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The appointment of student governors to the governing board is mandatory in further education (FE) colleges across the UK. There is, however, confusion and lack of clarity over the role of the stud...

Concerns about racism and race equality have been widely reported in the first decades of the 21st century, following the Black Lives Matter protests and campaigns such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’. Yet ‘race’ remains largely absent from policy debate and research concerning further education colleges in the four countries of the UK, particularly in relationship to leadership and governance. The focus of this paper is on who governs and why it matters. Governors and trustees play an increasingly visible and significant role in public, private and charity sector organisations, but diversity on governing bodies of further education across the UK remains patchy and is seen as a major challenge. The paper reports on what is known about the composition of governing bodies and what this tells us about the involvement of governors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds at the present time, drawing on a three-year project which examined the processes and practices of governing in the four countries of the UK. The findings highlight the continuing absence of governors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds on college governing boards and suggest that normative, invisible assumptions of how governing gets done persist, with black and minority ethnic governors often little more than a token gesture of adding diversity to the faces on the board.

The issues addressed in the articles in this special issue indicate the many ways in which vocational forms of higher education (HiVE) are understood and interpreted. While most articles focus on ...

This paper explores ways in which university students articulate understandings of their class positions and perceptions of opportunities for social mobility. The promise that participation in high...

This article explores the issue of social mobility in relation to the recent expansion of higher vocational education (HIVE) by non-university providers. The post-school vocational education sector has become the object of policies to widen access to higher education to ensure greater social mobility and provide second chance education to those who do not complete initial education in Anglophone countries. Drawing on typologies of vocational education and training systems, the article generates understanding of the expansion of HIVE within two Anglophone countries (Australia and England). The article considers the implications for widening opportunities to higher education for non-traditional students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds in these two contexts. Descriptive analysis of current national data on participation reveals surprising differences between countries. The article concludes by discussing the extent to which the higher education offerings in vocational institutions can contribute to social mobility within these two countries.

Distinctive forms of post-secondary education for those who do not follow well-worn academic routes from school to university are evolving rapidly across a wide range of countries. Referred to as H...

University Technical Colleges (UTCs), introduced in 2010, represent a new form of vocational education for young people in England. They contribute to an increasingly complex landscape of education and training, promoted as a creative means of meeting the diverse educational needs of young people (Fuller and Unwin, Lond Rev Educ 9(2):191-204, 2011). UTCs respond in particular to national and international policy agendas that seek to promote participation in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and maths). They have been championed by the UK's Edge Foundation as providing a 'highly regarded' course of study 'with clear progression routes into higher education or further learning in work,' especially careers in technician and degree level engineering. However, there is very limited research evidence to show whether young people and their parents understand the different options available, how decisions to attend a UTC are made, nor whether the education offered in these new institutions enhances or conversely limits the opportunities of students who attend them. This chapter draws on data from a project that carried out detailed case studies in two UTCs in England during 2014. The project addressed the following core question: What impact does vocational diversification in the form of UTCs have on the decision-making and experience of boys and girls from different class backgrounds?

This article examines the evolution of assessment policy and practice in technician-level vocational education. Using the example of an advanced-level BTEC National programme in Engineering in one college in the UK, the article highlights how the origins of current assessment practice lie in genuine concerns since the late 1950s about the appropriateness of examination-based assessment for assessing technician engineering skills, resulting in a shift to teacher-based, criterion-referenced assessment and an emphasis on formative feedback. Data are presented from a case study of assessment practice in an engineering department of one college of further and higher education in the UK during the academic years 2006–2008, which investigated salient influences and considerations underpinning lecturers’ constructs of assessment. The study found a departmental ethos of facilitating students to achieve a pass, and the use of assessment methods that would ensure that students got through. However, lecturers...

This paper examines changing policy orientations to widening participation through college-based higher education in England. After more than 30 years of increasing and diversifying participation in higher education (HE) in a wide range of countries, such policy goals are coming under increasing scrutiny in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, in an age defined by austerity in public spending. The paper focuses on England, as an example of opening up access in one country, with parallels internationally such as the American Graduation Initiative in the United States. In England such policies have changed the landscape of higher education, with claims that college-based HE plays a distinctive role. The paper reviews the nature of the ‘distinctiveness’ of college-based HE, including what students report about their experience of moving into this form of higher education during the 2000s. The paper highlights the challenges under current conditions, for creating a distinctive and value...

Drawing together example studies from international contexts, this edited collection provides a new and cross-disciplinary perspective on the concept of the possible self, exploring its theoretical, methodological and empirical uses with regards to Higher Education. Building on research which examines the ways in which possible selves are constructed through inequalities of class, race and gender, the book interrogates the role of imagined futures in student, professional and academic lives, augmenting the concept of possible selves, with its origins in psychology, with sociological approaches to educational inequalities and exclusionary practices.

