Project Aims

The project aims to improve our understanding of the learning processes in further education by means of a study of every-day learning settings. Specifically, the aims of the projects are to:

• Improve our knowledge of learning and working in FE in Wales and how these relate to each other;

• Determine the ways and extent to which learner and professional identities are shaped by the setting in which they take place such as classrooms and the wider economic, social and cultural environment;

• Engage with colleges and other users in the production of evidence-based research in order to improve the capacity of individual teachers and colleges to respond to learner needs;

• Present evidence-based research and engage users (teachers, college managers and policy makers) in an informed dialogue.

Significance

Relatively little is known about learning and working in post-16 FE, and existing research offers limited insights into FE classrooms. While attempting to fill this gap, a distinctive feature of this project is on the ways in which learning outcomes of all kinds are a product of the social interactions of students and teachers.

A mixed method approach with an emphasis on classroom ethnography will produce a contemporary account of the sorts of social engagement that provide a context for learning to take place. Thus, learning is situated in the social processes through which it is achieved and the real social conditions in which these processes occur.

We are particularly interested in how students understand themselves as learners and how this not only reflects their previous learning experiences but also the profound influences of their families, peers and the wider communities in which they live.

A distinctive feature of the analytical approach is that teachers are also conceptualized as learners who continuously construct and reconstruct their own professional knowledge and practice. Like students, they also bring prior dispositions to the learning interaction which are reflected in, for example, their choice of pedagogy and their expectations of students. Understanding the determinants of teachers' dispositions and how these influence the learning interaction is a necessary condition for changing them.

The learning settings in which the interactions between students and teachers takes place are situated within the wider institutional contexts of their colleges, regulatory frameworks and changing policy contexts. It is important to consider, therefore, the nature of these contexts and how, if at all, they impact on learning and teaching. To this end, comparison with the results of the Transforming Learning Cultures in FE project in England will help to illuminate effects of an emerging and distinctive policy regime in Wales .

Our mapping and understanding of learning outcomes derives from the complex interplay of the social interaction between students and teachers, their dispositions to learning and teaching and the wider contexts in which this takes place.