The Technology and Vocational Education Initiative was funded by UK’s Employment Ministry (not education) during a period 1984 to 1995. Its aim was to make late secondary education more relevant for a broad spectrum of learners. It encouraged a broader curriculum to include more practical  study; work experience as part of everyone’s education; better careers education; attention to emerging key skill and ICT; an opportunity to learn out-of-school; and in the context of this material - a flexible approach to learning. The introduction of a statutory National Curriculum as a result of the 1988 Education Act lead to its demise.

 

This material is taken, with the authors' permission, from a now out-of-print document (which was Crown Copyright and fully acknowledged) from a document at that time. It provides a theoretical basis for flexible learning and as such also provides a direction for both action and evaluation of any activities we design to support students learning.

 

 

The historic context of this work is important. It was written in the 1990s - hence we do have phrases like “the recently discovered work of Vygotsky”.However Peter and Simon need congratulating on the timelessness of much of what they say.

 

The material is written so that you can go deeper by reading the material in the blue boxes - but still make practical sense by just reading the white text.

 

 

Although in 2007, the phrase "personalised learning" is high on the agenda in the politics of education the issues it addresses are not new. This material is from the 1980s and 90s. It was during a period of educational development across the UK (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too)that was funded by the ministry responsible for employment and skills at that time.  The key phrase was "Flexible Learning"

 

Flexible Learning is an approach to the delivery of education and training which emphasises adaptation to the varying learning needs of students and the promoting of their learning autonomy, within a framework of appropriate support.

 

This paper offers a critical examination of Flexible Learning in the light of current educational theory and other relevant sources, as one form of rational basis for its further development and dissemination. It comprises five main sections.

 

Following a brief introduction to the background and nature of the Flexible Learning! approach in the first section, Section Two offers a conceptual analysis of relationships between learning and teaching and a review of the underlying framework that has increasingly informed recent research on teaching. Both sources are seen to confirm an interactive approach consistent with and having implications for that of Flexible Learning., but traditional polarisations in educators' thinking point to a need for clarity and care in its dissemination.

 

Section Three focuses on conceptions of the learner and learning emerging from modern research. Current psychology offers considerable evidence for the active as well as receptive nature of human awareness and motivation, and the modem psychology of skill demonstrates the complex requirements needed for the learning of skills and the skills of learning. Whilst confirming the Flexible Learning stance, this also implies that the development of self- regulatory skills of learning must be a central concern of the approach.

 

Section Four then considers the implications of previous sections, as well as recent insights from developmental psychology and peer-based learning, for the nature and strategies of Flexible Teaching. A variety of useful strategies are available, but here too there appears to be a similar need for development in the skills required.

 

The final section draws together implications relevant to Flexible Learning in each of the above sections, considering such insights for their combined application to the Flexible Learning Framework. As well as yielding additional support for the essential features of the general approach. certain issues and potential tensions emerge which are likely to need addressing in the interests of successful dissemination and implementation of the Flexible Approach.