"Just a tutor": narratives of tutor development in a changing Irish adult education landscape.

Jerry O’NeillPhD Candidate

John and Pat Hume ScholarDepartment of Adult and Community Education

NUI Maynooth, Ireland

Research objective

... to identify the barriers and opportunities facing adult education tutor development by co-constructing and analysing their narratives of occupational experience.

Contexts

• Shifting landscape and discourses of adult education

• Tutor development• Theoretical• Biographical

Shifting landscapeFrom 33 VECs to 13 ETBs

(SOLAS, 2012)

CohortVEC/ETB

Education Services

Youth Services/Youthreach Further Education Colleges Community/Adult Education Education

Adult Literacy Services

ESOL

Other community and adult programmes

Workplace Education

Primary/Secondary schools

.

CohortVEC/ETB

Education Services

Youth Services/Youthreach Further Education Colleges Community/Adult Education Education

Adult Literacy Services

ESOL

Other community and adult programmes

Workplace Education

Primary/Secondary schools

Shifting landscape

FETAC: 2001-2012

NQAI: 1999-2012

HETAC: 2001-2012

QQI: 2012 - ?

Shifting Landscape

201

1

2013

201

3

Shifting discourses

(Department of Education and Skills , 2012)

(Department of Education and Science, 2000)

Contexts

• Biographical• Shifting landscape and discourses of

adult education• Tutor development• Theoretical

Growth in educator programmes:• Professional Diploma in Education (Further Education), NUIG,

Galway • Graduate Diploma in Adult & Further Education, MIC Limerick• Professional Diploma in Education (Further Education), MIC,

Limerick• Postgraduate Diploma in Arts in Learning and Teaching, NCI , Dublin • Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Teaching in Further Education & Adult

Education, WIT. Waterford• Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching in Further Education, WIT• Higher Diploma in Further Education (HDFE), NUIM, Maynooth • Professional Diploma in Education (Further Education), MIE, Dublin • BSc in Education and Training (Further, Adult and Continuing

Education),DCU, Dublin• MA in Socially Engaged Art: (Further, Adult and Community

Education, NCAD, Dublin(Teaching Council, 2013)

Growth in educator programmes:

Some recommendations from Alpine Report (2008):

• Improve transparency of

educational pathways entering

the profession (p.12)

• Staff need a stronger lobby (p.13)

• More attention to Continuous Professional Development (p.14)

Tutor development

• Centrality of tutor role in high quality sector (Snow- Gerona, 2005; Coffield, 2008; Teaching Council, 2011)

• Role of critical, peer dialogue in tutor development (Wenger, 1998; Marceau, 2003; James, 2007; Penlington, 2008; Scales, 2011).

Biographical context

Who am I?Doctoral researcher

Adult Education tutor

Father

SonHusband

Student

Friend

FE Lecturer

Education Officer

Distant learning tutor

Teaching Fellow

Senior Lecturer

Curriculum advisor

“unqualified, part- time”

Qualified secondary school teacher

Teaching Practice Tutor

University tutor

Biographical context

Who am I?researcher

tutor

Theoretical Context

Narrative Approach

• connection between narrative, community and professional knowledge (Elbaz-Luwisch, 2007)

• Welsh study of occupational lives of adult educators stressed importance of narrative in educator ontology (Jephcote et al, 2008)

• Narrative ‘creates a longitudinal sense of self’ (Tedder, 2009, 78)

• Writing as a method of inquiry (Richardson, 1994)

living

telling

re-living

re-telling

Processes in telling and living the life story (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000).

Research Design

Emerging narrative threads• Voluntarism – significant occupational pathway• Social and individual development – core purpose of tutor role• For some tutors, there are limited opportunities for the development of

peer dialogue networks. • Importance of local context• Relationships and experiences generally focussed, positively or negatively,

vertically through an organiser rather than independently through horizontal peer networks.

• Contractual contexts ∞ tutor learning development networks. • Lack of a designated and shared tutor space to work, share and talk. • Evidence of tension, amongst some tutors, regarding ongoing commitment

to unpaid CPD or, particularly, administration activity. • Some evidence of frustration and confusion with aspects of the evolving

national curricular framework for further and adult education • Narratives also reveal rich occupational and life experiences • Sense of self-worth under-played - 'just a tutor'. • Self-identify as “tutor” or “trainer” – never “teacher”• Research is ongoing – narratives unfolding

Selection of references (1) … AONTAS. (2010). Response to the Report of the Further Education (Teacher Education Qualification Group) of the Teaching

Council. Dublin: AONTAS.Bakhtin, M. (1988). The dialogic imagination: four essays. (M. Holquist, Ed., & C. a. Emerson, Trans.) Austin: University of Texas

Press.Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. London: Harvard University Press.Clandinin, D. J. (2007). Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology. London: Sage.Clandinin, D. J. (2000). Narrative Inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Coffield, F. E. (2007). How policy impacts on practice and how practice does not impact on policy. British Educational Research

Journal , 33 (5), 723-741.Coffield, F. (2009). Rolling out 'good', 'best' and 'excellent' practice. What next? Perfect practice? British Education Research

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Discursive/Poststructuralist Turn. Qualitative Inquiry , 13 (8), 1139-1159.Department of Education and Science. (2000). Learning for Life: White Paper on Adult Education. Dublin: Dublin Stationery

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140-161). London: Sage.James, D. a. (2007). Improving Learning Cultures in Further Education. London: Routledge.Lynch, K., Grummell, B., & Devine, D. (2012). New Managerialism in Education: Commercialization, Carelessness and Gender.

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"Just a tutor": narratives of tutor development in a changing Irish adult education landscape.

Jerry O’NeillPhD Candidate

John and Pat Hume ScholarDepartment of Adult and Community Education

NUI Maynooth, Ireland

jerryoneill@hotmail.com or jeremiah.oneill.2012@nuim.ie