Vignette 1: Making knowledge relevant

This first vignette is based upon an incident which took place in a teaching session with a small group of 16-19-year-old students following a foundation course in hairdressing.

Vignette 1: Foundation level hairdressing – The wrong letter

In this particular session, students were following an element of the course which intended to develop their key skills. The friendly and interactive group of girls clearly has a good relationship with their tutor, who was also female, and they were generally cooperative with the teacher’s proposed activities. However, it was also clear that these students could easily be distracted and, it seemed, would be likely to withdraw their cooperation if they were unhappy. The students were given a worksheet to complete which included an example of a letter which they may write if they were responding to a job advertisement. The activity asked students to use the letter to discuss how they will apply for jobs in hairdressing on completion of their course. All of the students completed this fairly straightforward task with no comment. However, as was clear in the session and as the tutor explained to me afterwards, the wrong letter had been used with this group. The same tutor also taught groups following other vocational courses at the same level and used similar resources. She had forgotten to change the text in the letter from that which she had used with other students following a course in motor vehicle engineering who were envisaged to be eventually applying for a job in a garage. The hairdressing students had used, discussed, copied out and signed this letter which was initially presented to them as one they would use in applying for jobs with no comment whatsoever about the fact that this letter was obviously intended for a mechanic who was applying for a job in a garage. The girls in the group were relatively articulate and had ample opportunity to question this during the session, but yet it seemed puzzling to me and to the teacher, when we discussed this after the session that none of them highlighted the fact that it was clearly the wrong letter.

In considering this vignette, an initial observation can be made about the status of knowledge: its relevance and its meaning. It should be noted that the design of curricula for the ‘disaffected learners’ that I discuss, is premised on the notion that learning should be ‘relevant’ and should also relate to ‘real life’. As Page (1998: 1) observes, the “value of ‘relevant’ curriculum is virtually axiomatic: If teachers provide lessons that are pertinent, students will engage”.

In relation to the hairdressing students, as the use of the wrong letter went without comment, it seems that this teacher’s attempts in principle to make the classroom activities relevant (to courses being studied, and therefore to the students in question) were possibly in fact irrelevant, if students do not recognise when this is done incorrectly. This suggests that the meaning that the teacher may intend in contextualising these activities, which are part of a generic key skills type curriculum, may either not be recognised or may be ignored by students. The possibility that this is the case may only become apparent when an error is made.

In that respect, perhaps, as Bernstein (1971) notes, students view course content as ‘uncommonsense knowledge’: as merely some artefact to be dealt with according to the rules and expectations communicated by the teacher. This may be similar to the procedural or ‘ritual’ knowledge described by Edwards & Mercer (1987) citing Taba & Elzey (1964). Here, an account is given of a high achieving student who explains the procedures she uses in mathematics as follows:

I know what to do by looking at the examples. If there are only two numbers I subtract. If there are lots of numbers I add. If there are just two numbers and

one is smaller than the other it is a hard problem. I divide to see if it comes out even and if it doesn’t, I multiply.

(Taba & Elzey, 1964: 132 in Edwards & Mercer, 1987: 96)

It is clear from this example that the student does not have much real understanding of mathematics and does not engage with what Edwards & Mercer (1987) refer to as ‘principled knowledge’. The procedure she has developed, however, has been successful for her thus far. The ritual knowledge in this mathematics example is also due to a problem in meaning, and we can speculate about the origin of this divergence in meaning in practice. One explanation could concern a lack of discussion and collaborative learning in the classroom leading to the development of idiosyncratic understandings which remain unchallenged. Another explanation could relate to the desire of the student to strategically achieve right answers in the easiest possible way and to consciously avoid thinking about the mathematical problem. The student may in fact be aware of the cost in terms of meaning and appreciation of principled knowledge.

Taba & Elzey (1964) question the validity of pedagogical practices in which “effective teaching is seen as consisting primarily of what we get out of the children instead of what we put into them” (p. 132). They emphasise the importance of developing students’ abilities to ‘judge’ and for students to develop a basis for understanding the importance of knowledge rather than relying on techniques of recall or providing correct answers – a practice which may be based on divining ‘what the teacher wants’ or on an ability to “recollect what the book said” (p. 131). These practices, in their association with the idea of knowledge as commodity, also recall

Sfard’s (1998) acquisition metaphor for learning.

A slightly different perspective is provided by considering examples of classroom practice outlined by Walkerdine (1988). Walkerdine describes a ‘shopping game’ activity, again in a mathematics classroom. The activity was designed to enable school-age children to practise addition and subtraction. Here it becomes clear to students that the procedures in the game bear little resemblance to real practices and meanings involved in the activity of shopping – they are inauthentic. For example, in real life when all money is spent it is not renewed in the way that it is in the game, and items such as a yacht cost more then a few pence. The result in the ‘shopping game’ example appears to be that the teacher’s general lack of success in her strategy of making knowledge relevant and ‘real’ from the students’ point of view produces a form of detachment and resignation in the students – a disengagement.

In the vignette of the wrong letter we could also speculate about the authenticity of the task. It may be that the students do not relate the activity of responding to a job advertisement to any of their actual goals. It may be that their participation in the course is not related to their career plans. As many writers have observed (e.g. Ball et

al., 2000; Hodkinson & Bloomer, 2001) the basis for students’ course choices are highly complex and do not follow the technical-rational model which underpins aspects of policy. In relation to 14-16 year old students in FE colleges, Davies & Biesta (2007) found that:

there was little evidence of direct influence from their course on the formation of these young people’s vocational aspirations. The happenstance of life, together with their work experience, seemed to be much more significant.

(Davies & Biesta, 2007: 31)

The degree of agency students exercise in initially choosing these courses can also be questioned. There are a very worrying set of issues connected with what may be ideal choices for students and their real choices. Ecclestone (2006: 6) observes in her article Let the poor do hairdressing that “’Flexible’ options at 14 appear to be reinforcing gender, race and class stereotypes, directing less advantaged social groups into ‘suitable’ vocational routes”. Davies & Biesta (2007) also echo this view, highlighting the extent to which the course choices made by such students may be culturally determined. They observe that the young people in their study:

without a background of high economic, social and cultural capital appeared to feel more comfortable taking an apparently work-related course instead of another less ‘relevant’ academic GCSE. Admin/IT was also considered by them to be an appropriately female field, in comparison with, for example, construction, which several students had considered taking but dismissed as ‘for the boys’.

(Davies & Biesta, 2007: 38)

It is also not possible to ignore the likelihood that some analyses of the vignette may well suggest students’ lack of intelligence or initiative as a significant factor. However, aside from other arguments about resisting unhelpful deficit discourses,

other aspects of the situation do not support that conclusion. The students in my vignette had seemed to be able to make well thought out arguments about, for example, the length and timings of breaks and to make comments about other issues. It would seem, therefore, that a basic ‘lack of intelligence’ does not provide a viable explanation in this case. However, it is important not to ignore these issues and how they are perceived, particularly in respect of teacher education.