Many research findings show that the convergence of education reform policies over the world is part of the globalisation process and the result of policy borrowing. At present, more than 100 countries are now involved in some way in designing or implementing qualifications frameworks (QF). The Hong Kong government is no exception. The Hong Kong QF was officially implemented on 5 May 2008 after years of preparation. Among many policy instruments to reform the education and training sectors, why did the Hong Kong government converge with other governments to adopt QF? The literature suggests that policy borrowing is a strong reason to explain this convergence phenomenon. The repOli of a study in 16 countries commissioned by the Skills and Employability Department of the International Labour Office (ILO) says, "policy borrowing emerged as a strong reason why NQFs [national qualifications frameworks] are being introduced, as well as playing a significant role in how they are being developed" (International Labor Office, October 2010:3). Policy borrowing has been a useful lens to understand the phenomenon of policy convergence as Green (1999: 56) suggests that "three principal ways in 11 which convergence may occur. One is through an increase in policy borrowing, an instance of the wider process of cultural diffusion". The significance of this research topic is aptly pointed out in the ILO report: The focus on NQFs is important because some 100 countries are now involved in some way in designing or implementing qualifications frameworks .... Despite the growing international interest, there is very little empirical research about the actual design process, implementation and results ofNQFs in the labour market (International Labor Office, October 2010 :iii). Owing to my work at the then Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation (now the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications), I have the opportunity to observe the inception of an QF idea and the translation of it into practice in Hong Kong. I was also involved in the preparatory work for developing the quality assurance mechanism which underpins the Hong Kong QF. Against this background, it is of great interest for me to choose QF as my research topic to understand why many governments in general, and the Hong Kong government in pmiicular, adopt QF despite there being little evidence of its success. The popularity ofNQFs suggests an apparent convergence in education policies around the world. My research problem is - why the Hong Kong government implements QF despite there being little evidence of its success. This will be done by looking through the lenses of policy 111 convergence and policy borrowing. These inter-related lenses together with the global circulated discourses on lifelong learning and the knowledge economy provide the theoretical framework of this study. This research is a case study of why QF is adopted in Hong Kong. The following questions have guided this study: 1. What are the main features of the Hong Kong QF? 2. What impact do the global circulated discourses on lifelong learning and the knowledge economy have on the adoption of QF in Hong Kong? 3. To what extent is the adopting of Q F in Hong Kong pmi of the trend of education policy convergence? 4. To what extent is the adoption of QF in Hong Kong the result of policy borrowing? Analysis of policy documents and qualitative interviews with key stakeholders were used to address these research questions. The contribution of this thesis is on two fronts. Firstly, this study has emiched the QF literature by offering a Hong Kong case study. This contribution is significant because there is a problem with the current QF literature in that it is heavily biased towards the five Anglophone founders (England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) and to the European Union and its efforts in its hinterland. Information on QF development in other countries or regions is scanty. This case study helps fill this gap by shedding some light on why and how QF is developed in other places. IV Secondly, very little has been written about the implementation of the Hong Kong QF since its establishment in May 2008. As an exploratory case study, this study illuminates our understanding on why QF has become an attractive policy instrument in wider education policy processes in Hong Kong through the lenses of policy convergence and policy borrowing. v

