Dr Sarah Aynsley s'r'aynsleysussex'ac'uk Dr Barbara Crossouard b'crossouardsussex'ac'uk

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Dr Sarah Aynsley(s.r.aynsley_at_sussex.ac.uk)D
r Barbara Crossouard (b.crossouard_at_sussex.ac.uk)

• Making Choices an investigation into the
  factors which affect young peoples decisions not
  to progress to Higher Education after following a
  vocational pathway in upper secondary education
• British Academy funded research project (April -
  October 2008)

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Methodological positioning

• Recognition of reflexive construction of
  researcher and the constructs of the research
  within a historically contingent nexus of power /
  knowledge, or a regime of truth (Foucault, 1984)
• Produces imperative towards problematisation of
  the discourses within which research framed as
  well as the conduct of the research
• Question the structuring of possible fields of
  action, what discourses are taken for granted and
  what this marginalises or makes impossible

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Conceptual Frameworks Governmentality

• 'the whole range of practices that constitute,
  define, organize, and instrumentalize the
  strategies that individuals in their freedom can
  use in dealing with each other'
• (Foucault, 2003, p.41)
• Refers to the structures of power by which
  conduct is organized and by which governance is
  aligned with the self-organizing capacities of
  individual subjects (Olssen, 2008)
• The concept of imagined futures (Ball 1999) a
  way of considering the students
  decision-making in their transition from FE to
  other locations

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Conceptual Frameworks Identity

• The concept is called into question from
  post-structuralist perspective not seen as
  reflecting any fixed, essentialised self
• Instead a concept under erasure - contingent
  always in process multiple fragmented
  constituted through difference (Hall, 1996)
• Calls into question the rational, autonomous self
• In historical context of neo-liberal regimes
  individuals responsibilitised for project of the
  self
• paradoxical intensification of strongly
  individualised and centred production of
  identity/ies

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Research Methods

• Relevant policy texts and research literature
  were analysed
• 80 questionnaires returned from 7 different
  courses
• 8 students were interviewed on two separate
  occasions
• Discussions with key college staff development
  of research instruments and interpretation of
  findings.

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Policy Discourses

• Divergent and contradictory policy initiatives
• widening participation initiatives and increasing
  access to higher education
• the burgeoning skills agenda (decontexualized/aso
  cial)
• Lifelong learning as an obligation

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Recent policy developments within the context of
the Widening Participation (WP) agenda

• WP in HE important thrust of both UK and EU
  government policies
• UK 50 participation target of first time
  participation in HE
• Fewer than 50 of those with level 3 vocational
  qualifications progress to HE
• Under-represented groups class and ethnic
  imbalances and inequities in HE participation
  rates
• Plateau of participation

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Recent policy developments within the context of
the skills agenda

• Leitch Review of Skills (2006) 40 of the
  workforce should have skills to level 4 or above
  by 2020
• Those whose highest qualification is at level 3
  may be displaced within the labour market.
• the impact of the expansion of HE in the 1990s
  will not be fully reflected in the labour force
  for a further 20 years (Elias and Purcell 2004 p.
  73).

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Issues arising from the literature

• Education in neo-liberal times shift in
  discourse from education to learning, and from
  the social toward the economic, more recently the
  soft economic
• The paradoxes of WP within neo-liberal agendas
  assumption of high levels of individual agency
• Deficit construction of non-participants
  against relative lack of questioning about HE
  teaching, learning and assessment practices
• Generic skills discourses not well theorised,
  possible surrogate for values positioned within
  disqualified discourses such as class stresses
  the importance and portability of
  qualifications
• Diversification of HEI missions - ignoring
  class/gender/ethnic issues and accentuating
  social inequalities
• The benefits and risks of participation
  differentially distributed

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Imagined Futures

• Schooling and its failure to incite any imagined
  futures
• Constructions of education versus world of paid
  employment
• Serendipity v. imagined futures
• Illusory imagined futures
• Gender/class and imagined futures

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Schooling and its non-articulation with any
imagined futures

• For some, experiences of schooling failed to
  invoke imagined futures
• Schooling seemed to leave respondents
  indifferent/or with boundaried sense of self,
  after not doing well in GCSEs
• Even for a respondent who had gained A levels,
  what she had studied remained unrelated to any
  identity project
• Decisions on college route conjoined with
  uncertainties
• College experiences often contrasted with
  schooling

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Constructions of Education

• Education constructed in opposition to real
  experience in the world of paid work
• Concern about costs and doubt about employment
  benefits
• Debt aversion distrust of student loans, wanted
  to pay their way uncertain about what financial
  support available
• Some fear of higher education workloads/better to
  leave education on a successful note
• Cultural otherness
• A sense that it was time to leave behind a
  learner identity e.g. doing college had used
  this up although also would consider HE later,
  particularly if employer-funded

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Imagined futures and serendipity

• For some respondents, imagined future was
  abandoned after relatively serendipitous events /
  chance encounters
• I met one of them on the street and I was sort of
  like, I applied for a job and I got it.

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Illusory imagined futures

• Vocational qualifications gained were sometimes
  not recognised either by employers or by HE
• Respondent struggling during job interviews to
  explain what his qualification was
• The degrees that were interesting to other
  students from his course were requesting that
  students do a further Level 3 course, and
  effectively drop back down a level.
• This meant facing five years of being a student
  in FE, before completing a degree.

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Illusory imagined futures(2)

• Vocational qualifications not enough for HE
  progression
• i.e. course structure involving placements off
  campus precluding retaking of key GCSE
  qualifications such as Maths/English
• Vocational qualifications with poor employment
  prospects
• female respondent now working full-time in
  part-time job she had worked in when at college
• male respondent happy to have a full-time
  permanent job - not too like in the gutter like
  not doing anything

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Imagined futures and gendered/classed dimensions

• Denial of class as legitimate discourse by some
• Participants in most courses polarised in terms
  of gender (only Public Services had more balanced
  gender mix)
• Allure of travel to many respondents for female
  respondents could involve very poorly paid short
  term contract work e.g. with travel companies in
  childcare/beauty
• Ideal job that would be just right find
  something that really suited parental desires
  represented in similar ways
• Different possibilities for male and female
  respondents to articulate current part-time
  employment within a narrative of employability

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What happens next?

• Larger bid has been submitted to the British
  Academy for further funding
• Currently working with colleagues from Brighton
  University and AimHigher Sussex
• Journal articles to be submitted in spring/summer
  2009