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Journal of Vocational Education & Training

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Transforming elarning cultures in further education

Phil Hodkinson & David James
a b a b

Lifelong Learning Institute, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom Published online: 07 Sep 2007.

To cite this article: Phil Hodkinson & David James (2003) Transforming elarning cultures in further education, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 55:4, 389-406, DOI: 10.1080/13636820300200236 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13636820300200236

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Journal of Vocational Education and Training, Volume 55, Number 4, 2003

INTRODUCTION

Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education

PHIL HODKINSON Lifelong Learning Institute, University of Leeds, United Kingdom DAVID JAMES University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom

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ABSTRACT This article describes and explains the origin and approach of a major research project investigating learning in further education (FE). The Transforming Learning Cultures in FE project (TLC) is part of the Economic and Social Research Councils Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). The project is a partnership between four universities and four FE colleges. It takes a broadly social and relational view of learning, and explores the complex interrelationships between a wide range of factors, in 16 very varied learning sites. The article also introduces the other contributions to this Special Issue, and contextualises them in relation to the TLC project as a whole.

Introduction At the invitation of the Journal editors, this special issue focuses on the interim findings from one major research project, entitled Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC). The project was announced in September 2000 as part of the second phase of a large programme of research managed by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) called the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). In essence, the project is a 4-year longitudinal study that takes a cultural approach to learning. Its core aims are to: deepen understanding of the complexities of learning; identify, implement and evaluate strategies for the improvement of learning opportunities; 389

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set in place an enhanced and lasting capacity among practitioners for enquiry into FE practice. This opening article explains the context, rationale and methodology of the project, and introduces the other articles that follow. It also presents an admittedly insider perspective on why one project might warrant this much attention. In a nutshell, this is because it is the biggest research project ever targeted at English Further Education (FE), a significantly underresearched sector. It is also part of a very large and politically significant (ESRC) research programme, the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). It is unusual, if not unique, in combining 16 detailed qualitative case studies with extensive questionnaire surveys, and a funded research partnership between higher education academics and researchers, and FE practitioners as researchers. All of this is taking place over a 3-year data collection period, giving a real time longitudinal dimension. Finally, the core research team is 14 strong, giving diverse insights and theoretical/practical foci. Though two of us have written this article, the TLC project is co-directed by five people Biesta (since September 2003), Gleeson, Hodkinson, James and Postlethwaite. It is also important to acknowledge that the late Martin Bloomer was the original principal applicant, and was central to the project design and early execution, before his untimely death in 2002. In this article, we first set the context for the research, in relation to the FE sector and the politically influenced research environment, which was central to the TLRPs birth and impacted upon its driving principles. We then explain the underlying approach of the project, before describing our methods in more detail. Next, we share some of the advantages that this approach has brought, but also some of the problems we have faced. We finish by outlining, in general terms, some of the more substantial and substantiated provisional findings, whilst introducing the articles that follow. The Context of the Research From its conception, the project recognised that English FE was chronically underresearched as a sector (Elliott, 1996b; Hughes et al, 1996). Most existing research focused on management and professional identity, rather than learning (Elliott, 1996a; Ainley & Bailey, 1997; Gleeson & Shain, 1999; Shain & Gleeson, 1999). Ecclestone (2002) was a notable exception, but the focus in her work was explicitly on assessment. Yet, at the same time, FE was in a process of becoming more visible and significant, in relation to government policy on lifelong learning, social inclusion and economic regeneration (Department for Education and Employment [DfEE], 1998, 1999; Department for Education and Skills [DfES], 2003), and in the lives of vast numbers of young people

