Session Information
23 SES 07B, Effects of Reform on Professionalism
Paper Session
Time:
2008-09-11
15:30-17:00
Room:
B1 114
Chair:
Anja Sinikka Heikkinen
Contribution
This paper arises from recent empirical work with partnerships tasked with the implementation of new 14-19 Diplomas in schools and colleges in England. The immediate policy context is one in which central government is steering the provision of vocational education for this age group through consortium or partnership arrangements. Such consortia are often organised so that students must attend courses at different venues. Such arrangements vary greatly and we illustrate typical variations in the paper. One of the effects of this central government steer towards partnership arrangements is that education and training providers are having to coordinate their provision and find ways of cooperating in a policy environment dominated by competitive pressures that apparently support ‘weak collaboration’ (Hodgson and Spours, 2006) at best.
Within this context, we have explored the roles of a range of ‘support staff’ including teaching assistants, an increasingly numerous group of non-teacher qualified education workers whose roles are usually bounded by classroom and curriculum-related support functions. In the rapidly developing environment of 14-19 consortia, there is evidence that such support workers are now being deployed to carry out new roles such as liaison and mediation acting as ‘guides and interpreters’ in ways that represent new 'skill mixes' for which coherent qualifications are not available. This paper explores the developing roles of these support staff in the context of changes for such staff in English schools and colleges over recent years.
The paper considers in particular the way that the exigencies of practice situations and the context of local arrangements lead to dynamics that seem to outrun the pace and direction of national policy, reform and implementation. We also consider how such dynamics feed back upon policy makers.
To understand this policy-practice dynamic we have taken a theoretical frame partly influenced by the critical theory tradition as developed by Habermas (1987) with his constructs of system world and lifeworld. In this frame, the everyday lifeworlds of groups of people acting together to reach understanding and solve problems are seen as increasingly subject to steering systems driven by the logics of capital and power (bureaucracy). The rationality of steering systems is seen by Habermas as dominated by an instrumentalist rationality, with the aims of maximising profit/minimising investment and gaining maximum control and predictability over events. In the critique of the modern system world, Habermas (1987b) views the discourses of expert systems (in this case, dominant pedagogical practices promoted through policy initiatives such as 14-19 Reform) as potentially limiting the possibilities for communicative action. However, he also sees lifeworlds as not succumbing to system world, but instead showing as much possibility for emancipation, through the rationality potential of critical discourse.
Method
Data is drawn principally from Case Studies of 4 local consortia across England, drawing on interviews with support staff, teachers, managers and documentary evidence.
We also draw on interviews and other data from discussions concerning consortium and partnership structures with 20 consortium leaders.
Expected Outcomes
The Habermassian analysis outlined above at the macro level is useful but is not sufficiently developed to explain the mix of rationalities at all levels. We suggest that at different levels - from central government to local community of practice - similar forms of rationality operate but with quite different results to those intended at the levels above. This leads to a tendency for practice situations to escape the 'subjection' that - as we will discuss - a Foucauldian analysis would suggest. Local settings show a degree of agency within the overall steering from government that has the potential to feedback upon government and influence policy. This was the case with the rising numbers of teaching assistants following the implementation of inclusion policy: in the case of 14-19 reform, we tentatively claim to have found another example of events on the ground potentially becoming a steer on policy.
References
Habermas, J. (1987a) The Theory of Communicative Action, vol 2: Lifeworld and System: a critique of Functionalist Reason, trans McCarthy, T. Cambridge: Polity Habermas, J. (1987b) The Philosophical discourse of modernity, Cambridge: Polity Hodgson, A. and Spours, K (2006) The organisation of 14-19 education and training in England: beyond weakly collaborative arrangements. Journal of Education and Work 19:4 pp. 325-342
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.