Data analysis: making the ordinary extraordinary

The analysis builds on my previous work regarding quality in teaching language and literacy in which I argued that teachers experienced tensions between quality-as-abstract textualisation and quality-as-an-embodiment. This was connected to how practitioners are required to textualise their experiences in contrast to the embodied actuality of their experiences.  In this analysis I explore further the notion of ‘embodiment’: the ways in which practitioners assemble the disparate narratives that define their pedagogy.

While paper sets up a polarity it doesn’t rest on one. There are clearly overlaps and affordances between socio-cultural and cognitive theories of ALLN.  Bracewell and Witte (2008) point out that writing is social and material as well as cultural. Literacy as embodied how incoherencies are woven into a narrative: teacher / writer / professional / student -

Data analysis explores moments when participants touch upon these different ideas. The whole discussion is about writing – offers support in the writing of the assignment, participant is a writer (aspires to get scripts published), and the assignment itself is about teaching writing.  My focus is on literacy as the subject they teach but explores their ideas about literacy from multiple perspectives including how they experience their own engagements with text.

Analysis

University Diploma is part of general policy driven initiative to improve quality of literacy teaching predicated on basis that way to do that is define a body of knowledge to be taught and then training teachers in how to deliver it. Define what they need to know and qualification to assure their competence. There is a strong possibility that teachers may come to the course with little general interest in broader ideas about language literacy or pedagogy – but with a narrow instrumental interest in ‘tips & techniques’ that improve their teaching.

Dis/connections between context, motivation & engagement 

Joseph: teaching but not a teacher.

Has been teaching for 10 years, but talks in terms of being at a crossroads in life and asking himself ‘what do I actually want to do?’ Makes references to his age, to time running out and ‘his clock ticking’ – hinting at something of a desperation to achieve goals that are not fulfilled by teaching literacy. The qualification has an exchange value – he teaches in prison and sees the qualification as a way out of this context. The quiet desperation is evident throughout as he clearly feels this environment constrains his pedagogy. He talks about feeling burnt out, and is of the opinion that 10 years in this context is too much. Whatever the bonhomie between himself and students, there is always a threatening undercurrent.   Other teachers in prison have insisted on ensuring they see students as students and that whatever else defines the context is not their concern. But the context is physically inescapable, from the process required to observe a class, to moving around, to managing a classroom situation.

Pearl: trying to live by ideas about good interaction, feedback and talk

Had worked for years in a school – admin – upon retirement teacher and wanted to change career and teach adult literacy.  She is doing the course out of interest and works in an open access workshop in her local AEI.  She teaches on a 1-to-1 basis. Over a period of time she has worked with a single student who she has a good knowledge of. The knowledge has not been gathered as a direct result of a broadened assessment – but has been gleaned indirectly through general talk about other aspects of the students work. Not treated as being central to how literacy is taught. Throughout the tutorial she makes regular references to the reading and mentions specific theories and ideas about literacy.

She attempts throughout the directly relate these ideas to what she does. The attempts are open to discussion: what she means by context, collaboration and success are clearly ideas in the shaping. The qualification required by her student lurks and defines her pedagogy but not in a way that she experiences as constraining. This tutorial represents a shift in which we have agreed that it is possible her student may ultimately be more able to pass the test or at least improve her literacy if there is less insistent and exclusive focus on trying out multiple papers all the time.

Once conceptions of literacy are embodied they become part of a complex nexus of other considerations that cannot be teased out as a singular variable.  What and how we teach is not solely determined by technical considerations of what curricular documents say, what and how we construct our subject or what the environment determines but a shifting combination of these.

Teaching, testing and targeting:

i)                     ‘It’s not an excuse, it’s a business.’

A point sometimes made about teachers who have been practicing since the inception of SfL is that – as they have not experienced any other framework, they may not always have access to frames of reference that would enable critique. This may resonate but as the opening quote suggests this is not the case with Joseph. More concerning is that at times he embodies what might be more fairly understood as an environmental limitation.

It’s very target driven, when you are in a target driven environment professional judgement goes out the window, it suffers, because, that’s the main critique of my teaching, it’s not an excuse, it’s a business. They want more for less. It’s stressful; they are asking you for what you can’t deliver. It’s terribly stressful. I’ve had 10 years of it and I’m burnt out from it.  10 years.  It’s too long for this environment.  It’s too long. You should probably have a shelf life of 5 years.

Joseph, Prison Literacy Teacher

ii)                   She doesn’t have literacy in her life at all

Pearl grapples with ideas about literacy and is aware of the importance for her students to experience resonance between in-college and out-of-college literacies.  But here she seems to suggest that what she does in college with her as a teacher – even when she ‘provides’ her with a context drawn from real life, is ‘literacy’ but the ‘unschooled’ tasks she performs at home is not.

Respondent:   [...] She didn't do any literacy work at all.  She didn’t have literacy in her life at all.  As far as things like letter writing or reading she didn't do any.  [...] 

Interviewer:  What about things like managing her house or managing her family, or paying bills, or does she work at all?

