ABSTRACT: This article investigates the experience of individual learners who have been allocated learning support in the further education system in England. The particular focus is on interviewees’ constructions of their emotional and psychic experiences. Through the adoption of a psycho-social perspective, learners’ tendency to ‘idealise’ their learning support workers is understood as a strategy for coping with the anxiety generated by a range of previous experiences. The implications for policy-makers are discussed.

This desk-based-study explores, on the basis of a Critical Realist perspective, the possibility to integrate the concept of Learning Cultures within the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis. It proposes a theoretical framework to support and guide the use of textual analysis in the study of Learning Cultures and highlights new opportunities to study technology enhanced learning communities and communities of practice, leveraging on Corpora Analysis and Metaphor Individuation Procedures.

Summary At a time when Britain's vocational education and training (VET) system and vocational qualifications are undergoing a major review and restructuring in response to critical reports about the model established under the former National Council for Vocational Qualifications, the British Council and associated agencies is currently trying to market National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) overseas. The chief weaknesses and failings of NVQs and the competence?based education and training (CBET) system on which they are based are outlined in terms of assessment (...) anomalies and the needs of firms, trainees and employers. Since these shortcomings are so so serious, it is suggested that??until they have been remedied through the current reforms under the aegis of the new Qualifications and Curriculum Authority??it is ethically unjustifiable to export a failed VET system to countries which may be unaware of the critical research surrounding NVQs and CBET. (shrink)