EX_JD_MT_PUB_CONF_09.03.doc
Becoming Vocational:
insights from two different vocational courses
in a further education college
A report from the project Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education
by Jennie Davies and Michael Tedder
presented at the
British Educational Research Association Conference,
Edinburgh, September 2003
Jennie Davies
School of Education and Lifelong Learning
University of Exeter
Heavitree Road
Exeter EX1 2LU
Tel: 01392 264787
E-mail: Jenifer.M.Davies@exeter.ac.uk
Michael Tedder
St Austell College
Trevarthian Road
St Austell
Cornwall PL26 7YE
Tel: 01726 226736
E-mail: mtedder@st-austell.ac.uk
Becoming Vocational: BERA 2003
Becoming Vocational: insights from two different
vocational courses in a further education college
by Jennie Davies (University of Exeter) and Michael Tedder (St Austell College)
Abstract
The paper is based on work undertaken for the project Transforming Learning
Cultures in Further Education which forms part of the Economic and Social Research
Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme. It draws on ongoing
longitudinal case studies of two learning sites in the project, both Level 3 two-year
vocational courses in the same further education college. It illuminates the nature of
the formation and transformation of young people’s vocational aspirations in these
sites – a BTEC National Diploma in Health Studies, and an Advanced Vocational
Certificate in Education in Travel and Tourism.
Initial impressions of two strongly contrasted sites regarding students’ vocational
aspirations are compared with the more complex picture of similarities that emerges.
Specific attention is given to the nature of the relationship between students’ learning
on these courses and their shifting vocational aspirations. Issues of identity formation
and the role and status of vocational courses for young people are raised, with
implications for FE policy and practice.
Introduction
The Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC)1 project involves
close working partnerships between researchers based in universities and in further
education colleges and includes a teacher from each of the learning sites 2, the
participating tutor. Together they explore the recent learning experiences of tutors
and students, so that the project can ‘examine learning processes, dispositions and
cultures over time and in relation to a wide range of personal experiences and other
factors’ (Bloomer & James, 2003). Our data are drawn from two learning sites at a
further education (FE) college in the south west of England: a BTEC National
Diploma in Health Studies and an Advanced Vocational Certificate (AVCE) in Travel
and Tourism. Our case studies (Davies, 2003; Tedder, 2003)
1
2
For more information on the project visit the website (www.ex.ac.uk/education/tlc).
In TLC the term ‘learning site’ is used rather than ‘course’, to denote more than classroom learning; it
encompasses the entire time and space within which learning takes place.
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focus on data derived from the first cohort of students during the academic years
2001/02 and 2002/03.
We have conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with a sample of students
towards the beginning and at the end of each year of their course. Other data that
inform this study derive from repeated interviews with the participating tutor in each
learning site, entries from their reflective journals, researcher observations and a
questionnaire survey administered to all students in the learning site at the start of
each academic year and at the end of their course.
The paper begins by describing the research context and then focuses on the
shifting vocational aspirations of students in our two sites, with a short student case
study from each. The case studies were not chosen as a conventionally
representative sample, but for the insights they provide into the relationships
between students’ learning, their vocational aspirations and their developing
identities. The ensuing discussion draws out similarities between the two sites which
have implications both for those teaching and managing vocational courses in FE
and for policy makers.
Context
Our findings here have links with other research into young people’s lives, in
particular with research that focuses on the formation of identities and on the
decisions young people make as they move from education into employment. Our
findings show how students’ vocational aspirations are inextricably bound up with
other aspects of their lives, with issues of identity, with becoming a person.
It is acknowledged that young people today are growing up in a world characterised
by rapid change, increased complexities and uncertainties (Beck, 1992; Furlong and
Cartmel, 1997).
This is a world where many of the old certainties have gone, where lives are multidimensional (Dwyer and Wyn, 2001) and where adulthood is often deferred (the
‘post-adolescence’ described by Wyn and Dwyer, 1999). It is a world which includes
an unprecedentedly wide range of possibilities in employment and further and higher
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education, a range which can appear to individuals at its extremes as either
bewildering or incomprehensible. Giddens (1991) claimed that, for the ‘reflexive
project of the self’:
Modernity confronts the individual with a complex diversity of choices and…
at the same time offers little help as to which options should be selected (p
80).
We are interested in the way young people confront such diversity and try to select
options.
