The Post-16 Curriculum according to MacNaughton - Essay Example

?The Post-16 Curriculum according to MacNaughton Introduction Several s have as rich and long a history as that of education. Debates overwhat education ought to be or do possess existed ever since the period of the Sophists and Socrates. However, in the past five decades, disappointment with public education has grown dramatically (Rubin & Silva 2003). Criticism of the errors of the education institution has ever since overwhelmed any recognition of their accomplishments. Everybody from the top management to school administrators is struggling to act in response to these condemnations by initiating one reform after another (Rubin & Silva 2003). Consequently, reform in education is currently the standard rather than the exception. Nonetheless, in spite of the continuous spectacle of reforms, only a slight portion of the core changes. Institutions and individuals should evolve over time or face the possibility of extinction. Valuable changes enhance the institution or individual so that it may work more successfully in, and be more sensitive to, a relentlessly evolving environment. But efforts at educational reform usually create new problems rather than improve its foundation and processes. There are those who find fault with comprehensive reforms in education which forces several schools to give in, or conform to mainstream standards. Hence, according to MacNaughton (2003), “curricula can defined as conforming, reforming, or transforming”. This essay will explain this statement and relate it to post-16 curriculum. The discussion will also take into account the points of view of different practitioners. Curriculum as ‘Conforming’ Before 1998 in England it was teachers, in theory, who chose the curricula and objectives of their schools. There were actual issues about this, not merely the often broadly disparate policies between schools (Ross 2000). However, there was a more deep-seated problem. Why should teachers be granted this authority? Do they have the knowledge and experience which qualify them to such choices? Are they qualified to make decisions whether to ‘conform’ or ‘reform’? According to Webster (2011), the term ‘conform’ means ‘to fit, accommodate, adapt, suit or befit’ (para 3). Following this definition, there is certainly a valid argument against granting macro-decisions to conform or not to teachers. They are just one sector of the population, but decisions about the routes education should follow involve everyone. Cuban (1993) suggests a paradigm of varied curricula for the study of curriculum. He proposes that we treat curricula in four groups (as cited in Joseph, Braymann, Windschitl, Mikel & Green 2000): Official curriculum can be found in curriculum guides and conform to state-mandated assessment. Taught curriculum is what individual teachers focus on and choose to emphasise—often the choices represent teachers’ knowledge, beliefs about how subjects should be taught, assumptions about their students’ needs, and interests in certain subjects. Learned curriculum encompasses all that students learn; learned curriculum may be what teachers planned or have not intended, such as modelling teachers’ behaviour or what students learn from other students. The fourth curriculum Cuban calls tested curriculum; these tests—whether derived from the teacher, the school district, state, or national testing organisations—represent only part of what is taught or learned (ibid, p. 4). Similar to MacNaughton (2003), Cuban advises us to be careful of the view that curriculum is ‘conforming’, or how the state or school embodies itself, but not essentially suggestive of what transpires in classrooms (Joseph et al. 2000). Cuban (1993 as cited in Joseph et al. 2000) argues that we have to take into account these varied perspectives of curricula if we are genuinely interested with reform in education; reforms in tested and official curricula could be pointless unless we address the learned and taught curricula. The varied curricula model of curriculum indicates that the term ‘curriculum’ involves the question ‘which curriculum?’ A curriculum discourse is not possible if a consideration of the curriculum as having diverse experiences and implications is left out. Curriculum as ‘Reforming’ or ‘Transforming’ The term ‘reform’ itself reflexively influences the forms of potential changes. