Improving Learning Cultures In Further Education

This book proposes a new approach to improving education in further education colleges by focusing on the cultural understanding of teaching and learning. It presents findings from ethnographic research of seventeen learning sites and explores how learning cultures can transform over time and how they can impact individuals. The book also discusses ways in which people, including tutors, managers, and policy makers, can work to improve learning cultures. It argues for the importance of a cultural approach and provides practical guidance for implementing change in further education.

Through its unique theoretical framework - a cultural understanding of teaching and learning - this book develops a new way of understanding educational improvement, one which focuses on the formation and transformation of the practices through which students learn. Based on detailed ethnographic research of seventeen learning sites in further education colleges, this book generates a unique insight into a wide variety of practices of teaching and learning. Illustrated by case studies, it is structured around three key questions: * what do learning cultures in FE look like and how do they transform over time? * how do learning cultures transform people? * how can people (tutors, managers, policy makers, but also students) transform learning cultures for the better? Through a combination of theory and analysis, Improving Learning Cultures in Further Education makes a strong case for the importance of a cultural approach to the improvement of teaching and learning in further education, and provides practical guidance for researchers, policymakers and practitioners for implementing change for the better.