In a post on Monday I explained how the UK government was planning to privatise the education system through the establishment of Academies. This post, which is an abridged version of a document written by the National Union of Teachers explains why the NUT opposes Academies. It was published last year in reaction to the Labour Parties limited programme of establishing Academies and before today’s announcement by the UK schools minister that he aims to create over 200 Academies this year.

Academies hand over state schools to sponsors

Creating Academies in place of community or foundation schools involves the transfer of publicly funded assets to unaccountable sponsoring bodies.   Academy sponsors are given control of a modern independent school set up as a company limited by guarantee. Sponsors receive the entire school budget directly from the Government. Academies on the scale proposed by the Government have the effect of transferring billions of pounds worth of publicly funded assets in the form of buildings and land into the hands of private sponsors.

Many sponsors are unsuitable

Sponsors are not required to have educational expertise or experience. As examples, Academy sponsors include Charles Dunstone, the founder and Chief Executive of Carphone Warehouse, Aston Villa football club, Christian philanthropist, Sir Peter Vardy, of Reg Vardy car dealership and David Samworth, a sausage, pies and ready meals manufacturer.

Some sponsors have used their involvement in Academies to further their business interests or in the case of some sponsors to impose their individual religious views on a school.

Academies Threaten Fair Admissions Procedures

Academies have a destabilising effect on the capacity of other neighbouring schools to achieve a balance of abilities amongst their pupil intakes.  The publicity surrounding Academies gives parents the impression that they are the “best” secondary schools in the area irrespective of the quality of other schools.  Their brand new buildings and glossy image on show during visits by Government ministers can act as magnets for parents.  This has resulted in some Academies being heavily over-subscribed, irrespective of the realities of their educational attainment.

There is a wide diversity of practice regarding admissions in Academies including entrance tests, various forms of banding, sibling places, random selection such as lotteries as well as selection by aptitude. The criteria used by Academies in respect of distance from school, however, also varies.  The complexity of these arrangements means that there is a lack of transparency for parents in understanding how the Academies’ admissions systems work.

Academies threaten teachers; pat and working conditions

All Academies are able to set their own pay, conditions and working time arrangements for newly appointed teachers joining the Academy.  In some Academies, pay and conditions arrangements for such teachers are similar or identical to those for teachers in local authority maintained state schools.  In others, teachers’ pay and conditions can be very different.

In some Academies teachers are being expected to work an extended day and for more hours in each academic year.   Also, in many Academies, teacher and support staff Trade Unions are not recognised….

Academies do not offer pupils a better education than other local schools

Academies are based on a flawed premise that standards will be raised simply through designating a school as an Academy and by transferring it to a sponsor. There is no independent evidence that Academies are delivering significantly improved results at a faster rate than Academies. PriceWaterhouseCoopers Fifth Annual Report, published in November 2008, concluded: “There is insufficient evidence to make a definitive judgement about Academies as a model for school improvement”.

Academies undermine the independent role of school governors

The governance arrangements for Academies differ substantially from those of local authority schools which have a balance of places for key “stakeholders”, particularly elected parent and staff governors, as well as representatives of the local community and the local authority.

In an Academy, the external Academy sponsor always appoints the majority of governors, even when the local authority is a co-sponsor. Academies are only obliged to have one parent governor.

The DCSF Standards website states that most Academies also have a teacher governor (either elected or appointed), a staff governor (either elected or appointed) and many include community representatives. This is not a requirement however.

Academies have a damaging impact on other neighbouring schools and on local authorities

Academies can create or reinforce local hierarchies of schools.  The entitlement of Academies to select ten per cent of their pupils means that they are able to choose more academically successful pupils.

Figures from various sources show that Academies exclude disproportionately high numbers of students. …In December 2008 the Institute of Education reported that Academies that expel large numbers of disruptive pupils are having a potentially bad impact on neighbouring schools. The Institute of Education’s findings support claims by critics that Academies are failing to meet their original objective of raising standards in deprived areas not only for their own pupils but also for their “family of schools” and the wider community.

Yesterday saw the expected announcement by the UK DemCon Coalition government of the closure of Becta, the British Educational Communication and Technology Agency, as part of a massive cut back in public services.

