1. Every child matters

Since 2004, UK education policy has been shaped by ‘Every Child Matters’ (ECM). This provides for a new ‘joined-up’ approach to the delivery of children’s services such as education, health and child protection. It also requires service providers to deliver measurable improvements in children’s ability to:

• Be healthy
• Stay safe
• Enjoy and achieve
• Make a positive contribution
• Achieve economic well-being

One reason for the adoption of this approach was the long running concern that specific children’s protection needs were sometimes lost in the gaps between services (Laming, 2003). There was also a concern that relative supply-side capture of both education and health services had made it difficult over the years to access efficiencies and synergies that a more holistic approach to the child might offer. For example, from a traditional teacher’s perspective it may be difficult to justify the use of limited resources to discuss curriculum and pedagogy with a non-teacher, say a health psychologist, even though learning about self, beliefs and behaviours and health outcomes might all be closely linked in the perspectives of policy makers, parents and students, and use of these connections might speed positive behaviour change. Joining up services is expected to make it easier for service providers to coordinate their efforts.

A shift of emphasis from supply-side to demand-side perspectives can also be seen in the attention ECM gives to children’s views of service provision and of their own needs, both locally in consultation with Children’s Trusts, and nationally through Children’s Commissioners. Whatever the real outcomes for the influence that children have, ECM has certainly established a default assumption that children should be consulted. It has also established the view that what matters primarily is the well-being of children, not the operational convenience of service providers. There are two features of ECM that are of particular significance to the present discussion:

• Relationships between health and education services are now open to re-negotiation on an issue-by-issue, initiative-by-initiative basis in the light of ECM aims
• Children’s views of the services they receive will be solicited and may inform future service delivery

The recently published Children’s Plan (2007), a ten year strategy for improving UK childhoods, underlines both of these key points. It adds commitments to making clear improvements in children’s health, including obesity levels, and to reducing the numbers of young offenders. Together these policy directives establish a firm connection between education services and children’s health and behaviour. These conditions arguably increase the scope for education and health providers, whether state-, charitable- or commercially-funded to form strategic alliances.

2. The promise of improved education services through Academies

Currently UK government is committed to establishing 400 academy schools, having already established about 100. Opposition party support for the programme suggests this policy will survive a future change of government. Academies are all-ability, independent state schools funded in parity with other state schools, but established and managed by academy sponsors (variously faith groups, businesses, universities, philanthropists and educational foundations) most often in partnership with local authorities. Commercial sponsors are required to invest £2 million in a newly established academy, while ‘educational’ sponsors invest their reputation rather than money in the success of the academy. Typically based in purpose-built or recently renovated accommodation, Academies have tended, so far, to serve relatively deprived communities with a recent history of failing schools.

Academies manage their own budgets, answering directly to Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families under the terms of their funding agreements. Their funding and governance, independent of local authority control, makes them relatively free to invest in educational resources, such as IT, and to meet National Curriculum objectives as their leading teachers and governors see fit, as long as they can convince OFSTED of their plans. Thus the performance of Academies is closely scrutinised, the expectation being that their relative freedom should translate into innovative and excellent teaching strategies delivering improved educational outcomes measurable in terms of pupils’ GCSE performance. Campaigners against Academies (eg www.antiacademies.org.uk) claim that Academies’ governance structure means that they lack local democratic accountability, raising questions about their ability to respond to local communities’ needs and wants.

Key points to note here are:

• Academies are expected to innovate and their leaders are under high pressure to ensure their pupils perform
• Academies are a very clear example of a purchaser/provider split in education delivery: local and national authorities are no longer to act as providers of education but should act instead as commissioners of education
• Academies’ strategic positioning within education market and ways of delivering national curriculum are relatively open to the influence of their sponsors.

Clearly, not all schools are Academies. However, their relative freedom to experiment in the new policy context set by ECM and the Children’s Plan and their close relationship with central government makes them a likely source of, and be test-beds for, future initiatives.

ECM diminishes conceptual and practical boundaries between ‘education’ and ‘health’. Couple this with the accountability regime surrounding academies and their innovation brief, and pupils’ health could become not only a key assessment criterion but also a key ‘lever’ in working toward excellence. Thus education will become more porous to health information. There are reasons for thinking that health provision may also become more porous to education providers. I am aware of an Academy that is turning its approach to pupils’ physical education into a marketable product, becoming a ‘health provider’ of sorts for other schools. Further, the attention of health policy makers is turning from informing the public with health messages toward individual behaviour change (Taylor, 2008). It may be that education professionals and institutions are seen as possessing valuable skills in this area.

3. Pharmaceutical trading conditions and future strategy

As the table of worries below indicates, the pharmaceutical industry was experiencing declining profitability even during the recent economic boom.

