Not Just the Economy: the public value of adult learning (NJE-2)

Economy, Community & Public Value

Last week I discussed the beginnings of the idea of a Formative Public Value and critically reviewed the issues concerning the social productivity of education as discussed by Feinstein and Sabates.  I couldn’t see substantive arguments for learning as empowerment either at an individual or community level nor any sense of engagement and the notion of community in their work. This week I will address a broader set of issues concerning Public Value moving away from the simple focus on skills for the economy.

Ursula Howard – Adult literacy learning, participative democracy and the public collective good – new life for old causes?

This is the first paper in NJE to mention and use the term “communities” and to explicitly discuss literacy and learning as social practices and move attention away from the focus on skills for the economy and underachievement towards the development of a “democratic, community-based learning culture and turning the current logic on its head.” (p66)

Howard sees a crisis in democracy characterised by the minimisation of the practices of social democracy in favour of a representative democracy where private interests and the individual co-exist with the state and have become aspects of each other, squeezing out meaningful experience of society as a reality or something a person belongs to or is part of (p67).  This representative democracy permits a plurality of elites to represent and define the range of interests in society and “often minimises the practice of social democracy, whereby people directly participate in the direction and government of their local communities.” (p67) This analysis has its echoes in the approach taken by the “Spirit Level”, referred to in previous posts and also discussed in my final post on this topic.

The contribution of adult learning is seen by Howard as having a wider purpose than being primarily focused on the acquisition of skills for employment and argues for;

• Adult education that develops the public understanding of critical issues; and
• Develops the capacity of individuals and groups to participate more directly in the government of their local communities. (p69)

Howard’s vision for adult education includes the development of an adult education culture to meet current challenges to work towards the creation of strong communities and re-create a strong, public, collective voice on issues that affect all of us. In this work,  the role of adult educators would be to act as practitioners and (co)-creators of new models and practices for formal and informal learning.

In the current UK context of “Skills for Life” and “Train to Gain” Howard identifies a disembodied form of education that does not pay attention to the “context, purposes and practices in which, language, written language and numbers play a part,” quoting Ivanic (2006) (p70). Not only have these funding streams been limited to a restricted, top-down model of learning, but the targets set have distorted the original purpose of the programmes and the practices adopted by providers.

Looking forward, Howard sees the need to regenerate informal, self-generated learning in communities and overcome the organisational boundaries created by competitive funding arrangements and policy which sees learners typologised or stereotyped as dependent (p71) and subject to inflexible provision and assessment requirements.

Overall, Howard’s vision for adult education and public value is at odds with the other papers in this collection, being much more focused on “public”, “community” and “learning” with a strong sense of the participation required to generate public value. Her notion of “seriously useful knowledge” is a good point to follow up the debate she starts in NJE.

Carole Stott and Finbar Lillis – The right to make the wrong choices – liberty, learning and credit systems in the twentieth-first century

Stott and Lillis set their proposals for a learning credit system in the following context for public value; “We take ‘public value’ to mean any perceived additional benefit to wider society that accrues from individual participation in (adult) learning. The additional public value is variously associated with improved public health, better personal and community relationships, a more ‘inclusive’ society and improved prospects for wealth and prosperity. Participation in adult learning is meant to accrue such benefits to wider society.” (p77)

In their paper, Stott and Lillis argue that a properly constituted learning credit system can contribute to the two wider aims of the quest for social justice and meeting the demands of the globalised economy. (p78)

The role of a learning credit system in meeting these objectives is explored alongside a review of the problems engendered by recent experiences and the required conditions for creating a system to meet the objectives noted above. The key arguments set out revolve around the contention that using learning credits promotes the public value of learning, that credit is an entitlement and that this entitlement includes the right to make wrong decisions about the use of credit and that this entails trusting the public to exercise their entitlements and involving them in the decisions made about educational provision.

John Stone – Demonstrating Public Value

This paper provides an introduction to the recent history of policy making and the response of the FE sector to centralised approaches to quality assurance; moving from the days of Total Quality Management to the need to revisit that agenda in the light of the centralised funding and policy agendas. It is difficult to relate the detailed content of this paper to the concerns of this blog as the approach taken by Stone is to see the primary measure of public value as being the improvement of public perceptions of public services. The focus of this engagement is with “the considered view of the informed citizen” (p98), which seems to be governed as much by marketing considerations as a process of community engagement. Other statements such as a “balanced stakeholder scorecard” and the weighting of the needs and interests of specific groups, seems to lead to relatively static rather than dynamic responses to developments in communities. It is instructive to note how little the term community appears in the paper; the terms students, customers and local stakeholders and citizens are, seemingly, the preferred options for defining those with an interest in provider activity.

The focus on colleges as the model for adult learning within the paper seems to ignore community-based activity and outreach and the needs of adult learners are lost in the abstractions discussed. It would be good to see examples provided and discussed and the one initiative mentioned is a government led project that uses “public value” as a component of a quality improvement model at a national level “with proposals for in-depth customer and stakeholder surveys” (p98). Engagement is not stressed in the scenario described. As Ursula Howard notes in her paper in this collection, the role of colleges as part of their communities is being undermined and the recent talk of fifty more colleges being closed/merged, moves colleges further and further from their communities, in terms of both physical distance and focus. John Stone’s paper represents a senior manager’s view of the means to legitimate the activity of colleges, but it does not address how public value can be generated and sustained in the sense being explored in these postings.

Tom Schuller – Public Value: international insights

This contribution starts by setting “public value” in the domain of attitudes/value judgements rather than as something that can be assessed in terms of public activity and social outcomes. Three possible interpretations of the term are used;

1. Publically shared beliefs or norms of a general kind;
2. Desirable – i.e. valued features or goals of he education system; and
3. Value judgements about the best way of achieving point 2. (p101)

This is not the use of the term used by other contributors to NJE which focus on the value to publics or the value of public services expressed in the level of pay for senior managers derived from the Harvard model – see discussion of Caroline Mager’s paper below.

