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The present Labour Government is committed to "the era of learning through life". However, as the Kennedy Report (1997) into Widening Participation in Further Education argues, education is still an exclusion zone for an important minority of the population including women. If present policy, as set out in The Learning Age (DfEE, 1998a) is to work, further education colleges have an important role to play, becoming the vehicle for moving people "from unemployment through training to employment" (Smith, 1997:4). The present study initially sought to establish the nature of this role by exploring the impact of the current political climate on lifelong learning and the way in which local education authorities have interpreted the policy directives in this area. A detailed Institution Focused Study of one Local Education Authority and one Further Education College revealed a possible mismatch between provision and the needs of the population targeted under the lifelong learning initiative. It concluded that the initiative is likely to present a considerable challenge for institutions which, because of market forces, are increasingly viewing their client population in terms of funding units and academic output (Jarvis, 1998:220). The study subsequently adapted an action research approach to explore possible ways of meeting the lifelong learning challenge in the case of one group of female adults making a return to further education. A variety of data collection methods, including questionnaires, focus group techniques and reflective journals were employed throughout the two action cycles to record, in detail, the effects of the actions taken on students, lecturers, policy and practice. These provide the basis for an account of the characteristics of provision that could justifiably be described as a lifelong learning opportunity for adult females returning to education. The study concludes that an action research approach has the capacity for positively affecting lecturers' experience of teaching and the students' experience of learning within a further education environment.

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The study takes a qualitative approach to the study of lecturers’ practice in FE colleges. The meanings and ideas that individuals hold about their practice and their narratives about work experiences are captured through an exploratory methodology. The study is based in four FE colleges and offers a comparison of experienced lecturers, novice lecturers and managers to discuss dimensions of lecturers’ practice, namely their autonomy, responsibility and knowledge. Macro policies are introduced to FE colleges by external players and are driven top - down in FE colleges. Here, colleges are defined as the meso level of the Learning and Skills Sector. Within each college’s unique context lecturers have to negotiate their daily work routines and practices, that is, forming the micro arena. At the micro level, termed ‘the lecturer’s space’ the ongoing reconciliation by lecturers of the outside-in vectors (factors in the work environment that impinge on lecturers) with the insideout vectors (factors that emerge from their personal orientations and understandings) is examined to gain an understanding of practice. Degraded practice found in two of the three case-study colleges is compared with the third which emerged as having less degradation. Drawing on the evidence for nondegraded practice in this latter college, recommendations are made with regards to improving learning opportunities and the workplace, so that lecturers can realise their potential for flourishing in their teaching. In conclusion, the position of the colleges in the structured field of post compulsory education and training was explored in an attempt to explain the pattern of degraded practice amongst the case-study colleges. It was proposed that those colleges with weaker reserves of academic capital were more subject to the macro level discourses that advocated treating lecturers’ practice as a form of delivery. Moreover, the casestudy college with more extensive reserves of academic capital was less dependent on external stakeholders’ priorities and as a consequence was able to develop its own approach with regards to forming a community of practice.

Merger organizational change has been prolific across Wales and has significantly affected all Further Education (FE) colleges. The main merger driver was to reduce operational costs, whilst in the pursuit of increased organizational and departmental efficiencies and effectiveness. An imperative to widening access to education, an increase in the quality of curriculum provision and a need to reduce duplication of curriculum programmes were also important considerations. It is these changes that have shaped college organizations and the college middle manager role, post-merger, with a resulting impact on middle managers professional 'lived' experiences. The author's research examines the effect of merger on the middle manager role and the influence of the college context on the 'lived' experiences of middle managers managing curriculum departments. The review of the literature highlights key relationships between mainstream management and the college middle manager role, as well as the influences likely to have an impact on this role. The author has developed a conceptual model with key elements consisting of professional 'lived' experiences of middle managers and role construct and behaviour, management and leadership. This study is exploratory in nature and uses a social constructionist philosophical approach. A subjectivist epistemology was adopted for this study, with the researcher applying a thematic analysis and an investigation of multiple realities. Data for this research was collected from in-depth semi-structured interviewees, which gave interviewees the opportunity to highlight their specific day-to-day professional 'lived' work experiences. The research study outlines a number of conclusions, which accord with this study's specific research objectives and recommendations. In the post-merger era, the middle manager role has become more complex and challenging. Conclusions indicate a broader role for the middle manager, and a role defined by the college's professional context, which contributes to influencing the college middle manager role. This study contributes to the field of academic study, and to professional practice. It provides insights to understanding the role of middle managers in the FE sector and also offers recommendations for college strategy and policy. Finally, it highlights opportunities for further research in Wales and beyond.