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary in 1913 identified ‘reform’ as ‘to return to a good state’ (White 2003, 56). Although numerous individuals may consciously characterise reform as an attempt to enhance or to eliminate problems, in an unconscious way this ‘return to a good state’ frequently skulks behind as the final objective (White 2003). This idea stems from the assumptions that (1) the institution of education was some time ago in a ‘good state’; and (2) that similar ‘good state’ is suitable for the schools of today (Bloomer 1997). Another definition of ‘reform’ is ‘action to improve social or economic conditions without radical or revolutionary change’ (Rubin & Silva 2003, 21).The term‘re-form’ itself fits this meaning and generates an unconscious and very restrictive belief—‘that the existing form must remain’ (Rubin & Silva 2003, 21). Basically, to ‘reform’ is to reconstruct the current parts. Apparently, reform seems more favourable to revolution; however, revolutionary change does not have to be violent. Yet, it does need a deep-seated change in belief or outlook—a key change in the perspective of all the main participants (Thompson 2006). However, what is the different between‘re-forming’ the institution of education and ‘transforming’ it? Is there a significant difference between‘re-forming’ the current components of education and transforming the institution into a quite distinct form (White 2003). To ‘transform’ implies replacing the form, not merely restructure it. Post-16 Curriculum: Conforming, Reforming or Transforming? Conforming? At the core of the post-16 discussion lie opposing perspectives of the objectives of compulsory and post-compulsory, education: is it to conform, reform, or transform? This section will explain the ‘conforming’ aspect of post-16 curriculum. The greatest weight, since the time of the FE Colleges and Mechanics’ Institutes, has constantly been upon the training of young individuals for employment (Bloomer 1997). This remains a primary role of the public post-compulsory policy. It is a component of the practice of FE, a practice preserved as much by public as by expert assumptions and values, and despite of valuable modest investment by industry and state in vocational training (Ecclestone 2002). It was the focus on extended education offering a ‘preparation for jobs’ which strengthened the 1980’s ‘new vocationalism’ (p. 82). Yet, recently, the ‘vocational education’ provision has become acknowledged as a more complicated issue that that of merely preparing students in occupational skills (Thompson 2006). Although it is factual to state that General, Liberal and Social Studies additions to post-war vocational curriculum were an effort to give students a broader educational foundation for their courses, it was the curriculum of BTEC pioneered since the 1980s which initiated the initial major action towards a preparation for employment within a wider notion of vocational training (Bloomer 1997). The creation of TVEI as an enrichment curriculum, or specific and general competencies, and of ‘modular course structures’ like GNVQ can be viewed as an additional confirmation of some broad transition towards a wider, re-constructed vocationalism (Hyland 1994). The causes underlying these changes are themselves fascinating and stem from studies of the evolving requirements of the labour market, the larger economy and, particularly, work’s nature. Post-Fordist and other studies of present and potential changes in Western societies have underlined a need for some sort of ‘adaptive’ knowledge employee within high-skill, high-trust, collaborative, work relations and it is to a certain extent, although shallow and rapid, recognition of these needs that curriculum progress has been kindled (Bloomer 1997). Shallow and rapid because, as argued by Young (1993 as cited in Bloomer 1997), a high level of indecision still envelops the level of, the paths of, and the entire repercussions of the developments expected in the post-Fordist study. Certainly, proof of the expected leaner, and more levelled off hierarchies is not in vast wealth (Schubert, Schubert, Thomas & Carroll 2002), at least in the UK. Furthermore, as argued by Avis (1993 as cited in Schubert et al. 2002), the external characteristics of post-Fordism are mainly similar to those of the ‘commercial culture’ and, in instances curriculum movements do not deal with basic distinctions between the two, their unsettled disagreements are progressed into course planning. ‘Citizenship’, ‘empowerment’, ‘entitlement’, ‘democracy’, ‘autonomy’ and student-oriented learning (Bloomer 1997, 18), which surface significantly in curriculum developments, are instances of notions in mainstream application in post-16 curriculum whose core relevance is their legitimising power and impose common agreement to changes in the curriculum but whose more threatening role is to confuse the need for serious evaluation of those reforms, and continue conforming. However, numerous of the changes to have occurred in post-16 curriculum since the 1980s, in spite of the problematic character of their primary rationale and evidence, show an apparent and clear effort to change from a limitedly oriented ‘preparation for work’ to some concept of preparation ‘for collaborative