This chapter discusses how institutional differentiation in England has re-cast the meaning of ‘diversity’ in higher education, creating a student body which is at one and the same time more diverse and yet more segmented. It considers the implications of increasing sector stratification for participation by students from diverse economic and social backgrounds. Drawing on available statistical data on participation by social class and ethnicity in England, the authors argue that the relationship between diversification and equity is ambiguous, with students from ‘diverse’ backgrounds tending to remain in lower status parts of the system, leaving elite higher education relatively unaffected by their presence.

This paper uses Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ as a tool to examine higher education participation in England in the context of diversified and differentiated provision. Admissions practices for courses in two institutions offering tertiary and higher education demonstrate how the official rules of the game shape the experience of students moving into and through HE on vocational and alternative routes. These examples suggest that rules created for the ‘selective’ part of the HE field can have perverse effects on other parts of the field, creating barriers rather than bridges for students seeking to participate in HE via alternative routes. The paper concludes by considering the strengths and limitations of using Bourdieu’s tools for understanding diversification in HE. Does using Bourdieu lead to the inevitable conclusion that diversity is a form of diversion, directing a proportion of the population through an easily accessible, but ultimately less rewarding path, or can Bourdieu’s tools suggest possibil...

This article explores constructions of teacher identities at a time of significant changes to public service professionalism. The article draws on different discourses of professionalism, contrasting ‘organisational’ and ‘occupational’ professionalism, with discourses of ‘personal’ and ‘critical’ professionalism, to explore changing meanings and enactments of teacher professionalism in the 2000s. Narratives of three novice teachers, followed over eight years, are used to consider the impact of dominant discourses of ‘organisational’ professionalism in English further education, resulting in inbound, outbound and peripheral trajectories. In response, the article considers how practitioners might engage critically with current changes, arguing that it is necessary to work with what matters to teachers, such as their relations with students, teaching and learning and subject specialism. Such work might create, at least temporarily and locally, spaces in which more favourable conditions towards socially just ...

Strategies employed by middle-class families to ensure successful educational outcomes for their children have long been the focus of theoretical and empirical analysis in the United Kingdom and beyond. In austerity England, the issue of middle-class social reproduction through higher education increases in saliency, and students’ awareness of how to ‘play the game’ of enhancing their chances to acquire a sought-after graduate position becomes increasingly important. Using data from a longitudinal study of working-class and middle-class undergraduates at Bristol’s two universities (the Paired Peers project), we employ Bourdieu’s conceptual tools to examine processes of capital mobilisation and acquisition by students to enhance future social positioning. We highlight middle-class advantage over privileged access to valued capitals, and argue that the emphasis on competition, both in terms of educational outcomes and the accrual of capital in the lives of working-class and middle-class students, compounds rather than alleviates social inequalities.

What is meant by ‘knowledge’ in vocational education qualifications and who decides? These are significant questions in a context where ‘skill’ is the prevailing discourse. This paper reports on a research project, undertaken in 2010–2011, which investigated the role of national stakeholders in defining knowledge in vocational education qualifications at levels 2 and 3 in the English qualifications framework. The paper explores who the key constituencies were at this point in time, and how they conceptualised the purpose and content of vocational education qualifications. The study found a complex mix of stakeholders involved in design and regulation of qualifications, but it was difficult to discern who took responsibility for knowledge beyond qualification awarding bodies. While concern was expressed about the dominant role of employers, other constituencies such as higher education subject specialists and teachers were missing. There was a lack of consensus amongst stakeholders about the purposes of vo...

This chapter introduces the project, with details of its aims and methods. It locates the project in the wider policy context and in the relevant research and policy-based literature.

The two universities in Bristol typify many of the widely recognized differences in the UK between those founded before and after 1992. The University of Bristol is an elite research-intensive university, while UWE Bristol is a modern university, a former polytechnic, with a focus on teaching as well as research, with a much larger undergraduate population (24,000 compared with 13,000 at the University of Bristol). These two universities represent a particular example of the stratification of HE in England. In this chapter, we discuss how stratification is a significant feature of HE systems internationally, and consider how this affects participation by social class in different parts of a stratified system in the UK. The chapter looks in detail at the two universities, and considers how each university is positioned in the stratified field of HE. The chapter further explores how reputational positioning in a stratified field creates not just effects but affects in the lives of students in the study.

This chapter explores intersections of class and ‘race’ in the context of HE. The chapter considers the largely unspoken whiteness of the HE environment in England, and then examines what ‘getting in, getting on, and getting out’ mean for students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds. We focus on a number of individual student narratives that provide insights into how intersections of class and ethnicity shape HE experience and the opportunities for social mobility through HE. We tease out the opportunities, but also the constraints experienced by students from minority ethnic backgrounds, and how ‘race’ intersects with class and continues to shape the ways in which students’ identities are constituted in and through HE.