The recognition of ‘choice biographies’ (du Bois Reymond, 1998) does not imply a
discounting of long-standing structural constraints like class, gender and ethnicity on
many young people’s choices. As Furlong and Cartmel (1997) have explained:
Young people can struggle to establish adult identities and maintain coherent
biographies, they may develop strategies to overcome various obstacles, but
their
life chances remain highly structured, with social class and gender being
crucial to
an understanding of experiences in a range of life contexts (p109).
Frequently, however, these constraints are unrecognised: ‘The young people see
themselves as individuals in a meritocratic setting, not as classed or gendered
members of an unequal society’ (Ball et al 2000).
As part of the discourse on the transition from school to work, Hodkinson and
Sparkes (1997) put forward the theory of ‘careership’, which discounts both structural
determinism and individual agency alone. This theory provides a more complex
awareness of career decisions than the traditional concept of career trajectory with
its inherent emphasis on the feasibility of technically rational decision-making. As
they explain:
In this theory, three artificially-separated parts are completely inter-related.
They
are pragmatically rational decision-making, choices as interactions within a
field,
and choices within a life course consisting of inter-linked routines and turningpoints. We coined the term ‘careership’ as a shorthand title for the whole
(p32).
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Indeed, young people will always make their career decisions within ‘horizons for
action’: ‘By horizon for action we mean the arena within which actions can be taken
and decisions made’ (Hodkinson and Sparkes, 1997, p34). Such ideas help to make
sense of the unfolding stories of our students during a different time of transition,
from school to a vocational course in college.
The complexities of the relationships between young people’s decisions about their
education and other aspects of their lives have been explored in a number of recent
longitudinal studies (for example, Ball et al, 2000; Bloomer and Hodkinson, 1997,
1999; Dwyer and Wyn, 2001). The concept of ‘learning career’ (Bloomer, 1997;
Bloomer and Hodkinson, 2000) is helpful in understanding some of these
complexities. Bloomer (1997) challenges the assumption that learning careers are
susceptible to prediction and rational planning:
Learning careers describe transformations in habitus, dispositions and
studentship, over time. They cannot be planned in any technical or rational
sense; they happen
or ‘unfold’. Their futures are unpredictable to the extent that there is much that
is unpredictable about the conditions under which unfoldment or
happenstance
takes place (p 153).
This paper focuses on students’ learning careers in two specific vocational courses
and explores the relationship between those learning careers and the students’
vocational aspirations and decision-making. From our interview data we can provide
an account of the ways in which the learning careers of some vocational students
are ‘unfolding’.
The learning sites
Our initial impression of the two learning sites, which are both Level 3 two-year
courses - BTEC National Diploma in Health Studies (HS) and AVCE in Travel and
Tourism (TT) - was one of superficial similarities but an essential difference. Of the
similarities, one was the overwhelmingly female nature of both groups (there was
just one TT male student and none in HS). In addition, all students were aged 16
or17 at the start of their course, apart from one TT student aged 25. They looked
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similar in that they dressed in conventional rather than conspicuous youth fashion,
and sported no visible tattoos or flamboyant piercings. Of the less visible aspects, all
had met the entry requirements of their course (4 subjects at grade C or above for
the AVCE and the BTEC, with the option also of BTEC First Diploma award for the
HS course). The majority in both TT and HS had gained nine or ten GCSE passes
with at least a grade C. Another similarity was the fact that they all had either
already acquired part-time jobs by the start of their course in 2001 or else acquired
them soon afterwards, and for many the number of hours at work increased
considerably during our two years’ relationship with them. This aspect of their lives
was to prove increasingly significant in relation to their studies, as we discuss later.
The main difference seemed to concern vocational aspirations. At the start of the
autumn term 2001, most HS students were aiming for a career in the health service,
the majority wanting to be nurses and aware that this would involve an HE course
after their BTEC. One student had her sights set on HE, but not on a specifically
health-related course. Perhaps as a result of this reasonably strong vocational
bonding, the classroom dynamics of this group initially appeared to be more
cohesive than those in TT. The TT students, in contrast, appeared to be bound
together more by a shared commitment not to go to university than by any firm
vocational aspirations to work in TT. Such aspirations as they expressed appeared
to be vague, sometimes founded on ideas of cabin crew or overseas representatives
gained from the media or holidays abroad, sometimes simply on a general wish to
travel. Sometimes they were avowedly non-existent. Subsequent interview sweeps,
however, revealed a more complex picture of aspiration-setting in both HS and TT,
with more profound similarities rather than differences emerging as significant.