Respondent:  Oh she works, she’s a cook and a cleaner.  [...] I know that she functions in her job and in her daily life with these things perfectly well. 

Interviewer:    So with the literacy aspects of those things?

Respondent:  Yes, she does.  She has to write orders at work, she has to leave notes for people, she has to account for things that she’s done at work and as I say, make orders. 

BRACEWELL, R.J & WITTE, S.P 2008. Implications of Practice, Activity and Semiotic Theory for Cognitive Constructs of Writing Chapter 15 in ALBRIGHT, J. & LUKE, A. Pierre Bourdieu and literacy education, Routledge, Taylor & Francis: London.

GRENFELL, M., BLOOME, D., HARDY, C., PAHL, K., ROWSELL, J. & STREET, B. V. 2011. Language, Ethnography, and Education: Bridging New Literacy Studies and Bourdieu, Oxon, Routhledge.

This is what it is not

I like the idea of a negative explanation that perhaps define something by what it is not

I am now mid-way through a small scale unfunded research project about how professional teachers registered on a University Diploma course conceptualise teaching.

I am conscious of entering what was a crowded terrain but as the sector (post-16) enters a cries of austerity – I am perhaps asking an apt question at a very distinct moment One where fear of not having any work means that participants are even less likely to challenge orthodoxy, or required policy constraints. Where they are unable to engage with training despite recognising it as vital to their long-term employment possibilities.

This is the backdrop and as part of the situation (Clarke, 2005) it has its own impact on what I seek to explore.

This research explores language and literacy teachers’ conceptualisation of the subject they teach.

It is not:

# an analysis of pedagogical content knowledge to assess professional competence in the required subject matter

# an attempt to see if they have the right or the wrong ideas about language and literacy

# a project that aims at improving my practice in any but an incidental, indirect way

# about professional competence or capability

# about whether language and literacy are best viewed as skills or social practices – though a view on this informs the study

# a project that connects conceptualisation of subject to approach to teaching, though it recognises that such a connection exists and matters

It is:

An exploration into the different ways teachers talk and write about language and literacy which analyses how they negotiate the contradictions between literacy as policy text and literacy as lived experience

CLARKE, A. 2005. Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn, Sage Publications, Inc.

skills, practices and sustainable growth

cont/d

Skills, practices and sustainable growth

In BIS’ strategy paper, ‘Skills for Sustainable Growth’, ALLN policy is entwined within a broader framework of vocational skills. In planning for a world-class skills base, ‘Skills for Sustainable Growth’ views the existence of adults with low-levels of literacy as evidence of school failure requiring an OfSTED led policy solution to innovate more effective teaching. The conceptualisation of language and literacy to be deployed by the new policy framework looks set to be an extension and elaboration of what has so far been developed within Skills for Life even if the discourse of ‘basic skills’ has been remobilised.

In Skills for Life ALLN are treated as clearly definable, abstract skills that adults need to lead functional lives. The core-curricular documents and the standards that underpin them detail precisely what adults are required to be able to do and while learners may bring the ‘context of their lives’ to vivify the skills, the document specifies community, employment and family as the imagined arena for skills for be deployed. When constructed by policy makers, ALLN is imagined as existing along a hierarchical ladder from Entry Level 1 to Level 2. Adults progress neatly through the designated stages with their skills emerging, consolidating or progressing with logical linearity. The narrative that drives policy constructions of ALLN asserts that functionally literate or numerate adults can then use their skills in any situation required as these basic skills are easily transferable from one context to another. This view of language and literacy has a reassuring back to basics common sense appeal. If ALLN is ‘autonomous’ the relationships between race, class and schooled educational inequality can be erased as non-existent.

This view of literacy stands in diametric opposition to a view of literacy as an ideological construct (Street, 1984, Street, 2003, Crowther et al., 2001, Hamilton, 2002, Appleby et al., 2006, Barton, 2007) a view that has taken considerable hold in the form of a paradigm shift that rejects psychological or cognitive approaches to literacy in favour of one that is informed by socio-cultural practices. Within this frame literacy is a relational concept, defined by who, what, when, where and why that surroundings people and their textual interactions. This is an approach that argues, there is no one way of being literate but several culturally and historically contingent literacies.  This view of literacy represents a sustained critique of Skills for Life with its distilled insistence on literacy as skills. The pedagogic implications of this limitation have been explored by various commentators (Dennis, 2010, Ivanic 2009)and while a more holistic view of ALLN pedagogy has been deployed in Ireland, Wales and Scotland – the approach adopted in England is one that persists in erasing the socio-cultural dimensions of ALLN.  In England, there is what Green and Howard (2007)refer to as a research, policy and practice impasse.

I situate my discussion from within this impasse. In as much over the 12 month period of an academic year I have explored with trainees registered on a University Diploma in Teaching Adult Language and Literacy the ways in which they conceptualised their pedagogic subject. That is, how they negotiate the reconciliations between literacy as skills and literacy as social practices.