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and adults (Gleeson, 1999). This recent elevation of the profile of FE was accompanied by the creation of new structures and a redefined sector (the Learning and Skills Sector, which includes a range of providers in addition to colleges) and some new research activity in the area of policy and practice (see, for example, Learning and Skills Development Agency [LSDA], 2003), but compared to primary, secondary and higher education, the sector was and continues to be underresearched. Because of its historical Cinderella-like image, the sheer scale of FE can be easily overlooked. At the time of our initial fieldwork, there were 2.35 million students enrolled at colleges in the FE sector in England, 1.97 million of whom were within Further Education Funding Council (FEFC)funded provision. Of these, 27.2% students were aged under 19; on average each of these students was studying for 3.49 qualifications, and 78.5% of these were enrolled on full-time, full-year programmes. The qualifications for which they were studying were mainly vocational (the General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ; Wahlberg & Gleeson, this issue), as well as many qualifications focused on specific vocational areas (Colley et al, this issue). However, a significant number of full-time students were studying for academic qualifications at two levels. The first of these being the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) normally intended for 16-year-old school leavers, and the second being the more advanced General Certificate of Education Advanced (A-levels) and recently introduced half-A levels (AS). A total of 72.8% of students on state-funded provision, then organised through the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), were adults studying, on average, 1.32 qualifications each. Only 9.4% of these adults were enrolled on a full-time, full-year programme. The qualifications for which they were working were very varied, with no one qualification standing out as by far the largest category (Learning and Skills Council [LSC], 2002). This sector-level diversity of provision is reflected in considerable college to college variation. Whilst this presented the project with a difficult set of decisions in terms of the choice of cases, it also presented an opportunity, because we felt that the inclusion of diversity was likely to add to empirical and theoretical understanding of learning more generally (see below). As is explained more fully in the articles that follow, throughout the time of our research, the FE sector was (and arguably, still is) impregnated and perhaps dominated by what has been termed the new managerialism (Avis et al, 1996) or the audit culture (Power, 1997). When, in 1993, colleges were freed from previous Local Education Authority control, the government established the FEFC together with a performance-related funding mechanism (Ainley & Bailey, 1997). In essence, all state FE funding depended upon the recruitment, retention and achievement of individual students. A key focus of the new mechanism, especially in the early days, was to even out funding across all colleges, primarily by driving funding levels down, in a search for

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greater efficiency and value for money. This was further supported, soon after, by the imposition of a national inspection service, which laid down detailed criteria against which FE provision was to be judged. Once the Labour Party came to power in 1997, this audit trend continued, but with the added imperative to meet every students personal learning needs and to increase social inclusion through widening participation. As well as forming part of the context for the study, these factors have also impinged in a more intimate sense on the operation of the TLC, as will be briefly described later. They certainly provided a further justification for the research. There was a need to know how these processes, ostensibly aimed at improving learning, actually impacted upon learning and teaching on the ground. Furthermore, lying behind both the funding and inspection frameworks lurks a set of strong if implicit assumptions that good teaching is the prime determinant of effective learning, and that there are universally applicable standards of good teaching that can be applied in any situation. These assumptions are well worth testing out and the TLC research is providing the opportunity to do that. The research context for the project was also significant. In the late 1990s, there was what appeared to be a concerted attack on educational research quality in the United Kingdom. This came from both inside the educational academic community (Hargreaves, 1996, 1997; Reynolds, 1998; Tooley & Darby, 1998) and from outside (Hillage et al, 1998; Blunkett, 2000; Oakley, 2000). The main thrust of this attack was that too much educational research was of low quality, projects were too small and too diverse, there was little evidence of cumulative findings, and what there was lacked relevance to practice. In addition, there was not enough quantitative research, and too much qualitative research lacked methodological rigour and transparency. Although most of the research being criticised related to school-based education, the cumulative impact of these challenges resulted in a significant shift in the climate for all educational research towards an unrepentant empiricism, and the search for decontextualised scientific truths, telling government and practitioners what works (see Hammersley, 1997, 2002; Simons et al, 2003; Hodkinson, 2004; Hodkinson & Smith, in press; for critiques of this new orthodoxy). The TLRP was at the vanguard of this new climate. Under government pressure, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) moved some of its education research budget to the ESRC, to fund this major new programme. Additional funding came from various United Kingdom government agencies and departments. The aim of the programme was to produce high quality educational research that would directly result in the improvement of teaching and learning. Projects would be large (the TLC will cost over 800k), many would use mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, and there would be direct involvement with users at all stages, to help ensure relevance and

