Vocational Studies, Lifelong Learning and Social Values

Investigating Education, Training and NVQs Under the New Deal

Terry Hyland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138360938
• eBook ISBN: 9780429778971
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

Published in 1999. Lifelong learning is the slogan with which the Labour Government has chosen to publicise and popularise its values and policies for post-16 education and training under the new administration. Dr. Hyland's book subjects New Labour policy - particularly developments surrounding the University for Industry and the New Deal - to searching scrutiny and offers a number of recommendations designed to upgrade vocational education and training (VET). If we are to create a high status and high quality VET system comparable to those of our European competitors we will need, Dr. Hyland argues, to move towards a unified curriculum in the post-school sector bringing with it the abolition of the present three-track model of NVQs, GNVQs and GCSEs/A Levels. More significantly it is argued that all vocational learning - both work-based and college-based - needs to be underpinned by a common core of knowledge and understanding and crucially, be located within a values framework which gives due attention to social justice and community interests rather than simplistic and utilitarian economistic objectives and employability skills. Moreover, the aesthetic and moral dimensions of vocational studies are not optional extras but areas of vocational learning experience which are essential and foundational if vocational education and training is to be enhanced in order to satisfy current lifelong learning criteria. Dr. Hyland's challenging account provides one of the first comprehensive philosophical and policy critiques of New Labour VET developments and will be of interest to those committed to high quality vocational studies on all sides of education and industry as well as to lecturers, tutors, trainers and students working in post-compulsory education and training.

1 Lifelong Learning and PostSchool Education and Training

Introduction

Lifelong learning is the slogan chosen by the Labour government to summarise, publicise and popularise its values and policies for education and training under the new administration. The government's National Advisory Group was appointed specifically to address issues of lifelong learning (Fryer, 1997), the concept features prominently in the Kennedy report on further education (Kennedy, 1997) and the Dearing report on higher education (Dearing, 1997), and lifelong learning assumptions dominate and dictate all the key policies in the government Green Paper The Learning Age (DfEE, 1998a). The concept of lifelong learning is, however, by no means a new one. Like its predecessor, the 'learning society', it has been appropriated from the adult education tradition (Hyland, 1994a; Edwards, 1997; Duke, 1992; Barnett, 1998) in order to prescribe a conception of learning, from the 'cradle to the grave' or, as Henry Morris put it, with the aim of 'raising the school leaving age to 90' (Kellner, 1998, p. 15), to replace the mainstream and dominant school-centred, so-called 'front-loading' model of education. It might be worth examining these earlier manifestations in a little more depth before looking at the reconstructed model and the current policies being subsumed under the lifelong learning banner.

Learning, Life and Society

In a recent editorial celebrating its seventeenth year of publication, the International Journal of Lifelong Education rejoiced in the fact that 'lifelong education' has really come to the fore in the educational vocabulary in recent years' (IJLE, 1998, p.69). The editors go on, however, to complain that the concept is:

increasingly being equated with continuing education and related rather specifically to vocational updating for which academic qualifications are awarded...we are certainly not here opposing the growth of academic and vocational qualifications that are emerging, but, if we are not careful, education which does not result in a qualification will not be regarded as 'real' education or 'real' learning (ibid.).

At various stages in the chapters which follow I will be criticising this excessively 'economistic' (Avis et al., 1996) conception of learning and the obsession with qualifications, awards and credit (Hyland, 1996a,c). For the moment it is worth taking note of the way in which the original meaning of lifelong learning has been mutated and employed to support objectives and policies which are quite some way from the philosophy of adult education espoused by mainstream practitioners.

Lifelong education (as opposed to lifelong learning, a shift which, as will be noted later, has important implications for practice) has its roots in the adult education tradition of 'recurrent education' (Houghton & Richardson, 1974) and ^'education permanente' (Schuller & McGarry, 1979) which seek to challenge the stereotypical school-centred, frontloading model of education. The central perspective is of an education that is:

planned as something which will be experienced by people in an individually ongoing, though discontinuous way, over the whole of their lives-and which will correspond with their emerging vocational, social and cultural aspirations (Legge, 1982, p.7).

