) with respect to the major upheaval of Incorporation[1] upon practice. Conditions of service for FE practitioners have been subject to extensive change in many ways since 1993 but the primary focus of practice for most i.e. teaching students has remained constant. While it is certainly true that many learner cohorts are perhaps quite different to those of ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, change in the sector should be understood in relation to much broader shifts. Thus recent developments in FE professionalism have mirrored correspondingly contemporary shifts towards an increasingly widening interventionist policy development across public services (Exworthy and Halford 1999). Similarly, unchallenged New Right assumptions prioritising consumerism, market hegemony and managerialism in educational reform have underpinned the policy context of FE practice (Avis 1997, 2003). Dimensions of inclusion and community may have been tagged on since the arrival of New Labour to government (Hyland 2002, Hyland and Merrill 2003) but ‘a particular understanding of global economic relations’ (Avis 1997: 243) continues to give precedence to the market. This is true even with respect to aspects of post-compulsory education and training (PCET) apparently grounded in social justice (Avis 1997). The conditions and status of FE practitioner professionalism must then be understood with reference to policy and the implementation of that policy by organisations. It is in relation to this that the scales of interconnectedness between the macro, meso and micro levels of practice proposed above are envisaged, with respect to exploring the data derived from this study i.e. to develop a holistic and culturally defined approach to practitioners’ stories. The policy-determined field of FE, e.g. funding, accountability and government priorities in the wider sense, inevitably impacts upon the shape of organisational structures and individuals’ dispositions to their day-to-day practice.
Individual dispositions and professionality
Despite the pervasive impact of policy and structure, individuals’ personal dispositions towards FE practice remained crucially important to participants in the study, not least in some cases in terms of actually allowing them to remain working in the sector despite serious reservations that the extent of change rather than the extent of continuity dominated their experience. At the micro level many participants did not regard the status of FE practitioners as having ever been professional. There were distinctly personal reasons for this. For some it was the extent of external and organisational intervention with respect to educational practice in general.
…well I don’t think education (sic) can be viewed as professional people. I think it’s one of those words, which is abused to a large extent. For me a professional person is somebody that’s autonomous and makes their own decisions. (Alan – Staff Development Manager)
Another participant, John, partly agreed but added that it was the fragmented nature of FE practice specifically that had historically determined FE practitioners’ non-professional status.
The FE sector’s always just as a sector and as a body organisation, it’s always just done what the government’s told it because it’s weak professionally, it’s too fragmented. What have you got in common with a welder or, you know, what have I got in common with someone who does drama? Can I identify with a language teacher, someone who teaches German? Can I identify with someone who does carpentry? (John – Senior Lecturer)
For others the lack of a professional body undermined any notion of true practitioner professionalism.
There isn’t an appropriate one really for FE teachers, there isn’t, if you think about FENTO, they’re a standards setting body. They’re not a professional body and to me professionalism is tied up with a professional body, having a professional code of practice and code of ethics. (Helen – Learning and Teaching Development Co-ordinator)
Nevertheless, many practitioners described their own individual practices as somehow rooted in ‘professionality’ that is values and attitudes placing learners at the centre of their sense of responsibility, even if at the organisational (meso) and sector (macro) levels this seen as not recognised.
I know we’re not classed as if we are professional but certainly there’s a feeling about being professional within my colleagues, you know the emphasis, we do this, we put on a professional face, we do the job professionally and I don’t think that’s always …… I think it’s expected by management within this college
but it’s not always acknowledged. (Geoff – Lecturer)
It was noticeable that practitioners’ often understood their lesser status in relation to other ‘professional’ groups, especially other educators located in schools and universities, who were widely regarded as enjoying a genuine and publicly authenticated professionalism. Gleeson et al (2005: 447) citing Ainley and Bailey (1997) also identify the low profile of FE compared with schools and HE in public discourse.
Position and professionality
Early findings from the research reinforce the importance of localised variation in defining the location and shape of practice at the meso level. The ‘proliferation of job titles that characterise FE practitioners’ work’ identified by Gleeson et al (2005: 446) was reinforced by the data in this study. Only nine of the twenty-eight interviewees described themselves as simply lecturers (see Appendix A for research sample) and even within this group, three used the additional term ‘senior’ or ‘principal’ in their lecturer job title. Similarly the fact of job insecurity, the use of part time peripheral staff and even the combining of temporary, externally funded fractionalised posts to build ‘full time’ jobs that emerged from practitioner accounts, appeared to support wider trends also identified by Gleeson et al (2005) describing a pervasive insecurity underpinning current patterns FE employment. David’s account spoke for several participants with respect to temporary contract work.
…it’s part-time only but I’ve been working here for over a year on these contracts… it’s because I’m so like transferable… that’s way it is, the funding stops, the project stops. Because it is provided on like external funding, the role has to change... (David – part time project worker and PTHP lecturer)