In many ways this was an easy hit for the government. Becta has always had a mixed reputation in the educational technology community; although much of its work was respected, particularly the research, other policies especially around procurement and its alleged bias against open source were less popular.

However, there is no doubt that the closure signals the end of an era in technology development and implementation in UK education. Educational technologists in many European countries have long looked at the UK in envy. Reliant on either centralised government led initiatives, or local support and projects, there has been far less opportunities for developing and implementing effective programmes and strategies for technology in learning. Germany today continues to languish far behind many other counties in the use of technology in schools. Arguably one of the reasons for this is the lack of ability of the regional Lander governments who are responsible for education to develop coherent programmes to support educational technology development. There are of course exceptions, often driven by innovative regional governments, including the Extramadura programme around open source software. But nevertheless, and despite the dubious obsession of the previous UK Labour government with output driven targets, the last ten years has seen sustained support for developing educational technology in schools which has enabled a movement beyond isolated islands of effective practice to the more mainstream adoption of education technology for learning. Becta has played an important part in this.

As Becta themselves have pointed out, the closure may well not save money with the ending of the technology procurement support for schools.

The closure  probably reflects wider ConDem policies. One is the conservative myth that somehow if we return to old fashioned rote learning and traditional pedagogies allied to stronger school discipline, rigid school uniform policies etc. then somehow school standards will improve. Naturally technology plays no part in a chalk and talk view of learning. And the end result of such policies will be the further alienation of many students from the schooling system, an increase in the already growing class nature of the educational system and a widening of the reality gap between the way young learn and the practice of schools.

The second is a movement towards privatising education. According to the Guardian newspaper, the government will announce tomorrow their intention to allow “500 secondary schools and 1,700 primary schools have the freedom of city academy status by the summer.” The Guardian explains “Academies have greater freedom to set their curriculum, pay rates and admissions policies.” Such a move heralds selective admission policies which are set to benefit students from richer families and the breaking up of collective pay bargaining for teachers. But central to the policy of City Academies, which were introduced by the previous Labour Government, was the desire to introduce private funding for schools. Academies  receive state funds but are privately sponsored and run independently of local authorities. As Fiona Miller explains they are “independently owned, run by sponsors and loosely governed by “funding agreements” – confidential commercial contracts that don’t necessarily give pupils and parents the same protection under the law in areas like admissions, special needs and exclusions.Their governing bodies are controlled by the sponsors, who are often based miles away from where the school is situated. In the Conservative free schools model, private sector companies based in other parts of the world are being groomed to take over English schools.”

Such a policy is hidden behind an rhetoric of protecting direct services. In other words money is taken from an agency such as Becta with a remit to support learning for all students and given to private organisations to spend as they wish, all under the guise of greater accountability and democracy.

The problem with Becta was not that its policy on this or that was right or wrong, or even its perceived lack of support for open source. The issue was that as a government controlled agency, or quango, it often seemed to remote from the practice and everyday experience of teachers and learners. Whilst schools in the UK have traditionally been run by elected local governments, the previous Labour government set about a policy of centralisation, introducing a relatively rigid national curriculum, setting endless performance targets and national testing and giving increased powers to central agencies. The ConDem government is set to build on that beginning by the progressive and creeping privatisation of education. Becta is but one victim of that process. Of course there will be continued development of educational technology. But expect to see less emphasis on research. Expect to see less concern over the learner experience. Expect to see less concern over support for lower achieving students.  Expect to see contracts placed with the friends of Academy directors in this brave new free world. And expect to see a widening of the class division in the provision of education.

Another in the occasional series on the use of the internet for Careers Advice, Information and Guidance. This series is based on research undertaken by Jenny Bimrose, Sally Anne Barnes and Graham Attwell for the UK based trust CfBT. If you are interested in reading more, the full report can be downloaded for free from the CfBT web site.

The proliferation of the use of ICT has combined with other factors (like changes in family structure and decline in manufacturing industries) to bring about profound shifts in how young people make sense of themselves. For example, the traditional move from identifying with the family to a single peer group has now been replaced by identifying with family to multiple peer groups, many of which are virtual. ICT also ensures that young people now have access to an instant, international, dynamically-shifting and vast range of stories and forms of knowledge that can inform their identity management. These identities are rarely unified, but rather multiple in nature and increasingly fragmented (Murakami, 2008).