This study explores ownership and manifestations of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1984) demonstrated by a sample of lecturers in the UK Further Education ('FE') sector and the influence this has on cross-college collaborative practice. The research was conducted at three colleges in the English Midlands in 2010-11 employing a researcher-as-bricoleur approach (Kincheloe 2002). Knowledge explaining inhibitor or activator mechanisms involved in collaborative working is essential if the sector is to gain from the opportunities of innovative problem solving afforded by communities of practice (Wenger et al. 2002). The significance of this knowledge is amplified when considered against the background of efficiency pressures resulting from funding cuts to FE proposed in the Government's 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review. The study found the types and magnitude of lecturers' cultural capital and the patterns of its deployment should act, in the main, as enablers for collaborative practice. Despite their middle-class professional status lecturers tend to exhibit popularist to middlebrow cultural affinities. The minority of practitioners who possessed 'highbrow' cultural capital tend to classify as cultural omnivores rather than exhibiting traits solely associated with univores (Peterson 1992, Peterson and Kern 1996). Few lines of cultural cleavage were found, with one notable exception. There was evidence of antipathy resulting from dislocations of capital owned by lecturers delivering Higher Education programmes in the FE environment and their predominantly FE line managers and FE lecturer colleagues. The asset value of cultural capital is depressed in comparison to more valuable 'organisational knowledge' capitals, for example an understanding of college bureaucratic practice and procedure. Deployment of high cultural capital where it might be exchanged for status tends to be suppressed. There was evidence of strong enthusiasm for collaboration, possibly due to the tolerance of the cultural omnivore (Erickson 1996), but Homo Actificivm is encountering significant obstacles to cross-college working: physical isolationism, the precarite of job insecurity (Bourdieu 1998a), andrestrictions imposed by inter-departmental competition within college. The thesis argues that to promote innovative collaborative practice Further Education colleges should rebalance the emphasis in their accommodation strategies to give more of an equal weighting to staff provision as they do for students. In the light of the findings, wherever possible, colleges should consider enlarging staffrooms and providing additional cost-efficient informal social network spaces for their staff organised around the optimum 'Dunbar number' (Dunbar 1992) in order to catalyse 'community'. The lecturer 'species' Homo Artificium is contrived from the study's results. Its name, etymologically from the Latin 'artificium', encompasses the notion of skill, ability and opportunity. It attempts to encapsulate FE's raison d'etre that of the UK's "Lifelong Learning and Skills Sector". The characteristics of the species are dissimilar to a distant relative, Homo Academicus, postulated by Bourdieu (1984b) following his research into the cultural capital possessed by Parisian university academics [pun intended]. My interpretation of Homo Artificium is depicted on the bookmark.

This study investigates issues which arose out of concern and interest about how professional occupational practitioners experience the shift to becoming tutors of their former profession within the context of further education in the Republic of Ireland. More particularly, the research examines how this shift affects notions of professional identity, credibility and role legitimacy. This shift, or transition, is examined through the personal stories and experiences of a small group of six individuals currently experiencing this journey. A further level of interest is generated by changes in government education policy within the Republic of Ireland which aimed at reframing the focus of education back onto the student (student centred learning). This change in policy in turn impacted on the culture of the organisation by which the six tutors are employed, in terms of now seeing students as clients. In recent years there have been further shifts in the profile of the students, who are now more discerning and demanding; this raised questions about the personal and organisational preparation and development of tutors to meet these new demands, both pedagogical and subject-based. The concept of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991) was used as a heuristic framework or lens through which to examine this transition, framed as moving from one community of practice into another whilst acknowledging the need to maintain membership of the former occupational community of practice. The key data source for this study is semi-structured interviews with six chef-tutors, all of whom formerly worked as occupational practitioners in industry. Additional documentation data was drawn on as the research evolved. The study draws attention to both the career trajectories and the personal and professional development paths of the tutors, from initial encounters with the occupational domain to their present day role of tutor. The research identifies that these tutors occupy a vulnerable position of static equilibrium between the two communities of practice and challenges the legitimacy of the use of the term “professional” with respect to either domain, professional chef or professional tutor. This phenomenon is conceptualised and articulated through a model termed the “Professional Eclipse”, within which time is shown to be an incremental influence to assuming this position. The topic of this research study is central to the debates around dual professionalism, communities of practice and notions of professional identity within further education.

The aim of this phenomenologically-based study was to establish, from the perspective of academics, what impact the introduction of Teaching Quality Assessment had had on teaching in higher education. Teaching Quality Assessment (TQA) was introduced by the university funding councils, in response to their obligations under the Further and Higher Education (FHE) Act (1992) and was the methodology used to assess the quality of teaching in higher education in the UK during the period February 1993 to June 1995. A semi-structured interview approach was chosen to generate the data. Forty-six academics from two departments (Computer Science and Business Studies) in four institutions (two pre-1992 and two post-1992 universities) were interviewed. Questions focused on academics’ personal views, opinions and aspirations with respect to teaching. These were examined together with their perceptions of the institutional context particularly with respect to support for teaching, and incorporating their experiences of TQA. Respondents expressed a high commitment to teaching, and a stronger professional than institutional loyalty. Teaching was very pressurised due to increasing student numbers, high student:staff ratios, demanding students and the requirements of external monitoring. Academics were also under pressure to excel at research, since status was based on research, rather than teaching excellence. These pressures had been exacerbated by the Government’s funding, expansion, and customer-service policies, to which institutions had responded with increasingly bureaucratic and less collegial systems. The academics felt that TQA did not benefit teaching and learning directly, but indirect benefits included promoting the improvement of administrative systems, and helping them to maintain standards. Participants also regarded the TQA methodology as inappropriate, and suggested that quality assurance systems should be audit-based and improvement-focused, with minimal external controls to assure the integrity of institutional self-regulatory mechanisms.