Lawson (1975, pp. 10-11) saw recurrent or lifelong education as a 'revolution...a shift in the current constellation of beliefs, values and technologies' of education; it is a reconstruction and reinterpretation of the educational task which:

includes formal, non-formal and informal patterns of learning throughout the life cycle of an individual for the conscious and continuous enhancement of the quality of life, his own and that of his society (Dave, 1976, p.11).

Similarly, Lengrand (1975) asserts that the project of lifelong education is 'to be judged not in relation to other people or to a given body of knowledge external to the pupil, but in relation to the personal development of the particular individual' (p.51).

Contemporary versions of lifelong education, though retaining the learning throughout life connotations, tend to view the nature and purpose of learning primarily in terms of skills updating and the 'training and development needs' (Stephens, 1990, p.51) of employees. Tight (1998a) offers the view that the concept has become part of a trinity – lifelong learning, the learning organisation and the learning society – aimed at 'articulating the importance of continuing learning for survival and development at the levels of the individual, the organisation and society as a whole' (p.254). This provides interesting insights though it seems more accurate to say that, whereas the notion of the learning organisation applied to firms and businesses does have a legitimately vocationalist/economic thrust, we still need to account for the way in which the other two items of the trinity have also come to be interpreted in this circumscribed way. Lifelong learning, increasingly linked in government policy documents (DfEE, 3998a,c,e) with the 'Learning Age' in which learning is the key to success in the global market, does not, as Strain (1998) points out, naturally carry such instrumental and economistic connotations, and it is worth marking the re-programming of these new educational shibboleths. The policy slogan which immediately preceded lifelong learning, the 'learning society', serves to illustrate how the process of 'vocationalisation' (a leitmotif of recent trends; see Halliday, 1990; Avis et al.,1996; Hyland, 1991, 1992, 1998c) has transformed the whole system of post-compulsory education and training (PCET).

Visions of the Learning Society

Barnett (1998, pp. 14-15) examines four different conceptions of the learning society in his critical evaluation of the 1997 Bearing report on higher education:

i) the continuing replenishment of human capital so as to maintain and strengthen society's economic capital;

ii) the maintenance of cultural capital and the quality of life of individuals and the collective;

iii) the inculcation of democratic citizenship;

iv) an emancipatory conception aimed at fostering self-reflexive learners who can respond to change in a rational and creative manner.

Barnett concludes that the:

Dearing conception of the learning society is the economic conception...but with a human face. Individual learning and development are to be welcomed but principally for their contribution to the growth of economic capital (ibid., p. 15; original italics).

Moreover, this conception is based on the 'belief that it is individuals who must shoulder the burden of their own continuing regeneration' (ibid.).

Dearing's preference for an economistic model of the learning society, on the grounds that 'in the future, competitive advantage for advanced economies will lie in the quality, effectiveness and relevance of their provision for education and training' (Dearing, 1997, para.34), though some way short of the most extreme vocationalised conceptions of the learning society, reflects the culture shift in educational values and aims that has occurred in Britain over the last twenty years or so (Tight, 1998b, makes some interesting comparisons which highlight commonalities in this respect between the Dearing, Fryer and Kennedy reports). The report on higher education by the Robbins committee (1963), though alluding to vocational preparation, was concerned principally with the intellectual, cultural and social aims of education, a perspective shared by the authors of the 1973 Russell Report (DES,1973) on adult education. All this is a long way from current conceptions of lifelong learning neatly summed up in the Secretary of State's comments on the 1998 government Green Paper. Mr Blunkett observed that:

the ability to manage and use information is becoming the key to the competitive strength of advanced economies. With increasing globalisation, the best way of getting and keeping a job will be to have the skills needed by employers...For individuals who want security in employment and a nation that must compete worldwide, learning is the key (Blunkett, 1998, p. 18).

Recent policy analyses of conceptions of the learning society have provided more detailed and finely nuanced models within which to locate and explain contemporary developments in lifelong learning. The first point of note in this sphere is that, in addition to the debate about whether the learning society is simply a 'myth' which has 'no real prospect of coming into existence in the forseeable future' (Hughes & Tight, 1998, p. 188) or, alternatively, a project which 'redefines educational needs and refurbishes the institutional forms by which these are provided within the polity' (Strain & Field, 1998, p.239), there is a diverse and complex array of learning society models on offer.