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impact. At least in the early days, programme events celebrated research that might underpin the evidence-based practice similar to that of the medical world and encouraged a perception that projects had to combine the scientific robustness of positivism, with the engagement of action research, all on a very large scale. Because of its scale and political significance, the TLRP and the projects within it have a very high profile, a fact that can be a mixed blessing, particularly in the early stages of a project. A further tension arises because none of the TLC project team takes an empiricist, let alone positivist stance (Bloomer & James, 2003). The Theoretical Rationale for the Project One of the concerns of the TLRP was the need for the study of teaching and learning in authentic ways. For us, a key aspect of this authenticity is the complexity of relationships between teachers, teaching, learners, learning, learning situations and the wider contexts of learning. Where educational research focuses on particular variables and, especially where these are narrowly defined, there is always a danger of decontextualising the object of study. Particular aspects are emphasised, often from within the concerns of one academic discipline, and other factors may come to be treated as background or even ignored. Our view is that teaching and learning cannot be decontextualised from broader social, economic historical and political forces, and that addressing this complexity directly is the most likely route to understanding that is useful to policy and practice. In the TLC, we attached importance to the term, culture, to indicate these complex relationships (see James and Diment, in this issue, for a more detailed explanation). The project aimed to examine, within a variety of settings, what a culture of learning is, based upon an acceptance that learning and thinking are always situated in a cultural setting, and always dependent upon the utilization of cultural resources (Bruner, 1996, p 4). We conceptualised learning broadly within a situated learning frame, which sees learning as located in the interactions between context, concept and activity (Brown et al, 1989). Learning is an inseparable part of social practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), closely related to what might be termed the culture of the place of learning. Significant weight is given to informal as well as formal attributes of learning (Colley et al, 2003). One of very few recent studies directly focused on learning in FE (Bloomer & Hodkinson, 2000) found that students dispositions towards learning were intricately related to their wider social lives, both inside and outside the college setting. In other words, there were strong, even dominant cultural dimensions to those dispositions. These cultural dimensions were partly related to the nature of the particular institution attended (Hodkinson & Bloomer, 2000). Furthermore, for many learners, 393

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dispositions changed over a 3-year period, centred around their time in FE. However, this study did not investigate the links between the dispositions of learners and their learning, or examine relationships between their changing dispositions and their learning experiences and encounters in the FE colleges they attended. It also did not take account of the dispositions and learning of teachers, implicitly seeing colleges as sites where only students learned. This work led us to recognise the need for a study directly focused on the nature of learning cultures that identifies aspects of those cultures amenable to intervention at various levels. To help conceptualise this, we turned to the work of Pierre Bourdieu (e.g. Bourdieu, 1977, 1989, 1998; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Grenfell & James, 1998). There were five principal reasons for this orientation, as follows. First, Bourdieus theory-as-method offers researchers a relational approach to social practices. Developing a distinction made by Cassirer, Bourdieu contrasts relational with substantialist thinking: the latter treats the preferences and activities of individuals or groups as if they indicate an essence, whilst the former sees them as instances of the intersection of relationships and positions in social space (see, for example, Bourdieu, 1998, p 4). Earlier work within the team had shown that this distinction had practical, as well as theoretical implications (e.g. James, 1995). Secondly, and closely related to this, the approach emphasises the mutual interdependence of social constraint and individual volition, or structure and agency. Social practices are understood as having both an objective and a subjective reality at one and the same moment. Complex human relations and activities can be understood via theoretical tools that enable the unpacking of social practices in social spaces: examples of these tools include the notions of habitus (i.e. a collection of durable, transposable dispositions) and field (a set of positions and relationships defined by the possession and interaction of different amounts of economic, social and cultural capital). Habitus and field are mutually constituting, a point of significance for the way that the actions of tutors, students and institutions are studied and understood. Put more concretely, our assumption was that learning would depend upon the complex interactions between the following factors, amongst others: students positions, dispositions and actions, influenced by their previous life histories; tutors positions, dispositions and actions, influenced by their previous life histories; the nature of the subject, including broader issues of disciplinary identity and status, as well as specifics such as syllabus, assessment requirements, links with external agencies or employers, etc.; college management approaches and procedures, together with organisational structures, site location and resources;

