Session Information
99 ERC SES 08 C, Sociologies of Education
Paper Session
Contribution
In the past 10 years, the Further Education and Training (FET) sector in Ireland has undergone fundamental reform (Rami & O’Leary, 2017). FET in Ireland is now an umbrella term to describe all post-compulsory education and training outside of Higher Education. SOLAS (An tSeirbhis Oideachais Leanunaigh agus Scileanna which translates as Further Education and Skills Service) was formed in 2013 as the state organisation responsible for funding, planning and coordinating FET in Ireland.
This study is driven by the question, ‘What impact has sectoral reform has had on the professional identity and practice of teachers in Ireland’s FET sector?’ As the first phase of wider multi-phase study, this systematic literature review will provide the initial groundwork for mapping the activity system (Engeström, 2016) of teachers in FET. This mapping will inform conceptual and theoretical frameworks for subsequent study phases.
Ireland’s national FET strategy (SOLAS, 2020) proposes an evolution of the FET sector in Ireland, prioritising agility and responsiveness to changing societal and economic needs. Owing to the separate evolution of ‘Further Education’ and ‘Training’ sectoral components, reform has raised ideological tensions within FET. Criticism from those within adult and further education traditions have claimed reforms represent a neo-liberal paradigm-shift (Glanton, 2023) with a bias towards training traditions. A top-down re-organisation of the sector and the acceleration to align education with employability is noted by O'Neill and Fitzsimons (2020) as contributing to a "contested profession" of FET teacher.
The current Irish FET sector will be explored through the Three-Perspectives Model of VET (Cedefop, 2023), representing overlapping and competing perspectives of Socioeconomic/Labour Market, Education System and Pedagogical/Epistemological. This lens allows comparative analysis of the Irish FET system reforms and other relevant national VET systems in Europe.
A Socioeconomic/Labour Market perspective focuses on FET’s place in Irish society. The SOLAS sectoral reforms have prioritised an outcome-based approach to FET and prioritised jobs creation. This has led to a perceived commoditisation and marketisation of education, leading to FET being subservient to the interests of the economy rather than being driven by emancipatory educational goals (O'Brien, 2018).
From an Educational System perspective, we will examine the infrastructure that has developed under sectoral reform. The role of FET within the wider education system will be reviewed. A performative funding model has been criticism as contributing to a shift from a flexible learner-centred approach to a simplified funder-centred system-driven model (O'Brien, 2018), similar to the new public management approach to further education in England (Smith & O’Leary, 2013).
The role of the FET teacher will be examined from a Pedagogical/Epistemological perspective. Terms such as ‘adult education’ have disappeared from the FET narrative, while others such as ‘inclusion’ and ‘lifelong learning’ have been redefined within an FET driven by a neo-liberal training agenda (Glanton, 2023). The reframing of ‘Teachers’ in FET as ‘Learning Practitioners’ (SOLAS & ETBI, 2017; SOLAS & ETBI, 2020) further demonstrates the contested professional status of teachers (O'Neill & Fitzsimons, 2020) within a reformed sector.
Finally, building from the Pedagogical/Epistemological perspective findings, the Activity System (Engeström, 2016) of FET teachers will be mapped. This unit of analysis helps to frame the professional identity and practice of teachers in FET, and identify inner contradictions and tensions stemming from sectoral reform.
Method
A systematic review of literature was undertaken to answer the question ‘What impact has sectoral reform has had on the professional identity and practice of teachers in Ireland’s FET sector?’ This approach allowed for a comprehensive and structured synthesis of several studies investigating the same research area, representing the state of knowledge in the field of study (Boland, Cherry and Dickson, 2017). The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 Statement (Page et al., 2021) informed the planning and conducting of the review to ensure a transparent, complete and accurate account was provided. To develop the initial inclusion criteria for the systematic review, an adaption of the Population, Intervention, Comparator and Outcome (PICO) Framework was used. The key components of the research were identified, along with surrogate terms to develop the following initial search terms. Population: Teacher, Trainer, Educator Intervention: Reform*, Change, Improvement Context: Further Education and Training, Vocational Education and Training, Post-Compulsory Education, Adult Education Context: Ireland, Irish, Europe*, EU Outcome: Identity, Practice The following terms were used to exclude results. NOT: Teacher Education, Teacher Educators, Teacher Trainers The search terms were used to search the literature databases of Academic Research Complete, Education Research Complete and ERIC, resulting in the return of 176 matching results. The following exclusion criteria were applied resulting in the reduction of sources retained for review to the number indicated below. Date range (2013 – 2024) – 79 English Only – 72 Peer-reviewed Journal Articles – 56 Title Read for relevance – 23 Duplicates Removed – 18 Abstract Read for Relevance – 15 Full text versions of 15 retained journal articles were assessed for eligibility to the research question and how reform of the FET sector has impacted the identity and practice of teachers. Studies from other European countries were also considered for inclusion if covering the same research area in comparable VET systems. This final selection process was to exclude reports that did not focus on the professional identity or practice of teachers in FET/VET sectors at times of change or reform. Additional literature was identified for inclusion following backwards and forwards citation searching. Informed by the research question, the analysis of the final literature selection was guided by the Three-Perspectives Model of VET (Cedefop, 2023) and the Activity System triangular model (Engeström, 2016).