work relationships’, ‘for multi-skilled work’, ‘for citizenship’, and ‘for life’ (Bloomer 1997, 18). As a result, the once evident objective of vocational curriculum has become divided into ‘vocational education’ rooted in some wider notions of vocation and planning, as well as ‘occupational training’ (Ross 2000) whose main objective is to provide students with competencies for jobs. Other primary objectives of post-16 curriculum may fall under the label of ‘conformist’ or ‘general’ education. A ‘conformist’ education emphasises the essence of self-fulfilment over value and of the ‘learned individual’ over the professional expert (Stenhouse 1975). Such a curriculum is basically rationalised, as having value itself and, in post-16 curriculum, it is to be viewed as bringing about ultimate learning. It is a component of an educational practice which can be traced back to ancient times, which supported secondary and tertiary education in Britain up to and during the 19th century, which has deeply affected educational patterns of the 20th century and which has been manifested entirely and imposingly in its diverse ways in the efforts of liberal humanist teachers like Holt, Peters, Hirst, and Oakeshott (Bloomers 1997). It is interested in encouraging ‘ways of experiencing’ and, even though it is frequently conveyed in terms which hold a firm connection with academic subjects, it is not to be considered in terms of separate subject viewpoints (White 2003). Subjects, even though supported by an epistemological justification, are to an extent, subjective categorisations of knowledge developed for the objectives of fostering mass education and for dealing with the ‘knowledge explosion’ (Joseph et al. 2000). A ‘general’ education seeks to go beyond these partitions, to enable the learner to make sense of the world in its entire intricacy. Curriculum developments during the 20th century, however, signify a deviation from the ‘conformist’ practice as subject disciplines have developed to make the curriculum measurable and communicable. The School Certificate, GCSEs, CSEs, GCEs and the misnomer National Curriculum have merely verified the division of a curriculum for ‘conformist’ or ‘general’ education into roughly ten components (Joseph et al. 2000). Hence, what is there in post-16 curriculum which may be defined as ‘conformist’ or ‘general’, as a portion of a life-long learning process and as basically rationalised? Responses to this issue will differ based on their source. There are instances for arguing that GNVQ, BTEC, CPVE, and TVEI have been to a certain extent influenced by the premises of a ‘conformist’ education (Ecclestone 2002), otherwise a liberal education. However, these are certainly unfounded claims. In contrast, A-levels stem from liberal humanist institution (Bloomer 1997). Nonetheless, the opposing expectations that higher education admissions coaches, potential employers, teachers, and students have of A-levels make the opportunity of them ever satisfying the objectives of a liberal education distant without a doubt (Schubert et al. 2002). The most evident obstacle to A-level in relation to this is that any version of three subject-particular components from the dimension of knowledge is destined to lead to a partial curriculum although evaluated by the most minimum standard (Schubert et al. 2002). During the 1980s and 1990s, there have been several thoroughly envisioned efforts to set A-levels off their groove (for instance, The Association for Colleges et al., 1994; National Commission on Education, 1993) and it is apparent that there is a wide support base for reform of some sort (Bloomer 1997). Rapidly rather than soon after the A-level process will alter into a kind which will allow or oblige students to have a wider preparation for their courses (White 2003). Whether the results will equate to anything akin to liberal education curriculum, although, should be regarded uncertain. The relevance of culture and history in the formation and preservation of a fragmented post-compulsory education is seriously vital in any examination of our current situation and for any policy making which may develop from this (Richardson 1993). However this crucial component is quite frequently lacking from current guidelines and recommendations for reform which project that change can be customised merely by bolting-on enrichment curriculum to fixed courses or by claiming uniformity of esteem between ‘paths’ whose core objectives are founded in various and even hostile cultural issues (Thompson 2006). Beneath its surface, this policy [of declaring parity of esteem between separate pathways] is an instinctive appeal to the status quo, to familiarity and, it may be argued, to continuing social differentiation based upon educational background and qualification (Richardson 1993, 27-28). The