Pharma Marketing News 2005

http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2005/01/drug-pricesdeclining-profits-top.html

Pharmaceutical development and testing is a high risk business with both the efficacy and safety of candidate drugs in doubt until relatively late stages of development. From a profitability perspective a sensible development strategy is to focus attention on candidate drugs that are likely to have a large market in the affluent minority world. This accounts for the recent growth of ‘life-style’ drugs (Flower, 2004) such as Viagra and the emergence of the category ‘medically enhanced normality’ (Møldrup et al, 2003). The figures above also suggest that pharmaceutical businesses are motivated to influence government regulation of drug development and health policy.

The scoping exercise reported in ‘Drugs Futures 2025′ (Office of Science and Technology, 2005) brought policy makers, representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, and others together.  It offers some insight into the industry’s current and near future strategies. One aspect is of direct relevance here: the development of cognition enhancers (CE). Such CEs are believed to strengthen a range of cognitive functions, including memory, reasoning and concentration, by selectively enhancing or diminishing neurotransmitter function and synaptic efficacy. Regulators and the pharmaceutical industry expect both the size and product range of CE markets to expand in the near future. There is a history of soft drink and food manufacturers adding CEs to their products (Coke, Red Bull). Arguably, combining a CE with an otherwise desirable product would shift the conditions of consumer choice toward the state of ambient consumption that caffeine has long enjoyed. Food and soft drink manufacturers may act in concert with pharmaceutical manufacturers in the development of such products in the near future. An expansion of unregulated pharmaceutical CEA production by domestic and overseas concerns is also envisaged.

According to the anecdotal reports of some commentators (Turner and Sahakian, 2006) many adults and children who have no medically identified cognitive deficits are already finding uses for these agents, hoping to improve their performance in education, work and leisure. There is a large existing market for non-pharmaceutical agents such as dietary supplements and herbs and a new market is emerging in the ‘off-label’ use of pharmaceuticals. In this new market, drugs developed to treat pathological conditions are used by those with no diagnosed need in the hope of enhancement. Ritalin, for example, is often prescribed in cases of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but can also be taken in the hope of boosting powers of concentration that are understood as ‘normal’. Although pharmaceutical research and development activities are often subject to the ethical constraint that they must aim at finding a treatment for a pathology, consumers with no pathological condition are relatively free to experiment with the many opportunities and risks presented by self-prescription of pharmaceuticals, sourced through the internet or social networks.

4. How effective is the current range of CEs?

Jones et al (2007) identify 27 major agents believed to have cognition enhancing potential. These include ten dietary supplements and seventeen pharmaceuticals. Horne (2008) provides a synoptic review of evidence of their effectiveness which I summarise below.

i.        Nutrachemicals: dietary supplements and vitamins

Vitamins E, B6, B12, folate, thiamine, lecithin, neurosteroids and Ginko biloba. There is insufficient evidence to assess their efficacy although there are suggestions of an association between vitamin B6 and memory in healthy individuals.

ii.        Cholinergic drugs

These drugs enhance neural transmission through the cholinergic system that uses acetylcholine as its neurotransmitter. Cholinesterase inhibitors reducing the effectiveness of enzymes that breakdown acetylcholine, thus making it more available within the brain. Lab tests have shown cognitive improvements in healthy subjects, although effects on different cognitive abilities vary between individuals. Nicotine and related compounds have been shown to have beneficial effects on attention, learning and memory in healthy subjects.

iii.        Psychomotor stimulant drugs

These are often prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Adderall, Ritalin), where there is good evidence of their effectiveness. Ritalin can enhance spatial working memory, cognitive flexibility and reaction time in young healthy adults, but effects on verbal learning, vigilance and long term memory are relatively small and restricted to the special conditions found in the lab.

iv.        Atypical stimulants : modafinil

Marketed as treatment for excessive sleepiness, there is evidence that modafinil (provigil) can benefit some cognitive functions in young healthy adults including verbal working memory, visual recognition, planning performance and executive inhibitory control. No memory enhancement has been demonstrated. Means by which the effects are produced is unknown.

v.        Cerebral vasodilators

Cerebral vasodilators widen blood vessels in the brain. There is little evidence that they enhance cognitive function in healthy individuals.

It is clear that there is more evidence for some CEs than for others, but also that there are gaps in evidence. While the availability of a high standard of scientific evidence may be salient for some actors, for others possibility and anecdote are just as convincing.  As Martin et al (2008) argue, bio-science development, marketing and public reception are shaped by an economy of hope as well as available evidence. The ‘gold standard’ of medicines research, the double-blind control study, is certainly not the only available metric of effectiveness, even if it can claim to be the best. It is likely, then, that individuals and perhaps organisations will find their own ‘tests’ of CEs.