All of this has relevance for young people’s transitions into and through the world of work. The availability of technology influences the way that clients’ access and use guidance services. It also has the potential to support transitions, for example, by helping young people identify transferable skills, help connect them to the job market and support the development of the critical analytic skills for negotiating their way through both their virtual and physical worlds (Riley, 2008). To perform any of these tasks successfully, however, young people are likely to require support from a technologically confident and effective facilitator. It is also suggested that they will also need help with learning how to engage with technology without getting lost or overwhelmed, as well as protection from bullying facilitated by technology, invasion of privacy and advertising (Riley, 2008). Even where the role of ICT expands to respond to the needs of young people in transition there is, therefore, a continuing need for professional support for Careers Personal Advisors

This professional support will need to adapt and accommodate the different requirements that young people have of technology. A fourfold typology that emerged from recent research helps us appreciate the levels of differentiation that occur in the engagement with ICT amongst young people. These four types of relationships comprise:

• Digital pioneers – advanced and innovative users of the potential of technology;
• Creative producers – building websites, positing movies, photos and music to share with friends and family;
• Everyday communicators – making their lives easier through texting and MSN; and
• Information gatherers – typically Google and Wikipedia addicts, for whom cutting and pasting are a way of life.

(Green & Hannon, 2007, p.11)

These styles that young people have of interacting with technology need to be considered when designing and implementing internet-based services for young people, though a crucial factor in implementing effective guidance services will be the Personal Advisors and their managers. They typically see the world very differently from their clients and yet it is often these adults who mediate the type of ICT used in guidance and the ways it should be used. The relative lack of impact of technology in education to date highlights not only the importance of providing young people with a more active and central voice in determining the nature and role of ICT in their learning experiences, but also the need to shift away from focusing too much on hardware and more towards relationships, networks and skills (Attwell, Cook and Ravenscroft, 2009; Green and Hannon, 2007; Riley, 2008).

References

Attwell, G., Cook, J., and Ravenscroft, A. (2009). Appropriating technologies for contextual knowledge: Mobile Personal Learning Environments. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Second World Congress on the Information Society.

Green, H., and Hannon, C. (2007). Their Space: Education for a digital generation. London: Demos. Retrieved 3 August 2009, from http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Their%20space%20-%20web.pdf

Murakami, K. (2008). Re-imagining the future: young people’s construction of identities through digital storytelling. London: DCSF/Futurelab. Retrieved 4 August 2009, from http://www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/final_murakami_youngpeoplesdigitalstorytelling_20081201_jb2.pdf

Riley, S. (2008). Identity, community and selfhood: understanding the self in relation to contemporary youth cultures. London: Futurelab/DCSF. Retrieved 4 August 2009, from http://www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/final_riley_identitycommunityselfhood_20081201_jb.pdf

Yesterday’s OLDaily included excellent coverage by Stephen Downes of the growing Facebook privacy row. Personally I particularly enjoyed Danah Boyds rant:

What pisses me off the most are the numbers of people who feel trapped. Not because they don’t have another choice. (Technically, they do.) But because they feel like they don’t. They have invested time, energy, resources, into building Facebook what it is. They don’t trust the service, are concerned about it, and are just hoping the problems will go away. It pains me how many people are living like ostriches. If we don’t look, it doesn’t exist, right?? This isn’t good for society. Forcing people into being exposed isn’t good for society. Outting people isn’t good for society, turning people into mini-celebrities isn’t good for society.

And I very much like Frances Bell’s comment citing Tony Hirst, “Ah, but you’re not Facebook’s customer. Advertisers are their customers. You are the product they’re selling.”

My Facebook account is still hanging on, but it is getting very close to disappearing (and all I use it for is forwarding my Twitter feed anyway. I have at least 20 friendship requests ending from people who I have no idea who are!).

Of course Stephen Downes is right when he says the answer is learning to manage our digital identities. But I am not sure digital literacy alone is enough. I think young people should be able to understand why they need to manage their identities on Facebook as well as how. And this goes way beyond internet safety. They should be able to understand the reasons why Facebook is making such drastic changes to its privacy policies and what such changes mean. Of course this involves judgement. I am prepared to accept the Google Buzz balls up on privacy was just that – a balls up.

