Abstract
In this paper, we explore the various ways that current policies are being enacted in Further Education Institutions (FEIs). The Further Education (FE) sector in the UK is a diverse and sizable part of the wider education system. In England and Scotland, the two countries we focus on here, FEIs cater to a combined total of approximately 2 million students and offer a wide range of academic and vocational courses and apprenticeship provision (AOC, 2021; Colleges Scotland, 2021).
In order to provide a framework for our work, we start by detailing how we understand policy and policy enactments - that is, how policies are being ‘done’ in educational settings - and contrast this with other understandings of policy ‘implementation’ which, we suggest, only offer a limited insight into the work involved in ‘doing policy’. Understanding policy in a ‘normative’ way (Ozga, 2000) - as being the plans developed by politicians and their advisors in order to improve or reform provision (see Maguire and de St Croix, 2018) can be useful but it doesn’t account properly for decision-making taking place at many levels below national government.
We focus on that sub-national level here by drawing on a key account of ‘policy enactment’ by Ball et al (2012) and exploring the ways in which FE settings might differ from the school settings that were their focus. In Ball et al’s (2012) model of policy enactments in schools, they identify different types of ‘policy work’ and suggest a typology of policy actors derived from the predominant types of policy work that policy actors undertake. Using this framework, we explored accounts of ‘policy work’ in two FE settings - one in Scotland and one in England. In each case, we centred the discussions around a specific policy issue which was different in each case to account for the devolved educational policy context. In England, our focus was entry requirements for Level 3 options - building on some of our earlier work (Lupton et al, 2021) where we examined post-16 options for those without grade 4/C in English and Maths GCSE (or equivalent). In Scotland, we examined challenges around the provision of the Curriculum for Excellence’s (CFE) senior phase in colleges. In both these policy contexts, practitioners are enacting policies that have impacts on admissions, organisation and delivery of provision and assessment.
We conducted semi-structured focus groups and interviews with a total of 6 practitioners and used Directed Qualitative Content Analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005) to analyse the transcripts from these. The initial codes were formed by considering the types of policy work in Ball et al’s (2012) model of policy enactments for schools and looking for evidence of these in the accounts of FE practitioners. We then tried to categorise any accounts of policy work that remained uncoded and, finally, reflected on how we had determined what constituted policy work and how this was separate from other types of work undertaken by practitioners in their own setting.
We found evidence of some of what Ball et al (2012) call the ‘master discourses’ that shape policy work in FE. These overarching understandings of the place of FE in the wider education landscape were key in shaping the policy enactments of practitioners and often formed the backbone of their narratives about the policy work that they did. We also found evidence that policy enactments in FE differed at the sub-institutional level as well as by institution and suggest that this may be linked to practitioners’ professional identities - something that Jephcote and Salisbury (2009) suggest can link strongly to previous occupations. Our work also suggests that careful thought is needed about what constitutes ‘policy work’ in FE settings to avoid mischaracterising the nature of that work.
These findings, taken together, suggest that Ball et al’s (2012) work on policy enactment in schools can provide a useful framework for exploring policy enactment in FE. The identification of master discourses in our data helped to contextualise the narratives of practitioners and avoid an overly-simplistic reading of their accounts of their policy work. However, we identified evidence of different kinds of enactments within colleges as well as between them - something that was not a key finding of Ball et al’s (2012) work in schools and therefore not a key part of their model. We conclude by suggesting that this framework may need to be adapted to account for more widespread use in the FE context to account for the sub-institutional and local differences typically found in FE policy enactments.
In order to provide a framework for our work, we start by detailing how we understand policy and policy enactments - that is, how policies are being ‘done’ in educational settings - and contrast this with other understandings of policy ‘implementation’ which, we suggest, only offer a limited insight into the work involved in ‘doing policy’. Understanding policy in a ‘normative’ way (Ozga, 2000) - as being the plans developed by politicians and their advisors in order to improve or reform provision (see Maguire and de St Croix, 2018) can be useful but it doesn’t account properly for decision-making taking place at many levels below national government.
We focus on that sub-national level here by drawing on a key account of ‘policy enactment’ by Ball et al (2012) and exploring the ways in which FE settings might differ from the school settings that were their focus. In Ball et al’s (2012) model of policy enactments in schools, they identify different types of ‘policy work’ and suggest a typology of policy actors derived from the predominant types of policy work that policy actors undertake. Using this framework, we explored accounts of ‘policy work’ in two FE settings - one in Scotland and one in England. In each case, we centred the discussions around a specific policy issue which was different in each case to account for the devolved educational policy context. In England, our focus was entry requirements for Level 3 options - building on some of our earlier work (Lupton et al, 2021) where we examined post-16 options for those without grade 4/C in English and Maths GCSE (or equivalent). In Scotland, we examined challenges around the provision of the Curriculum for Excellence’s (CFE) senior phase in colleges. In both these policy contexts, practitioners are enacting policies that have impacts on admissions, organisation and delivery of provision and assessment.
We conducted semi-structured focus groups and interviews with a total of 6 practitioners and used Directed Qualitative Content Analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005) to analyse the transcripts from these. The initial codes were formed by considering the types of policy work in Ball et al’s (2012) model of policy enactments for schools and looking for evidence of these in the accounts of FE practitioners. We then tried to categorise any accounts of policy work that remained uncoded and, finally, reflected on how we had determined what constituted policy work and how this was separate from other types of work undertaken by practitioners in their own setting.
We found evidence of some of what Ball et al (2012) call the ‘master discourses’ that shape policy work in FE. These overarching understandings of the place of FE in the wider education landscape were key in shaping the policy enactments of practitioners and often formed the backbone of their narratives about the policy work that they did. We also found evidence that policy enactments in FE differed at the sub-institutional level as well as by institution and suggest that this may be linked to practitioners’ professional identities - something that Jephcote and Salisbury (2009) suggest can link strongly to previous occupations. Our work also suggests that careful thought is needed about what constitutes ‘policy work’ in FE settings to avoid mischaracterising the nature of that work.
These findings, taken together, suggest that Ball et al’s (2012) work on policy enactment in schools can provide a useful framework for exploring policy enactment in FE. The identification of master discourses in our data helped to contextualise the narratives of practitioners and avoid an overly-simplistic reading of their accounts of their policy work. However, we identified evidence of different kinds of enactments within colleges as well as between them - something that was not a key finding of Ball et al’s (2012) work in schools and therefore not a key part of their model. We conclude by suggesting that this framework may need to be adapted to account for more widespread use in the FE context to account for the sub-institutional and local differences typically found in FE policy enactments.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - 6 Sept 2022 |
| Event | British Educational Research Conference - University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom Duration: 6 Sept 2022 → 8 Sept 2022 |
Conference
| Conference | British Educational Research Conference |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
| City | Liverpool |
| Period | 6/09/22 → 8/09/22 |
