There has long been discussion about the value of academic vs vocational education, but can we reach a point where we can blur these lines, to the benefit of learners?
Let's be clear, here. I was recruited to teach 2.5 days per week of GCSE Maths. Academic, right?
As of today, I teach 3.5 days per week and cover: GCSE Maths (academic), Level 1 IT with Business (vocational), Digital (vocational non-qualification) and Science for electively home educated learners (non-qualification, but required for the EHE gold standard).
Even after only a year of teaching, because I straddle both types of the educational divide, I have some things to say.
Academic
Firstly, my approach to teaching GCSE Maths was to identify over-arching storylines, or themes, as vehicles for the learning. Let's look at some of these before I continue with this thought:
GCSE topic My Overarching Storyline or Theme
Number Beckham of the Bronx - Murder Mystery
Algebra AlgeBro – Rapping to Solve X
Ratio Glastonbury
Probability Viva Las Vegas
Statistics Social Media Madness
Distance Speed Time, Pressure etc Buzz Priest - Astronaut
Before I began developing my lessons, I had, arguably, decided on a vocational approach to teaching this academic subject. Hadn't I? As an example, installing ourselves (the class and me) in "Las Vegas", put a real-life context around all the probability we learned. We discussed the gambling industry.
How it operates, its business model, how it makes its profits, the fact that "The House Always Wins" and the risk of gambling addiction. These are, largely, vocational discussions. Yet during these discussions, we learned about predicting what the likelihood is of rolling a 6 or a 2; we worked out how to identify the likelihood of a casino having both a circus and a roulette wheel.
So, vocational content seeps, liberally, into my academic lessons. More than that, vocational context is the vehicle for the lesson. This does not reduce or replace the academic subject coverage. It just puts the learning into perspective.
My idea is that the context is of interest to the learners (aged 14-19), so is more likely to engage them. Keep them interested. Choose to turn up that day.
In addition, they will learn a bit about the world, about my own real-life experience and perhaps this will positively influence them in their future lives. In my example, if just one learner chooses not to fall into the trap of compulsive gambling, then I will feel fully justified.
Vocational
But does it work the other way around? Does academic content seep into my Vocational lessons? Let's take my IT with Business course. We focus on Project Based Learning; topics and focus areas chosen by learners based on their own interests.
For example, the first two terms are taught under the umbrella project of learners starting their own business. This builds up to a Trade Fair just before Christmas. Product and service choices are made by the learners themselves. From packaging chocolates for sale to (specifically) Goths, to 3D printing bespoke gaming characters, to composing music for paid download, to producing Minecraft Top Tips videos. They produce a business plan (and learn MS Word), produce a profit and loss spreadsheet (and learn MS Excel) and create a website for their business. They physically create that business, the products or services within it, the sales process and financials, then actually sell to customers at college. This is highly vocational. Where is the academic content? Where is GCSE Maths included, or English?
Well, it is.
The content for English and Maths is inserted into my vocational subject in the opposite way to how I insert vocational topics. Remember I had an overarching theme for GCSE Maths - and that theme was the vehicle for us learning a particular set of topics? Well, with IT and Business, the overarching theme is, indeed the vocational topic - the project. The Maths and English are inserted in these types of ad-hoc ways:
by correcting spelling or grammatical mistakes in their business plans
by coaching them on times tables in the Excel modelling for their profit and loss spreadsheet
by using charts - such as bar charts or pie charts - in descriptions of business functions, and explaining in detail how these charts are produced, encouraging learners to use these charts in their own business plans
So the micro-insertion, "from underneath", of GCSE Maths or English content into the vocational lesson, is at the detailed level rather than at the overarching level. This makes sense, as it would be impossible to engage my learners any other way.
How does this link with the Intent and Implementation strategy for Activate Learning?
The template for Schemes of Learning (SOL), issued to teachers within Activate Learning, (headings below) has an explicit requirement for each lesson to be designed with reference to "Wider curriculum elements" including Maths and English.
Conclusion
Academics have long argued over the outcomes for learners of an academic vs vocational approach to education. The discussions have been framed as polarised - "either"/"or".
But in my foray into teaching, my instinct was to mix the two from the start - with this hybrid approach, I hoped to engage learners in a Further Education academic topic, where they may not have engaged with that topic in a school setting.
The SOL template, issued by Activate Learning to teachers, explicitly seeks to embed aspects of Maths and English in any scheme of work. Of course, this would, chiefly, be relevant for vocational topics (admittedly, you could include aspects of English in the GCSE Maths course, and vice versa). So embedding English and Maths into the vocational SOLs is part of Activate Learnings own vision for its vocational lessons.
I argue that we should also do the opposite, and frame academic lessons within a vocational storyline.
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