separation between the academic and vocational, as it has been referred to, has both justified and been justified by fragmented cultural and educational concerns over a long history and is profoundly entrenched in our cultural structure. It will not be overwhelmed only by the amendment of course content, the reconstruction of ‘paths’ or by proclamations of ‘parity’ between uneven commodities (Ross 2000). The issue has to be dealt with at the infrastructure level (MacNaughton 2003). Reforms, if they are to initiate actual change, should give a complete and satisfying response to cultural norms, values, and interests. Reforming? During the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a radical narrowing of the notion of ‘curriculum’. In rules, planning and, to a degree, professional communities it has become little more than a recommendation of ‘content’ accompanied by a cycle of checks for its effective execution (Ross 2000). ‘Quality assurance’, ‘outcomes’ and ‘objectives’ currently cover everything, whilst ‘delivery’ is the symbol to define the procedure (Ross 2000). It has been shown in earlier studies how students and teachers ‘act upon’ recommendations of ‘content’ in the formation of their different descriptive curriculum and how the making of curriculum is a heuristic procedure greatly reliant on the involvement of individuals who it is designed for will be influenced by it (White 2003). According to Stenhouse (1975), “curriculum invites critical testing rather than acceptance” (p. 142); hence, the initial task of the practitioner is that of: ...interpreting the ‘curriculum’ as text... [But] and interpretive view of textual analysis would deny the authority of the document to impose its own meaning. Such a view implies that the practitioner has not only the right, but also the obligation, to make his/her own meaning of the text... If practitioners take seriously their obligations to regard the interpretation of curriculum texts as a practical action, that is, as one which engages their judgment, they will also take seriously the status of the students as learning subjects, not objects in the curriculum event... Moreover, learning will involve, not the production of certain artefacts... but the making of meaning (Grundy 1987, 69). Although the arguments and assumptions discussed so far have much repercussions for a curriculum for the new millennium, it is evident, first and foremost, that curriculum development cannot proceed anymore on the belief that recommendations apply to all and that students and teachers are nothing but consumers and players in the process; instead, curriculum should be prepared in absolute consideration of the fundamental contributions which students and teachers provide to their final creations (Grundy 1987). They should be prepared around those inputs. There is much to indicate the current post-16 curriculum is restricted in its ability to satisfy all the conditions of a curriculum for the 21st century. A-levels connect high premium to the redistribution of second-hand information or knowledge and to a passive mastery of traditions and rules (Ecclestone 2002). Whilst the BTEC National curriculum furnished some guarantee of person-centred, problem-centred, and trans-disciplinary course knowledge, the realisation of that promise was erratic, depending as it did upon the eccentricities of vocational courses and how students and teachers ‘acted upon’ the course content and learning prospected provided to them (Ecclestone 2002). However BTEC Nationals have been mostly substituted by Advanced GNVQ curriculum which, it seems, in a number of important regards, have diminished the aspirations which BTECs, momentarily, motivated (Rubin & Silva 2003). The structure of GNVQ is firmly unitised and does not promote the uncomplicated knowledge integration all over division boundaries (Hyland 1994); procedures are more homogenised than within BTEC whilst the entirety is subjected to an evaluation scheme which is in part oriented by the behaviourist-focused idea of competence of NCVQ and mainly aimed at assuring standardisation of outcome (Hyland 1994). Instead of a holistic framework, CBET [competence-based education and training] atomises and fragments learning into measurable chunks; rather than valuing process and experience, NVQs are concerned only with performance outcomes; and, most importantly, instead of encouraging critical reflection on alternative perspectives, the NCVQ model offers a monocultural view based on the satisfaction of narrow performance criteria and directed towards fixed and predetermined ends (Hyland 1994, 54). The NCVQ approach to competence and knowledge is totally in agreement with other reductivist and technicist concepts like ‘transferable skills’ (Bloomer 1997). These notions function not only to trivialise and generalise issues of knowledge