Cautionary Tales in the Ethics of Lifelong Learning Policy and Management: A Book of Fables

194 Pages·2004·3.235 MB·English

by  Richard G. Bagnall (auth.)

CAUTIONARY TALES IN THE ETHICS OF LIFELONG LEARNING
POLICY AND MANAGEMENT
Lifelong Learning Book Series
VOLUME 1
Series Editors
David N. Aspin, Em, Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne,
Australia
Judith D. Chapman, Centre of Lifelong Learning, Australian Catholic University,
Melbourne, Australia
Editorial Board
William L. Boyd, Department of Education Policy Studies, Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, PA, USA
Karen Evans, Institute of Education, University of London, UK
Malcolm Skilbeck, Drysdale, Victoria, Australia
Yukiko Sawano, Department for Lifelong Learning Policies, National Institute for
Educational Policy Research (NIER), Tokyo, Japan
Kaoru Okamoto, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology,
Government of Japan, Tokyo, Japan
Denis W. Ralph, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
Aims & Scope
"Lifelong Learning" has become a central theme in education and community
development. Both international and national agencies, governments and
educational institutions have adopted the idea of lifelong learning as their major
theme for address and attention over the next ten years. They realize that it is only
by getting people committed to the idea of education both life-wide and lifelong
that the goals of economic advancement, social emancipation and personal growth
will be attained.
The Lifelong Learning Book Series aims to keep scholars and professionals
informed about and abreast of current developments and to advance research and
scholarship in the domain of Lifelong Learning. It further aims to provide
learning and teaching materials, serve as a forum for scholarly and professional
debate and offer a rich fund of resources for researchers, policy-makers, scholars,
professionals and practitioners in the field.
The volumes in this international Series are multi-disciplinary in orientation,
polymathic in origin, range and reach, and variegated in range and complexity.
They are written by researchers, professionals and practitioners working widely
across the international arena in lifelong learning and are orientated towards
policy improvement and educational betterment throughout the life cycle.
Cautionary Tales in the Ethics
of Lifelong Leaming Policy and
Management
A Book of Fables
by
RICHARD G. BAGNALL
Griffith University,
Brisbane, Australia
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is avai1ab1e from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-2214-2 ISBN 978-1-4020-2215-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-2215-9
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
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© 2004 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers 2004
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ vii
Introduction ............................................................................................................. ix
Editorial by Series Editors ..................................................................................... xiii
Chapter I The Cultural Context.......................................................................... 1
1.1 Introduction.................................................................................. 1
1.2 Lifelong Learning and Education ................................................. 1
1.3 The Contemporary Cultural Context.. .......................................... 6
Chapter 2 The Ethical Perspective ...................................................................... 9
2.1 Ethics ........................................................................................... 9
2.2 Ethics as Tensional. .................................................................... 11
Chapter 3 The Fable of Learning ...................................................................... 15
Chapter 4 The Fable of the Individual.. ............................................................ 23
Chapter 5 The Fable of Outcomes .................................................................... 31
Chapter 6 The Fable of Context. ....................................................................... 39
Chapter 7 The Fable of Vocation. ..................................................................... 47
Chapter 8 The Fable of Education and Training .............................................. 55
Chapter 9 The Fable of Education as Literacy .................................................. 63
Chapter 10 The Fable of Accountability ............................................................. 69
Chapter 11 The Fable of Standards .................................................................... 77
Chapter 12 The Fable of Technique ................................................................... 83
Chapter 13 The Fable of Flexibility .................................................................... 89
Chapter 14 The Fable of the Educational MarkeL ............................................. 97
Chapter 15 The Fable of the Educational Contract.. .......................................... 105
Chapter 16 The Fable of the Educational Project .............................................. 111
Chapter 17 The Fable of the Educational Manager ........................................... 117
Chapter 18 The Fable of the International Provider .......................................... 125
Chapter 19 The Fable of the Educational Requirement.. ................................... 133
Chapter 20 The Fable of the Present Moment ................................................... 139
Chapter 21 The Fable of the Educational Partisan ............................................. 143
Chapter 22 The Fable of Education as a Commodity ........................................ 149
Chapter 23 The Fable of Discriminative Injustice ............................................. 155
Chapter 24 In Closing ........................................................................................ 161
References ............................................................................................................. 165
Index ...................................................................................................................... 183
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To those many individuals into whose lives I have intruded by representing here
their experiences in the fables and in whose anguish this work is grounded. To
Sharon Hayes and Teri Merlyn for their work on sources for the accounts. To Kate
Bagnall for her support, encouragement, tolerance and critical comments. To Joanne
Waddell for her transformation of the manuscript into a book.