Schuller explores a number measures derived from OECD data including “educational expectancy” (p101), participation in continuing education by the labour force (p102) and private expenditure on tertiary education. The conclusion from his brief survey is that “there is much to be done (in the UK), but there is no need to wring hands in total despair” (p103) over the UK’s current situation.

In the second section of the paper the focus shifts to short discussions of “Building social capital”, “Collective Consumerism”, “Positive sum competition” and “Innovation and continuity”. In each case the discussion is brief, setting out short proposals in favour of the use of these concepts to support educational development through the re-invigoration of public values in favour of education and learning.

I have real concerns about the approach taken in this paper which are best addressed in later posts dealing with Fine’s book and the setting out of the LGC position on public value to complete this series of posts. Overall though, this paper does not address the conflicting meaning attributed “public value” or provide the analysis to set the international comparisons in context. Five pages of comments leaves this reader anxious to find out more and follow through the comments here with a more detailed critique of the IFLL Report itself.

Richard Hooper – Doing the wrong thing righter

This paper takes a look at adult education from a local government perspective and gives a detailed historic account of the changing role of local government and policy post-2000, which is seen as marginalising local democracy and separating a skills strategy from wider community or cultural learning. Taking up the conclusions of the “Learning for Life” report he stresses the need for there to be a learning policy that sees all aspects of learning considered in their totality and that this priority to join up provision be seen as a reality and necessity (p116).

“At present, the public value of adult learning, and its funding, appears to have shrunk to a narrow view of learners as consumers of private and public services; as a means to an economic and globally competitive end. The emphasis is ……………… on transmitting to adult learners rather than engaging in dialogue with them; and on treating them as learners rather than as the ‘social actors’ they in fact are” (p118).

This seems to represent the key argument of this paper, but I would urge those with an interest in this discussion, to read the whole paper as its key ideas are even more relevant in the context of the ever more centralised control of the economy and public spending. It is worth quoting the final paragraph at length. “Above all the increased and direct involvement of local government in shaping and influencing adult learning might restore the democratic link which has been missing from the past 14 years (to 2008) ….. it is always perplexing to hear the view that because voter turnout can be less than 50 per cent in local elections then important services such as adult and further education are better entrusted to wholly unelected quangos (although that’s now back to central government-NE). We are constantly looking for new and innovative ways of giving expression to the voice of the learner. Perhaps properly empowered local elected representatives of learners in their communities might not be a bad idea to revisit” (p120).

Caroline Mager – Public value and leadership – exploring the implications

Caroline Mager has written extensively on this topic with a focus on leadership stemming from her work for CEL and, currently LSIS. In this paper, her focus is on describing the underlying theory derived from Mark Moore’s work, which is concerned to explore how organisational purpose, capacity and legitimacy can be aligned “ in order to provide the public manager or leader with the necessary authority to create public value through a particular course of action” (p124)

“This approach by Moore suggests that legitimacy is earned by public services, not just by their achievement of government targets, but by their relationship with their public – their customers, citizens and stakeholders” (p125). The key ideas arising from this position are outlined as being;

• Public servants understanding and valuing what the public wants
• Public servants considering their role as adding public value (?)
• Clarity about purposes and values as the basis for discussion and deliberation with the public
• Being able to describe what is delivered in terms of adding the public good
• Thinking about how public servants gain legitimacy and authority for roles and purposes
• Leaders and managers proactively engaging customers, stakeholders and citizens in defining and shaping services in a process that simultaneously defines public value and helps to produce it.
• Leaders being prepared to educate and shape public preferences, not simply to follow them. (pp126-7)

The implications for leadership are seen as being particularly important in a time when organisations (colleges) are being more self-regulating and market driven so that the role of leaders is seen as being essentially pro-active with a responsibility to educate and shape public opinion (p127). This role is seen as increasing the legitimacy and credibility with communities and citizens and thereby strengthening their ability to influence government policy. Thinking locally and working in partnership with other organisations is seen as a key priority, although Mager sets out the potential barriers and difficulties to be overcome in working way and the need for action research to assess the value of different approaches. The promise of this approach is seen in what it can offer leaders (p130), but it is interesting to see how the approach to public value, based on, appropriates the language of business management and lionises the role of leaders as educators and shapers and still holds learners and communities at an arms length in terms of participation and decision-making.

Beyond Managerial; Community

This approach is managerial in the sense that it treats “stakeholders” as sources of demand and in need of education and shaping, where a reading of the problems of this sector would attest to the need for leaders to be more actively “shaped” and “educated” by the communities they ostensibly serve. As with other papers in this collection it is a shame that the discussion is held at an abstract level rather than using the many positive examples of engagement to be found in accounts of Adult Learners’ weeks over the years or in inspection reports and the Excellence Gateway. As I will argue in my final post on this topic, approaches such as this, which take their cue from Moore and the Cabinet Office work mid-decade, are compromised by the focus on leadership behaviours and rewards, while they miss the literature on the active engagement with communities that challenge the view that issues such as public value are ultimately the province of “leaders”.

Having said I would cover the content of NJE in two posts, I decided that it was more worthwhile to keep each post at a manageable size. Consequently I will shortly follow this with a final post on the books last four papers, before turning to Fine’s critiques of the assumptions, and skewed research, around “social capital” picking up the pointers in my reviews of the Feinstein and Sabates paper as well as Schuller’s use of “bridging social capital”.

Nigel Ecclesfield 8th July 2010

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