RaPAL , July 2011. UEA, Norwich Amy Burgess, University of Exeter

1. Practitioners’ Perspectives on Functional Skills:how do literacy educators interpret policy and translate it into practice? RaPAL , July 2011. UEA, Norwich Amy Burgess, University of Exeter

2. Outline of Workshop • Introduction to the pilot study • Reflections on your own experience of implementing literacy policy • Using the idea of ‘translation’ to understand the relationship between policy and practice • Findings from pilot study • Discussion of pilot study • Response to themes • Implications for practice and research

3. Introduction to the Pilot Study • In-depth interviews with 8 practitioners • Various roles and settings • Varying lengths of experience • Different regions of England

4. Interview Topics • How is the transition to FS experienced by practitioners? • How far do they feel they have they been able to influence the development of FS? • How do they think the introduction of FS will change their practice? • What is their understanding of the policy’s rationale and the vision of literacy that underpins it? • How far do these accord with their own values as educators?

5. Your experience of implementing policy • What is‘policy’ ? • How do you understand the relationship between policy and practice? • How do you understand your own role in relation to literacy policy? (10 minutes)

6. Themes from interviews Policy is ……… • Remote from practice • Imposed ‘from above’ • Not always in line with practitioners’ values • About money – what gets funded • About the requirements of awarding bodies • Not always in students’ best interests

7. Can practitioners be agents of change? More often than not, teachers working in this field are motivated by a clear sense of purpose, even moral purpose, and a commitment to social justice. If they are to function as agents of change, and agents of the social, cultural and, particularly, the economic transformations that the government trusts Skills for Life will achieve, then they must not only feel included in the reform process, but share ownership of the reform initiatives. (Cara et al 2008)

8. Another view of policy • Policies do not normally tell you what to do, they create circumstances in which the range of options available in deciding what to do are narrowed or changed or particular goals or outcomes are set. A response must still be put together, constructed in context, off-set against other expectations. All of this involves creative social action not robotic reactivity. • (Ball 2006:46)

9. Translation, not implementation • Policies change in the process of translation • One policy can be translated in many different ways

10. Actor-Network Theory • Not a theory of what to think, but a guide to how to think • Its aim is to ‘intervene in educational issues to reframe how we might enact and engage with them.’ (Fenwick and Edwards 2010:1) • Things in the social world are not fixed entities, but constantly changing ‘actor-networks’

11. Strengths of ANT • It foregrounds the importance of power relations • It shows the weak points and gaps in networks – the spaces for alternative ways of thinking and acting

12. Translating the abstract into the concrete • I wish I could stop using the word functional ……… I don’t want it to get mixed up with FS. Being functional is not the same as FS ….. it’s all down to the individual person, it depends on your life. • You read the marking guidance but the trouble is in real life students don’t do what the marking guidance says.

13. Translating by creating documents • I’ve got a FS file on my computer and I’ve got examples of teaching and learning activities, problem solving activities that were churned out by FSSP, developed by LSN or I think Nord Anglia were part of it as well. But it still didn’t really tell me when push came to shove, how do you support an assessor in the workplace who’s having to look at mastery, as it was called, of functional skills, to work in partnership with the literacy tutor in the provider itself who’s having to teach the FS curriculum. These kind of questions, these very practical questions of models and implementation, to my mind aren’t dealt with through any formal support materials.

14. Translating SfL Teachers into FS Teachers • There were tensions between preparing students to do the tests and preparing the students for what they actually wanted the literacy for and I think usually most tutors were able to manage both at the same time and I think it might just become that little bit more difficult. • [Do you think the idea of functional literacy is a good basis for literacy education?] Not to me, because I’m interested in all the other stuff around it. That’s what most adult basic skills tutors are interested in, the full picture. It’s about the mechanics, not the full picture.

15. Discussion • I’ve given some examples of how practitioners find spaces for alternative ways of acting and thinking in the FS network, can you think of any others from your own experience? • What implications do these findings have for the way you think about your own work? • Any suggestions about how I might take this research forward? (15 minutes)