The concept of social class and the categorization of individuals by social class is the subject of intense debate at the present time. Changing economic and labour market conditions, along with wider social changes, mean that social class is more contested and complex than ever before. This chapter addresses how we operationalized the concept of social class in this study. We discuss current debates about defining social class, such as the recent work of Savage and colleagues (Sociol 47:219–250, 2013), as well as the psycho-social nature of social class (Reay, Class out of place: The white middle-classes and intersectionalities of class and “race” in urban state schooling in England. In L. Weis (Ed.), The way class works (pp. 87–99). New York: Routledge, 2008; Camb J Educ 45:9–23, 2015) and how we assigned participants in the Paired Peers project to social-class categorisations of working-class and middle-class. The chapter also discusses the use of the work of Bourdieu and ideas developing from his work to understand the ‘classed’ experience of HE in the project.

This chapter focuses on how students make their way through HE. We focus in particular on how students come to an understanding of their social-class positioning in relation to other students they encounter at university. We discuss processes of ‘fitting in’, in social and academic contexts. We focus on narratives of students who have a sense of being ‘a fish in water’ or ‘a fish out of water’. We highlight a phenomenon that has only been implicit in previous literature—middle-class students who feel themselves to be a fish out of water at a modern university. We discuss how their responses to being a fish out of water are quite different to those of working-class students at the elite University of Bristol, who also have a sense of not quite fitting in. We also explore how students engage in building up capitals—and the ways in which middle-class students at both universities successfully engage in the concerted cultivation of capitals, through extra-curricular activities and CV building.

The current paper draws on data derived from a small‐scale ongoing longitudinal study of further education trainee teachers. It examines their experiences during and after the completion of their training. The study was conducted at a university in the English Midlands and sets trainees' experiences within the socio‐economic and policy context. This paper addresses the experiences of six respondents, exploring their trajectory into the sector, orientations towards pedagogic relations and enacted professionality. The paper concludes by suggesting that trainees' educational commitment to the tenets of social justice need to be accompanied by an expansive and politicised understanding of practice.

This article explores English policy on widening participation in higher education (HE), drawing on insights from a research study into higher education transitions and ‘dual sector’ institutions. Although further and higher education in England are divided into two sectors, it is possible for one institution to offer both further and higher education. This article examines the nature of transitions in such ‘dual sector’ institutions, and explores the shaping and structuring of HE transitions, as well as students’ experience of such transitions. The article draws on empirical research from a two‐year study which investigates the changing shape and experience of HE in England, and students’ experience of moving between different levels of study. The study includes four case‐study ‘dual sector’ institutions, and this article considers one of these institutions in more detail. The article discusses a number of different forms of transition which arise out of the analysis of the data – institutions in transit...

The development of professional identity amongst lecturers training to teach in further education (FE) colleges in England involves processes of adaptation. These partly take place during teaching placement in FE, as trainees navigate between their own anticipated professional identity and the identities which they feel under pressure to assume as they engage in their work with students. This article explores these processes of development, focusing in particular on the identities that trainee lecturers develop in their work with disengaged 16-19 year-old students. Using case studies of two trainee lecturers, the article explores the way in which they are pushed towards adopting what they see as a 'pedagogic', 'teacherly' identity, which they had previously associated with schoolteachers, in their work with such students. The article suggests that the notion of 'schooling' identities and cultures, whilst contrasting with the vocational habitus proposed by others, is a useful way to explore how cultures and identities in general FE are created through similar processes of identity construction and reconstruction.

The English Skills for Life strategy symbolises the prominent place that adult basic skills have claimed in education and training policy in England since the beginning of this century. The strategy aims to improve the skills of a large number of learners over a ten year period (2001–2010). This paper explores what we can learn about the impact of the strategy from an analysis of available statistical data. The paper presents trends in participation and achievement over the first four years of the strategy, which indicate a pattern of diminishing returns to numbers participating over time, and which may well reflect the growing difficulties the policy will face of engaging ‘hard to reach’ learners. Alongside this analysis, the paper raises a number of issues concerning the limitations of available statistical data in providing answers to questions such as the progress made by learners and their subsequent progression, both within and beyond adult basic skills provision. The paper goes on to argue that the...

The last five years have seen a radical transformation in adult education in England with a concentrated emphasis on national basic skills provision. This was prompted initially by a government response to low levels of literacy in the British adult population, identified by an influential international survey, showing unfavourable comparisons with other European countries. The response to the disclosure that seven million adults in England were not functionally literate saw the creation in 2001 of a national basic skills strategy in England entitled Skills for Life. It is a far-reaching strategy creating a new infrastructure to support adult basic skills learning opportunities over a seven-year period. It also created the entitlement to free basic skills learning opportunities, as a cornerstone to creating national economic competitiveness and social cohesion. Such an entitlement could be interpreted as a commitment to providing wider access to foundation skills for adults who had previously missed out, as part of a lifelong learning agenda. However, a critical reading of the policy texts, and recent funding priorities, show the strategy rooted more in a response to what is perceived as the skills demands of a knowledge economy for global competitiveness than to issues of social inclusion and increased opportunities for lifelong learning. The result of this may well be the creation of new sites of inequality that affect older women and adult ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) learners disproportionately, the very people that are identified as being needed to fill skill gaps in the economy.

