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Editorial, Volume 3, Number 2, Winter 2001-2002

"History, liminality, the 3Rs and the learning society",  Jonathan Brown

The last editorial [JACS 3 (1)] raised a question about whether there was a pre-history of access well before its 'invention' in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Recent reading of Professor Jonathan Rose's major new book The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2001) suggests that this question was more apposite than I had realised at the time. Rose looks afresh at literacy levels in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He looks at the ways in which reading, libraries, discussion groups mutual improvement societies and social action gave rise to distinctive intellectual activities quite separate from formal education, qualifications and credit. He tries to work out what ordinary people read in those days. Rose is full of vignettes of self-taught, self-emanicipating men and women. He talks of:

[an] autodidacts' mission statement: to be more than passive consumers of literature, to be active thinkers and writers. Those who proclaimed that "knowledge is power" meant that the only true education is self-education, and they often regarded the expansion of formal education opportunities with suspicion (p 57).

Rose argues that this 'autodidact culture, as a whole, survived largely intact until 1945' (p 456), but has now been left behind, left behind by changes in industry, work, culture and education. A world where markets dominate culture and education is a world where, in the

...dynamic economy, the autodidact is left hopelessly behind like the craftsman made redundant by new technology. His Everyman's Library will be rendered obsolete by critics who insist that everyone must buy this year's model of the literary canon, or else subject the old canon to increasingly opaque methods of interpretation (p 461).

This suggests that within any examination of the pre-history of access (and, indeed, credit) there needs to be a careful look at learning and empowerment, curriculum content and the linkages between learning and credit.

Turning to the challenges of the 21st century, the linkage between learning and credit remains problematic. On the one hand there is an assertion that the freedom to explore ideas and concepts should be respected while on the other there is the discipline and development of the well-constructed curriculum. The apprehension is that the two do not mix and that the joy of learning is lost in the trauma of assessment for credit. There are, for example, recurrent voices in the pages of JACS that worry about a 'compulsory' movement towards credit. In this issue Layer and Smith assert that:'...many aspects of provision for adult learners have now been destroyed because they cannot fit within a crude assessment-driven funding methodology'.

There are others who have made similar points in JACS including Coats (2000) and Pilkington and Stuart (2001). Layer and Smith go on to question a policy that assumes that 'learners know what they want to learn...and want a qualification'. I wonder if this is too static a formulation in the light of the unpredictability of learning. One of the arguments for credit is precisely that the unpredictability of life may cloud learner aspirations and wants. The qualification that is not an aim at point 1 in the learner's development can become absolutely essential at a later point 2. At any given moment the learner may not know the direction to be followed or the outcome, but nevertheless they are entitled to credit for what has been achieved on the 'journey', so that the qualification may be obtained if this is what the learner later needs. But perhaps the question is whether the learner owns the credit. Whether credit

...is an (oppressive?) form of co-option, or whether it can genuinely represent an ownership of the liminal points by the learner - is the learner subject or object of credit? (Summers, 2001)

To some extent this may depend on the nature and direction of the learning journey. It is clear that the concept of the journey now seems to be in vogue as it is noted that the last SCUTREA Conference was on the theme of Travellers' Tales: from adult education to lifelong learning...and beyond (West et al, 2001). The metaphor of the journey is well-established in contributions to JACS. Sandra Betts (1999), for example, wrote about a 'gendered journey' through Access and into HE complete with images of boarding and changing trains, and of the Access branch line and the HE main line. Similarly in the current number Kenneth Gibson and June Waters introduce the idea of liminality: of being at a threshold through which the successful student has to pass from the non-student past into a learning future. This progression is described by students as not being just about acquiring the necessary learning to obtain credit, qualification or learning outcome, but also about a life-changing transition. Identifying this transition as liminality may be quite helpful, as there is a problem about most of the terminology used elsewhere. For example, Megan Walters (2000) analyses this journey and transition in terms of the 3Rs of Redundancy, Recognition and Regeneration.

So powerful is the language of this framework that it deserves an extended quotation.

Redundancy:

Recognition: 

Regeneration:

The three Rs framework may be seen not only as a developmental process to aid our understanding of mature students' progress into and through higher education, but also as informing our concept of adulthood (pp 267-268).

There is no doubt that a journey in these terms even today echoes those journeys of the nineteenth century self-empowering autodidact coming to terms with life and learning via the 'big books'. However, there is some hesitation on my part about the extremes of two of Walters' 3 Rs. Redundancy has such clear linkages outside learning that it may mislead, while Regeneration is too revivalist for comfort. So it would appear that the relatively unencumbered nature of liminality might be quite helpful. It is hoped that there will be more examination of access journeys through the several modes of lifelong learning which explore this transition.

The connection (as with redundancy) to the world of work is one of the concerns that Graham Fowler visits in his review article. In examining the impact of the four volumes from the Learning Society Project, Fowler raises questions about what the graduate does after qualification. Within this discussion, the issue of 'the graduate job' arises. It is suspected that although there is wide use of this term, it has never made absolute sense. Graduate journeys have always been to a variety of jobs, a variety of jobs that has become even more bewildering in the age of the 'new career'. The new career is a fragmented one which involves people 'pursuing portfolio...and boundaryless...careers' (Arnold and Jackson, 1997). In these circumstances it is argued that the responsibility for the 'career' is more than ever the responsibility of the individual, and the external markers (such as that of 'the graduate job') become meaningless. This is an area of particular concern for the mature graduate as the Fowler review points out. It would be interesting to see studies of contemporary mature graduate journeys, especially if these career paths are, as he suggests, differentiated by gender.

The current number covers, as can be seen, a wide agenda and raises interesting questions which I trust readers will enjoy. JACS would be interested in papers which further pursued these and other journeys whether through history, critical transitions, lifelong learning and its meanings, adult guidance or other main or branch lines in the rich fields of access and credit.

References

Arnold J and Jackson C (1997) ' The new career: issues and challenges', British Journal of Guidance and Counselling 25 (4) 427-433.

Betts S (1999) 'From Access through HE: a gendered journey', Journal of Access and Credit Studies 1 (2) 124-136.

Coats M (2000) 'Compliance and Compromise or Challenge and Change: access without credit' Journal of Access and Credit Studies 2 (2) 178-191.

Pilkington M and Stuart M (2001) 'Science for Active Citizenship: the challenge of lifelong learning', Journal of Access and Credit Studies 3 (1) 4-16.

Rose J (2001) The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Summers J (2001) e-mail comment on the first draft of the editorial.

Walters M (2000) 'The mature students' 3 Rs', British Journal of Guidance and Counselling 28 (2) 267-278.