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JAPP: Abstracts

Volume 4, Number 2, Spring 2007

Identity and Exclusion: motivations, dispositions and identities on adult numeracy courses
Jon Swain

This article draws on research conducted in 2002–2003 into adults studying numeracy in two colleges of further education. It uses case studies of two white, middleaged, working-class women designated to be working at a relatively low level of mathematics (Entry Level), and argues that a study of the micro world will often relate to, and help us understand, the macro world. The narratives explore the women’s motivations for attending numeracy courses, and suggest that relatively short, part-time courses have the potential to transform learners’ identities, aspirations and dispositions towards learning. The article explores the relationship between agency and wider structures (such as social class and gender) which, are argued, constrain the learners options and opportunities. However, the article also draws on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and suggests that it is dynamic and can be modified to a certain extent. The article also raises questions about a perceived shift in the discourses found in government adult basic skills policies of moving away from an entitlement of lifelong learning towards a concentration on more narrowly defined skills at higher levels for employability.

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Student ambassadors, trust and HE choices
Clare Gartland and Anna Paczuska

UK policy on widening participation is targeted at young people from lower socioeconomic groups and at those with no family background of HE. The structure of the HE system, however, is one in which the ‘cultural capital’ of middle-class applicants is more valuable in the higher education ‘game’ than that of applicants from targeted backgrounds. It is generally held that the family is the major site for the generation of such cultural capital. Does this mean, therefore, that attempts to widen participation are inevitably doomed, and that young people from lower socio-economic groups are automatically disadvantaged forever? Or are there initiatives that may enable young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to acquire aspects of cultural capital which help them on the road to HE? This paper looks at how knowledge about HE may be acquired and how student ambassadors and group mentoring may be a significant ‘site’ for the generation of cultural capital to support widening participation. It argues that if ambassadors can earn the trust of young people they can become ‘hot’ sources of information about HE. This trust depends on the nature and context of the ambassador/student relationship. Attempts to formalise such relationships (e.g. through introducing accreditation) could undermine their value.

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When will diversity of higher education mean diversity of entry routes for young people?
Helen Connor and Brenda Little

Government calls for an expanded and more diverse higher education system can be traced back over a quarter of a century at least. Access to the system was also to be more diverse. In this article we consider the case of young people’s access to higher education through different pathways. We draw on the findings of recent empirical studies which focused particularly on vocational routes to higher education, including admissions-related issues, set against a backdrop of policy initiatives geared towards improving participation of young ‘vocational’ learners to examine whether diversity of access routes to higher education has become a reality. Finally, we consider reforms to education and training now being introduced for young people (through changes to the 14–19 curriculum) and question whether these, by themselves, will lead to more diverse routes to higher education.

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What price plumbing? Popular perceptions and misperceptions affecting vocational education
Angela Shaw

This paper cites three key issues as underpinning the problems in the British vocational education system. These are: 1. the perceptions and misperceptions resulting from the historical British class structure; 2. the significant after-effects of the post-1944 tripartite education system on public and employer perceptions; and 3. the current emphasis on the perceived significance of intellectual capital and the creation of a knowledge economy to meet the challenges of globalisation.
The paper provides a rationale for each of these issues and proposes a range of solutions to counteract their negative impact including the disaggregating of Key Skills from apprenticeships, the expansion of the qualifications available at Level 4 to provide additional access routes and the formation of genuine partnerships between further education and higher education with shared teaching, shared resources, shared staff development and joint research.

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The Common Good: Raymond Williams, adult education and social change
Alan Tuckett

Raymond Williams grew up in border country, in the Welsh marches, and contributed to the creation and development of a range of disciplines. His groundbreaking achievement in shaping cultural studies was forged in his experience as an adult educator. This paper explores the contemporary significance of his argument that social change is always a complex process, and that a key role for public educators is to support adults in understanding

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Robert Tressell, Raymond Williams and the purposes of education Hastings 1907/1957/2007
Stuart Laing

The socio-political purpose of the recently opened University Centre Hastings can be linked to the writings and educational projects of two significant former Hastings residents. Robert Tressell’s novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (written between 1907 and 1910) emphasises the necessity of developing a conceptual understanding of the factors which structure everyday experience and social inequality.
Over the past century the book itself has typically been read, dramatised and debated using very similar dialogic educational processes. Half a century later the adult education teaching in East Sussex of Raymond Williams used similar principles to implement a view of education as a ‘common highway’ for general social progress rather than a ‘ladder’ for individual advancement. The current University Centre Hastings project seeks to develop further these directions as part of its purpose of enabling locally based higher education to support positive social development.

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