Un/reconcilable literacies

The research, policy and practice impasse identified by Green and Howard (2007) has been the focus of considerable theorisation over the last 30 years (Haworth, 2006, Heath, 1983, Gee, 2008, Crowther et al., 2001, Kell, 2001, Barton and Hamilton, 1998, Wilson, 2000, Ivanic 2009) during which time policy prescribed notions of literacy have become increasingly more rigid. While in the context of the UK,  Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland have each developed distinct approaches to framing literacy policy, England’s insistence on an exclusively skills based approach designed primarily to improve rankings on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)  leagues tables is one shared by several industrialised economies (Hamilton and Barton, 2000).

Kell (2003) compares policy text literacy – such as contained in National Adult Core-Curricular documents  - to the modular climbing frame found in a children’s playground.  She suggests this autonomous, uni-dimensional structure persists within a discursive domain somewhat removed from the everyday literacies distributed through networks of unschooled people.  She further suggests that a phenomenon, ‘literacy as sign’ (or simulacrum) interposes between the two domains, prohibiting other forms of literacy from emerging.  

She makes use in this theorisation of Wilson’s work on prison literacies (Wilson, 2000). Wilson, echoing Bhabha’s (1994) notion of culture, locates a ‘third-space’ literacy. Between vertical policy text literacy and horizontal distributed network literacy this ‘third-space’ literacy is imbued with the potential for criticality, meta learning and reflectivity.

Kell (2003) and Wilson’s (2000) polarised literacy dis/connections can be re-explored to emphasise greater degrees of complexity (Rassool, 2009) but it is a useful construct here to illustrate the tensions I seek to explore. Professional teachers registered on a University Diploma course are required to deliver a curriculum based on policy text literacy, while they learn about and experience literacy in ways that undermine this construct. This study is an attempt to explore they ways in which they negotiate this contradiction.  Read (n.d) frames this as a dilemma for teacher educators that involves challenging assumptions, values and beliefs.  He suggests that professionals register on development courses wanting a toolkit of teaching tips and strategies that they can use immediately and may find it problematic to be confronted with esoteric theoretical discussions about the nature of language and literacy that may seem somewhat removed from their role as a professional: an implementer of government policy.

The tension touches upon professional aspirations, motivations and purposes but my primary focus is how trainees negotiate the different discourse to conceptualise language and literacy - the subject they teach. I veer away in this discussion from an examination of their preparedness to teach language or literacy ‘content’ (Van Driel and Berry, 2010). Instead my attention centres on what teachers talk about, when they talk about literacy and this shapes their teaching. More specifically for the professionals registered on this course – what are the contours along which they experience the contradictions and tensions between skills and social practices?

Entering a terrain in which I am already present and deeply implicated: research participants and site

All research participants were professionals registered on a University Diploma in Adult Language / Literacy over a one year period. This is a level 5 qualification for qualified teachers wishing to develop a specialism in language and literacy. Typically participants are already teaching the subject. Aspirations for registering on the programme vary and may include a desire to achieve career progression or career change. In the turbulent world of colleges amidst an crisis of austerity, teaching language or literacy was seen by some as a fall back position as existing sources of employment are becoming more scarce. Participants teach in varied contexts including a local further education college, prison, grant funded voluntary organisation and an adult education institute, and had completed their initial teacher education from two to 10 years ago.

All participants registered on the course are included in the data. Broadly, at the start of the course during induction, trainees were briefly introduced to the project as ‘research being undertaken by the course leader’ and asked for permission for their data to be used.  There was not detailed research schedule in place and the sort of data analysed has unfolded in the course of implementation.  At the end of the course a more detailed specification was provided for trainees who were then asked to state explicitly for permission to include their data in the project. Participants have been provided with a copy of the paper and invited to comment.

Data sources and collection

Sources of data collected included the personal profiles participants offered at the start of the programme, their language history, transcribed recordings of tutorials, an assignment that focussed on their teaching and learning and training sessions. At key points during the course participants complete a module evaluation, and a question – ‘What do you feel it means to be a literate adult’ was attached to this and included in data to be analysed. On some occasions teaching sessions were recorded and included in data is an analysis of teaching, the feedback and exchange between teacher and participant. Written into the approach was the desire to fit in with the ebb and flow of the programme and avoid trainees having any sense of participating in a research project – or at least to avid this placing any requirement on the over and above what the course requires. Data sources evolved to include assignments as in depth explorations and expressions of trainees’ views, but also to check and balance these with recordings of tutorials. The intention is to compare how participants think and  talk about language and literacy in different spaces and connect these to the demands being placed upon them – to articulate and develop ideas of to meet the criteria for an assignment.

Researcher positioning

Data analysis is ongoing rather than complete and draws on grounded theory and situational analysis (Clarke, 2005). The advantage of situational analysis – ‘grounded theory pushed round the postmodern turn’ is that it acknowledges the presence of the researcher as part of the analytical unit.