Travel and Tourism
AVCE TT, a ‘Vocational A-level’, has been available at the College since September
2000, replacing the GNVQ Leisure and Tourism Advanced qualification. Course
knowledge consists of 12 discrete units (6 compulsory and 6 chosen by our
participating tutor from a list of options) and is assessed two-thirds by assignments,
and one third by external examinations. TT students can also take optional additional
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subjects, many with clear vocational relevance. There is, however, no work
experience included in the AVCE.
The following table maps the vocational aspirations during the two years of their
course of each of the seven students who were being interviewed in 2002/03, two of
the original sample having left at the end of the first year. It maps both changes and
the consideration of options, as well as some apparently consistent aspirations. But
such a table can present only the bald outline of each student’s developing
vocational aspirations and identities. It is followed by a short case study tracing the
changes expressed by Hayley Abbott which fills in some of the rich detail that lies
beneath and between her shifting aspirations.
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Table 1: Changing vocational aspirations - AVCE Travel & Tourism interviewees
Pseudonym
1st interview
2nd interview
3rd interview
4th interview
Hayley Abbott
Redcoat at Butlins
HE Foundation
Degree:
marketing
(market research
executive)
Year out, possibly
in Greece; maybe
television work
Ground crew at
nearby city airport
Becky Carr
Administrator,
possibly abroad
Long-term goal: house renovation business
HE Degree: public Possibly degree,
Temporary work
relations
but not public
in USA visiting
relations; not TT
father; not TT
career
career
HE Foundation
Degree: tourism
management;
marketing via her
job at local tourist
attraction
Events organiser;
possibly HE
Foundation
Degree - subject
not decided
Children’s rep, but
keeping options
open
Children’s rep;
hotel
management
Year out, then
possibly HE
Foundation
Degree
Cabin crew
Not yet
interviewee
Modern
apprenticeship
(construction);
cabin crew;
overseas rep;
outdoor activities
instructor
Not yet
interviewee
Applying for HE
Foundation
Degree in events
management; not
necessarily
aiming at TT
career
Any local job;
later - overseas
rep or cabin crew
Not yet
interviewee
Not yet
interviewee
Tamsin Ellis
Overseas rep;
hotel work
Lindsay Fletcher
Events organiser,
not necessarily in
TT
Dennis Giddings
Not yet
interviewee but in
2nd interview said
he had had no
goal at this stage
Helen Newman
Carol Nichols
Camp America
next summer;
work in local
tourist office
Travel agency
work; airport
work; HE
Foundation
Degree: tourism
management
Any local job;
possibly with
tourist board in
future
Hotel
management;
work-based NVQ
at local hotel
(where she
works); HE
Foundation
Degree: leisure
and tourism
management
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Hayley Abbott - ‘It depends on what you want out of life really.’
Hayley, a confident and articulate young woman, had left school a year before
starting the AVCE TT, with 9 GCSEs (4 B grades and 5 C grades). After leaving
school, she started AS courses at the College ( Sociology, Psychology, English,
Drama, Politics and General Studies) but left when she developed glandular fever.
She had decided against returning to A-levels because she was adamant she did not
want to go to university and she seemed to have drifted into the AVCE TT before
deciding that it might lead to a possible career for her.
Her choice did not appear to be based on any substantial decision-making process;
it seemed more the product of happenstance. Her interest in tourism was apparently
triggered by working as a waitress in a local hotel, when recovering from glandular
fever:
So, I mean to begin with I was thinking of going back to do the A-levels but
once I found I had an interest, I thought it might be a better avenue to go
down.
(1st interview, Nov 2001)
With a long-standing interest in drama she also confessed, ‘I wanted to be a Redcoat
at Butlins and I still kind of do, and this is of course another avenue into going into it.'
By her second interview in May 2002, there was evidence of a clearer goal, although
not one necessarily focused around travel and tourism. With an interest awakened
by the marketing unit on the course, she was considering a two-year foundation
degree in marketing, in order to become a market research executive, and the earlier
idea of becoming a Redcoat had now vanished.
The vocational insights from her third interview in November 2002 could be
summarised in her own words, repeated several times, ‘I keep just having different
ideas’. She spoke at length about possible future plans, which no longer included a
career in marketing. Other aspects of her life now appeared to be more influential,
like the desire to move away from the locality and to have some time apart from her
long-term boyfriend (‘I need to do stuff before I settle down properly anyway’) and
she appeared to be toying with several new ideas, namely going to work in Greece
or trying to enter the world of television.
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Hayley was now formulating a desire for an interesting job with a reasonable salary
away from her home village. She stressed the value of qualifications for her
generation:
Well there's not really much you can do [without qualifications]. I mean
I've got friends who left school and didn’t go to college and they're like
chambermaiding and waitressing which is fine - you know they wanted
to do that. But I wouldn’t want to be barmaiding in the pub for the rest of
my life or anything, so it depends what you want out of life really.