The Facebook privacy issues are not the result of bad planning or even evangelical thinking on behalf of the Facebook directors. They are driven purely by the desire to make more profit for shareholders, regardless of the opinion or interests of users. And young people need to be able to understand this: to understand the motives driving different web developments and to understand the use of the internet within wider society.

Digital literacy is not enough. Young people need to understand the  politics and economics of the web. And soon!

I am towards the end of a long series of meetings, hence the limited posts on this site of late. Whilst the meetings have involved far too much travel (and I wonder if some could have been better done by video), they have allowed me the privilege of meeting and talking to many interesting, motivated and talented teachers, researchers and developers from all over Europe.

Here is just a few reflections on the discussions I have had.

Compared to even two years ago, there seems to be increasing interest and understanding by teachers of the potential of using the the web for learning and especially of using Web 2.0 and social software applications. Especially there appears to be an understanding of supporting learners in constructing their own meanings and understandings, rather than passively consuming materials. Although this may be because many of those I have met are involved in projects, teachers seem more confident about their own learning and about developing their own learning materials. And there is a real excitement about the potential of using multimedia for learning, once more not just consuming but creating audio and video.

This may be just the people I mix with, but many teachers also seem to understand the Learning Management Systems and Virtual Learning Environments are for managing students, rather than providing an active tool for learning.

All this ids important. For years researchers have been saying that a major barrier to the uptake of e-learning has been the attitude of teachers, based on their lack of understanding of the technologies and their poteial for learning. I am not sure if this is true, but I think there is a change underway.

However, there remain very real barriers. Many teachers, whilst aware of the possibilities of new media, say the education system makes it difficult for them to change existing tecahing and learning practice. The reasons vary but include lack of infrastructure, lack of understanding and support from management, an overly prescriptive curriculum, lack of time, and rigid and individualistic assessment practices.

I would see these as real tensions. Teachers are increasingly adapting to the way learners are using new technologies in their daily life. And for the first time we are seeing generations of teachers who themselves have grown up with the internet. Yet still education systems are remarkably conservative and remarkably resilient to changes in society.

This leads to discussions about change. Can teachers themselves initiate such change bottom up through introducing new technologies and pedagogies in their own practice. Can we drive change through modernising teacher training? How effective are projects in embedding change? How about ‘innovation champions’? Can we persuade managements of the potential new ways of tecahing and learning offer? How effective is lobbying for changes in policy – for top down driven innovation.

I suspect the answer is all of these.But I think we have to move beyond the change management idea. This is not going to be an orderly change from ‘old’ policy and practice to a shiny new world of technology enhanced learning. It will be messy. the problem is not the modernisation of schools, but rather that our schooling systems are increasingly dysfunctional within our society and increasingly irrelevant to the way many young people communicate and develop understandings and meanings.

But I still tend to think changes in teaching and learning may come from outside the education systems. It has always seemed odd to me that most research, development and resources in the use of technology for learning have been focused on those already in education – in other words giving more to those that had. The greatest potential of Technology Enhanced Learning is to open up learning to everyone in our societies – to socially disadvantaged people, to different age groups, to those in work and those unemployed. And it is here that we are possibly more free for institutional inertia to experiment and to innovate, to develop new pedagogic approaches and new patterns of playing, working and learning.

In time who knows – the educational establishment may learn from the practice of learning outside the school.

Sometimes it it is hard to see anything stopping Facebook ruling the world. But a few years ago it was hard to see anyone ever challenging My Space. And some of us can still remember Friends Reunited. Now the tide may be beginning to change against Facebook. It is Facebook’s own financial greed and their willingness to run roughshod over privacy rights which is threatening their hold.

A new generation of entrepreneurs are emerging with a very different vision and different technologies.

A report in today’s New York Times explains: “A few months back, four geeky college students, living on pizza in a computer lab downtown on Mercer Street, decided to build a social network that wouldn’t force people to surrender their privacy to a big business.” They go onto say: “They have called their project Diaspora* and intend to distribute the software free, and to make the code openly available so that other programmers can build on it. As they describe it, the Diaspora* software will let users set up their own personal servers, called seeds, create their own hubs and fully control the information they share. Mr. Sofaer says that centralized networks like Facebook are not necessary. “In our real lives, we talk to each other,” he said. “We don’t need to hand our messages to a hub. What Facebook gives you as a user isn’t all that hard to do. All the little games, the little walls, the little chat, aren’t really rare things. The technology already exists.”