Using the work of Gallie (1964) on 'essentially contested concepts' (Gallie gives the examples of freedom, religion and democracy to illustrate the idea), Young (1998) rightly chooses to characterise conceptions of the learning society as being:

essentially contested, in which the different meanings given to it not only reflect different interests but imply different visions of the future and different strategies for getting there (p. 193).

This observation is worth noting since, in examining recent and current policy and practice on post-compulsory education and training, it will be important to mark the difference between those that are merely 'mythical' or 'visionary' which, though not actually existing at present, provide prescriptions for future theory and practice, and those which are actually operating or, at least, are emerging from the contemporary welter of policy documents on lifelong learning. Rikowski (1998a) also makes a valuable contribution to the debate in pointing out that most (if not all) of the current conceptions of the learning society are essentially examples of 'idealist educationalist discourse' (p.223), often incorporating a strong 'utopian element' which renders them 'unhistorical', 'survivalist' and 'indeterminate' (pp.226-228). Against these constructions, which are underpinned by a 'general reluctance to see the learning society, in materialist, historical, form-determined ways', Rikowski recommends a 'materialist theory of the learning society [which] at least holds out the promise of a new form of society emerging out of existing capitalist society'(p.229).

Rikowki's trenchant critiques (1998b,c,d, 1999) of policy and practice in post-compulsory VET provide valuable insights into current trends in education and training (particularly with reference to employment-related skills and modern apprenticeships) and will be referred to again in later chapters of the book. At this stage, it is worth examining in more detail three elaborated typologies of the 'learning society' concept which supplement those offered by Barnett and others already referred to and which have the potential for providing a coherent, analytic framework for identifying and explaining current trends in the field.

Edwards (1997) identifies three 'senses' of a learning society distilled from the 'multiple discourses' (p. 175) which have characterised debate in this field over the last quarter century (pp.184ff.):

1. Based on the adult lifelong education tradition discussed above, the learning society can be characterised as an 'educated society committed to active citizenship, liberal education and equal opportunities'. This conception 'supports lifelong learning within the social policy frameworks of post-Second World War social democracies'.
2. A learning society is a 'learning market enabling institutions to provide services for individuals as a condition for supporting the competitiveness of the economy'. This perspective 'supports the "economic policy framework adopted by many governments since the middle of the 1970s" with the aim of establishing "a market in learning opportunities...to meet the demands of individuals and employers for the updating of skills and competences'".
3. A learning society is 'one in which learners adopt a learning approach to life, drawing on a wide range of resources to enable them to support their lifestyle practices'. In this version the 'normative goals of a liberal democratic society – an educated society – and an economically competitive society – a learning market – are displaced by a conception of participation in learning as an activity in and through which individuals and groups pursue their heterogeneous goals'.

On the basis of what has been discussed thus far about contemporary policy and practice on PCET, we can state fairly confidently that conception (1) was an early adult education vision which has never been fully realised, and versions of (3) are held by a number of contemporary commentators on post-school and adult education but, as yet, do not substantially influence policy and practice. Conception (2), on the other hand, seems to match perfectly current government policy on lifelong learning set out in the various DfEE Learning Age documents. In short, the prevailing model is the economistic model which Barnett identified in Bearing's vision for higher education though, as will be discussed in later chapters, this tends to be supplemented under New Labour with certain broader social and educational goals which were markedly absent from policy documents issued under their Conservative predecessors.

Young's (1998) analysis of the basic conceptions begins with the chilling observation that in 'all countries of Western Europe postcompulsory education is either...in a crisis, or, as in the Nordic countries and Germany, the subject of increasing questioning and critique' (p. 189). The analysis goes on to to explain that:

Post-compulsory education in the UK, however...also suffers from a crisis of its own history. The UK faces the economic and cultural challenges shared by all European countries that I have referred to. However, it also inherits a weak system of compulsory education...and low levels of participation and attainment (except in the private sector) in a post-compulsory sector that is over-specialized, sharply divided and with vocational provision that carries little credibility (p. 190).

