Learning as becoming in vocational education and training: class, gender and the role of vocational habitus

Abstract

Official accounts of learning in vocational education and training emphasise the acquisition of technical skills and knowledge to foster behavioural competence in the workplace. However, such accounts fail to acknowledge the relationship between learning and identity. Drawing on detailed case studies of three vocational coursesin childcare, healthcare and engineering -in English further education colleges, within the project Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education, we argue that learning is a process of becoming. Learning cultures, and the vocational cultures in which they are steeped, transform those who enter them. We develop the concept of 'vocational habitus' to explain a central aspect of students' experience, as they have to orient to a particular set of dispositions -both idealised and realised. Predispositions related to gender, family background and specific locations within the working class are necessary but not sufficient for effective learning. Vocational habitus reinforces and develops these in line with demands of the workplace, although it may reproduce social inequalities at the same time. Vocational habitus involves developing not only a 'sense' of how to be, but also 'sensibility': requisite feelings and morals, and the capacity for emotional labour. Learning as becoming in vocational education and training: class, gender and the role of vocational habitus IntroductionThree decades ago, direct transition from compulsory schooling to work was the norm for many young people in England. Since the collapse of this youth labour market in the late 1970s, school-to-work transitions have become extended (Rikowski, 2001). Almost three-quarters of 16 year-olds now continue to participate in full-time education, and almost half of these pursue vocational education and training (VET) courses in further education (FE) colleges (DfES, 2001). This paper is focused on that provision (although we note here that the majority of FE students are adults). This expansion of the FE sector has produced a highly diversified market in VET, with courses that range from foundation to advanced level, and from general provision relating to broad occupational areas (such as Business Studies or Health and Social Care) to specialised training for particular jobs. This is in addition to youth training based in the workplace with (usually) one day per week off-the-job provision, some of which is also delivered in FE. Much VET was re-developed around the competence-based approach typified by National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in the early 1990s, and advocates for this model argued that, as a result, lecturers would have to meet the challenge of a new role: '[they] will need to be more than subject specialists and think more about the process of learning' (Jessup, 1991, p.106).The challenge of understanding better the process of learning in FE is at the heart of our work in the national project Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC), within the Economic and Social Research Council's ...

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“…Kay echoes the emotional care and pastoral duty revealed in the literature although her fragile position in the teaching team paradoxically questions Colley et al's (2003) belief that emotional care is a central tenet in the act of "becoming" since, although she is becoming a teacher, she appears firmly locked out of her community of practice. However, when probed, the interviewees seemed to momentarily rise above their positions of conformity and tended to share Kay's commitment to emotional care for emancipatory reasons, although whether this was due to being interviewed by their ITE tutor was unclear.…”

“…There is a literature that suggests social and cultural capital combine with other dimensions of individual habitus as trainees enter the sector and which change during their training period (Colley et al, 2003;Bathmaker and Avis, 2004;Rice, 2004;Wallace et al, 2002). Here, trainee teachers possess a mix of identity, agency and habitus of various learned experiences which, for the most part, dovetail with personal value systems, biographical and schooling experiences, are formed by their own unique experiences both as learners and vocational specialists and are axiomatic of specialist pedagogy much sought by LLS organisations (Colley, 2006).…”

“…Social capital is deemed to be an individual's cultural capital after it has been further modified by, for example, a community of practice or vocational culture (Bathmaker and Avis, 2005) and is a central concept in the study. Habitus (after Colley et al, 2003) is taken to be a wider, more complex version of the self including, for example, dispositions relating to one's race and gender.…”

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