ESCalate at BERA 2011

There was a great buzz this year at the annual conference of the British Educational Research Association, which met at the Institution of Education, University of London from 6th to 8th September.  Nearly 1000 delegates turned up, including some 300 from overseas.  Highlights included a keynote lecture by Baroness Onora O'Neill on 'intelligent accountability', which discussed the potential distorting effects of accountability systems and the importance of retaining trust and commitment.  The relevance of this was picked up by ESCalate's Director, Andrew Pollard, when he introduced the panel of the Research Excellence Framework to the conference.  There was discussion of how powerful, centrally-managed initiatives must be so careful in going about their business. Some have been concerned about the policies of the Higher Education Academy in this respect - but BERA was also an occasion when ESCalate was able to welcome Kathy Wright, the HEA's new lead on Education.  Kathy was introduced to senior representatives of many education associations, including SRHE, BERA, BESA and FACE, and to colleagues from the four countries of the UK who have worked with ESCalate.  The subject centre also sponsored two poster competitions and Andrew Pollard presented the prize winners prior to the Presidential Lecture by Professor Mary James.  She too argued that there need to be more alliances within our subject community. ESCalate's publications, made available at this event, simply flew off the shelves.  Overall then, BERA 2011 was a considerable showcase for research in the fields of Education and Teacher Education and ESCalate was delighted to have taken part - albeit for the last time.

Earli 2011 @University of Exeter

The European Association of Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) host a biennial conference which, this year, was held at Exeter - EARLI 2011. The conference is one of, if not the largest, I have ever attended - I heard there were over 2000 delegates. Certainly there were between 17 and 23 parallel sessions at any one time during the paper presentations which spread across the entire campus and five refreshment halls. The presentations are organised by Special Interest Groups (SIGs) into themes and I was impressed by the invited symposia for each  SIG which brought together some of the most well-known names in the fields of education and educational psychology. The weather and campus grounds were lovely which was just as well as we were walking what felt like several miles a day between sessions however, regularly getting out into the fresh air just helped stimulate thinking following a presentation.

The conference theme was Education for a Global Networked Society and I followed sessions that largely focused on learning through collaboration and creative use of digital tools. However, you could have followed many other themes that  included assessment, conceptual change, early childhood, motivation, teacher education, religious or moral education, instructional design, social interaction, professional development, neuroscience in education, cultural diversity and metacognition amongst others.

I noticed two reoccurring foci that were novel (well to me). The first being self-regulation which was presented variously as time-on-task, a metacognitive process, a reflective task and in relation to synchronous online learning environments. The second was the role of external representations and my sincere thanks go to Shaaron Ainsworth and Anniken Furberg who in separate presentations gave me much food for thought about the role images and animations play in supporting learning through multimedia resources. Look out for Shaaron's paper in Science last week on 'Drawing to Learn in Science'.

Two other keynotes I particularly noted were Andrew Pollard & Mary James' distillation of the 10 year Teaching and Learning Research Project (TLRP) into ten evidence-informed principles for teaching and learning or pedagogies that ground learning throughout all sectors. And Michael Reiss  who raised questions about the role school science currently plays. He then presented a framework for conceptualising the scope of science education that emphasised the whole life course before, during and beyond formal education and the importance of informal, outside school science learning.

HEA Conference 5-6 July 2011

I have just returned from the Academy's Annual Conference held this year at the East Midlands Conference Centre at Nottingham University. The highlight of the two days was the Question Time Panel session reflecting on the recent White Paper ” Students at the Heart of the System ” and the consequent challenges and changes to the sector over the next five years. It was chaired by Mike Baker – columnist and broadcaster and featured:

Alex Bols – NUS Head of Education and Quality

Ann Caesar – PVC (Education and Student Experience) at Warwick University

Claire Callender  - Professor of Higher Education Policy (Birkbeck) and Studies (IoE)

Stephen Jackson (Director of Reviews, QAA)

Wes Streeting (Chief Executive of the Helena Kennedy Foundation

The following challenges for the sector were quickly identified.

Student identity, student engagement and how students view themselves. Much recent discourse in HE has been about students as co-producers even agents for change. How does this square with the student as consumer view prevalent in the White Paper?

The emphasis on competition between Universities, even though individuals collaborate (the work the HEA funds is a good example of this) institutions compete and this will become more intense.