Against the background of this gloomy picture, Young outlines three models of the learning society which, in their own way, attempt to grapple with the post-school crisis:

1. The schooling model: stresses 'high participation in post-compulsory schooling as a way of ensuring that the maximum proportion of the population reach as far beyond a minimum level of education as possible' (ibid., p. 194). Both strong (Nordic and S.E.Asian countries) and weak (UK, France) versions suffer from the flaw of conceptualising education as an end in itself, thus unduly perpetuating academic as against general or vocational culture. Schooling is also expensive (so not really affordable by poorer and developing nations) and does not fully connect with other forms of learning in communities, at work and in the diversity of non-formal settings.
2. The credentialist model: gives 'priority to ensuring that the vast majority of the population have qualifications or certificated skills and knowledge and that the qualifications people achieve are related to their future employment' (p. 195). Germany provides a paradigm example of this model and aspects of the German approach were unsuccessfully attempted in Britain with the new vocationalist initiatives of the 1980s. Its main, and fatal, weakness is its concentration on credentials and certificates rather than skills and knowledge. At its worst it leads to the 'diploma disease' described by Dore (1976, 1997, and discussed in greater depth in Chapter 3) resulting in chronic and wasteful qualification inflation.
3. The access model: represents a 'vision of a learning society of the future in which learning, after the phase of compulsory schooling, is increasingly freed from its ties with specialized educational institutions such as schools, colleges and universities' (p. 197). It has connections with neo-liberal notions which seek to remove state control of education (Tooley, 1995) and, in an earlier version, can be linked to the deschooling literature of the 1970s (Buckman, 1973). Its key weakness is that it rests on a Utopian vision of self-motivated learners taking responsibility for their own learning bydrawing upon a wide range of resources and networks with the aim of building up an ever-expanding portfolio of knowledge and skills. Its main weakness is just this idealist rhetoric which is divorced from the real world of post-school learning in which, to take Britain as an example, there is a large cohort of underachieves with around 7 million people lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills (DfEE, 1998a, p. 12). Young asserts that the 'access model's focus on learner choice, access to IT, and credit transfer can only lead to low-level pracical skills, which all the trends suggest are less and less demanded by enployers' (p. 199). In spite of all this (though I should stress that Young does not make these points, and that the following are part of my own analysis) this model, arguably, underpins much of what is currently developing in UK education, from school to university, that the model directly informs most of postcompulosry practice (especially in the FE sector), that it provides the rationale for most of the lifelong learning policies of the Learning Age documents and that it is, clearly and unequivocally, the model which provides the theoretical foundation for the development of contemporary schemes under the University for Industry (UfI) umbrella (see Hillman, 1997, discussed in later chapters).

From the critical remains of these models, Young then offers a preferred fourth strategy, the educative model, which 'starts with a recognition that all social life involves learning, whether conscious and planned or not' (p.203). It is further informed by Engestrom's work (1994) outlining three orders of learning: rote learning, learning by doing and expansive learning. Defined as a model within which the 'learner questions and begins to transform the context or community of practice in which the learning takes place', this idea of 'expansive learning' is recommended by Young who suggests that 'following through its implications can enable schools, colleges or training programmes to help students, teachers and people in the community to design and implement their own futures, as their prevailing practices show symptoms of crisis' (ibid., pp.203-4; I would connect this idea of expansive learning with, both the notions of 'deep' learning referred to in Chapter 2, and also with the main features of the 'studentship' strategies discussed in Chapter 7).

A third typology of the learning society is constructed by Ranson (1998a) who, drawing on a formidable range of theoretical and practical literature concerned with ways of linking learning with societal change and transformation, identifies four interrelated versions of learning societies:

1. A society which learns about itself and how it is changing: Drawing on the work of Schon (1971), this conception is concerned essentially with coping with structural change, economic, political, and cultural, by means of modifying approaches to learning. Within this framework, learning is used to temper the 'dynamic conservatism' of many societies so that they 'become capable of transforming themselves without intolerable disruption' (p.3).
2. A society which needs to change the way it learns: Using frameworks developed by Husen (1974), this society is informed by the attempt to reform educational/learning structures and modes to keep pace with technological, communication and episte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Lifelong Learning and Post-School Education and Training
• 2 The Reconstruction of Education and Training
• 3 Vocational Skills, Qualifications and NVQs
• 4 Employers and Vocational Education and Training
• 5 New Labour Policy and the Post-Compulsory Sector
• 6 The Emerging National System of Education and Training
• 7 Values and Vocational Studies
• 8 Lifelong Learning and New Deal Values in the Learning Age
• Bibliography
• Index