This thesis explores the derivation of the core skills curriculum prescription through the layered perspectives of globalism and its interpretation at national level. I critically examine the claims made in the government rhetoric around improving the core skills of young people through vocational education and consider the nature of core skills and the complexity inherent in the concepts of embedded knowledge, transfer, and learning styles. The introduction of core skills in GNVQs into a college of further education shortly after incorporation in 1994 was the setting to explore students and lecturers perceptions of core skills learning alongside the impact of the changes in education policy. Drawing on the data that my study provided I analysed core skills learning within the contextual complexities of a large college of further education. I report the students and lecturers perceptions of the nature of the core skills, the methods of learning established in the college, and their reactions to change. This thesis is partly about my journey which started with my accepting that the curriculum prescription for core skills in GNVQs was appropriate for my students and adopting a realist / empiricist approach to my research. As my research proceeded my journey was taking me from the simple to the complex and this led me to question this stance and adopt an interpretivist position as a way of coping with the complex messages I was receiving from lecturers and students. I analyse the lecturers and students perceptions and explain them through linking the literature relating to innovation and change to that on the nature of learning. I conclude that core skills learning and rhetoric mean little until they are linked with innovation strategies and the nature of teaching and learning. I suggest that core skills learning was unclear but was presented in the rhetoric as self evident and its implementation in the college was reduced to a learning design problem. This led to uncertainty, insecurity, anxiety and frustration for both students and staff. I explore three models relating to innovation, planned learning and fluid learning and demonstrate that oversimplified approaches to a whole range of complex social, organisational and interactive processes are unlikely to work and that innovation, planned learning and fluid learning are linked and interlocked.

The workplace of today is characterized by global competition, cultural diversity, technological and management processes that require people to think critically, solve problems and communicate effectively. This requires a well founded Further Education and Training system. The researchers have indicated that the provision of vocational training under apartheid, that is, prior to 1994, was characterized by unequal access to learning opportunities based on the vestiges of legal, financial and other distinctions between formerly advantaged and disadvantaged institutions (Department of Education 2001, 9). The National Department of Education decided to merge the above institutions in attempt to remove the aforementioned vestiges. Education systems do not, however, just change because there is a change in the government, but the existing structures and vested interests, material constraints and the interplay of competing ideologies do warrant changes in education systems (McGregor and McGregor 1992, 17). At the same time, education transformation goes hand in glove with political transformation as a result of the shift in the balance of political power (African National Congress 1994, 3). However, education is a fundamental process, which can be expected to reflect the values, principles and practices of a new democratic dispensation at all levels and in all sectors (Nkoe 2002, 129). The article purports to investigate the perceptions of stakeholders on the merging of the Further Education and Training (FET) colleges in bringing about transformation of the South African FET sector. The reform of the FET colleges, which resulted in the formation of the new FET institutional landscape, is seen as a means to address and fulfil the aspirations of the democratic society as set in the preambles of the new legislation, namely, the Further Education and Training Act 98 of 1998, the Skills Development Act 97 of 1998, the South African Qualification Authority Act 57 of 1995 and the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998. In order to achieve this, the legislation will be examined and the perceptions of the FET colleges' stakeholders will be explored to help achieve this objective.

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The thesis examines the evolution of the approach to staff management in colleges of further education, and the implications of current pressures upon them for the further development of this management function. It recognizes that the traditional approach to the management of staff is based upon the presumption that staff have only to be recruited and selected to ensure that effective management occurs. This approach underplays the importance of personnel management in a labour intensive industry. It seeks to establish the likely directions of future development of the staff management function in F.E. colleges, in the context of governmental and market-induced pressures upon them. It uses the models of personnel management and human resource management, as developed in the literature (itself based largely on experience in industro-commercial organisations), to guide this part of the analysis, taking into account the similarities and differences in the nature of the the two types of organisation. The thesis concludes that colleges are likely to find it increasingly imperative to develop more deliberate personnel policies and practices and to integrate them more closely with objectives and strategies. To this extent, and in this context, the model of strategic human resource management is considered to offer more guidance to F.E. college managements on how they might proceed in the emergent environment.