Data management issues allied to the increased expectations on information provision, concerns over its reliability, purpose and possibilities of misinterpretation. Students will need guidance and support to make good use of it. Also what about alumni, students are investors and changes reflect on their degree currency?

The widening participation agenda appears to have been displaced by a focus on social mobility. Yet this is unlikely to be helped by the abolishment of the EMA and increased fees (especially likely to impact on mature students’ applications). The proposed National Scholarship has been described as a sham. Even the 20,000 extra AAB places are more to be accessed by the aspiring middle classes than those of lower SES. Why are universities deemed solely responsible? Involving other stakeholders in student education seems sensible.

The entry of private providers into the HE market. What about the criteria needed to be met to become a degree awarding institution? Currently requires a track record. Quality assurance concerns arise over the proposed ‘risk’ basis to QA itself. There will be an opportunity for a lower rate of engagement with the QAA for low risk institutions.  Concerns over unpredictable outcome of the changes eg increased competition, involvement of private providers and commitment to deregulation.

The 'fudge' between opening HE to market forces and public control of the sector. Read as if it was a model of naked consumerism based on pre-conceptions and assumptions. It may well have been better to go more fully for Lord Browne’s original proposals.

Other issues raised by the audience and discussed with the panel included:

How do OER and other collaborative initiatives fit within this new model? This led to the reflection that institutions are more likely to form networks and partnerships so that groups of HEI and FECs will be in competition. In addition institutions will be looking to secure recruitment from overseas which raises questions over the coherence of the government’s current  policies with the Borders Agency aiming to reduce numbers of incoming international students by 20,000.

Where is creativity (often cited along with flexibility as a key attribute of employability) in the new system? This led to an animated discussion about detrimental impact on creativity of the proposed differential funding for the sciences and the arts and humanities. It was noted that the eBacc was forcing youngsters into a one-size fits all system, that government rhetoric was focused on production of science  graduates whereas, in fact, the creative industry is one of the biggest in Britain and a world leader.

Lastly it was pointed out that the White Paper was ‘oddly quiet’ about the relationship between research and teaching, teaching quality will be the new order of things however, there is a gap as to how this will be researched and developed. The role of research informed teaching practice is currently important for an institution to be given degree awarding powers.

In a  final round up the panel members were asked on the spot to grade and comment in a word on the White Paper. It was awarded a mean average of 4/10 and described as ‘misguided’, ‘misleading’, ‘muddled’ and ‘leading to uncertainty’.

The new Initial Teacher Training strategy

On 27 June 2011, the government published its proposals for reforming teacher training, building on the previous white paper The Importance of Teaching. This strategy document is intended to provide the basis for discussion with providers, teachers, head teachers, pupils, parents and the general public before the final policy is announced later this year and changes are put in place for courses starting in 2012. A brief summary of some of the key points is provided below.

You can make your voice heard by going to the DfE's consultation page by 29 July.

The TDA are hosting a series of consultation meetings about the strategy for current and potential providers of ITT. These meetings run between 4 and 12 July, and you can sign up on the TDA's website.

Funding

The fees for both PGCE and undergraduate teacher training programmes will be set on the same basis as other undergraduate courses, so up to £6,000 or £9,000 where a Fair Access agreement is in place. From 2012, providers will not receive grants from the government for running ITT courses, but the strategy envisages that funding per trainee from all sources will remain stable between 2011/12 and 2012/13. The Teaching Agency (which will replace some of the functions of the TDA) will provide some direct funding to support ITT programmes in parts of the country where tuition fees may not fully cover progamme costs where this is in the public interest.

Bursaries will be available for students, differentiated by the potential achievement of the trainee and the priority of the subject or phase. Trainees could be classified as having "outstanding", "good" or "satisfactory" potential (mapping to whether they have a first, upper second or lower second class degree) and the level of their bursary would reflect this. There will be no DfE funding for trainees who do not have a second class degree or higher. Consideration is also being given to provide higher bursaries to trainees who are recruited and selected by schools with high levels of free school meals.

Recruitment of trainees

There is a strong emphasis in the strategy on improving the quality of students recruited onto teacher training courses. The strategy document notes that currently more teachers are trained than go into the profession, and aims to reduce this wastage and raise entry criteria by becoming more selective, a move that is also reflected in differential bursary rates. Pre-entry tests in literacy and numeracy will be required for PGCE trainees, though ICT tests will no longer be required.

