This paper reports the findings of a two-year Research Development Fellowship (RDF) Programme sponsored by the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), the national improvement body for Vocational Education and Training (VET) in England. The purpose of the Programme was to improve teaching and learning in the sector through practitioner research, supported by the University of Sunderland’s Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training (SUNCETT). The research question framing the inestigation of the RDF programme was to explore what factors and conditions encourage or inhibit good practice and the improvement of teaching and learning in VET contexts. Voices from across the field of educational research warn that improvements in practice are  hard won and that what appear to be ‘quick fixes’ seldom, if ever, ‘fix’ anything and never ‘quickly’ (Gregson & Nixon 2010;Coffield 2007). In recognition of these shortcomings the RDF Programme was designed to open up democratic spaces for argument where knowledge claims could be tested and developed and conditions and factors inhibiting or encouraging the improvement of practice explored.

Theoretical perspectives informing the research drew upon Fielding’s (2005) notion of ‘Joint Practice Development’ (JPD) and Eraut’s (2004) work on the transfer of knowledge between education and workplace settings. Two models of knowledge transfer and practice development are used to analyse approaches to educational improvement in the VET sector. The first sees knowledge as something given, unproblematic and easily transferred by simply ‘cascading ‘information (Schön, 1983). The second, sees knowledge as something jointly developed and crafted in context, tested and reviewed in the light of evidence and through engagement with the literature (Korthagen 2001, Andrews 2009).

This paper offers insights into factors and conditions that can encourage or inhibit the improvement of practice in VET contexts. It also explores how and why talking about the practicalities involved in the improvement of practice openly, ‘out loud and together’ can help to achieve real and sustainable developments in teaching and learning beyond the expense and pretensions of ‘political short-term ‘quick fixes’ and technical-rational models of educational improvement and transfer.

Taylor (2010) argued that the legacy of a democracy is that we are responsible for what have we allowed or limited our leaders to become. In the context of a long period of public spending constraints, political, civic and educational leaders need to be able to engage in collective and adaptive decision making grounded in evidence and good argument. How else, he asked, can we expect them to make the most appropriate and cost-effective, long-term decisions for all of us in situations which are always likely to be complex and uncertain and in which the educational stakes will always be high?

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