Meanwhile Facebook itself is showing some signs of recognising the danger.  Nick O’Neill on the All Facebook web site says: “Facing increasing pressure from the media and users, Facebook has called an all hands meeting tomorrow afternoon, at 4 PM Pacific, to discuss the company’s overall privacy strategy according to sources inside the company……..While it’s unknown what Facebook will announce during the meeting, it’s pretty obvious that changes will need to be made if Facebook is going to regain users’ trust. The most likely change will come in the form of a temporary removal of the “Instant Personalization” service, or at the least, a shift to “opt-in”, something many privacy advocates have been calling for.”

This week is the deadline for applications for Online Educa Berlin. Online Educa may not be the most prestigious of educational research conferences, but it is a great crack. So, I went to make a proposal. Obviously, the Educa people have been giving some serious thought to how to improve the quality of presentations (they are even asking for examples of your PowerPoint slides) And they have a completely new application form which I quite like. It starts off innocuously enough, asking fro a 500 word abstract. Here’s mine – on (no surprises here), Vygosky.

“Pedagogic approaches to e-learning remain problematic. Whilst many researchers have proposed constructivist approaches to learning, in reality there remains a gap between espoused and actual uses of Technology for learning. Technology has tended to be introduced within the present paradigms of educational and institutional organisation and management. Educational technology has focused on the management of learning rather than active learning.

This is the more so when it comes to work based learning where technology has been seen primarily as an extension of exiting training practices.

This presentation will explore research and development vbeing undertaken though a number of European projects including the Research Programme funded Mature project on knowledge maturing and the Lifelong Learning Programme G8WAY project. Both are seeking to develop new pedagogic approaches to learning using social software and web 2.0 – the first for knowledge development and maturing and the second for supporting  young people in educational transitions.

Both projects are seeking to develop and implement Personal Learning Environments  as a new approach to the development of e-learning tools (Wilson et al, 2006) that are no longer focused on integrated learning platforms such as VLEs or course management systems. In contrast, these PLEs are made-up of a collection of loosely coupled tools, including Web 2.0 technologies, used for working, learning, reflection and collaboration with others. PLEs can be seen as the spaces in which people interact and communicate and whose ultimate result is learning and the development of collective know-how. A PLE can use social software for informal learning which is learner driven, problem-based and motivated by interest – not as a process triggered by a single learning provider, but as a continuing activity.

Both projects are also seeking to develop new pedagogic approaches to social learning and knowledge development and sharing.

The presentation will examine the work of the Russian phschologist, Vygotsky, Vygotsky’s research focused on school based learning. He developed the idea of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) which is the gap between “actual developmental level” which children can accomplish independently and the “potential developmental level” which children can accomplish when they are interacting with others who are more capable peers or adults.

In Vygotsky’s view, interactions with the social environment, including peer interaction and/or scaffolding, are important ways to facilitate individual cognitive growth and knowledge acquisition.

Vygotsky also emphasized the importance of the social nature of imagination play for development. He saw the imaginary situations created in play as zones of proximal development that operate as mental support system (Fleer, 2008).

Vygotsky stressed the importance of support for learning through a More Knowledge Other, a teacher or peer, This idea corresponds to the use of Personal Learning Networks to suppoort learning.

The paper will examine how the work of Vygostky, including the idea of scaffolding learning, can be used to develop pedagogic approaches to informal and self motivated learning and how it can assist us in developing learning environments including in the school and in the workplace.”

Then the questions get hard. In addition, they say, teh conference will be focusing on practical outcomes – so all proposals will need to answer four key questions. What did we do> Why? With what results> With what impact? Here is my answer.

“Although this may seem a theoretical presentation it is not intended as such. Instead I wish to make the links between pedagogy and practice in a vivid and radical way..

What did we do?

We researched pedagogic approaches to learning looking in particular at how young people use computers and Web 2.0 for learning and sought to explain, make sense and meanings from this.We went on to design and develop tools for social learning (a PLE) in communities of practice and in the workplace and are currently evaluating the use of those tools. We also established processes of developing ‘mini learning activities’ to scaffold learning within a Zone of Proximal Development. We provided tools to support peer group learning and collaboration. We developed workshops for teachers and others who support learning to explain how to use such a pedagogic approach and to use the tools.We told others about our ideas at Online Educa Berlin!