A single application gateway will be introduced that allows parallel applications to all providers. The allocation of numbers of places will be determined by quality of provision as judged by Ofsted inspections, as it is now, but also by the use of employability data, published by provider and subject.

Undergraduate ITT courses will continue to be allocated places from 2012/13, but recruits must be of “at least the same quality” as those on typical PGCE courses.

Partnerships and providers

The vision over the next five to ten years is of schools increasingly taking much of the responsibility from government for managing the system of initial teacher training. Universities are nevertheless expected to continue to play a role in most teacher training through their partnerships with schools, acting as providers to teaching schools, and the best universities will be encouraged to form University Training Schools. Reflecting this, the strength of partnerships between universities and schools will have a stronger emphasis in inspections, with shared staff between HEIs and schools, and representatives of HEIs on governing bodies to be applauded.

Teach First will be expanded and plans for Teach Next – for professionals with a few years work experience – will be developed. This strategy document sets out an aim to expand the Graduate Teaching Programme but recognises that the higher cost per trainee of this programme makes this difficult without asking for a greater contribution from the school. The requirement that GTP trainees are ‘supernumerary’ to a school’s core staff may therefore be removed and trainees allowed to take on more teaching responsibilities, allowing schools to include funding for trainees in their core staff budgets.

Finally, the content of teacher training programmes will have a greater focus on behaviour management, and for primary teachers, the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics.

2nd TEAN Conference 'The Important Role of HE in Teacher Education'

Professor Jean Murray opened this second annual conference for the Teacher Education Advancement Network on 20 May 2011 with a stimulating keynote that started with a review of teacher education across the UK (from the Escalate booklet) and ended with a call to teacher educators everywhere to speak up about and for their profession. Talking about the Coalition Government's technicist view of teaching as a craft, she made the point that if teacher education remains 'a hidden profession' then we can continue to expect misunderstanding about what we do.

The rest of the day presented a variety of activity with round table discussions and workshops as well as research papers. Many presenters were disseminating results from ESCalate funded projects (my apologies I could not get to them all) and the book of abstracts is available from the conference web page. The variety in the sessions worked particularly well and I came away with many new ideas on the pros and cons of co-teaching with trainees, on different ways of conceptualising research informed pedagogy, on modelling as a teaching strategy and on  the role of HE in teacher education.

All in all, it was a most enjoyable and informative day and I would to thank the TEAN team for organising it. I recommend keeping an eye on their Storehouse for the complete papers which will be available in time.

ESCalate’s Third Annual Student Conference – Enterprise and Employability

Last week saw ESCalate’s third student conference take place at Liverpool Hope University. Staff and students from a range of Education disciplines came together to discuss the very timely themes of enterprise and employability.

Dr Martin Carey, chief executive of Business Gateway & Urban Hope at Liverpool Hope welcomed us to a very appropriate venue – the new EDEN (education and enterprise) building, home to the university’s education faculty but also designed to be used by Liverpool’s wider education community for continuing professional development and to enable businesses to benefit from the knowledge, research and expertise of the university.

Dr Wendy Bignold, Vice Dean of Education at Liverpool Hope University set the scene for the day with her opening plenary session. She encouraged us to view enterprise as something broader than simply a business or industry-focused activity, as activity that is purposeful and creative and involves developing and applying innovative approaches to practical situations. Linking this notion of the ‘enterprising student’ to employability and education, Wendy went on to discuss how employers wanted employees who would not just fit in to their workplaces but who would be able to transform their organisations. Such students need to have a vision of the future – of their future selves and the possible futures of the organisations in which they work – a vision that Wendy saw as at the heart of what enterprise education could offer. She also related this vision to the work of education in supporting and nurturing traditions of a civil society: students who had been transformed themselves in the course of their education are themselves equipped with transformative potential that they can bring to the workplace.

Two parallel sessions in the morning and afternoon offered delegates some choices in the morning and afternoon sessions, and we were particularly pleased that several sessions involved students themselves presenting - offering hands-on practice of employable skills in the process. One of the themes that I spotted running across several sessions was the exploration of employability for students studying Education, a subject that has sometimes been thought of as a vocational course inevitably leading to becoming a teacher. Namrata Rao and Anesa Hosein shared data showing that while most students on an Education Studies module at Liverpool Hope wanted to be teachers, only 13% actually were working as teachers after graduating, and they worked with students to expand their definitions of what it is to be an “education professional”. Students Bryony-Anne Bennett and Jennifer Cahill from Liverpool Hope showed how, through working with Lynne McCann, they had found opportunities to use their knowledge and skills of education in ‘real world’ projects, and were planning on setting up their own business to continue working in the world of education, though not as school teachers.

