Research on the transition from vocational education and training to higher education

Dunbar-Goddet, H. & Ertl, H. (2007). Research on the transition from vocational education and training to higher education. Degrees of Success Working Paper 1.

This paper discusses the method used in the previous paper I looked at. It has some useful information to consider, relating to questions. It also makes me realise that everything seems to have been done before. After all, this paper is 8 years old.

Context: The current debate on WP in HE in relation to VET needs to consider two issues:
1. The increase in participation in post-compulsory education;
2. Issues of parity of VQs and 'academic' qualifications (i.e. A levels).

Despite the expansion in the HE sector, the greatest levels of growth are seen in students from the traditional source, that is middle class backgrounds who have entered HE with traditional A level qualifications. A substantial increase in VQs in secondary education has not opened the doors to an equality of access to HE. There is tracking of VET students to less prestigious HEIs.

Government policy under New Labour was to improve the perceived academic value of VQs. The authors found a gap in the knowledge about transition from level three VQs to HE and whether increasing participation in VET has led to widened participation in HE.

Project overview: large scale data analysis and some more in depth interviews, both of students and tutors.

Research design: A variety of questions, including "To what extent are students in VQs prepared fro studies in HE?" "What mechanisms are in place to remedy any lack of preparation?"

Since the 1970s arrange of questionnaires have been used to measure how students approach study in HE (Richardson, 2000). See: Approaches to Studying Inventory, Learning and Studying Questionnaire. See also Ertl, Hayward et al., 2007: The student learning experience in higher education literature review report for the HEA

See also: Christie et al. (2006) From college to university: Looking backwards, looking forwards.

The research had not only a question on preparedness for HE but also on unpreparedness. I would also need to consider asking questions about parental education and whether or not they were first generation HE. Other questions could cover the main challenges they find in academic skills, and how they overcome them., and what their expectations were about academic study at HE and how they thought it would differ from FE. The links above can help me formulate my questions. See p. 28 of article for the questions they used.

They start off with gentle questions such as "Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, for example can you describe the qualifications you obtained before coming into higher education?", "What subject did you study?", "Before you came to university, how well did you think your qualification prepared you for further study?" "Now you've been at university for a while, how well do you now think your vocational qualification prepared you for study at university?"

I need to think around these questions, and then think about what questions I can ask that will help me to answer *my* specific research question. It will be important to make sure we both understand what we mean by academic skills as this is what I'm interested in, rather than general differences between college and HE.

Interviewees are not automatons

Reading from:

Foddy, W. (1993). Interviews and questionnaires: Theory and practice in social research. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

This information is taken from chapter 2 of this book. The chapter is entitled: A theoretical framework.

This paper links to the session we undertook on questionnaires and interviews. In it, Foddy discusses the issues associated with both a quantitative method of survey and also qualitative. Foddy introduces symbolic interactionism (SI) as a way of social actors in a social situation negotiating a shared definition of the situation.

An overview

Foddy introduces the positivist approach which attempts to discover the 'real world' 'out there'. To do this they use a 'stimulus/response' model of questioning, with carefully controlled questions and also answers. They aim for standardised understanding and standardised responses, to provide validity.

Foddy discusses ten key assumptions associated with positivistic surveys, primarily that the researcher provides clear definitions and the respondent is able to provide appropriate standardised answers in the specific situation, and that answers from different respondents can be meaningfully compared.

Pawson (n.d.) suggests that questions and answers are simplified to a 'lowest common denominator' approach. This is a very behaviourist approach. Control is by the researcher, trying to formulate standardised questions and limiting the respondent to standardised answers.

In contrast, 'qualitative field researchers' are interested in how human beings 'experience' their world, for example through the use of non-directive, open questions. They are committed to understanding the respondent's 'meaning' so use near-to-naturalistic unstructured interviews. The researcher and respondent should come to a joint construction of meaning. The data are narrative. Questions have been asked about he 'validity' of qualitative researchers' data, and the fact that it is difficult to replicate studies.

Within quantitative research, they still cannot control for the respondent not understanding the question 'correctly'. This is equally true for qualitative research, with the respondent often looking to the interviewer to show evidence of arriving at a "shared understanding" of questions and answers.
[Note: may need to consider Lyotardian paralogy here, to go past this shared understanding - see my notes on Lather].