Expected Outcomes
The findings from this systematic literature review will be used to map the impact that sectoral reform has had on the professional identity and practice of teachers in Ireland’s FET sector. Initial study findings indicate that FET and VET are increasing acknowledged as contested terrains (Avis, 2018) and the teacher within it a contested profession (O’Neill & Fitzsimons, 2020). The dominant discourse of national strategy informed by European Union policy is resulting in a narrowed professional field of view for teachers in FET (Glanton, 2023). The emancipatory and social justice language of education is being appropriated to drive the alternative agenda of sectoral reform (Shannon, 2019), with new top-down reporting systems dominating agendas, and professional recognition of teachers being significantly reduced (Kyle, 2020). This systematic literature review represents the first phase of a transformative mixed-methods cyclical design (Mertens, 2018) study into Understanding and Facilitating the Changing Role of Further Education and Training Teachers. It is hoped this wider study will develop a framework, with supporting tools and platforms, that will support the collaborative co-creation of value between FET teacher, stakeholders and industry. The analysis of literature review findings through the Three-Perspectives Model of VET (Cedefop, 2023) and the Activity System triangular model (Engeström, 2016) will provide a foundation from which to further explore the interconnected activity systems of FET teachers, sectoral stakeholders and industry professionals. The mapping of interdependent activity systems will help to highlight opportunities for Expansive Learning (Engeström, 2016) between stakeholders. This learning will not be limited to transmitting and preserving cultures or processes, but rather the process of transformation and creating culture within a reform FET sector. By better understanding the reformed FET sector, the professional role of teachers can be developed to meeting new challenges while retaining professional values and standards.
References
Avis, J. (2018). Crossing Boundaries: VET, the Labour Market and Social Justice. International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training, 5(3), 178–190. https://doi.org/10.13152/IJRVET.5.3.2 Boland, A., Cherry, M. G., & Dickson, R. (Eds.). (2017). Doing a systematic review: A student’s guide (2nd edition). SAGE Publications. CEDEFOP. (2023). The future of vocational education and training in Europe: 50 dimensions of vocational education and training : Cedefop’s analytical framework for comparing VET. Publications Office. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2801/57908 Engeström, Y. (2016). Studies in Expansive Learning: Learning What Is Not Yet There (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316225363 Glanton, N. (2023). Adult education in a neoliberal policy paradigm. Irish Educational Studies, 42(4), 787–803. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2023.2259377 Kyle, S. (2018). Assessing the Health of Community Education: The Experience of Change from the Perspective of Community Education Practitioners. Adult Learner: The Irish Journal of Adult and Community Education, 50–67. eric. O’Brien, T. (2018). Adult literacy organisers in Ireland resisting neoliberalism. Education + Training, 60(6), 556–568. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-03-2018-0055 O’Leary, M., & Rami, J. (2017). The impact of austerity in Further Education. In B. Bartram (Ed.), International and Comparative Education (1st ed., pp. 74–86). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315563091-7 O’Neill, J., & Fitzsimons, C. (2020). Precarious professionality: Graduate outcomes and experiences from an Initial Teacher (Further) Education programme in Ireland. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 25(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2020.1720143 Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J. M., Akl, E. A., Brennan, S. E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J. M., Hróbjartsson, A., Lalu, M. M., Li, T., Loder, E. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., … Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71 Shannon, D. (2019). A Tale of a Discursive Shift: Analysing EU Policy Discourses in Irish Adult Education Policy—From the ‘White Paper’ to the ‘Further Education and Training Strategy’. Adult Learner: The Irish Journal of Adult and Community Education, 98. Smith, R., & O’Leary, M. (2013). New Public Management in an age of austerity: Knowledge and experience in further education. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 45(3), 244–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2013.796913 SOLAS. (2020). Future FET: Transforming Learning. SOLAS. https://www.solas.ie/f/70398/x/64d0718c9e/solas_fet_strategy_web.pdf SOLAS & Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI). (2017). FET Professional Development Strategy 2017–2019. SOLAS. https://www.solas.ie/f/70398/x/4e966c3112/solasfetpds.pdf SOLAS & Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI). (2020). The FET Professional Learning & Development: Statement of Strategy 2020-2024. SOLAS. https://www.solas.ie/f/70398/x/1e2e117467/solas-professional-dev-strategy.pdf
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