Why did we do it?

We observed a growing gap between the ways in which young people (and not just young people) use computers for work and for play and for learning and the pedagogic and institutional approaches to education in schools and in the workplace. We looked for pedagogic theories which could support the social construction of learning and learning through Personal Learning Networks and in communities of practice.

We were seeking to develop new pedagogic approaches which could support informal learning and lifelong learning and bring together learning from the school, from home and from the workplace. We wanted to stimulate curiosity and release the creative potential of learners.

With what results?

It is really to early to tell. There is growing interest in our pedagogic approach from researchers and developers. And our early evaluation of designs with users are favourable. Teachers too are increasingly adopting our approach to social land creative learning. We have a number of pilots currently running with early adopters participating. By the time of the conference we will be able to show much more of our work and the results of our trials.

With what impact?

At one level we can point to a high impact. People are interested in our approach to learning. We have many teachers and trainers signing up for workshops. A number of projects are adopting this approach. Evaluation work with enterprises – so called application partners – is encouraging. But the real impact can only be measured over a longer time period. Will  this be just interesting project and research work which never moves beyond a pilot stage or can we change practice on a wider level. We think we can!”

And finally they ask for web references and multimedia! Here you go.

Pontydysgu blogs posts on Vygotsky – http://www.pontydysgu.org/?s=vygotsky

Pontydysgu wiki on Vyrgotsky – http://opendistancelearning.pbworks.com/Vygotsky-Resources

Video of presentation at debate on PLEs – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW9SGNYr37s

Slidecast – PLEs: the future of Learning – http://www.slideshare.net/GrahamAttwell/personal-learning-enviroments-the-future-of-education-presentation

Mature project – www.mature-ip.eu

G8WAY project –  g8way.0u.nt

I have been doing a lot of work over the last year looking at how Information and communication Technologies can be used for Careers Advice, Information and Guidance, both in terms of providing direct services to young people and adults and in terms of supporting careers advisers. New Zealand seems to be leading in this work. This post is taken from a report I produced earlier this year, along with Jenny Bimrose and Sally Anne Barnes.

‘Career Services’ is the name by which the national organisation that delivers careers guidance support is known in New Zealand. It is a government funded organisation that regards itself as ‘New Zealand’s leading provider of independent career information, advice and guidance’. It aims to provide all people living in New Zealand with ‘access to the best careers information, advice and guidance to achieve their life goals’.

The Career Services’ website (http://www2.careers.govt.nz/home_page.html) is well used and has become a focal point for service delivery. Internet-based guidance is currently being integrated into mainstream service delivery, via the telephone, chat-lines and email, with the face-to-face service remaining available as an option. Telephone guidance is a particular feature, with text-based services being developed alongside this facility. Internet-based services are described on the Careers Service website as follows:

Advice line
Our Advice Line is a small team of trained career advisers located in central Wellington. We’re here to help you with your career planning. When you contact us (by phone or online via web chat or email), we’ll assess your situation and suggest career options suited to your needs. If you need more in-depth support, we’ll make an appointment for you to talk to one of our guidance staff either over the phone or in person. We’re open from 8am – 8pm weekdays, and on Saturday from 10am – 2pm.

Following the successful pilot, the advice line (contact centre) team has grown to 15. This team currently offers a service to clients of all ‘ages and stages’ all around the country, both by telephone and face-to-face. Careers practitioners have had ‘significant training and coaching in asking more open questions, making greater use of the interactive tools on the website with the client, identifying client need and referral processes’. The practitioners actively involved in delivering this new service have indicated how the conversations they have with clients are more direct than those they have face-to-face. The pace is more intense, with pauses and silences amplified, and rapport is being built up throughout the call (rather than at the early stage of the interaction). Practitioners have also reported that this method of delivery is more demanding on their energy. Supporting practitioner self-care has consequently become more of a priority for the service.

The Quality Standards Manual for the Careers Guidance Services is currently being re-written with sections on telephone guidance and online guidance being developed. This manual contains minimum quality measures for service delivery by telephone (e.g. total delivery time will not exceed 1.5 hours per client, including administrative tasks); an outline structure for a phone career guidance sessions (that is, a six stage model of guidance); and the key skills required (micro-counselling skills; excellent listening skills; solution focused counselling skills and the ability to use scaling questions).