Symbolic Interactionist (SI) theory

SI was coined by Blumer (1967, 1969).
- Humans interpret and define each other's actions; they do not react in a stimulus/response way.
- Humans can be the objects of their own attention - the concept of 'self';
- Conscious social behaviour is intentional. We construct and rehearse different possible lines of action before choosing how to act in a given social situation;
- These are ongoing processes, occurring at every stage of a social interaction. Both parties take part in this. Each social actor takes their view of the other into account but also the other's view of themselves, when constructing and choosing possible lines of action.
- Human intelligence is, in part reflexive, for example when you 'take the role' of the other.

SIs claim that social actors in any social situation are constantly negotiating a shared definition of the situation.

Implications of SI theory for social research

Survey researchers and qualitative field researchers have paid little attention to respondents 'taking the role' of the researcher when framing answers. Similarly the reason for asking the question. SI theory suggests that respondents will constantly try to reach a mutually shared definition of the situation with the researcher. Respondents search for clues if the information they require are not forthcoming. Different respondents may attach to different 'clues' and so differently interpret a question - so there is little reason for comparing respondents' different answers.

There are at least four additional sources of response variability that the researcher should keep in mind when formulating questions. Different respondents can interpret the same question in many different ways and give many different answers to it.

My thoughts

In the questionnaire exercise in the first weekend, it was clear to see that including free text answers in such a questionnaire led to a wide range of interpretations of the question. The questionnaire wasn't designed particularly well, but even so the relatively straightforward questions were open to different interpretations. It's probable that the same respondent could answer differently at a different time. So, quantitative work is subject to this issue.

The SI viewpoint seems to be to accept/embrace this multitude of potential answers. The participant will take their cues from the researcher and respond to the researcher to try and reach concordance.

Relevance to me? Again, I think this highlights the importance of thinking about my own frames of reference and being aware of them throughout an interview process, from writing the questions to the questioning itself and then on to the analysis. Just to be aware that the respondent is not only responding to the question I ask but more particularly the question they think I asked, and looking to me to help them provide the answer they think I want. Difficult!

 

Weekend 1

My first EdD weekend took place on Friday evening and on Saturday. A chance to meet the other people on the long journey to a doctorate. Many of the others are specialists in primary and early years, with a smattering of university employees and one or two secondary teachers. There's even a retired  teacher who has already completed a PhD after retiring. whilst some seemed to have an understanding of some of the concepts, I wasn't the only one who seemed new to it all.

After a brief course introduction, we started into the first module, research methodologies for professional enquiry. This is the source of the reading I've been doing over the past fortnight. There was a brief overview of the assignment, then straight into considering our views on research. We worked as small groups to winnow 27 statements about research down to what we considered the six most important. We were the only group to make it to six, and we managed to have quite a discussion whilst doing so. I wish I'd noted down the statements, but in general, they seemed to relate to an interpretivist viewpoint, from what I've read.

One group only agreed on a single statement - that research is always parasitic. Our group did discuss this, but we discounted it. Parasitism is a negative process to the host, and whilst some research (if not done ethically) *may* cause harm to the participant(s), overwhelmingly research will at least cause no harm and can have positive effects. The whole point of critical theory paradigm seems to be that one completes research in order to transform the lives of those who are underdogs and have been ignored or actively put down by the dominant section of society.

We were then allocated one of the pre-reading texts to go over ready for an activity the next day. Typically, it was, for our group, the one paper I'd barely started reading. I had a chance to read over Patti Lather's paper once that night and then first thing in the morning, but it made little sense. Some more time reading during the activity did clarify areas for me, but it wasn't easy. More on that in the blog post about that article.

In the afternoon, we looked at the role of questionnaires as methods of gathering data. The tutor introduced two opposing schools of thought (post-positivist and interpretative. We then analysed a questionnaire from one of these viewpoints. Half of the class from a behaviourist viewpoint and half from a symbolic interactionist view. The summary was that, despite it being a questionnaire from a well-respected research group, the design of it was rather appalling, ultimately satisfying no-one. An extension of this activity was to investigate some of the key themes drawn out from one  of the free-answer questions on the questionnaire. I found this very interesting. Note to self: could I use this approach in my assignment? We then looked at the interpretation published by the research group. fascinating differences appeared, giving a positive spin to the results. It also illustrated one of the research definitions we did choose the previous evening: research conceals as well as reveals. It selected in particular (privileged) responses, whilst 'selecting out' others.

After an investigation of our view of ourselves as professionals and people, the day was finished. Reading to do, writing up to clarify, and thinking about assignment. Lots of things to do if I want to stay on track and organised.

Planned blog posts:
1. Complete reading blogposts
2. Post on starting the assignment
3. Reworking notes taken during the weekend
4. Read and blog on the reading we were given during the weekend.

A scary first session over.