(3rd interview, Nov 2002)
She valued the AVCE TT, but not for specific vocational reasons; Hayley’s emphasis
was on its generic qualities: ‘It leads, you know, it doesn’t just lead to jobs in travel
and tourism…. I'm getting lots more skills that can be used outside of the scope of
travel and tourism’.
However, by the fourth interview in May 2003, Hayley’s vocational focus had moved
from the general to the particular, and she now sounded firmly focused on a specific
career in the travel industry:
I’m applying for jobs at the moment. I’ve applied at [the local] airport as a
passenger service rep…I’ve also applied for a temporary position at [a
regional] airport as a customer service rep and I’ve also sent my CV to
Britannia, Air 2000
and My Travel…I want to start off on a like a check-in desk and then,
hopefully, move up to like an airport controller… [it’s] probably the first step in
the career.
Her part-time job appeared to have been the most influential factor in these latest
decisions, as it had helped her develop confidence in customer service: ‘I like
working with the general public and … I know how to deal with like awkward
customers and stuff like that, which you do get at airports’. This job had also
contributed towards crystallising her priority, to earn a decent wage soon; she had
spent enough time ‘doing the menial jobs that don’t pay very well and stuff like that’.
So her earlier passing vocational aspirations, including the possible university
course, had all now disappeared, because
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[I am] fed up with being broke, I think. I just want to get a job where I can
earn. There’s no age limit on doing your education, so if I find I’m not getting
anywhere
in work, then [I’ll] think about it [HE] then, when I’ve got some money behind
me
to go and do it. I’ve got so many friends at uni now that are struggling
because
they haven’t got any money and are having to get jobs as night barmaids, or
whatever, to support their uni funds, and it’s just putting them behind in their
work and I don’t want to end up like that, so. It’s a lot of money for something
that you’re not putting your best into.
The most recent twist to her story, from information that emerged a few weeks after
this fourth interview, is that her boyfriend was moving to the city near the regional
airport she had applied to, and her priority was now to join him and find work there.
Domestic aspirations expressed in the first two interviews, when she hoped to be
‘settling down’ and having children by the age of about 23, were, however, not
mentioned again. She was not thinking about the future beyond the next year:
Until I find out what I’m going to be doing, I don’t think I really can think
that far ahead. I want to take some time out and travel in a few years, but
not now. Again, it’s something I don’t want to do without money.
(4th interview, May 2003)
It seems that Hayley’s changing vocational aspirations during her course are part of
other, wider personal changes - in particular, in her relationship with her longstanding boyfriend and in her attitude towards moving away from her home area.
They could be described as ‘exploratory’ rather than fixed in any way, with the
possibility of continuing into HE surfacing and resurfacing throughout the two years
despite her initial rejection of university. When considering both university and other
employment possibilities, her phrasing was markedly tentative: ‘I wouldn’t mind’, ‘I’m
not positive’, ‘I’m just thinking about it’. Her course appears to have been influential
in the development of her own ‘choice biography’ in three ways: by widening her
horizons for action, by encouraging her to think of having a career rather than simply
a job, and by giving her skills not limited to the field of travel and tourism. We cannot,
of course, assume that these influences will automatically endure once she leaves
college.
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From her academic profile and articulate responses in class, Hayley’s tutor expected
her to achieve high grades for her assignments, but this expectation was largely
unfulfilled. How influential was Hayley’s own lack of vocational focus together with
the weak vocational bonding of the group here? How significant were structural
factors, like her increasing lack of time for study because of the demands of her job?
Whether, if she had set herself more focused vocational goals, she would have
aimed for higher grades it is impossible to gauge, as she had made it clear in the first
interview that for her, having a balance in life was essential: ‘I know you shouldn’t put
work first, but you know everyone has other things they need to do’. She had also
stressed the need to relax: 'I don't like to wear myself down too much, I mean I take
evenings off'. Her learning career did not change as significantly as her tutor had
expected and we might conjecture that this was due to a combination of shifting
vocational and personal aspirations.
Her story indicates how throughout her course she was combining decisions
regarding work, personal matters and learning, as du Bois Reymond (1998)
describes. Using the terminology of ‘careership’ referred to previously, we see her
making ‘pragmatically rational decisions’ throughout the two years; we see her
making choices ‘as interactions within a field’; and by the fourth interview, ‘choices
within a life course consisting of inter-linked routines and turning-points’. At the time
of her last interview, it was clear that structural issues and personal needs were
paramount rather than a clear-cut vocational goal.
