Reading Geoff Hayward's message is very depressing. From 1987 to 1992 I was
one of my country's representatives on an OECD working group on school to
work transition. During that period I was able to study the subject on the
ground in all but 3 of the OECD countries.
Reading Geoff's message I conclude - nothing has changed unless to get
worse. I eventually resigned from what was an increasingly frustrating
exercise and moved on to other things.
The fundamental contradiction is between what educational research says
about learning and development and the assumptions it makes about the
purposes of formal education, and what the community at large believes it is
funding a public education system for. When I say 'community at large'. I
mean the community when it is acting as an economic entity.
One of the most clearly indicative phenomena of the absolute confusion that
this engenders is to ask employers what they want from the education system,
with the questions worded to elicit their perspective as an employer. Then
ask the same questions but with the wording designed to elicit their views
as a parent of their own children. Most people can hold contradictory views
without any sense of there being a contradiction. It is a classic tragedy of
the commons.
Public policy - and especially public policy in the English speaking
countries (whose cultural and historical roots are held in common and
derived from the evolving roles of the English public schools, and parish
schools during the Industrial Revolution) - simply reflects this ongoing
confusion. Education reform since 'A Nation at Risk' has sought to align the
school systems in English speaking countries even more towards the
requirements of the economic system (that document did for us all - not just
the USA).
That's why I got out. There was a moment when I was repeating my oft-sung
song at a meeting in Paris, when I saw the body language of the non English
speaking members of the group after they got the translation (there is no
more powerful communicator than the effects of that translation delay when
you see the body response to what you said about 15 seconds ago). I was
quoting from Sue Berryman and Sylvia Scribner at the time. Then they were
all looking at me as though 'how did they let HIM in? What the hell is he
talking about?'. I went back to my hotel, wrote my letter of resignation to
NZ, and started figuring out what to do next with my life.
(And I didn't even mention the tacit assumptions about social
reproduction.....)
Phillip Capper,
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business Ltd. (WEB Research),
Level 9
142 Featherston Street
(PO Box 2855)
WELLINGTON
New Zealand
Ph: +64 4 499 8140
Fx: +64 4 499 8395
Mb: +64 021 519 741
-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Hayward
[mailto:geoff.hayward@educational-studies.oxford.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, 19 February 2002 1:57 a.m.
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: school/work
We also have a research group working on school to work transitions. The UK
legislation is like that of the US, full of contradictions. What seems to be
happening in both the US and the UK is that employers are pushing what would
have been considered to be legitimate training functions surrounding the
induction of workers back into the schooling system in a highly mechanistic
way. Thus, employers that I work with are very fond of the term 'hitting the
ground running' when they describe their ideal recruit. They appear to have
little understanding of the sorts of situational knowledge that young people
entering work places have to work with in order to function effectively. In
the UK we are currently going through another round of what have now become
known as 'key skills', for example, which in previous incarnations were
termed core or generic skills. These have been identified as communication,
IT, application of number, problem solving, improving your own learning and
performance, and team working. I will leave it to your imagination what the
content of these qualifications might be. They are assessed, at least in the
case of the first three, by written examinations and they are of course
thought to be transferable. Thus, a failure of a young person to demonstrate
their communicative competence upon entry to the workplace is prima facie
evidence of a failure of the school/university system.
In our work we are trying to unpick these ideas both philosophically and
empirically. Currently, we are particularly interested in ideas of
communicative competence and what that might mean in different workplaces,
especially in relation to the use of Information Technology. We are
approaching this largely using a sociocultural lens and trying to develop
ideas about learner identity. Ultimately, we hope, through working with both
business firms and teachers, to be able to provide advice both to policy
makers and suggestions for practice for practitioners in schools and
universities, and HR professionals in companies, struggling to 'deliver'
this stuff about more sensible models and pedagogies.
If anyone is interested in knowing more then please let me know. Ongoing
discussions on XMCA are very helpful.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 5:18 PM
Subject: school/work
>
> Eric-- I am sure the legislation is full of contradictions. Helen W
> is working on the ground in this area and can hopefully enlighten further
> on whether ANY useful openinng in this area of practice would reward
> investigation for understanding links between education, work, class, etc.
> mike
>
>
>
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