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How policy impacts on practice and how practice does not impact on policy
Author(s) -
Coffield Frank,
Edward Sheila,
Finlay Ian,
Hodgson Ann,
Spours Ken,
Steer Richard,
Gregson Maggie
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1080/01411920701582363
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , public relations , tutor , public policy , set (abstract data type) , work (physics) , policy analysis , education policy , professional development , service (business) , pedagogy , sociology , political science , psychology , public administration , higher education , business , marketing , mechanical engineering , philosophy , linguistics , computer science , law , programming language , engineering
The TLRP project reported on in this article attempts to understand how the Learning and Skills sector functions. It traces how education and training policy percolates down through many levels in the English system and how these levels interact, or fail to interact. The authors first focus upon how policy impacts upon the interests of three groups of learners: unemployed people in adult and community learning centres, adult employees in work‐based learning and younger learners on Level 1 and Level 2 courses in further education. They focus next upon how professionals in these three settings struggle to cope with two sets of pressures upon them: those exerted by government and a broader set of professional, institutional and local factors. They describe in particular how managers and tutors mediate national policy and translate it (and sometimes mistranslate it) into local plans and practices. Finally, the authors criticise the new government model of public service reform for failing to harness the knowledge, good will and energy of staff working in the sector, and for ignoring what constitutes the main finding of the research: the central importance of the relationship between tutor and students.