Health Studies
Within the College the BTEC ND Health Studies course is one of a cluster of three in
the Care area, the other courses being BTEC Social Care and BTEC Early Years.
The course has 18 modules in a ‘core plus options’ model and has a strong science
focus when compared with the other care courses. Students are expected to
undertake 400 hours of work placement, gaining experience in three areas of care:
with children, with the elderly and with people who have special needs.
The interviews have elicited the shifting, malleable nature of student ideas about
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possible careers arising from the interaction of, among other factors, their course
experiences, work placements and part-time work commitments. Table 2 illustrates
briefly the changing aspirations of the six interviewed students over the two years of
their course. Of these six who were recruited for a course perceived by many as a
preparation for nursing, four actually started the course with that specific career
intention and two finished it with that intention. The table is followed by a short case
study of one of the interviewed students, Rachel Norris.
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Table 2: Changing vocational aspirations – BTEC Health Studies interviewees
Carol Gardner
1st interview
2nd interview
3rd interview
4th interview
Degree to study
Criminal Justice
or Psychology
Not interviewed
Forensic science;
Interests in
paramedic –
police – lab
assistant
Foundation
Degree in Human
Bioscience
Possibly mental
health nursing
‘eventually’
Army to do
degree
Judy Goodall
Paramedic
Paramedic
Unsure about
paramedic –
possibly police
Police or
Ambulance
Technician
Rachel Norris
Carer for people
with special needs
HE: nursing
diploma
Paramedic
Paramedic
HE: nursing
diploma
Nurse first then
Midwife
HE locally to train
as nurse
‘Going off nursing’
Interest in
Radiotherapy
‘Permanent
student’
Anti-nursing
Perhaps local HE
Foundation
Degree
Bridget Robson
Sandy Spencer
Nurse first then
Midwife
Possibly nurse for
the elderly
HE locally to train
as nurse then
USA and possibly
midwife training in
Australia
HE locally or
within the region
for nursing.
Not sure about
midwife
Paramedic
interest
‘Dream job’become a
midwife, work in
the private
hospital in London
‘that does the
celebrity babies’
Lynne Turner
Children’s nurse
HE within the
region for
children’s nurse
training
HE within the
region for Diploma
or Degree in
children’s nursing
+ intensive care
HE Advanced Dip
in children’s
nursing. Intensive
care.
Possible
specialisation in
nursing children
with disabilities
Psychiatric nurse
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Rachel Norris - ‘They kind of expect you to know already what you’re doing.’
Rachel achieved 11 GCSE subjects at grade C or above from school. She lives in a
village a few miles from the College with her father and a brother. Her family are
generally supportive of her educational aspirations but it seems that, despite her
relative youth, there were quite strong pressures on her to make a decision about a
career direction:
They’re just really glad I’ve made up my mind what I want to do … My nan was
getting fed up because one day I wanted to be a lawyer, one day I wanted to be
a graphic designer then I wanted to be in the police force then I wanted to be in
the
RAF and she got quite fed up with it. I’ve settled down now. (1st interview, Dec
2001)
In fact, Rachel originally applied to the College for the BTEC ND in Social Care but
there were too few students for that course to run and she settled for Health Studies.
She sees herself as a ‘practical’ person and the appeal of nursing for her was partly
the variety of practical work it entails. While there was no substantial history of health
or care work in her family, Rachel has close relatives who have learning difficulties
and she showed an unusually strong ideological commitment to this field of work, a
disposition which presumably arises from that family experience:
I always think to myself I always want to work with adults with special needs
because, when children like that are young it’s like “oh, poor little children” but
when they’re older they’re like pushed back out of society. I think that’s wrong.
I think a lot more people need to think the way I do - that they are people and
need
to be cared for. (1st interview, Dec 2001)
Coming to college gave Rachel aspirations to go to university. In the early weeks of
the course she found out about the NHS bursary and this allayed some of the
financial anxieties she shares with many youngsters, particularly those in working
class and rural areas, about undertaking higher education. By the second interview,
she had developed plans for work and study abroad.
Rachel was the only one of the six interviewed students who did not have part-time
employment at the start of the course but as a result of a work placement in the
spring term at a residential care home she was offered – and accepted – a job as a
care assistant. At the second interview she said that she worked between six and 24
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hours per week and that, on occasions, worked as many as 30 hours. What she
valued about the placement was ‘doing something really, really helpful’ and working
as part of a team.
