Post‐compulsory education and training: transformism and the struggle for change

Abstract

The paper addresses a number of issues concerning policy and curriculum in post‐compulsory education and training (PCET). Firstly, it seeks to locate PCET within its socio‐economic context as it is this that frames curricula within the learning and skills sector and serves to legitimate its particular form. Secondly, the paper addresses the manner in which state policy impacts upon the sector and is followed by a discussion of curricula issues. It is argued that the rhetoric of competitiveness is over‐stated and that this serves to tie educational processes to economic needs. This is reflected in curricular divisions as well as differentiations between learners. These, rather than challenging existing social relations, serve to conserve these resulting in a ‘transformist’ politics. The paper concludes with a section that explores the struggle for social justice, arguing that a radical educational politics needs to address inequalities endemic in wider society. Localized educational responses are limited and can only take us so far in the struggle for social justice.

Notes

1. It is important to recognize that the malleability of the notion of skill derives in part from its socially constructed form as well as its imbrication with power.

2. Capital is far from homogeneous, being marked by contradictions and differential interests. The labour/skill requirements of the bio‐technology sector will be qualitatively different from those of fast food outlets.

3. Smith and Webster draw our attention to the distinction between mode 1 and mode 2 knowledge, ‘a transformation of knowledge, a move away from … mode 1 knowledge which is homogeneous, rooted in strong disciplines which are hierarchical, and transmitted to novitiates in an apprentice‐master relationship, to mode 2 knowledges which are non‐hierarchical, pluralistic, transdisciplinary, fast changing, and socially responsive to a diversity of needs such as students’ dispositions and industrial priorities’ (Smith & Webster, 1997, p. 104).

4. The Gramscian concept of transformism is helpful in this context. Johnson and Steinberg write, ‘Transformism does not, however, develop or “educate” these currents, does not “bring out the best of them”, as it were. It does not base itself within them. Rather it seeks to contain and control popular forces from outside. This may involve making real concessions, but always within the limits of existing social arrangements. At this more “structural” level, involving socio‐economic relations and whole ways of life, passive revolution is an attempt to solve structural problems within the terms of existing structures. An example today might be trying to solve environmental problems without curtailing the production of commodities or contesting the power of big corporations’ (Johnson & Steinberg, 2004, p. 13).