The Third Face of Modules: Gendered Patterns of Participation and Progression in Scottish Vocational Education

Abstract

The sociological literature on modularisation is currently underdeveloped. Much of the analytical writing that exists tends to emphasise one of two ‘faces’ of modules. Some writers see modules as an instrument of educational Taylorism, and claim that the detailed specification of modular curricula changes patterns of control, reduces professional autonomy and fragments the learning experience. Others see modules as a source of post‐modem flexibility, a means of individualising differentiation, integrating academic and vocational study and removing the barriers and disincentives to participation and progression associated with traditional course structures. In this paper we propose a third ‘face’ of modules: as a change agent whose effects are variable, conditional and typically small. We describe gender differences in young people's participation and progression in the National Certificate, the system‐wide modular framework introduced in Scotland in 1984. These gender differences are similar to those typically found in non‐modular systems. Drawing on an earlier theoretical framework, we suggest that the persistence of strong gender differences reflects the strength of the ‘institutional logic’ of the context of modules, relative to the ‘intrinsic logic’ of the modular system itself.