Understanding students' changing perceptions of their learning environments in four FE colleges in England

Abstract

As part of the Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC) project, questionnaire data were collected from three consecutive cohorts of students in a wide range of learning sites, initially four in each of four Further Education (FE) colleges in England. This paper focuses on changes in perceived learning environment as mapped by these questionnaire items and seeks to relate these changes to changes in the circumstances of the students and the site, as understood from the extensive qualitative data also collected by the project.

Although we make no suggestion that there were simple causal relationships, there is evidence that students' perceptions of their learning environment may have been affected by student and tutor disposition, curriculum, resources, broad aspects of college policy and by details of the overall FE framework. We argue that change in perception is particularly likely where there is synergy amongst two or more of these aspects within a site. On the basis of these findings we suggest that although change can be within the control of the tutor, the degree of control available will be affected by the broader circumstances in which the tutor and their students operate.

Acknowledgements

Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC) was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council within its Teaching and Learning Research Programme (Award No. L139251025). We are grateful to the other members of the TLC project team for their contributions to the development of this article. They are: Graham Anderson, Gert Biesta, Helen Colley, Jenny Davies, Kim Diment, Denis Gleeson, Phil Hodkinson, David James, Tony Scaife, Mike Tedder, Madeline Wahlberg and Eunice Wheeler.