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national policies towards FE, including qualification, funding and inspection regimes; wider social, economic and political contexts, which inter-penetrate all of the other points. Thinking relationally in the project meant seeing learning in relation to people, organisations, times and places (for example, Who? When? Where?); in other words, the field site or context. Rather than taking the validity or utility of specific individual or institutional definitions of learning at face value, one might seek to understand them in terms of their location amongst a series of possible socially-positioned definitions and in relation to other definitions in use. Thirdly, we had a wish to work across discipline boundaries. A Bourdieusian approach promotes a questioning stance in relation to the capture of certain questions by particular academic disciplines, and as such has strong parallels in socio-cultural theory (e.g. Wertsch, 1998) and in cultural studies (e.g. Smith, 2000). A degree of interdisciplinarity would help the project to focus on its object of study (i.e. learning in a particular institutional context as a set of practices to be understood, explained or transformed). Given the dominance of some pre-existing models of learning, this was an important consideration. Fourthly, a Bourdieusian approach necessitates a robust form of reflexivity, which we felt was in keeping with the goals of the project, for example, drawing attention to the relative social positionings of researchers and those they study, and the implications of this for knowledge generation. Finally, we were attracted by the possibility that Bourdieus theory-as-method and in particular the stance it promotes in relation to culture, could bring fresh insight to bear on the understanding of educational issues and settings (Grenfell & James, 1998). However, having detailed these reasons for a particular theoretical orientation, it is important to note that theoretical work in the project does not limit itself to Bourdieusian tools. For example, ongoing work on cultural analysis of learning sites draws on Dewey and Lave & Wenger, as well as Bourdieu. Methodology To organise data collection, we adopted nested case studies. Four case study FE colleges were selected, and the design of the project negotiated with their principals and key staff. Each college was paired with one of the four host universities in the project. The colleges are of different types, serving different catchment areas and communities, in different parts of England. At the second level, within each college, four specific sites of learning and teaching were identified, providing 16 initial sites across the whole project. By site we meant a location where tutor(s) and students worked together on learning. Site selection depended on

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negotiations between the research team and college management, and on the willingness of the tutor concerned to participate. Beyond that, we looked for variety of coverage, so that some sites resemble conventional classrooms, others workshops or workplaces, and others drop-in centres or distance learning. Sites cover a range of different types of course provision, at different levels of qualification. As might be expected, there has been some change to sites during the life of the project, which has had the effect of increasing the overall number of cases within the project. The resulting 19 sites are as follows: access students individual tutoring (from September 2003 replacing mature student support see below); Business Studies GNVQ (General National Vocational Qualifications) Intermediate level 1-year, level two course; CACHE Diploma (Child Care and Education) a 2-year level three course, formerly known as nursery nursing; an entry-level course for school leavers with moderate learning and behavioural difficulties; Drama (Entry level drama) a 1- or 2-year entry-level course in drama production for students with learning difficulties, leading to an ASDAN Expressive Arts award; Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications (National Certificate, 2 years, day release); ESOL Learning Services English for Speakers of Other Languages (roll-on, roll-off); Health Studies BTEC (Business and Technician Education Council) National Diploma a 2-year course; Information Technology by flexible learning, drop-in (City and Guilds 7261) (2001-2002 only); Information Technology GNVQ (replacing the one above, from Sept 2002); mature students support (up to September 2003) one-to-one tutoring in a learning centre for students needing support in maths, English or study skills in relation to dyslexia; Modern languages AS level (from September 2002); on-line basic IT skills; pathways for parents (re-engagement course for young parents); Photography (BTEC + City & Guilds; 1 and 2 years full or part time); Psychology AS (Advanced, supplementary) level (from 2001-2002 only); Travel and Tourism (Advanced Vocational Certificate in Education) a 1- or 2-year course; a vocational course for KS4 school students, replacing one of their GCSEs with a college course in Administration/Information Technology; work-based NVQ assessment in Administration, business and technology, National Vocational Qualifications, levels 2/3. 396

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This sample is not representative of the whole of FE provision, but it does provide a wide enough range to allow for the identification of significant variations between sites or significant common issues across them. It is evident that higher education provision is absent. Also, there is a slight preponderance of newer, almost experimental provision, because of the interest in examining this by some partner colleges. The main tutor in each site was funded for 2 hours a week, to participate in the research. These participating tutors attended regular meetings and workshops with their host university/college research team, were encouraged to keep reflective log books or diaries, and to observe each others sites. They were encouraged to innovate as the research progressed and, where new approaches were attempted, the research provided ongoing evidence of what happened. Engaging with them as partners, combined with legitimate college interests in not letting research near their poor provision, has no doubt given a bias in the overall TLC sample. The tutors are mainly full-time, experienced and relatively enthusiastic, and overall teaching standards appear to be high. In addition to the participating tutors, each local research team has three core members:

