Transcript How to improve improvement: Learning cultures in college

Policy, practice and learning
cultures (or how to improve
improvement)
David James
BRILLE – Bristol Centre for Research
in Lifelong Learning and Education,
University of the West of England,
Bristol
Background issues
• FE is often positioned as the ‘saviour’ in policy,
but is persistently positioned as ‘in need of
improvement’ too
• The silence about teaching and learning
• The low quality of some expressions of policy –
e.g. Leitch
• Low-trust accountability still the norm. This may
or may not change with greater self-regulation
• Increasing convergence between colleges and
schools – both continue to change
The Transforming Learning
Cultures in FE (TLC) Project - Aims
• To deepen understanding of the
complexities of learning;
• To identify, implement and evaluate
strategies for the improvement of learning
opportunities;
• To set in place an enhanced and lasting
capacity among practitioners for enquiry
into FE practice
The TLC project in outline
• 2001 to 2005, and part of ESRC Teaching and
Learning Research Programme
• Four universities, four colleges of Further
Education – in England
• Seventeen learning sites (why sites?) that
represented the diversity of FE on several key
dimensions. Chosen in negotiation
• Part-time efforts of a team of 30 – of whom 20
were FE practitioners
• Circa £870k total budget
Core team
• Graham Anderson, Gert Biesta, Martin
Bloomer, Helen Colley, Jennie Davies, Kim
Diment, Denis Gleeson, Phil Hodkinson,
David James, Wendy Maull, Keith
Postlethwaite, Tony Scaife, Michael
Tedder, Madeleine Wahlberg, Eunice
Wheeler
• …plus 17 ‘participating tutors’ in four FE
colleges
Activities included
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600 interviews with students, tutors, managers
150 observations
1043 questionnaires
Tutor diaries
Documents
Extensive peer shadowing
Regular team meetings
Residential workshops
Collaborative working and co-authorship
Glimpses of data and analysis
• Gwen: A tale of underground learning and the
unintended but gross exploitation of professional
values
• Paul: The big fight - audit vs. community of
practice – audit wins hands down
• Rachel: The inspectors are coming – so pretend
you are not a professional until they have gone
• Florence and Ruth: Two of fifty ways to leave
your lover
Conventional perceptions of
improvement in FE
• Subject, management and pedagogic
‘levers’
• BUT widespread perception of barriers to
improvement – (a) general decline, (b)
fragmentation & uniqueness, (c) clustering
of staff
What does the project say about
improvement?
• ‘Getting real means recognising cultures
and complexity
• Learning and teaching are legitimately
different from one programme to another
• A deep sense of professionalism is
surprisingly resilient and is an untapped
resource
• Inspection, audit and funding mechanisms
are not good levers for improvement
Some other conclusions from the project
• Teaching and learning are not just in a context –
they are constituted by context
• Learning efficiency should not be confused with
‘good practice’
• Current systems seem to promote managerialism
rather than management and leadership
• ‘Principled infidelity’ is a fact of professional life,
so we must learn to live with it. Ideas like
distributed leadership can help with this
• Despite the best efforts of Thatcher, Baker, Clarke
et al, being a professional still means much more
than doing a good job to a specification – get
used to it!
The book! There is also extensive material on the
Teaching and Learning Research Programme website –
www.tlrp.org.uk