Published as part of Learning and Skills Improvement Service support programme for teacher educators, Read’s paper on ‘Challenging Assumptions’ makes reference to the ways in which participants may resist the idea of language and literacy as anything other than the skills they are required to deliver. The struggle is framed as part of the learning process that requires trainees to go through a ‘trough of diminished competence’ as they are compelled to revise previously held in place and secure assumptions. He rightly points out that into this mix is the style of the training offered to trainees (Read, n.d). That a monotonous teaching style is likely to generate a situational resistance that is unrelated to the nature of what is being taught.

A situational analysis allows my as researcher to consider this possibility without reflexivity being overly central to the point and purpose of the study.  The nature of the field excludes the proviso ‘all other things being equal’. In tutorials and transcribed exchanges my own contributions are transcribed and coded alongside that of research participants to as far as possible acknowledge the dialogic nature of the data. In this study then, I am positioned as researcher, not as researcher into my own practice: the question stands outside of my practice, though my practice is the source of data. As researcher I am also participant and my transcribed contributions are part of the data to be analysed.

Research findings

APPLEBY, Y., BARTON, D., HODGE, R., IVANIC, R. & TUSTING, K. 2006. Linking learning and everyday life - Repo. London: National Research and Development Centre

BARTON, D. 2000. Moral panics about literacy. Lancaster University, CLS Working Paper Series.

BARTON, D. 2007. Literacy : an introduction to the ecology of written language, Malden, Mass. ; Oxford, Blackwell.

BARTON, D. & HAMILTON, M. 1998. Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community, London, Routledge.

BATHMAKER, A. M. 2007. The impact of Skills for Life on adult basic skills in England: how should we interpret trends in participation and achievement? International Journal of Lifelong Education, 26, 295-313.

BHABHA, H. K. 1994. The location of culture, London, Routhledge.

BIS 2010. Skills for Sustainable Growth: Strategy Document. London: Department of Business Innovation and Skills.

BROOKS, G. 1998. Trends in standards of literacy in the UnitedKingdom, 1948-1996, National Commission on Education.

BROOKS, G., FOXMAN, D. & GORMAN, T. 1995. Standards in Literacy and Numeracy, 1948-1994, National Commission on Education.

CLARKE, A. 2005. Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn, Sage Publications, Inc.

CROWTHER, J., HAMILTON, M. & TETT, L. 2001. Powerful Literacies, Leicester, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education.

DENNIS, C. A. 2010. Is the Professionalisation of Adult Basic Skills Practice Possible, Desirable or Inevitable? Literacy and Numeracy Studies, 18, 26.

DFEE 1999. Improving literacy and numeracy : a fresh start : the report of the working group chaired by Sir Claus Moser London: Department for Education and Employment.

GEE, J. P. 2008. Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses, Taylor & Francis.

GOODWIN, M. 2011. English Education Policy after New Labour: Big Society or Back to Basics? The Political Quarterly, 82, 407-424.

GREEN, A. & HOWARD, U. 2007. Insights: Skills and social practices: making common cause an NRDC policy London, National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy.

H.M.TREASURY 2010. Spending review 2010. In: TREASURY (ed.). London: H.M.Stationary Office.

HAMILTON, M. 2002. Sustainable literacies and the ecology of lifelong learning. Supporting Lifelong Learning: Perspectives on learning, 1, 176.

HAMILTON, M. & BARTON, D. 2000. The International Adult Literacy Survey: what does it really measure? International Review of Education/Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft/Revue internationale l'éducation, 46, 377-389.

HAMILTON, M. & HILLIER, Y. 2006. The changing face of adult literacy, language and numeracy 1970-2000 : a critical history. . Trentham Books, Stoke-on-Trent.

HAWORTH, A. 2006. The Literacy Maze: Walking Through or Stepping Round? Language and education, 20, 15.

HEATH, S. B. 1983. Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms, Cambridge Univ Pr.

IVANIC , R. 2009. Improving learning in college: rethinking literacies across the curriculum, Taylor & Francis.

KELL, C. 2001. Ciphers and Currencies: Literacy Dilemmas and Shifting Knowledges. Language and education, 15, 197-211.

KELL, C. 2003. Accounting for not Counting: Ethnography and literacy in South Africa. What counts as evidence for what purposes in research in adult literacy, numeracy and ESOL? Institutte if Education, University of London: National Research Development Centre for Adult Language, Literacy and Numeracy.

Author. 2010. Adult skills loses £1bn in spending review. Times Educational Supplement, 22 October.

MOSER, C. 1999. Chapter 5: a national strategy and national targets A fresh start: Improving literacy and numeracy. London: Department for Education and Employment.

NASH, I. & TUCKETT, A. 2011. A NEET and worrying way to treat adults with basic skills needs. Basic Skills Bulletin, 5-5.

PAYNE, J. & KEEP, E. 2011. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? Skills Policy in England under the Coalition Government. Cardiff: Cardiff University

RASSOOL, N. 2009. Chapter 1, Literacy: In search of a paradigm. In: SOLER, J., FLETCHER-CAMPBELL, F. & REID, G. (eds.) Understanding Difficulties in Literacy Development: Issues and Concepts. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

READ, B. n.d. Chapter Fourteen: Challenging assumptions, changing attitudes. Skills for Life Support Programme. London: Learning and Skills Improvement Service.

