Call for Papers
Making Progress or Losing Control?
LSRN Conference
12 July 2007 at The Exchange, Bridgwater
The agenda is online with links to all relevant papers which can be downloaded
In its second SW Learning and Skills Research Network conference, the Skills and Learning Intelligence Module, University of Exeter School of Education and Lifelong Learning, aims to explore how recent policy changes to the learning landscape are affecting practitioners around the region. We will be looking at how notions of professional experience, identity and practice are being challenged by new paradigms of learner progression. We will examine the implications of shifting priorities for learners on the control and empowerment of learning and skills professionals.
The Government’s vision for the UK of ‘demand-led, world class’ education and training aims to bring together messages from the Further Education White Paper on raising learners’ aspirations and the Leitch review with its focus on employers’ needs. By 2010, there is an expectation that all funding for adult learning (save in the community) will be channelled through Train to Gain and Learning Accounts, with ‘a full set of Progression Pathways identified and implemented across the Foundation Learning Tier’. According to a 2007 consultation:
We need more learners and more employers to engage with skills training, and a system that purposely sets out to give more choice and control to its customers in order to enhance their individual and business competitiveness.
But what does this mean for learning and skills professionals, with roles and identities that have in some cases taken many years to develop? There is an assumption that practitioners will be job ready and capable of supporting potentially radical shifts in systems planning and delivery at every level. However, is this expectation matched by what professionals feel that learners want or need? Where is the practitioners’ voice in the new Government vision?
Other questions arise:
How will individuals who have largely operated in community support capacities locate their existing skills within the new occupational framework, and transfer their roles as agents of social change?
How will university lecturers integrate their classroom practice in the same continuum of practice as newly qualified teaching assistants or vocational tutors in the workplace at NVQ Level 3?
How does early higher education experience with vocational place-based partnerships (as envisaged through Lifelong Learning Networks) inform our understanding of progression – for practitioners as well as learners?
Is the move towards degree awarding powers for colleges supported by institutional practice?
How are new training protocols for Train to Gain brokers, unionlearn learning representatives and advice and guidance professionals acknowledging less structured approaches, and changing what learners from all ages and contexts expect from practitioners?
What impact is informal learning and accreditation of prior experience for learners (through schemes such as RARPA) having on the learning and skills workforce?
If these and related issues reflect your own understanding of current challenges and opportunities, SLIM invites you to submit a proposal for presentation at the conference. This year we are also hoping to attract those younger practitioners who are closest in time to their own training experiences and able to offer views on how their expectations have been matched.
We are also delighted to be able to welcome as our Keynote Speaker Professor Frank Coffield of the Institute of Education. Frank is a leading voice nationally for educational policy reform and post-16 learning and skills, and is well known for his major contribution to the ESRC's Teaching and Learning Programme.