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one of the project directors, nominally for 1 day per week; a half-time academic researcher, employed by the university; an FE practitioner/researcher, seconded for 2 days a week, to work on the project. The local research teams meet approximately once per month. In addition to working with the participating tutors, the core researchers interview about six students per site twice a year, using semi-structured interviews, and observe the practice in each site on regular occasions. Regular observations of teaching within normal FE practice are designed to express judgements about teaching quality (potentially linked to pay and contracts) structured around a narrow set of criteria. Within the research, observation (sometimes termed shadowing) is based on a wide and fluid set of questions. It is concerned to find what is going on, rather than to evaluate whether this meets audit measures. Core researchers and visiting participating tutors simply record their impressions of the practices and settings in the sites. Participating tutors are also regularly interviewed, and given periodic feedback about what the research shows about their particular site, and more general issues across the project as a whole. In addition to these 16 qualitative case studies, the TLC also uses regular questionnaire sweeps, to generate a broader picture of the sites. One director and one part-time researcher work exclusively on this part of the project. We aim for as close to 100% coverage of students in each site as we can get. Actual response rates vary from site to site, but the survey allows us to contextualise the students who are intensively

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followed up by interview, and helps reveal patterns of similarity and difference between the sites. The article by Postlethwaite & Maull, in this issue, discusses the questionnaire methods more fully and presents some of the early findings. In approaching the analysis of data, the TLC faced some difficult problems, each of which is also a strength. First, the sheer volume of data, that gives us such rich and detailed pictures of learning, is potentially overwhelming. By the conclusion we will have six questionnaire sweeps, about 600 student interviews, 100 tutor interviews, 16 log books, between 500 and 1000 sets of observation notes, notes from local team meetings and discussions, interviews with a small number of college managers, and a large amount of documentary material. In response to this volume, we developed the following strategy. Initially, the quantitative and qualitative data are analysed separately. They are then integrated through an iterative process, between each major sweep of data collection. The analysis of quantitative data is described by Postlethwaite & Maull, elsewhere in this issue. For the qualitative data, we used each site as the main unit of analysis. After the first round of data collection, a detailed case study account was produced for each site. As the project progressed, these have been updated progressively, focusing on deepening understanding, mapping change, and examining in depth the impact of various interventions into site culture either initiated by the participating tutors or externally imposed. For an example of a case study account, see Wahlberg & Gleeson, in this issue. Analysis also took place with each case, exploring student perspectives (Davies & Tedder, this issue) and issues of tutor professionalism (Anderson et al, this issue). We have also worked on similarities and differences between sites, through the quantitative data (Postlethwaite & Maull) and through combined case study accounts (Colley et al, in this issue). At the time of writing, we are commencing the complex task of analysing learning cultures at a more macro and less idiosyncratic level. Our second problem comes from the size, diversity and dispersion of the core research team 14 people, all part-time, with different professional roots and identities, split across four geographically distant partnerships. This gives depth of understanding to all our work, as sometimes contrasting perspectives are blended. However, it also means that managing the project is more challenging than it is in many projects, and there are inevitably some tensions when some members feel that their perspectives or needs are marginalised. All team members have to balance their TLC activity against the rest of their busy working and family lives. A third problem concerns the role of the participating tutors. They are partners in the research, but also the subject of it. To fully understand the power-relations in each site, we decided from the outset that participating tutors would not be involved in interviewing students,

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that core team researchers would interview them, and that we could not share with them the raw data from the student interviews. Thus, the participating tutors are not given access to everything that the core team know about their own sites. If students are on a 2-year course, issues of confidentiality can prevent such sharing for a long period of time. In practice, tutors get two forms of feedback. There are informal discussions with a core team member and draft written accounts of their site are shared for comment, from time to time. Despite the difficulties, there are real strengths in this unusual research relationship. The research collects data from students that might not have been made available to tutors as researchers, and extensive insight from tutor diaries, meetings and discussions. The tutors gain a greater understanding of FE, and of teaching and learning, and some have used the opportunity to rethink aspects of their practice and to introduce changes, as a result of research involvement (Anderson et al, this issue). Also, tutors remain in total control of their own teaching practices. The fourth problem derives from the TLRP mission to directly improve learning or, put slightly more realistically, make a positive impact. This entails considerable team effort in constructing ways to share our insights with others, in the partner colleges and beyond. This is time-consuming, running, as it does, alongside data collection, analysis, team meetings and meeting wider TLRP commitments. It is also difficult, if we are to move beyond simple dissemination through professionallyorientated publications, and frequent seminar and conference presentations. The difficulties are intensified because the audit culture of FE, mentioned earlier, means that colleges have to focus almost all their attention on detailed measures used for funding and inspection. This means that the more complex cultural insights of this research, which is increasingly challenging aspects of that culture, are difficult for colleges to acknowledge. The sorts of impact we are beginning to chart are also likely to be medium, rather than short term, and may be seen by some college managements as idealistic at best and threatening at worst. However, treating the issue of impact seriously brings the research many benefits. It reminds the team of the terms of the original partnership it forged with the Further Education Development Agency (now the Learning and Skills Development Agency), which included practitionerorientated dissemination beyond the colleges with whom the project works most closely (see James, 2004). It also makes us more aware of the pressures that variously constrain and enable some transformations of learning culture. In addition, the contemporary general emphasis on impact increases that chance that those FE managers and practitioners, who are receptive to our findings, will encounter them and find ways to make some use of them. It will be several years before any serious attempt can be made to evaluate this aspect of our research.