SCHONELL, F. 1946. 'Problems of literacy: an examination of present needs'. Times Educational Supplement.

STREET, B. 2003. What’s “new” in New Literacy Studies? Critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice. Current issues in comparative education, 5, 77-91.

STREET, B. V. 1984. Literacy in theory and practice, Cambridge Univ Pr.

STRONACH, I. 2002. Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: teacher and nurse identities in flux. Journal of Education Policy, 17, 109.

VAN DRIEL, J. & BERRY, A. 2010. The Teacher Education Knowledge Base: Pedagogical Content Knowledge. International Encyclopedia of Education, 7, 656-661.

WILSON, A. 2000. There is no escape from third-space theory, chapter 4. In: BARTON, D., HAMILTON, M. & IVANI*C, R. (eds.) Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context. London: Routledge.

Meme #2 #WResearcher 2

Now that you have already introduced your research (see Meme #1), we propose you introduce your journey.  Take a minute to consider where you are at now and what brought you here. Look back into your journey of experience, and tell us how you’ve got here:

Tell the story! – Write in plain English! Allow the writing to flow. Let your voice be heard.

Provide the context of your journey: what/who brought you here? 

Tell your audience what fuels your research, what dreams, aspirations (or even life circumstances) have triggered your venture into academia, and how you’ve gone about fulfilling them. 

Share your passion!

Write for a generic audience.  Allow others to enter your world.

Keep your narrative short and rich. Shorter posts are easier to read on the screen; your personal account is what makes readers follow your blog.


You are trying to do something quite particular with this #wresearcher activity; my reasons for joining are not your reasons for starting the process. I don't think this matters. It's inevitable. And probably true for all participants. 

I love writing. It is the desire to write that started and makes me continue with academic life. I think through writing. As a child I loved reading and always imagined myself a writer. As an adult I was surprised when I tentatively started an MA to find out just how much I enjoyed it. Now there is just a permanent sense of frustration at not doing more than I do. 

The idea of blogging as a self-referencing public diary limits what I want to do: engage with ideas outside and beyond my experience that have the capacity to transform it. 

BEREITER, C. & SCARDAMALIA, M. 1987. The psychology of written composition, L. Erlbaum Associates.

I have just purchased this book though it is one a read about and have referenced some time ago. It is inconsistent with my preferred theoretical framework for understanding writing – as 'social' psychology rather than psychology. But one of the points they make is that while writing is often treated as ‘knowledge-showing’ it should be understood as ‘knowledge-transforming’. The physical act of putting ideas on paper generates new understandings. In writing we make conscious choices about nuances of meaning. We are required to be explicit about our preference for one word or phrase as oppose to another. We have to establish precisely how ideas dis/connect to each other, how they need to be sequenced. We have to decide that is important enough to include / exclude. 

I say this as an argumentative response to absent colleagues who are at time critical of essay writing as a process of merely reproducing what has been read: regurgitating. It seems to me that it is a creative process. No less creative that story telling. Indeed, it is a form of storytelling. All research is autobiography - a story of how and why the researcher has come to understand something in a particular way.

As I read I find my voice becomes caught up with other voices. I sometimes think of writing as similar to painting. That is, I use the voices, ideas, concepts I encounter like colours on an artist’s palate to create new thought shapes. 

literacy crisis of crisis to austerity

cont/d

The paper is written against the backdrop of a policy in decline. Skills for Life, New Labour’s flagship policy emerged from the Moser Report in 1999 (DfEE, 1999) aimed at improving the language, literacy and numeracy skills of the adult population in England with a target of 3.5 million adults to be lifted out of low level skills by 2010 (Moser, 1999). It radically redefined the infrastructure that had up until that time surrounded the delivery of Adult Language, Literacy and Numeracy (ALLN) as what had been an informal, community led, localised campaign with an inchoate institutional base became a national strategy  (Hamilton and Hillier, 2006).  The new policy was bounded by attractive financial incentives encouraging organisations to contribute towards achieving national targets, newly devised qualifications for students and targets for their achievement, a prescribed body of knowledge defining language, literacy and numeracy as a series of easily pinpointed skills referenced in widely circulated National Core Curriculum documents and, to provide an empirical base for the promotion of good practice, a National Research Development Centre (NRDC) whose strap line purpose became to  ‘generate knowledge and transform it into practice.’  In 2010 the UK elected Conservative led coalition government. Aspects of Skills for Life are now fully embedded within organisations and are likely to remain in place. But while the arrival of a new policy is accompanied by announcements and effervescence, its departure of policy is less is clear.

Policy dis/continuities:  from literacy crisis to a crisis of austerity

In 1946, the Times Educational Supplement published an article entitled ‘The Problem of Adult Literacy’. Calling for the establishment of county colleges offering adult literacy classes, educational psychologist, Fred Schonel (1946), believed that a reduction in the problem of adult literacy would lead to ‘less unhappiness, less delinquency, less crime, and less neurosis;’ and that improved ‘[…] personal and social efficiency would be a major gain to the nation.’ His contribution was part of a slow process through which Adult Literacy was eventually constructed as a problem requiring a policy solution.

