Whatever the name given to the exercise the process should be built into the learning programme and should not be seen as a bolt on extra. The ‘lets do the portfolios in the last week of the course’ syndrome is one to be avoided at all costs.
There are many types of evidence which are likely to be in a folder. Evidence of learning is produced during the programme and will cover a wide range of things from notes, handouts, plans, reports, learning journals, tapes, artefacts, sketches etc. Indeed almost anything, which has been produced during a programme of learning, could constitute evidence of learning. In order for this type of evidence to become evidence of achievement it has to be structured and mapped against the learning outcomes and assessment criteria identified in a unit. Education secretary Alan Johnstone asked colleges to adopt a “more realistic approach” (TES,2007) Evidence of achievement is evidence that has been selected and assessed against a specific outcome or outcomes, using the stated criteria.
My role as a Young Men’s Sex Educator is rather unusual one and which has many elements towards it and is heavily centred in youth work. Primarily I deliver sex education to young men and boys aged between 11-24. This education is informal and is delivered in mainstream, non-mainstream and post 16 education. I also work in community settings and on the streets of Easington and District in a detached youth work role. [Accreditation allows the powers to be to measure us in relation to targets and quality of delivery]. Whilst I do agree that things need to be tightened up. Accreditation is not the way forward. It can and does have a detrimental affect on the uptake of services but in turn may produce the attitude of "oh another course" The primary argument against accreditation is that it is axiomatic that all forms of validation and approval have a tendency both to being bureaucratic and to result in a standardisation of design and conception and should not be seen as “just another initiative” as George Sweeney argues (TES,2007). By their very nature validating bodies are acting as regulating agencies. They require a level of detail (and so conformity) and information concerning programme design. In a sense this is understandable if national bodies are to give their seal of approval then they have to know that provision in Community A is comparable with Community B. The real risk is that providers ‘learn’ how to meet the needs of the validating agency and take their needs as their point of reference rather than the needs of local community organisations. From the perspective of local users the particular requirements of an accrediting body may be unknown or at least in the background. From the perspective of providers the danger is that these needs are in the foreground rather than the needs/expectations of those on the programme. In 116 I eluded to this when I commented that “I have often found that with my groups of young men their interest will wane the moment you align sexual health with an accredited outcome”.
Rather than developing a programme through dialogue with local groups and being able to shape it to meet very specific needs there is a risk that providers will take ‘off the shelf’ programmes, which are already approved. This runs counter to an ethos and approach which is about devising training needs to meet local and expressed needs. It also runs the risk of producing a uniformity of approach rather than encouraging innovation and experimentation in design and delivery. In 2006 an article in the Times Edcation Supplement talked about “freedom from the straitjacket where courses needed to be for staff and students” (TES,2006)
Alongside an increased emphasis on an accreditted curriculum (which by definition takes much of youth engagement work out of the category of informal education) work in these services is more clearly aligned in specification with the sort of disposition usually associated with schooling. Here is one of the great dangers. What the specification does is to substantially increase the pressure to formalize the activities of youth workers and teachers within education and to take them away from the sorts of open-ended conversations, activities and relationships that defined the work in the twentieth century.
Unfortunately, the focus on accreditation also approaches education as a form of having rather than being. In other words there is a concern with competencies rather than competence. This has a detrimental effect on the relationships that workers can have with young people. It points them both to gaining and possessing 'things'. Erich Fromm brings out the way that this can undermine conversation and dialogue:
While the having persons rely on what they have, the being persons rely on the fact that they are, that they are alive and that something new will be born if only they have the courage to let go and respond. They become fully alive in the conversation because they do not stifle themselves by anxious concern with what they have. Their own aliveness is infectious and often helps the other person to transcend his or her egocentricity. Thus the conversation ceases to be an exchange of commodities (information, knowledge, status) and becomes a dialogue in which it does not matter any more who is right. (Kehily,94,2007)
The demands placed on us by funding bodies (Government)on us have been made abundantly clear. There is a real need for those of us involved in education to value the importance of training and to think creatively about how we meet the needs of local groups and local agencies. The point of this argument is to identify the risks we face and if at all we can place any value on accreditation and what it can offer. Whilst we may find ourselves involved in what appear to be contradictory decisions it is important that we remind ourselves why we think training is important and whose needs it can address. The overall result is a significant alteration in the balance in work within post 16 youth settings between the formal and the informal. The overall result has been a drive towards the achievement of specified outcomes and the adoption of standardized teaching models. The emphasis was less on community and equity, and rather more on individual advancement and the need to satisfy investors and influential consumers. Education has come to resemble a private, rather than a public, good. Learning, thus, has increasingly become a commodity or as investment, rather than as a way of exploring what might make for the good life or human flourishing. Teachers' and youth workers’ ability to ask critical questions about the world in which e live have been deeply compromised. Robb argues that “market ideologies they have assimilated (along with others in society), the direction of the curricula they are increasingly required to 'deliver', and the readiness of the colleges, schools and agencies in which they operate to embrace corporate sponsorship and intervention have combined to degrade their work to such an extent as to question whether what they are engaged in can be rightfully called education”. (Robb,113, 2002).
PCTs along with other voluntary and statutory agencies have become fixated with accredited outcomes. Primarily because they provide tangible evidence for target’s that have been set by central Government. However accrediting bodies provide legitimacy for providers (and funders) and therefore they have an explicit interest in achieving a badge of approval. It has currency in their terms for providers which may not be the same thing for users. Thereby the whole process itself is conservative and flawed rather than radical and empowering. Edexcel acknowledge this and have taken the controversial step in September 2007 of withdrawing their accredited music and music technology courses preferring a more robust method of assessment that has the pupils needs at heart (www.tes.2007).
In conclusion as the funding needs of providers have increased this shift in focus represents a real risk. The scale of the shift, for example towards accreditation and curriculum delivery, has tipped the balance significantly away from the forms of relationship and approach to SRE that have been central to the development of post 16 youth education/engagement work. The specification does make various references to youth engagement values (which if we were to examine the statement of values in the specifications of youth engagement services, we would find are not really values at all). However, it does not locate youth engagement work within the central understandings of practices that have emerged. Persistence on this current path of accreditation can only mean we are storing problems for the future and may in turn devalue any credibility in the community they have gained.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blane.D.(Oct 2006).Freedom to break the rules.Times Education Supplement.
Kehily.M.J.(2007). Understanding Youth: Perspectives, Identities and Practices (Perspectives & Practice.) Sage Publications.
Lee.J.(16/03/07).Advocate for freedom.Times Education Supplement.
Robb.M.(2007). Youth in Context: Frameworks, Settings and Encounters (Perspectives and Practice): Frameworks, Settings and Encounters (Perspectives and Practice). Sage publications.
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