Text-based guidance options are advertised on the Careers Service website in the following way:

Chat online about your career options

Looking for information or want some personal help? Chat online to a career adviser, who can give you independent advice to help you with career planning. Our advice line is open from Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm, and on Saturdays from 10am to 2pm.

Use the form to the right [on-line questionnaire] to ask us a question. We’ll respond within four hours if you email us between 8am and 5pm Monday to Friday.

The Careers Service has also recently piloted a curriculum vitae (CV) feedback service, from October, 2008 to January 2009. As part of this pilot, young people (under 25) were offered an email based feedback service on ‘starter’ CVs, which were created using a particular CV tool. The feedback was provided by a team of four practitioners with different levels of expertise in guidance and one team leader in the advice line. The offer of e-mail feedback came at the end of the CV tool, as a client saved their CV. The response from pilot clients was overwhelmingly positive, with clients reporting how they felt more confident about putting together their CV as a result of the feedback received. Professional practice observations, detailed in the internal evaluation report on the pilot, included:

• the importance of shared team values;
• the advantages of combining the skills and expertise of staff at different levels in the organisation;
• the ability to adapt practice to a more condensed and intensified medium than face-to-face or telephone guidance;

The introductory pilot for the telephone guidance ran from July 2007 to end of February, 2008. It involved one experienced consultant who was based at the Careers Services’ advice line. During the pilot year, the practitioner dealt with 226 clients. The process of introducing this telephone service highlighted potential advantages for clients together with challenges it poses for practitioners. Flexibility emerged as the key advantage of this service for clients, with practitioners needing to use already acquired skills in slightly different ways as well as develop some new skills (England, van Holten and Urbahn, 2008).

• the impact on delivery of not having background contextual information about clients;
• working with a client within an advice context rather than a full guidance context; the shift required by the pilot team around comfort levels with the final product being a starter CV and the service delivered being about learning;
• the value of quality monitoring and peer feedback.

An important feature of the shift towards internet-based guidance was the introduction by the Career Services in New Zealand of a needs assessment model, based on the client’s self-efficacy, confidence with self-help via the web and level / complexity of need. As part of their change management strategy, the Careers Service created a blog for staff, where careers practitioners could express their feelings, ask questions and have debates around the use of technologies in service deliver The animator placed the following question on the blog:E-mail may be the most important, unique method for communicating and developing relationships since the telephone.’ (John Suler, The Psychology of Cyberspace, 2004).

Most career practitioners agree that one of the career profession’s foundational and ongoing principles is that a face-to-face, facilitative relationship is an essential component for effective career counselling. There is also an unwritten assumption that visual clues and non-verbal communications are superior to written text in forming and maintaining an affective relationship.

Do career practitioners believe that face-to-face interactions are deemed more effective than online ones, and John Suler and other online advocates are talking nonsense?’One response is typical of the views expressed by P.A.s who participated in the research undertaken for this study.

“I’d have to say I sit firmly in the face to face camp here. So many cues are picked up at both a conscious and subconscious level that just can’t be gained otherwise. I focus a lot on interview techniques in my work, and relationship building, body language, eye contact etc. is best learned while it is being demonstrated. Sure there’s some great on-line tools, but counselling involves all the senses (…except maybe taste!)”

’The other response provides a more measured viewpoint: “Surely it’s about the needs of the client? For some, yes face to face is always going to be the preferred option for some but having an OPTION of telephone guidance or online or self help or group planning or a combination of these surely means that we are more responsive to the needs of our clients. One of the real beauties of having this flexibility is that someone who lives in a remote area is still able to access services.”

For some people it might be that they start in a face to face environment and then move to telephone or email, or perhaps it’s the other way – they start with email and as they develop their confidence and trust they may feel ‘ready’ to meet face to face.’

Whilst this service’s engagement with flexible methods of delivery, including internet-based guidance, is relatively new, it provides an illustration of a large, national service addressing the staff capability issues that this venture implies, in a measured way. From this and other respects, it can be regarded as an interesting and excellent model practice.