Rachel had become a temporary member of a community of practice (Lave and
Wenger, 1991) and showed increasing vocational confidence within that community:
All the senior carers told me I was doing really well and they’re extremely
impressed with me. I like knowing that I can do it right and that I am doing it
properly. (2nd interview, June 2002)
In our discussion of her work Rachel was able to talk about a growing sense of
professional awareness, recognising the trust placed in her by relatives of the
residents. She was able to articulate the dilemma of reconciling her feelings about
the residents with the expectation of professional detachment:
You find it’s a lot different to people who work in other jobs. You’re more
attached
to your work because it’s actual people you’re caring for. They say you don’t
get too close to them, you shouldn’t really, cause it’s a professional relationship
but you do
get attached to some people. (2nd interview, June 2002)
However, at the third interview, towards the end of the first term of the second year,
a significant shift had occurred in Rachel’s plans. It emerged that she had been
working as many as 50 hours per week in the residential care home where she had
started as a ‘part-time’ employee. The home was short staffed, and Rachel was a
willing and effective worker who had become increasingly vital to the functioning of
the home. Eventually, this commitment had taken its toll on her health and on her
participation in the Health Studies course: she had been absent frequently and was
falling behind with coursework. Her willingness to write coursework assignments had
changed markedly. Asked why she had taken on so many hours of work she talked
of the financial benefits, of the social gains and independence made possible from
being able to run a car.
Rachel’s career aspirations had changed significantly also: she no longer wanted to
be a nurse but instead planned to become a paramedic, an idea she said had come
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partly from hearing a talk by a visiting speaker and partly from contact with a friend
who is an ambulance care assistant. It was at the third meeting that Rachel
expressed the view that talks about careers should come in the first year. She said,
‘They kind of expect you to know already what you’re doing, if you know what I
mean, where you’re going and what you want to do’.
(3rd interview, Dec 2002)
By the fourth interview, near the end of the course, Rachel was disengaging from the
residential home and planning to widen her experience in other fields of care. She
spoke of plans to work for an NVQ3 qualification and of applying in time for
paramedic training. She mentioned a recently validated degree course she had
come across for paramedics but no longer had plans to go to university, even though
her closest friends from the course were due to leave in the autumn for universitybased training. Her plans for travel and study had been shelved and she no longer
considered the possibility of nursing:
No, I wouldn’t want to be a nurse, now, not at all! ….I just – I don’t know.
A nursing job seems to be so stressful. They’re short-staffed etc and I wouldn’t
want to do it at all. It’s not very nice. (4th interview, June 2003)
Over the two years we can start to trace the unfolding of Rachel’s learning career
within her horizons for action. What we see is someone who started her course with
a positive disposition to learning and an open attitude to vocational possibilities. She
had enjoyed academic success at school and achieved high qualifications,
suggesting she had a wide scope for possible careers. She showed distinct values
about ‘caring’ derived from her experiences with family members. Rachel was
pragmatically rational in considering her actions but had to reconcile a number of
conflicting influences within the decisions she made. She has a general commitment
to members of the community in need of care and that commitment rendered her
particularly well suited to the care home where she secured part-time employment.
Becoming a significant worker within the field of ‘care’ consequently became a
powerful possible identity.
At the same time, Rachel is a young person with the social interests common for her
age group, so she aspired to financial independence and the perceived freedom of
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action that such independence may offer. This was likely to reinforce the attraction of
employment over study. Encounters with others who could describe the job of a
paramedic – a visiting speaker, a colleague in the care home – presented another
possible vocational identity, one that had the potential to provide financial
independence sooner than nursing and one that was also compatible with a family
preference for Rachel not to leave the area. The cumulative effect is that Rachel
arrived at a turning point half way through the second year of her course, a turning
point that rendered problematic her continued work with the BTEC course.
In the early part of the course, work placements appeared to provide a powerful
formative
experience for several of our interviewed students. Our interviews have recorded
how they make connections between the course and their own lives, interpreting
their experiences at work sometimes by reference to course content and frequently
by reference to relatives. There are risks with work placements, however, and
Rachel illustrates one of them, that a capable student may become absorbed into the
workplace, almost certainly prematurely.
Discussion
Despite some initial apparent differences in students’ vocational aspiration-setting
between TT and HS, as the two courses progressed, more similarities emerged. In
both learning sites, some students began to consider HE as the next step and in
both the majority were now considering employment in their specific field. It would
appear that both learning sites influenced their students, but in at times subtle and,
to the tutors, unexpected ways.
