Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (FE) project was a ground-breaking project designed to explore ways in which learning in FE is cultural and relational. The principal aims of the project were to deepen understanding of the complexities of learning; to identify, implement and evaluate strategies for the improvement of learning opportunities; and to set in place an enhanced and lasting capacity among practitioners for enquiry into FE practice. The project was part of the ESRC's Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP). Further information about this project can be found on the ESRC award web page, and wider information about the research programme on the TLRP web site. The objectives of the project were: to determine the nature of learning cultures and their impact upon students' and teachers' learning in FE; to establish a theoretical base for understanding the interrelationships between learning cultures, learning, and situational and motivational factors in FE; to identify principles of procedure for the enhancement of learning cultures in order to improve student and teacher learning and achievement; to determine the effectiveness, within prescribed limits, of different intervention strategies for the enhancement of learning cultures and the improvement of learning; to set in place an enhanced and lasting practitioner-based research capability in FE. The project collected qualitative data from (usually) six students in each of 16 learning sites in four FE colleges in England. It also collected quantitative data from all students in the same learning sites. The quantitative data (deposited at the UK Data Archive) enabled deeper qualitative analysis by exploring similarities and differences amongst learning sites, to locate the views of the interviewees amongst those of their peers in the sites, and to relate the sample as a whole to national norms. (The qualitative data could not be deposited without compromising the anonymity of colleges, tutors and students.) (A learning site is the course of study on which a student is engaged; the term recognises that in FE especially there are many different kinds of situation in which learners and tutors come together to support a student's learning.)
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Questionnaires were issued to all students in the learning sites associated with the project. Students engaged in one year courses completed questionnaires at the beginning (entry) and the end of their year (exit). Students on two year courses completed a questionnaire at the beginning of each year (entry to year 1 and entry to year 2) and at the end of the second year (exit). Data from all entry and exit questionnaires are included in the data set. The questionnaire items included questions on gender, age, current employment, students' prior work experience and prior educational experience, the nature of their accommodation (focused especially on the people with whom they were living) their registration status as full-time or part-time students, and their ethnicity. Questions focused on were specific to the research, rather than on the broader constructs, e.g. asking about the students' employment situation and whether or not they had dependants, rather than about socio-economic status and marital status. Items on factors affecting students' study were informed by findings from Cook and Leckey (1999). The relevant questions included students' perception of the impact on their learning of time spent travelling, the attitudes of others to their study, their social life, their own study skills. Care was taken to keep open the possibility that such factors may have positive effects for some students, even though the normal expectation was that they would impose constraints on learning. The questionnaire included sections from The Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (Taylor, Fraser, and Fisher, 1997): this closely matched the socially constructed view of learning that was central to the project. Despite the Bourdieuian theoretical framework of the project no attempt was made to explore notions of habitus, field and cultural capital through the questionnaire, because even within a specific learning site, relevant questions could not be sufficiently contextualised to be meaningful.
No sampling (total universe)
Self-completion