The importance of reflection and the emotional aspects of learning and working were also themes running through some of the presentations I was able to see. Work-based learning can be very challenging and Fran Myers of the Open University showed how students who vented their frustration and confusion on online message boards often had very different perspectives of their course upon later reflection, while Shirley Potts of Liverpool Hope drew attention to the importance and challenge of honest reflection in coming to a more nuanced understanding of the issues for students on disability studies courses.

Dr Paul Redmond, Head of Careers & Employability at the University of Liverpool provided a memorable and engaging keynote presentation, opening with an unsettling set of figures he termed ‘crunchonomics’, including the fact that there are currently 70 graduates being produced for every ‘graduate job’ available. This particularly harsh economic moment has only served to intensify the ‘war for talent’, he argued, in which employers have at their disposal an increasing range of ‘weapons of mass rejection’. Getting noticed and getting employed is increasingly competitive for current graduates, and Paul pointed out a sharp contrast between the desired goals of Generation Y (born after 1978) and the realities of the labour market. In this market, it’s not just the hard currencies of educational credentials and skills that count, but the soft currencies: the social and cultural capital of who you know, where you went to university, how you dress and your extra-curricular activities that mark you out as ‘employable’ in certain sectors. Creating a convincing narrative that draws together these hard and soft currencies (and – if you’re a man – avoiding shirts with pockets) is the challenge for today’s graduates.

Joe Gazdula, Lynne McCann, Helen Jamieson and Leanne Thompson pulled the day together in a closing plenary panel session, offering a hopeful note in spite of the current economic outlook, looking for what opportunities may be offered by the recession. There were some questions about the importance of volunteering and extra-curricular activities for employability and enterprise, and whether, if volunteering is embedded in the curriculum is it still voluntary (and when does volunteering become exploitation if we look at the current debate about internships). While we might traditionally have thought of education as a subject only for those with a vocation to teach, this conference showed how employability and enterprise are certainly not strangers to these education staff and students.

Presentations from speakers, including the keynotes, will be available from the event page on the ESCalate website in the next week or so.

A big thank you to Liverpool Hope for hosting the event and to all our speakers and delegates for a very interesting and enjoyable day.

Higher Education in FE:FE-HE Collaboration;Drivers of Change

Last week I attended this important HE in FE Conference which asked and attempted to answer key questions about the future of this sector of HE provision in the light of recent changes to the funding landscape and how existing and new partnerships and collaborations between universities and FE Colleges delivering HE might be affected.
Professor Christine King, Vice-Chancellor Emeritus, Staffordshire University set the scene in her upbeat keynote address to conference. Professor King observed that society and the economy is changing - 'fact' and that within this landscape students want and need to learn in different ways leading to a re-defining of HE and a possible move away from the traditional forms of delivery and access points. HE in FE has traditionally offered opportunities to 'non-traditional' students and it is likely that the sector will continue to widen participation and support its HE students by offering local and flexible provision which meet the needs of students and support their changes in life.
John Widdowson, Principal, New College Durham endorsed Professor King's optimism and highlighted the excellent track record of HE in FE provision built on local provision,a clear focus on teaching and student support and progression opportunities to further HE study and employment. The future HE landscape will almost certainly require the construction and roll out of innovative curriculum models which the HE in FE sector have a good track record of developing again with a view to flexible and agile provision.
Dr Ian Tunbridge, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Thames Vally University emphasised that in the new future for HE primacy of the learner must be of the utmost concern in the wake of an era of 'initiatives'- HE in FE has a good record of providing access to students who enjoy small group tuition and committed teachers on programmes that meet need and develop skills for employment - 'good value learning, good quality with employment prospects'.
Steve Kendall, Associate Dean of Partnerships, University of Bedfordshire considered that HE in FE should aim wider as well as higher and offer opportunities to the newly unemployed, the disengaged and provide skills for those in work - 'a new workforce for a re-generated economy'. The sector should take every advantage in exploiting new communication channels and flexible ways of learning which fit into working lives.
The conference served as a timely reminder that the HE in FE sector has an important role to play in the new, emerging HE landscape and must continue to maintain sustainable and committed collaborations between FE colleges and HEIs.