The article draws on the findings of a longitudinal study of an opportunistic sample of full‐time further education trainee teachers attending an English new university. The study commenced in 2002 seeking to examine the processes through which trainee teachers entered the profession. Initially the research explored the routes followed and experiences that led trainees to enter teacher training. This was accompanied by an interest in trainees’ experiences in their placement colleges. The final stage of the project draws upon fieldwork conducted in 2004/05, which seeks to examine trainees’ accounts of teaching and working in the sector. This particular paper explores the lived experiences of four respondents and considers the personal trajectories that have led to FE teacher training. This is related to their orientations towards teaching and is followed by a section exploring teaching experiences within particular educational settings. Finally, the article examines respondents’ transitions to FE concludin...

This paper is concerned with changing constructions of teaching and learning in the further education (FE) sector in England. It explores how current changes may be affecting the development of lecturers' professional identity, drawing upon a small-scale study of trainees on a full-time FE teacher training programme in the academic year 2001-2002. Our underlying concern is the possibilities for democratic forms of practice within the changing context of lecturers' work. The paper considers how trainees make sense of pedagogic relations, and considers how such work might inform debates about new forms of professionalism and practice in FE.

Further education colleges in England offer a wide range of post‐school education and training provision. Recently they have undergone major transformations that have resulted in considerable changes to the work of those teaching in them. In this paper we examine how cultures of learning and teaching in colleges are affected and how the nature of professional identity has changed. The paper considers the formation of professional identity amongst a group of trainee lecturers completing a one‐year full‐time teacher‐training course at a university in the English Midlands. Lave and Wenger's work on apprenticeship to communities of practice is used to examine the effect of trainees' teaching placement on the development of professional identity. Rather than identifying effective processes of increasing participation in existing communities of practice, a strong sense of marginalisation and alienation amongst trainees was observed. The paper argues that this is detrimental both to trainees and experienced lect...

The article examines trainee lecturers' perceptions of teaching and learning in the sector, drawing upon a small-scale study of trainees on a full-time further education teacher-training programme at an English new university. The article explores how current changes may be affecting the development of lecturers' professional practice. It seeks to examine the relationship between critical pedagogy, performativity and a politics of hope. It concludes by arguing that it is not enough to hold to an ethic of care or even a concern to engage students, and that there is a wider politics inscribed within pedagogic practice: a politics of hope that is characterised by an aspiration towards critical and democratic practice

Further education has become pivotal to English educational policy with the sector being central to strategies that seek to raise educational standards and widen participation. This article derives from a study of trainee further education (FE) teachers on a full-time, postgraduate certificate course in the Midlands. It seeks to examine trainee experiences of their placement college and of the pedagogic relations in which they are placed. In particular, the article analyses trainees' initial orientation towards learning and teaching in the sector, and sets this against college experiences. Heuristically, trainees' understandings of care are located within and mediated by the pedagogic context in which they labour. Conceptualisations of emotional labour, performativity, and the relations between learner and teacher are central to understanding these orientations to care.

Following the Kennedy Report, the lifelong learning Green Paper and the 1999 White Paper Learning to Succeed , post compulsory education would appear to be at the forefront of Labour's education and training policies. This article examines the way trainee teachers at an English university understand the lecturer's role within the pedagogic, curricular and policy context of post-16 learning. It locates these understandings by comparing them with those held by more established staff as well as setting them against the policy context of further education. It seeks to explore the social justice implications of these differing interpretations. The article is based on research with a group of trainee teachers completing a one-year teacher training course. Their perceptions are analysed and compared with findings from interviews with staff based in further education colleges responsible for teaching practice.

To examine the labour process of teachers in further education we constructed a time-log diary in which lecturers recorded time spent on various activities undertaken during a week. In this article the authors explore the development of the time log, its use, and forms of analysis that arose as they sought to make sense of the data. The authors' interest in this article is not so much in their findings but rather in an exploration of the way in which they sought to gather, analyse and interpret the data so as to illuminate the social conditions of lecturers' labour. Their initial intent was to gather ‘hard’ statistical data, however the tension generated between over-specification of categories within the log and the different interpretations of participants led to alternative forms of analysis, in particular the cameo. This led the authors to consider refining the diary and using it alongside a series of cameos which would enable us to gather ‘hard’ statistical data whilst at the same time being...