In 1999 the Moser Report was published with headline findings that some 20% of the adult population were unable to ‘find a plumber in the yellow pages’; that is, they were unable to exhibit the skills expected of an 11 year old. What followed was a policy driven moral panic in the face of a literacy folk-devel (Barton, 2000) in the face of a literacy crisis. Sustainability was not a feature of New Labour’s Skills for Life as the policy was always intended as a short term response to what was considered to be an eradicable problem. What is remarkable about the ensuing furore was that it persisted in the face to robust evidence demonstrating that levels of literacy had remained constant in England since the 1940s (Bathmaker, 2007, Brooks, 1998, Brooks et al., 1995). 

Whatever the ideological discontinuities between New Labour and the Conservative led coalition elected in 2010, they seem not to emerge through their policy surrounding post 16 further / vocational education or skills (Goodwin, 2011, Payne and Keep, 2011). This is something to do with the nature of policy utterances: rarely do they amount to a caesura; The Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning , John Hayes – declared a policy framed by three key principles of fairness, responsibility and freedom (BIS, 2010)p3  signalling that the skills agenda will retain its centralised position as the key lever through which policy is able to deliver economic competitiveness and social mobility, ‘plus ça change…’. There is some fraying at the edges of policy – centrally defined targets have been removed and there are reassurances that ‘red tape’ unnecessary bureaucracy will be reduced. The skills agenda itself has been tempered with an acknowledged that skills alone –without attention to employers demand and utilisation of skills - is an insufficient strategy for achieving economic growth and international competitiveness. 

The most significant policy rupture between the Conservative-led coalition and New Labour is found within funding.  The Comprehensive Spending Review announced £81 bn of cuts (in contrast to the £50 bn proposed by the Labour opposition) to be achieved in the course of one Parliament (H.M.Treasury, 2010). The Department for Business Innovation and Skills faces a 25% reduction - higher than other departments – with the budget for further education reduced from £4.3 bn in 2010 to £3.2 bn in 2015. For ALLN this has meant a confused and inconsistent series of redefinitions of entitlements and uplift for language (English for Speakers of other Languages, ESOL) and literacy. Still the explicit statements of intent and purpose to emerge from Hayes are reassuring; he openly champions craft skills, would like to  see greater regard and respect paid to vocational learning; he is keen to open progression routes to Higher Education; has expanded apprenticeships exponentially;  he has clearly in his sights the importance of learning for learning’s sake and its contribution to quality of life. The policy intentions have to be balanced with  unintended policy consequences as a predicted 50 further education colleges may have to merge or close down and a probability that the sector will see smaller and fewer institutions  (Lee, 2010). Since May 2010 the coalition government has positioned debt rather than skills as the problem in need of policy attention: a shift from literacy crisis to crisis of austerity.  

BARTON, D. 2000. Moral panics about literacy. Lancaster University, CLS Working Paper Series.

BATHMAKER, A. M. 2007. The impact of Skills for Life on adult basic skills in England: how should we interpret trends in participation and achievement? International Journal of Lifelong Education, 26, 295-313.

BIS 2010. Skills for Sustainable Growth: Strategy Document. London: Department of Business Innovation and Skills.

BROOKS, G. 1998. Trends in standards of literacy in the UnitedKingdom, 1948-1996.

BROOKS, G., FOXMAN, D., GORMAN, T. & EDUCATION, N. C. O. 1995. Standards in Literacy and Numeracy, 1948-1994, National Commission on Education.

DFEE 1999. Improving literacy and numeracy : a fresh start : the report of the working group chaired by Sir Claus Moser London: Department for Education and Employment.

GOODWIN, M. 2011. English Education Policy after New Labour: Big Society or Back to Basics? The Political Quarterly, 82, 407-424.

H.M.TREASURY 2010. Spending review 2010. The Stationary Office, London, http://cdn. hm-treasury. gov. uk/sr2010_completereport. pdf.

HAMILTON, M. & HILLIER, Y. 2006. The changing face of adult literacy, language and numeracy 1970-2000 : a critical history. . Trentham Books, Stoke-on-Trent.

Lee, Joseph. 2010. Adult skills loses £1bn in spending review. Times Educational Supplement, 22 October.

MOSER, C. 1999. Chapter 5: a national strategy and national targets A fresh start: Improving literacy and numeracy. London: Department for Education and Employment.

PAYNE, J. & KEEP, E. 2011. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? Skills Policy in England under the Coalition Government. Cardiff: Cardiff University

SCHONELL, F. 1946. 'Problems of literacy: an examination of present needs'. Times Educational Supplement.

STRONACH, I. 2002. Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: teacher and nurse identities in flux. Journal of Education Policy, 17, 109.