RGB
Vll
INTRODUCTION
This work is concerned with appraising the contemporary ethical impact of lifelong
learning ideology and advocacy on education, through focusing on trends in
educational policy and management that flow from the ideology. It has its origins in
the author's concern that many of those trends are being defmed and promoted, or
opposed, without an adequate understanding of their ethical dimensions. The 21
trends examined in this work are seen as defming important dimensions of the quite
radical changes in educational policy and management that are flowing from the
practical realisation of lifelong learning ideology and advocacy. In here evaluating
those trends from an ethical perspective, the thesis is developed that they lead
inevitably to distinctive ethical dilemmas or tensions in the lived experience of
educational participants. The dilemmas, though, are not seen as realities that can
intelligently be either avoided or resolved. They are, rather, inescapable features of
the trends, although they and the experience of them may be managed intelligently
to a greater or lesser extent.
This analysis is premised on the belief that an understanding of the dilemmas
may be of practical value in assisting educators, and policy makers and managers, to
live and work more intelligently with them and to better manage the educational
changes that are defmed by the trends. It may thereby contribute to moderating the
excesses, sillinesses, and inanities so often evident in the directing and managing of
refonns associated with the trends and to reduce the anguish and pain associated
with them.
The sort of trends in educational policy and management upon which this
critique is focused are those applied broadly to what may be seen as the post
compulsory sectors of the educational institution: upper or senior secondary
schooling, vocational, higher, and adult education. The naming (and the structuring)
of sectors within this field varies across countries, but includes universities,
institutes of technical and further education, community colleges, polytechnics,
colleges of higher education, junior colleges, private vocational colleges, industry
based training, human resource development units, adult and community education,
continuing education, and non-fonnal education.
The concern with contemporary trends in educational policy and management is
intended to focus attention on important ways in which these educational sectors are
responding to the lifelong learning cultural context in which they operate. However,
there is here a deliberate eschewing of reference to specific legislative acts or policy
fonnulations, since these inevitably pertain to particular countries or their
constituent educational jurisdictions. In maintaining a focus on the general trends, it
is hoped that the analysis throughout will be of universal interest and application.
The analysis begins, in Chapter One, with an overview of the contemporary
cultural context to which educational refonns are responding. The educationally
important dimensions of that context are seen as expressions of lifelong learning
ideology and advocacy, which suffuses contemporary thinking about educational
refonns. The chapter provides a sketch of that ideology and relates it to the 21 trends
in educational policy and management on which the following critique is focused.
IX
x INTRODUCTION
Chapter Two outlines the ethical perspective that is used in the explanatory
accounts. It is a tensional perspective that is seen as being particularly congruent
with the contemporary cultural context and with the antinomial nature of the moral
dilemmas that are associated with the identified trends in educational policy and
management. It is seen, then, as being a perspective through which the ethical
dimensions of those trends may be best understood and responded to.
Chapters Three through Twenty-three encompass the bulk of the work. They
present the substantive examination of the 21 selected contemporary trends in
educational policy and management. Each trend is examined, firstly, through a fable:
a fictionalised account, grounded in the lived experience of the issues involved. The
experiences informing the fables, most strongly, are from Australia, but also the
United States of America, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The fables have
been selected, though, as exemplifying more general responses to the trends.
Correspondingly, every reasonable effort has been made to contextualise them
somewhat generally, in an attempt to underline their occurrence across different
countries. Inevitably, though, particular features of a fable will suggest its location
in a particular national or state educational system, for educational terminology and
systems vary across jurisdictions and therefore also in the fables. There remain, for
example, ineliminable differences in responsibility for educational policy in
federated systems of states (as in Australia and the United States of America), in
countries with a single national system (as in New Zealand), and in those with
regional educational policy (as in the United Kingdom). The generic notion of
'state-wide' should therefore be understood also as 'national' or 'regional' for the
latter cases. Other similar accommodations will need to be made in the reading of
particular fables.
Each fable has been crafted to illustrate both the trend and something of its
ethical impact. True to its presentation as a fable, that impact emerges as some sort
of an ethical dilemma, tension, contradiction or antinomy. The fables have been
written in such a way as to present the ethical tensions from the perspectives of
individual players in the field. They seek, therein, to portray the personal experience
and anguish of the tensions, and to do so from a wide range of different positions
across the educational sectors embraced by the work.
Accompanying each fable is an explanatory account. It opens with a description
of the trend, including comments on its origins and important relationships with the
broader context of lifelong learning ideology, advocacy, and cultural change. This is
followed by an analysis of the trend, from the ethical perspective presented in
Chapter Two. The account then ends, where appropriate, with a discussion of what
might be done to better manage the ethical dilemma. This is done, though, always
from the assumption that it is not a legitimate strategy to reverse or halt the trend
itself as a solution to any identified ethically limiting effects that it may have. The
description, analysis, and discussion are grounded in pertinent scholarly literature
and illustrated with reference to the accompanying fable. Thereby, the accounts are
seen as providing both an interpretation of the fables and a grounding of the fables
in the relevant scholarly literature.
