In the UK, further education (FE) colleges play a key role in providing literacy programmes. This article draws upon our research in FE, with a focus on literacy, learning and identity, to explore how different learners are positioned differently depending on the value of the literacy practices they bring with them from home. Indeed, it is…

Several characteristics are necessary to have a flourishing workplace: one is organisational learning. Modern workplaces call for individual responsibility, ability, and willingness to share expertise, as well as continuous learning. However, critical elements of the process of organisational learning -- participating, knowing, cooperating and…

In addition to the familiar occupational standards that underpin National Vocational Qualifications, the UK has a parallel if less complete system of competence or practice standards that are developed and controlled by professional bodies. While there is a certain amount of overlap between the two types of standard, recent research points to a…

By 2015, all young people must participate in some form of education and training until they are aged 18. This review discusses the challenges and opportunities involved if vocational education and training is to contribute to this raising of the participation age. We argue that as well as ensuring that young people who have made a full-time…

Research on reading in the lifelong-learning sector has tended to focus on the attitudes, habits and practices of the recipients of further education (FE), or the practices of literacy within the cultural and contextual environments of the subjects and spaces of further education. Although teachers' conceptualisations of literacy are often…

In this paper we discuss perceptions of the benefits of learner-generated podcasts for supporting postgraduate engineering students in a mathematics-intensive course. The course under study had previously been highlighted as one in which students had struggled to attain knowledge that formed an essential underpinning to their degree programme.…

This article assesses the role that middle managers play in creating and sustaining entrepreneurial institutions. To date little is known about this role, with attention favouring a more macro-level, top-down focus on institutional leaders, and/or a micro-level, bottom-up focus on individual enterprise champions. This focus on unidirectional…

This paper looks at works of various authors on the supervision of doctoral students and their expectations. We aim through reading, experience and reflection to offer a logical framework that will aid in the better understanding of the process for those new to supervision. The two authors draw upon experience as new supervisors via the use of…

Higher education is increasingly available to a wider range of people, not just recent school-leavers with established academic ability. One way of encouraging this trend is to provide credit transfer into higher education (HE) qualifications for people's prior vocational education and training (VET) studies. However, it is generally…

As the internationalisation of higher education has become an important element in university global competitiveness, universities are engaged in initiatives to internationalise their curricula. Among the strategies employed to internationalise the campuses is the recruitment of highly skilled international faculty. The recruitment of such faculty…

The Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) is a two-year senior school certificate available to secondary students in Victoria, Australia, and has been operational for almost a decade. It is delivered by secondary schools and further education providers. In 2010, two programmes from each of these providers were reviewed and considered in…

The dissonance between Eastern and Western learning approaches is regarded as an obstacle for Chinese students in adjusting to Western education environments, and one of the reasons is the lack of an understanding of Chinese learning approaches, that is, Chinese learners are uncritically perceived as rote learners. This paper investigates Chinese…

This article examines the development of new teachers' practice and conceptions of teaching in English further education (FE). Drawing upon data from observations and interviews involving both trainee and serving teachers at a large FE college, it discusses and applies a restricted conceptualisation of culture to investigate the influence of…

What it means to be a "professional" in further education (FE) in England has been the subject of ongoing debate over the last two decades. In an attempt to codify professionalism, New Labour developed a package of reforms, crystallised by the introduction of professional standards and qualifications and a new inspection framework under…

Workplace influences on Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) academics' development as researchers were examined in two Chinese higher education institutions in this qualitative collective case study. Data sources included research documentation and interviews with 12 Chinese TEFL academics. Both institutions were keen on…