Abstract

Set in the vocational education and training sector in England, this article draws attention to how top-down, center-periphery approaches to curriculum design and development in vocational education fail for at least three reasons. First, they misconstrue the nature of knowledge. Second, they lead to perfunctory and fragmented approaches to curriculum design, combined with mechanistic measures of quality and achievement, which often require little more than “one off” and superficially assessed demonstrations of performance. Finally, they underplay the role and importance of the teacher as researcher and artist in putting the cultural resources of society to work in creative curriculum design and pedagogy. Teacher-artistry is pivotal in animating and heightening the vitality of curricula. It is through this artistry that teachers make theories, ideas and concepts in vocational subjects and disciplines accessible and meaningful to all learners in coherent ways in the contexts of their learning and their lives. The consequences of the epistemic faux pax underpinning center to periphery models of curriculum design and development are highlighted in this article in vocational tutors’ accounts of experiences of problems and issues in curriculum design, development and assessment encountered in their practice. Participants in the research teach in a variety of vocational education settings including, Apprenticeships and Higher-Level Technical Education; English Language at General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level; Health and Social Care; Information and Communications Technology; Construction (Plumbing); Digital Production, Design and Development and High-Tech Precision Engineering. Data are analyzed and reported through systematic, thematic analysis (Clarke and Braun, 2017, Nowell et al, 2017).

This article draws upon qualitative data derived from a small-scale study funded by in England the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) over a two-year period from 2021-2023. The research population consists of a group of 8 practitioner-researchers working in three colleges of Further Education (FE) and one Industry Training Center (ITC) in England. All these teachers volunteered to participate in the study. Research methods include, semi-structured interviews, analysis of critical incidents and case studies produced by practitioner-researchers.

Keywords: Forms of knowledge; curriculum design and development; theory-practice relationships; teacher-researcher-artist; multimodal assessment; vocational education.