The conference season is fast approaching. As well as the PLE21010 conference, Pontydysgu is involved in organising a conference about the training of trainers, ‘Crossing Borders’, being held on the 14th – 15th of October in Kostelec near Prague. The conference is supported by the Network to support Trainers in Europe and the Czcch TTnet. And the good news is it is free! The conference has issued a call for papers with a deadline of 16th June. Full details can be found on the network’s web site.

There are four main themes for the conference.

Theme 1: Institutional, economic, and societal challenges to the role of trainers and teachers in vocational education and trainers

With the growing importance of initial and continuing learning in enterprises and the rapid  introduction of new technologies, the role of trainers is changing. Research suggests that ever growing numbers of people are responsible for training as part of their work. This change is accompanied by increasing pressure for economies in training resulting from the economic recession.

At the same time the move towards more authentic work-based learning is changing the role and activities of trainers. A series of studies have talked of a move away from didactic classroom and workshop-based training towards facilitating enquiry-based learning.

Theme 2: E-learning as a challenge for trainers, teachers, and learners in vocational  education

E-Learning is increasingly impacting on training. Larger enterprises are developing in-house e-learning programmes for employees. The internet is increasingly being used for informal learning. Internet-based tools offer opportunities for accessing learning in the workplace and for communication. E-portfolios can be used to record and reflect on learning. Web 2.0 tools offer opportunities to develop customised multi-media materials to support training.

Theme 3: New ways of learning and the re-definition of the role of trainers and teachers in vocational education

Studies and reports have documented a move away form classroom and work-based training towards work-based learning. Such learning is seen as being based on practice and thus developing applied work practice knowledge. Work based learning may also be more authentic and situated than classroom based training and may be more cost-effective in contributing to production processes.

At the same time some research suggests a move away from didactic training approaches towards the provision of coaching and mentoring.

Theme 4: Professional development and HRD for changing roles of trainers and teachers

With an increasing recognition of the importance of trainers and training and changing roles for trainers, the initial and continuing professional development of trainers is also coming under scrutiny. Research suggests that structures and processes for training trainers are fragmentary and differ widely in different countries, regions and sectors. In most countries there are not mandatory standards or qualifications for trainers. It may be that most trainers rely on personal networks and informal learning for their professional development.

The next in what will, I suspect, be a series of short posts from the Mature project meeting in Barcelona. Last year, the project reviewers asked us to develop more challenging social and technical scenarios for our work around using Information and Computer Technology to support knowledge development and maturing in organisations. As a response to this we started looking at the use of mobile devices for Organisational and Personal Learning Environments.

One key affordance of mobile devices, a number of us felt, was the ability to capture context in learning and knowledge development. Yet exploring and extending our understanding of the nature of context has proved challenging. In terms of mobile applications, the best developed aspect of context is location. Through GPS mobile devices are location aware. This has led to the development of context push services providing information dependent on geographical location. Users are also able to contribute data, for instance reviews of restaurants or services based on location. And GPS has facilitated the development of applications, such as On the Road, which allow users to generate personal stories including multi media, based on their location.

How importance is the context of location for learning. In some cases it obvi9usly is. Mobile devices can be used in museums for example, to provide information about exhibits. John Cook and Carl Smith have experimented with location aware learning tours, for instance for archaeological students visiting a Cistercian Abbey in Yorkshire.

But, in much of our (academic) learning location is not a key context factor. Indeed, one of the attractions of mobile devices is that learning can take place anywhere at any time. However location is important for much work based learning. E-Learning works well for vocational and occupational learning for tasks that involve the use of a computer. In this case we are using a computer to learn about computer based work tasks. Practice and learning are brought together. In other cases it may be possible to simulate work based environments through a computer. But for many work based activities a computer is not involved. In this situation, the use of a computer for learning only takes place away from the actual practice. Mobile devices have the potential to be used in proximity to practice. Furthermore, the ease of use of multi media allows the recording of learning and practice without the intervention of a keyboard. it allows us to ‘show’ and model practice, in ways which are not possible through print media. Thus mobile devices have the ability to capture the context of practice and extents Technology Enhanced Learning into the daily practice of the workplace. In so doing, we can overcome the unsatisfactory separation between formal learning and informal learning. The formal can become informal through practice and the informal, formal through reflection on that practice.