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Early Findings The articles in this Special Issue set out some of the findings of the TLC project thus far. In this section, we attempt a brief overview, whilst contexualising each article in turn. When we analysed the data collected thus far, we were struck by the variations between the various sites. These differences are far from trivial and superficial. The ways in which sites achieved learner success varied significantly, as did some of the issues and problems that they faced. Each site had a strong culture, of which students and tutors were constituent parts. The different aspects of those cultures were closely interrelated and the effects of teacher actions depended upon those interrelationships. Sometimes, many of these aspects were acting in a positively synergistic manner. On other occasions, there were tensions. Two sites are described in some detail in this issue. James and Diment illustrate their analysis of the value of adopting a cultural perspective on learning, by examining a workplace learning site, using a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ). The participating tutor concerned was employed to assess students work in the workplace. However, the high completion rates on the course, so valued by the college in relation to current audit measures, were a result of the large amounts of unofficial teaching and student support that she gave. Furthermore, the opportunity for such contact was being reduced by the college, primarily in an attempt to cut existing costs of provision. Whilst it is easy to understand the pressures on the college to do this, it also demonstrates a lack of institutional comprehension about why the course was so successful and suggests that improvement cannot be conceived in simple or straightforward terms. Walhberg and Gleeson analyse the GNVQ Business Studies site. They show how tensions between dispositions, the qualification and the nature of learning create problems for both tutors and students. Contrasting dispositions are located in the positions and past lives of participants. For the tutors, there was a strong sense of loss of professional identity, as they were forced to abandon their disciplinary roots, and become responsible for an area, business studies and, a new qualification, GNVQ, with which they could not identify. A further source of tension lay around the tenuous links between the course and eventual employment. Students felt that a business studies qualification should lead directly to a good job. However, the course had no work experience provision and there was no clear progression route into employment. At one level, it makes good sense to consider each learning site as unique. As these and other accounts in our work show, even what counts as good teaching and learning can be very different from site to site, and the complex interactions between numerous factors, almost inevitably means that specific characteristics of any site should be recognised and

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taken into account. It is this fact that leads to our first two major interim findings: 1. There are considerable benefits in understanding learning as a cultural phenomenon. 2. What works, or is deemed good practice in one learning site may not work or be good practice in another. Both these findings are strongly at odds with the current hegemonic rhetoric about FE, based as it is on the idea that individual needs are sufficiently known to tailor provision most effectively, within a framework of standardised approaches to teaching, measuring and funding success. However, we are also beginning to see ways to group and compare different sites. Over the whole project, the questionnaire data is revealing clear patterns of provision, some of which are described by Postlethwaite & Maull. In their article, they were only able to deal with the data from the first round of questionnaires. This showed up significant differences, for example between sites that contained predominantly young full-time students, and those where students were mainly part-time, and where age ranges were more varied. They also picked up significant differences in perceptions of learning by students in different sites, using part of the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey. This explored perceptions of shared control, critical voice and student negotiation. Analysis of this scale reinforced the distinction between part-time and full-time sites, but also threw up some significant anomalies within each grouping, which are discussed in detail in the article. What we do not know until further rounds of data are analysed, is whether or not these site differences are consistent over time, or change, as the students progress. Answering this question will largely determine the amount of effort devoted to understanding the possible site differences that are emerging. In any event, this sort of analysis adds significantly to the understanding of the individual site cultures developed in the qualitative case studies. Colley et al direct attention on a small group of sites that are of direct relevance to the readers of this journal. They focus on three sites health care, nursery nursing and engineering where there are established links between employment and college provision. All are aimed primarily at young students and, on all courses, part of the time is spent in college and part in the workplace. Taking a cultural view of learning in these sites has highlighted the significance of learning as becoming or what, following Bourdieu, we term the formation of vocational habitus. That is, on these courses, successful students have to become enculturated into the values and practices of the linked profession. These shared and often implicit values and practices are coconstructed by tutors, students, employers and fellow workers. They facilitate some very effective learning, but make taking a critical stance difficult, and reinforce some values and practices that may be

