ORCID Profile
0000-0001-9673-4428
Current Organisation
University of Derby
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Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2010
DOI: 10.2304/POWER.2010.2.3.253
Abstract: The policy discourse around those young people who are the focus of the 14–19 agenda in the United Kingdom is one of negativity which frames them as low achievers with low aspirations. In tension with this deficit model, policy offers these young people ‘opportunities' in the form of a vocational education which, according to the rhetoric, will lead to high-skill, high-paid work and a lifetime of opportunities. Drawing on original empirical research, this article contests the assumption that these young people have low aspirations, arguing that constrained by discourses of negativity and lacking the agency for change, their chances of achieving their aspirations are almost non-existent. Further, it suggests that the rhetoric of ‘opportunity’ is merely smoke and mirrors, a massive deception whereby young people are channelled into the low-pay, low-skill work market in readiness to fulfil economic demands for cheap labour as and when it is needed. It concludes with proposals for change in the 14–19 and post-compulsory education and training systems which could provide a more equitable and effective framework for young people to achieve their hopes and dreams.
Publisher: Institute of Education Press
Date: 2013
DOI: 10.18546/RET.31.1.06
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-07-2017
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-01-2015
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-04-2017
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 25-01-2022
Publisher: Unpublished
Date: 2013
Publisher: Uni Bremen Campus GmbH
Date: 11-08-2020
Abstract: Context: An enhanced role for work-based learning is advocated increasingly widely across industrialised countries and by international Vocational Education and Training (VET) policies. However, this is framed differently in each country by long-term policy orientations that reflect VET’s relationship with wider economic and social formations. These national differences reflect path dependency but also distinctive responses to contemporary challenges such as globalisation. In England, recent reforms strengthening workplace learning are constrained by existing patterns of skill formation and may be shaped by further market liberalisation and ergence from social and economic policies in Europe. Approach: The study examined the relationship between greater emphasis on workplace learning in England and societal change, addressing the research question: how are early experiences of work in England, as part of young people’s full-time education programmes, positioning them for future employment? Case studies were organised around apparently distinctive placement types that had emerged from earlier studies. Using the constant comparative method, the team identified a series of categories to distinguish the way each type of work-based learning positioned students in a particular type of labour market transition.Findings: Evidence emerged of ergence in England’s "further education" system, across mainly male "technical" routes, young people on vocational courses preparing them for routine, low-skilled, precarious employment, and an area of greater uncertainty preparing young people for digital routes linked to the "new economy". Key dimensions of difference included study locations, discourses of occupational status, types of valued learning content, approaches to socialisation, sources of expertise and processes of credentialisation. In each case, learning at work served to position students for a particular type of labour market transition, which we characterise as technical elite formation, welfare VET and new economy precarity.Conclusion: Approaches to workplace learning in England already reflect social distinctions but entail the possibility of reinforcing these, supporting a more hierarchical pattern of labour market transition. Whilst the upper strata of VET shift their purpose to support the formation of new "technical elites", others face the possibility of further marginalisation. Such new inequalities could become central to a further fragmented society in a post-Brexit, post-COVID-19 Britain. Other European states facing challenges of globalisation and the transition to services are also likely to experience pressures for VET stratification, although they may seek less isive solutions.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 30-12-2020
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 14-03-2016
Abstract: – The purpose of this paper is to draw on concepts of “female masculinity” to interrogate how hegemonic gendering discourses, forms and performances are inscribed in neoliberal narratives of competency in higher education in the Western Hemisphere. – Drawing on in idual ex les, the authors consider how these narratives are omnipresent in the sector, and systematically act to exclude those who do not conform. In doing so, the authors draw extensively on bodies of literature exploring gender/identity, and neo-liberalism. In particular, the paper draws on the work of Halberstam (1998, 2011), and of Drake (2015). – There are comparatively few women in senior positions in Higher Education and the authors argue that as gendering institutions they reproduce hegemonic gendering discourses. The authors find that hegemonic gendering discourses are instrumental in maintaining and privileging specific forms and perceptions of masculinity and femininity as inscribed within and reproduced by perceptions of professional competency. – This paper examines neo-liberal practices from a more nuanced perspective than some traditional polarised critiques which regard gender as a binary. In doing so, it contributes to debates on masculinity, but more importantly, opens discussions about the implications of gendering discourses for the role of the few women in senior positions in higher education institutions globally.
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 13-05-2022
Abstract: This paper aims to report on a project re-imagining of a Level 1 English-model broad vocational curriculum for low-attaining youth. The project, funded by Rothschild, has sought to develop a knowledge rich and engaging curriculum, which is more consistent with notions of social justice than contemporary low-level vocational curricula. The project utilised a participatory, action-research model of curriculum development informed by a theoretical framework drawing on concepts of social justice. The findings suggest that a broad, project-based curriculum, supported with a wide range of extra-curricular activities (enrichment) is effective in supporting secure and sustainable transitions into further education and/or meaningful employment for low attaining young people. This paper extends understandings about curricula approaches in low-level vocational education. There is a paucity of research into the curriculum at the lowest mainstream levels. Students engaging with education at that level are similarly under-researched. This paper seeks to fill that gap.
Publisher: Zenodo
Date: 2019
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Ltd
Date: 2013
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 15-02-2016
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2013
DOI: 10.2304/POWER.2013.5.1.28
Abstract: This article explores notions of ‘employability’ in the context of the experiences of those young people who leave the English education system at 16+ with few or no academic credentials. The article contests the conflation of ‘employability skills' with ‘inclusion’ in policy discourse, arguing that the real impact of such programmes is to inculcate attitudes and behaviours consistent with low-pay, low-skill work in already marginalised young people. It draws on empirical evidence from two studies which suggest that what young people really want are real, practical skills which are directly transferable to the world of work and which would fulfil the promise of high-pay, high-skill work in a knowledge economy. The article concludes that in a world where many young people are increasingly marginalised in terms of both education and employment, only an education which provides the skills the young people aspire to and which has real exchange value in the labour marketplace can confer any real advantage to them. Current approaches to employability skills education, far from achieving this, are little more than an exercise in social control resulting in new forms of class and labour (re)production, as already marginalised young people are socialised into particular forms of casual and low-pay, low-skill employment.
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2023
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Date: 07-08-2020
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-0007
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-2016
Publisher: The Open University
Date: 28-02-2018
DOI: 10.5456/WPLL.20.2.28
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 07-2008
Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
Date: 2012
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-2005
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2016
Publisher: Unpublished
Date: 2014
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 2009
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Start Date: 2014
End Date: 2016
Funder: Australian Research Council
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