In each of these 21 chapters, then, the identified trend of which the fable is
illustrative, is illuminated through the tensional ethical perspective. Through the
INTRODUCTION Xl
fables, it is hoped that the academic content may be made more accessible to a wide
audience of educationists, educational managers, and educational policy makers.
Through the explanatory accounts, it is hoped that the fables may be used, also, in
more formal study by scholars and students of education, whatever their sectoral
interests, but particularly those focusing on higher (university), adult, community
and vocational education, and on the later years of secondary or high schooling.
Each of the fables (and its accompanying explanatory account) has been given a
descriptive heading appropriate to the trend that it illustrates. While such
categorisations are at best only partial, the first four fables (Chapters 3-6) may be
seen as focusing on individual learners, the next five (Chapters 7-11), more on
matters of content or curriculum, the following eight (Chapters 12-19), more on the
management of education, teaching, and learning, and the final four (Chapters 20-
23), more on assumptions informing educational policy.
Finally, Chapter 24 draws together the main arguments from the commentaries
and the implications of the fables for policy and management in lifelong learning.
The fables may be read either independently of the accounts, or conjointly with
them. Conversely, the accounts may be read either as independent scholarly
critiques, or as explanations of the fables. They may be read in any order, but have
been compiled in the sequence in which they are here presented. Accordingly, points
of argument that have been made in earlier accounts are not developed when they
arise in later ones. Mention only is made, with some attempt at cross-referencing to
assist the reader who chooses not to read in such a pre-determined fashion. The
fables, of course, may be read without loss of understanding in any order at all.
While the explanation of the ethical perspective is important background to the
explanatory accounts, the fables are understandable independently of that theoretical
background.
While the form and substance of this book are very much my own, the work
draws both upon the experiences represented in the fables and upon other
scholarship. References to the latter are provided selectively throughout the text: in
the two initial explanatory chapters (1 & 2), in the explanatory account
accompanying each fable in Chapters Three through Twenty-three and in the final
concluding Chapter 24. These references are to published works that illustrate or
elaborate the points made here - to provide sources of further reading for those
readers who wish to further explore aspects of this work. The broad scope of the
work necessitates quite heavy referencing in meeting these illustrative and
elaborative objectives. Readers are therefore encouraged to develop the habit of
perusing the text without reading the parenthetical sources. The literature referred to
is drawn, on the one hand, from the field of applied ethics and, on the other, from
the field of educational policy and management. All such references are drawn
together in a reference list at the back of the volume.
My own elaborative notes on the text have been kept to a minimum and are
inserted as footnotes to the page in which they arise, to ensure ready identification
and access.
EDITORIAL BY SERIES EDITORS
This volume marks the beginning of a new publishing venture. It flows on from the
symposium International Handbook of Lifelong Learning, which we jointly edited
with Yukiko Sawano and Michael Hatton, and which was published by Kluwer
Academic Publishers in 2001.
The International Handbook made available to its readers over forty chapters in two
volumes, setting out some of the major themes in the main areas of discourse in the
domain of Lifelong Learning at that time. These chapters delineated some of the
typical forms and chief lines of development in the theory and practice of lifelong
learning - its philosophy, its policies, its international uptake, and its ongoing lines
of research across the international arena. These chapters together provided readers
and researchers with an overview and illustration of some of the principal issues,
topics and problems characteristic of the domain.
It was plain to us, however, that, in providing so much information and illustration of
activities in lifelong learning, we had only laid down a set of agenda for future
research and development, analysis and expansion, strategies and guidelines in the
field. It was clear that the whole domain of lifelong learning offered simply a ground
for setting out and summarising comparing and criticising the heterogeneous range,
scope and remit of policies and proposals in its different constitutive parts. Certainly
the scholars and researchers with whom we discussed this matter seemed to agree
with us that each of the chapters in the original Handbook would merit a separate
volume on its own - to say nothing of the other possibilities that a more extended
analysis of the field might quickly generate.
The volume that follows is the first outcome of those discussions. It is the work of
our colleague Richard Bagnall, whose own chapter in the original International
Handbook alerted readers to various ways in which lifelong learning policies,
structures and activities might seem to militate against the interests of many learners
but could actually be employed as a major form of educational emancipation. His
present work is a sequel to those initial memoranda.
In this book, Richard has constructed and sets out a set of "Fables" to illustrate, in
the lived experience of the actors in them, the twenty-one selected trends in learning
and education that he attributes to lifelong learning ideology and advocacy. These
fables are drawn from a range of sectors in education: post-compulsory schooling,
adult and community education, continuing professional education, vocational
education and training, higher education, and in both government and non
government providers of education and education services. They are drawn also from
learning experiences in a number of different (although essentially Western) political
settings: Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of
America.
xiii