Drug Futures 2025 (2005) also raises the issue of drugs testing. As more psychoactive and enhancing drugs are brought to formal and informal markets so the technology for detecting their use has become more widely available. For example Access Diagnostics (www.drug-testing-kit.co.uk) offer a saliva test kit at a rate of £5.50 per test to cover cannabis, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines and benzodiazepine that promises results within 10 minutes. According to Drugs Futures 2025 such testing is likely to be an increasingly common feature of the management of drug use in the classroom and at work, but it is unclear just what types of drugs will be tested for in what circumstances. For example a test might be used to assess a child’s compliance with a prescribed mood or performance-altering substance and another might be used to deter the same child from the use of recreational drugs. Some US schools apparently allow children who have been diagnosed with ADHD to attend school only on the condition that they have taken their medication.

B. Relationships

1. Might relationships between educators and private concerns in the information technology and health sectors come to resemble those between medics and drug companies?

There is a good deal of research and commentary on relations between pharmaceutical companies and medical service providers. Much of this work is critical in intent, raising questions about the balance between the influence over medics’ prescription habits and the support the industry offers medics in pursuing their professional goals and status. Moynihan (2003) gives pithy expression to the issues when he asks ‘who pays for the pizza?’ But this is more complicated than a question of luncheon bribery. It is not clear that the sponsorship of professional meetings and conferences by commercial interests, for example, is inappropriate. If medics and drug companies are ‘entangled’ with one another, this is the result of decades of mutual support and shared interest. Are there reasons to think that educational professionals of the near future might encounter similar relationships and ethical issues?

It has proved difficult to find published peer-reviewed evidence relevant to this question. However, the author recently enjoyed a ‘guinea-pig’ role in an information technology firm’s new marketing strategy. Having seen my name on publicity material for a conference organised by an educational research charity, the sales director invited me to address a small audience of IT marketers and academy heads. He had never invited an academic to speak before. A pleasant lunch was provided.  Key elements of this meeting indicate that strong parallels between education and health marketing and public relations strategies are emerging. These include the mobilization of an ‘expert’ to give the meeting a respectable research/professional development flavour, the provision of free lunch and travel budgets, and a smooth segue into post-lunch session of product demonstration.

2. What factors might strengthen relationships between educators and private sector organisations?

There are structural parallels between the emergent organization of primary health care and the burgeoning Academies programme that can shed further light on our issue and lend the anecdote above a policy context. As Pollock et al (2007) argue, 2003 saw the creation of a market in primary care. Primary care trusts in England, health boards in Scotland and local health boards in Wales gained new powers to negotiate contracts with commercial companies. This has brought about a diversification of providers in the health-care market. The range of health care providers, often firms employing general practitioners or practices managed by general practitioners, are now regulated primarily by commercial contract. There is a close parallel here with the purchaser/provider split that converted Local Authorities into commissioners rather than providers of educational services and the independent status enjoyed by Academies. In both cases the split is used in the hope of reducing supply-side capture, of locking ‘market discipline’ into service provision chains and, ultimately, of improving services to individuals.

Current regulations already allow academy sponsors a good deal of creative leeway when it comes to delivering on OFSTED defined targets. The Times Educational Supplement (14 November 2008) reports on a deal involving Edison Schools, a profit-making business, taking charge of up to 12 academy schools charging each academy £1.2 million for a three year contract. Full payment will be conditional on improvements in exam performance and pupil behaviour.

As this report indicates, the policy context has significant consequences for the dynamics of key relationships. The establishment of purchaser/provider splits decreases the practical relevance of the moralised and politicised distinction between ‘public’ and ‘commercial’ service provision within professionals’ everyday decision-making. It also replaces a hierarchical scheme of centralised decision making with a relatively dispersed range of decision and negotiation points. A number of assessments of this are possible. For Pollock et al (2007), like antiacademies.org, this will diminish local public accountability of service provision. From a current government point of view it will make services more responsive to individuals (including children) allowing for the greater personalisation of public services (Leadbeater, 2004). From the point of view of the current paper, however, it seems likely that educators will become more available for the influence and persuasion of commercial interests as they come to view such relationships as beneficial to the service delivery they are responsible for.

3. The emergence of a new educational ’strategic imaginary’?

Publicly funded education has long involved relationships with commercial organisations. From exam boards to publishing houses, exchange and conversion between commercial interest and ‘disinterested’ professional bodies, between saleable product and authoritative knowledge, has a long history. So what might be novel about increased pharmaceutical or IT business involvement in today’s education policy environment?