Firstly, there were not necessarily links between prior high academic achievement or
high academic achievement on the course and students’ more focused vocational
goals. On the AVCE, the two students who showed most determination to achieve
high grades were two of those who joined the course without TT vocational goals:
Becky and Helen. Over the two years, their TT goals had not shifted radically, yet
they were the students with the highest grade profile overall. Two HS students who
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had weak academic records – Carol and Judy – were on target to achieve the BTEC
Diploma at the end of the course; Carol had rather undefined vocational aspirations
while Judy had well defined ideas. Moreover, there were concerns that other
students with a more accomplished academic record would not achieve the award.
Within these two sites, therefore, there seemed little correlation between having welldefined vocational goals and eventual achievement of the award.
What seems significant is that the links between students’ learning and their
vocational aspirations form an integral part of students’ on-going identity formation.
It is apparent from all of their stories that the processes of vocational identity
formation and aspiration-setting are bound up in those of wider identity formation.
These students are at a time in their lives when they are becoming more
independent and when they are taking on more adult roles. Their identities are
continually transforming in a variety of subtle ways and they are sometimes
conscious of these changes and sometimes not. A strong theme emerging from our
research is that vocational orientation is one important aspect of identity formation,
but that it is an integral part, inextricably linked with other aspects of young people’s
lives.
Secondly, the interviews reveal some important insights into the dispositions to
learning and knowledge of these young people. Bloomer (1997) characterised
dispositions as stable but capable of changing perceptibly or imperceptibly from time
to time and from one situation to the next:
Changes in dispositions, and hence studentship, were profoundly influenced
by
both in-course and out-of-course experiences. In-course experiences of
learning frequently prompted students to reappraise themselves as learners
(and exceptionally as persons) and to revise the values they ascribed to
particular forms of knowledge
or types of learning activity (p 138).
The BTEC and AVCE learning sites both encompass significant vocationally-related
elements beyond the activities of many conventional college courses: HS requires
students to complete 400 hours of work placement, while TT offers students the
opportunity to achieve various industry-based certificates (BTEC Intermediate
Certificate Preparation for Air Cabin Crew Service, Overseas Resort Representatives
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BTEC Certificate, Air Ticketing, and Association of British Travel Agents’ Certificate).
These elements comprised powerful experiences for students that impacted on their
dispositions and studentship. Such powerful experiences need sensitive handling by
tutors. It is superficially attractive to have ‘work placement’ as an element of any
course that claims to be ‘vocational’ but evidence from the HS course suggests that
careful preparation and support are necessary if such experience is to be effectively
integrated with other elements. Tutors may need to give as much consideration to
the likely emotional and ethical demands as to the cognitive demands of work
placements.
In both learning sites we found that shifting career aspirations were associated with
shifting attitudes towards higher education. Initial shifts tended to favour courses in
local higher education institutions, but as some students became more committed to
continuing their studies they could describe detailed career plans, often involving
travel for study and work abroad. Again, there are important issues to be explored
about appropriate tutor and college support during such changes of vocational
aspiration.
The third significant aspect of the relationship between these learning sites and the
construction of students’ vocational aspirations is the effect of students’ part-time
jobs on their studies. Part-time employment played an increasingly significant role in
all our students’ lives over the two years of their courses. All students found parttime jobs
during the first year of their course, and the majority increased their hours so that by
the second year some were working regularly as many as 30 hours a week. At the
start of the second year, only three of the seven TT interviewees described
themselves as predominantly ‘student’; two described themselves as ‘worker’; and
two more as ‘in-between’, with equal student/worker identities. By the end of the
second year, the majority of these students considered they had this shared identity
rather than a mainly student identity. We could postulate that encouraging a stronger
‘student identity’ might lead to a more positive influence on studying.
The spiral of earning and spending seemed to hold an increasingly seductive appeal
for our students. The interviewed students from both sites were still living with a
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family member, and the majority were in receipt of an educational maintenance
allowance (EMA), but they still wanted or needed to earn their own spending money.
Students aspired to have an income, in order to furnish a lifestyle that included
clubbing, drinking, and the possession of fashionable clothes, a mobile phone and a
car. For many in this rural area, learning to drive and running a car is a particular
priority. The HS tutor commented how car availability resulted in some students
attending only when there were formal course activities. The nature of the course
experience thus changed subtly and, for the students, imperceptibly.
