Emerging Apprenticeship Practitioner Roles in England: Conceptualising the Subaltern Educator

Abstract

TVET educator roles and identities vary internationally, and are subject to repositioning, for example as the relative significance of institutions and the workplace change within national systems. In English apprenticeships, a key position has long been occupied by competence assessors, whose non-teaching role has related uneasily to those of professional educators. Following the introduction of new apprenticeship standards, former assessors are increasingly being allocated training responsibilities, raising issues about the expertise, identities and professional formation both of these emerging practitioners and of vocational educators in general. A qualitative study of assessors who have assumed greater training responsibilities examined these issues through individual and small-group interviews. Participant accounts of diverse and contested practices and environments suggested a need to conceptualise their roles in ways that draw upon but go beyond accounts of professionalism and occupational expertise developed at earlier stages. Drawing on Gramsci, the concept of the subaltern educator is put forward to characterise the complex position of these staff in the current climate of further education, the need for enhanced, rather than diminished, professional formation and wider possibilities for professional enhancement at a time of uncertainty for all vocational educators.

Vocational teachers and workplace learning: integrative, complementary and implicit accounts of boundary crossing

“…Thus, notions of autonomous learning at work contrast sharply with practices in schools or colleges, which are structured around the central role of the authoritative facilitator, the teacher, although distinctions may exist between vocational specialists, general educators or other educational roles (Esmond 2019a). This constitutes a critical difference between the two domains, and a particularly important one for younger students.…”

VET Realignment and the Development of Technical Elites: Learning at Work in England

“…On the professional-technical case study, students engaged with an unusually high level of theorised knowledge. Correspondingly, apprenticeships in such areas have retained taught qualifications whilst many service-sector apprenticeships are now taught entirely in the workplace (Fuller & Unwin, 2017;Esmond, 2019) and students reported the intensity of college-based study. Practical aptitude was clearly valued and respondents listed practical achievements alongside the high school grades as enabling them to join the course: Jack, a former lifeguard had taken on plant maintenance at his swimming pool, whilst Phil on the same course cited practical projects for family members.…”

“…Here work-based practitioners were placed in highly valued expert roles and could be seen by students as gatekeepers who determined what they could learn at work. Students were often visited by assessors, who lacked the authority of classroom-based teachers or industry-based experts: Their role is expanding with the growth of workplace learning in England (Esmond, 2019). Even in an area with significant traditions of workplace learning, childcare students found their learning experiences contingent on the extent to which they were trusted by the other practitioners to deal with parents and children.…”