but to misrepresent them; they are the instruments by which the entire discourse of learning and knowledge is made controllable by individuals who strive only in the technological field (Bloomer 1997). ‘Transferability’ is a very questionable notion when applied to competencies; it means a simple ‘sideways shift of knowledge from one context to the next’ (ibid, p. 20) as unique from any mechanism of knowledge reconstruction and deconstruction in relation to the specific prospects offered within the new setting. It does not consider context of knowledge, or the ‘situated nature of knowledge’ (Bloomer 1997, p. 20)—which has been claimed basically essential in justifying learning. There is a great deal of the current post-16 curriculum and the frame of thinking which preserves it which should abolished before preparations for education for the 21st century can be correctly performed (MacNaughton 2003). On the specific issue of competencies and knowledge, enhanced focus should be placed upon the fundamental situatedness and harmony of all knowledge, conventional distinctions between theory and practice should be questioned and the equally constitutive character of theory and practice be brought into the core of educational research (Schubert et al. 2002). As argued by MacNaughton (2003), concepts of skills and knowledge as divided, commodified units should be rapidly circulated and substituted by others which provide status to the social and individual interpretation of skill and knowledge and to tacit or reflexive knowledge, non-articulable, embedded and practical understanding. Transforming? Transformations in educational practice and policy are not merely evolutionary adjustments to alterations in public needs or to developments in professional knowledge. They are manifestations of political determination and the mechanism of political transformation (Thompson 2006). Since the election of the Thatcher government in the 1970s, the laissez-faire ideologies of the New Right have discovered absolute articulation in strategies of consumer preference and college incorporation, as institutions of education have been transferred to a competitive market. Market symbols have attended the transformation as learning and knowledge has developed into a commodity (Bloomer 1997): Ethos has become ‘corporate image’, teaching has become curriculum ‘delivery’, students have turned into ‘customers’ or, collectively, into ‘market niches’, and their achievements into ‘outcomes’. Even ‘student-centredness’, the imprecise butlong-standing hallmark of humanistic educational practices, has been hijacked to portray the consumer orientation of the new educational world (ibid, p. 16). However, this has been merely a narrow ‘free ‘market. Although particular autonomies have been given to consumers, producers have discovered their prospects increasingly reduced (Joseph et al. 2000). As with the schools sector’s National Curriculum, the post-16 curriculum has progressively been exposed to the control of the central government (Joseph et al. 2000). Immediate intervention in issues such as evaluated course work and, thru legitimately assigned ‘guangos’, in accountability mechanisms and curriculum design, has picked major educational decisions up of the dimensions of professional discretion, situating them rigidly within the realm of bureaucratic-political decision making (Ross 2000). The specialised objectives of teachers have seldom been faced with a more severe problem. Political involvement in curriculum making and, specifically, in issues regarding the objectives of education and description of knowledge, has evident consequences for teachers (White 2003). However it also has a significant implication for students. Not merely is the post-16 curriculum in transformation, it is a transformation which is questioned. Students have consistently had to make individual adjustments of some sort or other to the pressures that post-16 curriculum obliges them but, more and more, public debate encompasses the traditional standards of the educational institution where in those changes are initiated (Thompson 2006). It is a less secure contemporary world where previously ‘ignored’ theories about the value and nature of education are challenged and where forceful conflict instead of mutual enrichment may presently identify the ties between curriculum, students and teachers (White 2003). The capacity of studentship, as stated by MacNaughton (2003), currently involves some decisive, adaptive or ingenious response to these pressures. Conclusions The transformed post-16 curriculum provide for the prospect of innovative curriculum development to satisfy more the requirements of our highly diverse educational institutions. Although some may have favoured a more radical, braver image of a new curriculum, it is a practical response in