Abstract

The practitioner research presented in this thesis provides a specific case study of the implementation, delivery, and evaluation of Study Programmes at a Further Education (FE) college. This unique case study, carried out in a college that has been through a turbulent time with repeated Ofsted inspections, increasing financial restraint, and numerous restructures, provides an insight into models of educational change as well as models of curriculum design and development in Further Adult and Vocational Education (FAVE) contexts in England (Sarason 1971, Stenhouse 1975. Benjamin in Golby 1975). It addresses the impact of the implementation of Study Programmes through funding changes where the expectation is that students are working towards a GCSE grade 4 in both Maths and English alongside a core or vocational subject.
A striking impact of the introduction of Study Programmes is that two-thirds of students engaged in them are experiencing exam stress when repeating GCSE Maths/English exams, while improved achievement is only 12%, leading in some cases to embedding Maths and English being labelled by some tutors as “Curriculum Dumping”. Study Programmes are clearly well-intentioned but are introduced from the top-down and are evaluated through public performance tables. This thesis argues that this policy phenomenon is a classic example of a Technical-Rational approach to educational reform continually locking well intentioned educational policy into cycles of predicable failure in practice. This thesis considers the shortcomings of such Technical-Rational approaches to curriculum design, implementation, and evaluation. It considers to what extent Dewey’s (1933) Pragmatic Epistemology, as built upon and developed by Fielding et al (2005) in the form of Joint Practice Development (JPD), may be more helpful in supporting the development and improvement of educational practice. It explores how Study Programmes might be made better in practice so that students’ access to higher level qualifications is not curtailed and neither is their opportunity to develop in a craft. This realises Wolf’s ambition where ‘No young person should be in an education or training programme which denies them the chance to progress’ (Wolf 2011: 20).
Drawing upon the notion of the ‘Saber-tooth Curriculum’ (Benjamin 1939), as a storied metaphor that the curriculum needs to be adaptable through time, this thesis uses the story of Newfist to discover to what extent curriculum design must engage in the social context it is created or risk quickly becoming redundant. Data collection is conducted, not from a positivist, but from a constructivist-interpretive position, with a mixed methods approach. By examining narrative accounts of experiences from staff, students, and managers, this thesis offers insights into the ‘lived experiences’ of curriculum planning, teaching and learning in relation the Study Programme courses on offer at my FE college. Findings from analysis of the data indicate that JPD offers opportunities for tutors and education leaders to make well-intentioned policy ideas ‘good’ in practice in more collaborative and co-operative ways. Accounts of the experiences of the challenges, dilemmas and possibilities encountered by FE tutors and education leaders as they work together to put well-intended policy into practice in educationally sound ways in context are also reported and discussed. This is a very personal exploration for me as a tutor and manager as I want to continue to make effective education changes in my Study Programmes that benefit my students. This challenges discourses in education ‘where the ‘wiseman’ saw no need to discuss the curriculum as it should always be done that way’ (Benjamin 1939:). The thesis closes by recommending ways tutors and tutor-leaders might harness the principles of JPD to help to address misconceptions of knowledge and support coherent and multifaceted curriculum models, pedagogies, practices that are capable of supporting educational change and improvement in more sustainable ways.