Many students also talked about how much they enjoyed their jobs which they saw
as their ‘social life’, and ‘fun’. Bloomer (1997) noted that, for many young people,
personal growth and development were outside school or college:
a world which afforded new friendships, new social activities, new knowledge
and new questions…. Indeed, the ‘other world’ proved to provide many rich
and challenging experiences from which students truly learned and which
gave shape
to and was shaped by, their emergent personal identities (p 139).
Most students came from families who, in Bourdieu’s terms, hold limited cultural
capital (Bourdieu, 1984) where parents had not continued into further or higher
education themselves. Some, but by no means all, also came from families with
limited economic status. Many showed an awareness of being the first not to
participate in a culture of working rather than studying at sixteen. Thus there
appeared to be various pressures on these young people to earn alongside studying
and they found it increasingly difficult to resist offers of longer hours from their
employers. Needs and wants became intermingled for them, and the rigours of
pursuing Level 3 courses in comparison became less attractive for many as time
went by. The prevalence of these attitudes presents an ongoing challenge to tutors.
What are the most appropriate ways of managing students’ learning, when they
appear unwilling or unable to prioritise their course? Students’ horizons for action
appear to be influenced in ways that to them are barely perceptible but to tutors are
only too plain.
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Conclusion
We need to emphasise that this paper reports work in progress; we have another
year of data collection for the project including a final, fifth interview with our TT and
HS students planned to take place about six months after completing the course. It is
possible, even probable, that individuals’ vocational aspirations will have shifted
again by then. Our student stories do not tell us about direct causal links between
studying a Level 3 vocational course and formulating vocational goals. Instead, they
tell us about the interrelationship between young people’s developing identities and
their vocational aspirations, between their learning careers and their careership. We
would argue that the interrelationship is far more complex than policymakers would
appear to recognise. In 14-19: opportunity and excellence (2002) vocational choice
is presented as a straightforward and unproblematic task:
An effective 14-19 phase will depend on young people receiving effective
advice and guidance so that they can make the best choices and manage
their options well (DfES, 2002, vol 1: p36).
Our students’ awareness of their vocational possibilities changed during their
vocational courses but we saw little evidence of their having ‘longer-term learning
and career aspirations’ (DfES, 2002, vol 2: 27). There was far more evidence of
short- or medium-term thinking about learning and careers and that has significant
consequences and implications for FE colleges.
A further point concerns the way courses like TT and HS are marketed and
presented to students. The picture we gained from interviewing students was of
schools promoting the A-level route, of either non-existent or superficial careers
advice, and of welcoming but opaque vocational options in FE. Students told us that
they expect vocational courses to be ‘practical’ and many had difficulties with the
level and extent of written work required. Neither of our courses equipped students
for specific employment in their fields, unlike another learning site in TLC, the
CACHE3 course which provides vocational training for nursery nurses. To progress
3
Council for Awards in Childcare and Education
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Becoming Vocational: BERA 2003
to a career in either TT or HS would usually require further qualifications (for
example to work as cabin crew or paramedic), and sometimes this would be via a
university course (in, for example, tourism development or nursing). Indeed both TT
and HS include as much ‘job invisibility’ as ‘visibility’ (Foskett, N. and HemsleyBrown, J., 2001, p186), some of which is made visible to them through their tutors
during their course.
Another implication concerns the status of different courses within colleges. Both of
our learning sites lead to A-level equivalent qualifications yet neither course is
included within the College’s Sixth Form Centre which is exclusively for the ‘goldstandard’ single A-level subjects, available at AS and A2. Moreover, both of our
tutors felt that their courses were valued less highly by many colleagues within the
College than ‘academic’ courses. The long-standing divide between vocational and
academic appears to be as entrenched as ever.
Finally, our research findings emphasise that the TT and HS courses may introduce
students to specific vocational paths but equally can help them to develop more
generic skills that might lead them to consider other directions. Yet young people
were not aware of this when deciding which FE course to take on leaving school. ‘An
holistic lifestyle view of careers’ (Foskett, N. and Hemsley-Brown, J., 2001, p187)
accords with our students’ stories; the latter point to the value of keeping options
open rather than an over-emphasis on a narrower vocational view. There are
subsequent further implications for colleges, both in the way courses are conducted in particular with how exploratory and open they can be - and in colleges’
responsibilities to students over the transition from FE to work. It could be that more
open discussion of students’ experiences of ‘vocational’ courses throughout their
learning careers might enable future FE students to make more informed choices. As
with the term ‘academic’, the nuances of the term ‘vocational’ are wide-ranging and
need to be made transparent to would-be learners.
Acknowledgement
Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education is part of the ESRC Teaching
Learning Research Programme, Project No. L 139 25 1025.
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