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undesirable such as gender stereotyping, relatively low pay and status, together with burdens of emotional labour, for females in caring professions. This sort of analysis combines with individual case studies, and results in our third provisional finding: 3. Learning and teaching, especially in vocational courses, are strongly framed by structures, dispositions and practices from outside as well as inside the college, and over which college and tutors have little influence. This claim does not challenge recognition that, as the articles in this issue reveal and our wider research also shows, participating tutors exert a major influence over the culture of the sites where they teach and on the learning of the students in those sites. Our research also shows the breadth and variety of what tutors do, much of which lies outside the direct scope of inspection or teaching standards criteria. It may be valuable to think of teachers as managers of learning culture, much of which is not of their own direct making, as they respond to changing circumstances to preserve and hopefully improve the quality of learning, or to minimise the effects of some external pressures. Furthermore, making significant changes to teaching often entails more than applying new techniques, which is how it is often portrayed. Changes in disposition and identity are involved, and such changes are not easy to bring about. This leads to our fourth and fifth interim findings: 4. Despite the significance of other factors, the dispositions and actions of a tutor have a major influence on learning in a site. 5. Change and improvement to a tutors teaching activity often goes beyond the realm of techniques. It is just as likely to require fundamental shifts that challenge dispositional characteristics, and is sometimes difficult to achieve. The next article in this Special Issue focuses explicitly on the roles and professionalism of FE staff. Anderson et al discuss the relationships between research and professional practice. They explore the different positions and dispositions of university-based researchers, college-based researchers and participating tutors within the TLC project. They show how engagement in the research process can, itself, be a valuable learning experience for practitioners. This is followed by a typology of different types of relationship between research and professional practice. This article, when combined with some of the others (Walhberg & Gleeson, James & Diment), illustrates aspects of our final interim finding. Across the TLC project as a whole, some participating tutors have succeeded in bringing about valuable improvement to their teaching and/or to the cultures of their sites. However, there have been rather more cases of tutors fighting a rearguard action, against imposed and often financially driven changes from beyond the immediate learning site.

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In several sites, based upon what we know, this is likely to have a deleterious effect on learning. In other sites, resource restrictions prevent further changes that our analysis shows might be beneficial. 6. In some situations, current FE funding and management regimes are likely to reduce the quality of learning, whilst tutors are routinely expected to improve it. In the final article, Davies & Tedder throw the spotlight directly on to the student experience. Building on the earlier approaches of Bloomer & Hodkinson (2000), they present detailed accounts of two particular students experiences of vocational courses. They show how vocational aspirations can frequently change, and are influenced by factors outside the college, as well as within the course cultures described elsewhere in this issue. When placed alongside the article by Colley et al, a further downside of a strong vocational culture becomes apparent. That is, such courses may not work well for students who come to decide that they do not want to enter the particular profession upon which the course is centred. The well-known tensions between specific and more general vocational education and training thus resurface, from a rather different perspective. More broadly, this article shows how the TLC research further confirms Bloomers (1997, 2001) observation, that studentship, a combination of student dispositions and actions relating to the learning situations they encounter, is a major constituent of the learning process. Conclusion At the time of writing, the TLC project is entering a final phase of datagathering and at the same time is completing the early stages of data analysis. This Special Issue reflects a cross-section of project activity, although not one that we would claim was a representative sample of all such activity. Our view is that the project is beginning to bear fruit and that we have a great deal to say, both at the level of detailed insight into practices and in offering a cultural understanding of learning in FE. The team is in the process of developing theoretical tools that will assist in the description and comparison of learning cultures, and in the understanding of interventions, by tutors and others, in the FE context. Part of this will entail a greater emphasis on our extensive data on student experience. There is a great deal still to do. In the meantime, we would welcome general or specific comments in connection with any of the material presented in this issue.

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Acknowledgement This project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, as part of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme, Award number L139251025. We are grateful for the financial support. Correspondence Professor Phil Hodkinson, Lifelong Learning Institute, Continuing Education Building, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom (p.m.hodkinson@leeds.ac.uk). References
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