Trainee Skills for Life teachers at the research, policy, practice nexus

Fig 1 Pedagogic subject: constructed by confluence of policy, new learning (diploma), values and beliefs, practice

It doesn’t always fit in. It’s great theory; it’s good. You know, we’ve talked about how to contextualise it and the wheel, all of that.  It was very refreshing. But my [manager], all she’s interested in is, ‘Oh! He failed. Can we get him back in?’ Not, ‘Can we develop this individual?’ ‘Can we get him back in? What do you think he failed on?’ And that’s the environment we’re in. And with the contracts coming up for renewal.                                     

Joseph, Literacy Teacher, Prison

This paper emerges from an ongoing ethnographic study into the ways in which trainee PCET teachers undertaking a specialist University Diploma in Skills for Life (ESOL and Literacy) construct literacy as a pedagogic subject. Joseph, one the eleven trainees to take part in the study, articulates with striking familiarity the contradictions and tensions practitioners often experience when defining their pedagogy. Echoing the conceptual framework from within which this paper is written, Joseph positions himself uncomfortably between the ‘economy of performance’ and the ‘ecology of practice’ (Stronach, 2002)p109. Stronach et al present and then resist the presentation of this tension as a polarity between what policy requires practitioners to do and what in their own judgement they feel the situation requires.  Their use of the metaphor of the tightrope walker captures the danger and dexterity of Skills for Life professionalism but invites further complication with multiple conceptualisations of literacy which is further filtered through the intuitive values, beliefs and commitments that practitioners bring to their role.

Joseph, in the quote above based on a recording and transcription of a tutorial, references each of these tensions and filtrations.  He is refreshed by his learning, and seems to reframe a recently undertaken exercise in assessing literacy using a clock with his own holistic wheel metaphor. He then positions himself as being at odds with is manager – who responds to a student failing a literacy test – in target defined terms.  Her interest, unlike his own, is a distilled interest in identifying the specific core-curricular referenced points required by the student to pass the test. His broader developmental needs are not mentioned. The quote ends with a fragmented sentence. The contract Joseph refers to are those that enable his organisation to deliver literacy in Yorkshire and Humberside prisons. It requires little elaboration. The renewal of the contract is based entirely on performance and the passing of tests.

STRONACH, I. 2002. Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: teacher and nurse identities in flux. Journal of Education Policy, 17, 109.

plan: following a traditional structure

1)    Illustrative quote: introduction


Establish context for this area of work i) austerity: literacy crisis has become a financial crisis:  the un/hinging of skills policy ii) SfL as history: continuity and change


2)    Theoretical framework


As it relates to literacy: competing conceptualisations and metaphors – but primarily more than, other than skills : literacy as a policy construction nature of the relationship


As it relates to teacher education: is there is specific ‘pedagogic content knowledge’ as distinct from other ways of knowing this content and what are the implications


3)    Lit Review


Professionalism that centres on a deep seated polarity: economy of performance vs. the ecology or practice – with regards to the construction of literacy – ‘as implementers of government policy’.  Kell – literacy as shell / Wilson – literacy as 3^rd space / Scotland: the wheel / Ivanic: literacies for learning – less detailed explorations into teachers attitudes, the beliefs, dispositions, experiences they bring to the encounter  (Ellis & LfLin FE video).


4)    Methods – research participants and sites; data sources & procedures (interview protocol); researchers positions; data analysis


naturally occurring data – in process – discourse / documentary / situational analysis, approximation of grounded theory: had the advantage of materials that I was implicated in a close to. Written statements, recorded tutorials, lesson observation & reflections, audio-visual diary; the blog; personal language history. No strict protocol as such – apart form questioning. Other activities still ongoing. Reflexivity is key here: this is what emphasis is placed upon situational analysis. Acknowledges my presence in the field. Not action research – improving on practice; not evaluation: these statements not included.


5)    Research findings:
A) i. ii. B )i. ii. C) etc


Too soon to say so tentative:  a) awareness of limitations and contradictions of targets for their practice  b) they have their own construction of literacy / language that connected to place and space c) their own uses of literacy as literacy subjects – explicit, pedagogic and experiential epistemologies


6)    Discussion and implications
a) b) & c)


Too soon to say so tentative:  a) recognition of constraints and limitations but with a resigned acceptance that this is the condition we work within  -  literacies remain un/reconciled b) acceptance closely related to teaching context and what it allowed c) one literacy map collected as part of class exercise

teachers may teach more than we know, why we teach not just what we teach matters

ELLIS, V. 2009. Subject knowledge and teacher education: the development of beginning teachers' thinking, Continuum Intl Pub Group.

My purpose here is to explore, though at other times I will simply review and annotate.

The point of interest here is the nature of teachers’ pedagogic knowledge. At times this is presented as if there is subject knowledge and pedagogic knowledge as distinct and separate things. Ellis is attempting to sophisticate this view.  She does not explicitly mention Schon, though clearly his theories are of relevance here and will be explored and connected at a later stage.  

The main pointers here are:

Teachers beliefs, values, conceptions of purposes for teaching their subject

This is something other than what their subject is; the discussion I have so far had about literacy / literacies has tended towards a reified notion of it is or is not something – but this sense of pedagogic purpose is perhaps as important as pedagogic subject. I think that SfL not only shapes the discourse within which we frame what we teach, it also strongly constrains our sense of purpose.