the appropriate path, one possibly sensibly reduced to the bleak fact that not all teachers are eligible, and that there are actual dilemmas in accessing premium subjects particular to professional training and development. By way of a conclusion on MacNaughton’s definition of curricula, as it applies to post-16 curriculum, it is important to restate the major objectives of a curriculum and to verify several of the primary organisational aspects of that curriculum. The major underlying objective of a curriculum for post-16 education should be the emancipation of human will in education. We should deviate from the dependency ties cultivated by current curricula. The deliberate use of agency and the encouragement of self-dependence, freedom of thinking, shared working outlooks and traditions, moral, political, and social understanding and better recognition of self as an individual and as a learner is what should be realised. The ways to achieve these objectives require adjustments in our practices, rooted in adjustments in the ways where in we view and reflect upon teaching, learning and knowledge. Particularly, they will involve consideration of the interconnectedness of knowledge and for the potential of concepts of transdisciplinarity and collective specialisation; for the contextualised feature of learning and knowledge and for learning’s social conditions; for the application of evaluation with the intention of supporting learning and not with political interests; and, importantly, for learners and teachers as agents in the creation of their curriculum. As stated by MacNaughton (2003), a curriculum should provide the ‘room’ for teachers to use their professional discretion and for students to help the procedure of curriculum making. Moreover, it should provide ‘room’ for young individuals to be capable of becoming the individuals they do not expect them to become: it should be cultivated and constantly re-mediated around educational careers, not despite of them. The realisation of the post-16 curriculum will rely on the ability of legislators to overcome such culturally and historically strengthened obstacles. It will imply facing political demands for comparability and for basic industrial responsibility. It will also rely greatly on the value of thought used in the knowledge selection and structuring, its creation and dissemination. Policy making in the future should encourage knowledge integration throughout those borders which presently govern and divide the post-16 curriculum. The new curriculum should be formed around new ideas of expertise which reveal not just the interdependency and interconnectedness of knowledge but the contextualised nature of learning and knowledge. It should guarantee that the educational familiarity of all students involve not just a breadth of particular learning but, significantly, that of creating, verifying and using knowledge in different practical settings. It should also guarantee the opportunity to study knowledge from different job-related and academic perspectives and from within various moral, economic, political, cultural and social settings. Given the arguments discussed in this essay, and given also the pressures of work and life in the 21st century, one may be encouraged to challenge the appropriateness of the current post-16 system and its different curricula for prospective objectives. The dilemma is not that we do not know and recognise by now the significance of teacher and learner agency in the making of curriculum, it is that we do not understand the entire repercussions of such arguments. The debate which most usually attends the definition of MacNaughton (2003) of curriculum is one which involves the perception that recommendation counts for everybody: adjust the proposal and you will modify the practice. Provided that such perceptions are permitted to continue and control, opportunities for the complete exercise of human will in learning will be mislaid. References Bloomer, M., (1997). Curriculum Making in Post-16 Education: The Social Conditions of Studentship. London: Routledge. Ecclestone, K., (2002). Learning Autonomy in Post-16 Education: The Politics and Practice of Formative Assessment. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Grundy, S., (1987). Curriculum: Product or Praxis. London: Falmer Press. Hyland, T., (1994). Competence, Education and NVQs. London: Cassell. Joseph, P.B., Braymann, S.L., Windschitl, M.A., Mikel, E.R. & Green, N.S., (2000). Cultures of Curriculum. London: Routledge. Richardson, W., (1993). ‘The 16-19 Education and Training Debate: “Deciding Factors” in British Public Policy Process’, in W. Richardson, J. Woolhouse and D. Finegold (eds) The Reform of Post-16 Education and Training in England and Wales. Harlow: Longman. Ross, A., (2000). 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