Pedagogic knowledge is a specific construction not entirely bound to subject knowledge

That there seems to be a particular construction of pedagogic knowledge that is specific to practice and not based on subject knowledge as a distinct category, p43 – teacher test and research that suggested teachers who did poorly on abstract tests of say grammar, but did particularly well on the knowledge they were able to deploy in their teaching.

Knowledge that is brought into being by the nature of the learning context itself.

Nature of teacher knowledge:

Less fixed than 'disciplinary' knowledge – it is ‘totally embedded in subject knowledge’. It is less stable and more situated.

There is some Hattie like taxonomy of ‘effective teachers’ I note here that Elis refers to research suggesting that effective teachers of literacy – strong and coherent personal philosophies about teaching literacy; placed greatest emphasis on ‘purpose, communication and composition.’

All of this is good. All of it. What I am still unsure of and can find no direct reference to is: what and how teachers develop this beliefs about; and how they make connections between their own beliefs abut teaching as a pedagogic subject (albeit one defined in the moment) and their own experiences of being literate. 

Literacy as: skills, practices or pedagogic subject

Start with an illustrative quote that sets the framework and focus for the piece. That allows you a way into talking about the themes you want to explore.

It doesn’t always fit in. It’s great theory and it’s good. You know, we’ve talked about how to contextualise it and the wheel, all of that.  It was very refreshing. But my mentor, all she’s interested in is, oh, he failed, can we get him back in. Not, ‘Can we develop this individual?’ Can we get him back in? What do you think he failed on? And that’s the environment we’re in. And with the contracts coming up for renewal.

This quote is one of several quotes drawn from interviews, tutorials, reflective statements and classroom discussions that exemplify what Stronach (Stronach, 2002) refers to as the tightrope professionals walk between the economy of performance and the ecology of practice. It is interesting because this is an in service trainee teacher who has worked in literacy teaching for about 10 years.

He is used to the SfL regime with its steers and levers.  He’s clearly engaged and stimulated by the course and the new ideas about literacy he in encountering, but experiences a clear dis/connect between these ideas and approaches and a regime that does not share the aspirations that seems to underpin what he is coming to understand as a trainee.

He ask the question – can we develop him as a trainee. This is not a phrase I have used in sessions or one that I am aware of in the literature.  He also refers to the ‘clock’ exercise as a wheel. The metaphor appears to be one that values a holistic view of literacy learning. That treats literacy as an aspect of the student; there is a hint that teaching is about addressing developmental needs along many planes – not just the skills deficit that emerge from having failed a L1 or L2 test.

He is clear that this is target drive and inked to funding and this creates a specific environment. Note that here it is not the harshness of a penal regime that creates an ‘environment’ but the actions of his mentor.

Yes.  And I refer to the social aspects of literacy [...] say that I subscribe to her, her little resume of what adult literacy teaching and writing should be, and she talks about providing a context.  She talks about interaction between the teacher and the learner, and she talks about feedback and she talks about the value of talk, and I must say that I’ve tried to live by those in this exercise. 

This quite is quite different. This tutor is pre-retirement and at the end of a career in school based education has shifted to teaching literacy in adult education. She works in a one-to-one open access workshop. Here she is talking about completing the work required for an assignment. The sense of what she says in is=n stark contrast in as much as she does not articulate any sense of disconnection between what is theoretically sound and what the environment affords. I note with interest that she says ‘what adult literacy should be’. Ads oppose to a more forceful – what it is.  This student is none-the-less immersed in the ideas and experiences no tension in implementing them at all.

ii             Theoretical Framework

Broadly competing theorisations of literacy at the heart of the discussion and the significance these have for the teaching of the diploma course.  Acknowledge that this distinction is inevitably too stark that it does not capture the multiple constructions. More importantly – it is how teachers think and feel about this that forms the basis of this study. These are research or policy based ideas.

a) that trainee teachers will have their own constructions of literacy as a pedagogic subject. I am reminded here of Ellis, that they have not a Venn construct of literacy / pedagogy with a bit in the middle where they overlap as ‘literacy pedagogy’. But actually they have a single construct called literacy that defines the material they draw upon in their teaching

b) that my sense is that they see these constructions as having entirely different domains. These may be commons sense distinctions. That theory and practice are separate. But – there is literacy out of school and literacy in school rather than literacy - articulated in different ways and treated in distinct ways in these domains and the schooled treatment of home literacies creates a difficulty for learners.

Kell and Wilson have suggested that literacy as skills and literacy as social practice do exist in relation to each other. Scottish adult literacy, the wheel; metaphors of literacy.

iii             More direct exposition of these explored: lit review        a) b) & c)

iv            Methods – research participants and sites; data sources & procedures 

(interview protocol); researchers positions; data analysis

v             Research findings:  A)            i.              ii.             B)            i.              ii.             C) etc

vi            Discussion and implications                a) b) & c)

STRONACH, I. 2002. Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: teacher and nurse identities in flux. Journal of Education Policy, 17, 109.