In 2007 Durham County Council investigated the effects of a fish oil dietary supplement on pupils’ GCSE exam results. They began with 3000 pupils at year 11 taking supplements at home and at school. The fish oil supplements were provided free of charge by the company Equazen, manufacturer of such products as the widely available ‘eyeq chews’, a fruit flavoured, sweetened preparation of ‘naturally sourced’ Omega 3 and Omega 6 oils. By the time of the GCSE exams around 800 pupils were still compliant with the programme. In order to estimate the effects of the supplements on GCSE outcomes, the Council’s Children and Young People’s Services division compared the results of children who had remained compliant with those of children who had not taken the fish oil that Equazen provided. The two groups’ performance did differ, Equazen takers scoring higher than the others.

This investigation generated a great deal of positive publicity for fish oil supplements. Its status as scientific research has, however, been called into question by a series of closely argued articles by the science journalist Ben Goldacre (www.badscience.net). There is no good reason to attribute the differences in performance to the oil, given that the compliant group was self-selected and perhaps more invested in educational achievement than the others. No attempt was made to control for placebo effects. Further no information was sought about the diets and supplement use of children who did not take the Equazen product.

In a recent press release (25 September 2008), the Head of Achievement for Durham County Council’s Children and Young People’s Services acknowledged that the study’s design did not allow any positive inference to be drawn about the effectiveness of fish oil in raising children’s achievement. Having said this, however, he pointed out that had no difference been detected between groups, Durham would have been likely to dismiss fish oils entirely. Combining this imaginary negative result with the actual but scientifically meaningless positive result enabled him then to maintain hope in the effectiveness of fish oils:

‘… taking all this into account, it is our view that this study has produced some interesting and possibly exciting issues for further investigation that could be the basis for future scientific trials …’

http://www.durham.gov.uk/durhamcc/pressrel.nsf/Web+Releases/9B151A656B3FD9AB802574CF002D51F1?OpenDocument

Even though they fly in the face of scientific reasoning about effectiveness, I would suggest that these manoeuvres allowed him to maintain something of value – the possibility of a strategic alliance between Durham Children and Young People’s services, Equazen, and aspirational service users designed to meet policy objectives.

Whether this trial was good or bad science and whether fish oils really can raise performance is not the central issue that concerns me here. Instead it sheds light on trends in relationships between education service providers and commercial operations.

The Durham trial and its aftermath suggest that the current education policy environment has generated a new ’strategic imaginary’ amongst key stakeholders such as Heads of Achievement for local authority young people’s services division, Academy leadership, and sales and marketing agents in pharmaceutical and IT companies. I describe the ‘imaginary’ as ’strategic’ because it is closely aligned with the delivery of ECM and Children’s Plan objectives, and is concerned with actively seeking, choosing and organising promising materials and opportunities from whatever sources become available to deliver those objectives. I describe it as an ‘imaginary’ because it is knitted together with possibility and hope. I would emphasise that this is an observation not a critique.

References

Horne, B. (2008) Brain sciences, addiction and drugs. London, Academy of Medical Sciences

Children’s Plan http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/publications/childrensplan/downloads/The_Childrens_Plan.pdf

Every Child Matters

http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/

Flower, R. (2004) Lifestyle drugs: Pharmacology and the social agenda. Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 25 (4), pp.182-185

Jones, R., Morris, K. and Nutt, D. (2007). Cognition enhancers. In: Nutt, D., Robbins, T., Stimson, G., Ince, M. and Jackson, A. (2007). Drugs and the future: brain science, addiction and society. London, Elsevier.

Laming, L. (2003) The Victoria Climbié Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry. www.victoria-climbie-inquiry.org.uk/finreport/finreport.htm

Leadbeater, C. (2004) Personalisation through participation: a new script for public services. London, Demos

Martin, P., Brown, N. and Turner, A. (2008) Capitalizing hope: the commercial development of umbilical cord blood stem cell banking. New Genetics and Society, 27 (2), pp.127-143

Møldrup C., Traulsen, J.M. and Almarsdóttir, A.B. (2003) Medically-enhanced normality: an alternative perspective on the use of medicines for non-medical purposes. International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, 11 (4), pp.243-249

Moynihan, R. (2003) Who pays for the pizza? Redefining the relationships between doctors and drug companies. British Medical Journal, 326, pp.1193-1196

Office of Science and Technology (2005) Drugs Futures 2025. London, HMSO

Pollock, A.M., Price, D., Viebrock, E., Miller, E. and Watt, G. (2007) The market in primary care. British Medical Journal, 335, pp.475-477

Taylor, M. (2008) Behaviour Battles. Ethos. Edition 6. www.ethosjournal.com

Turner, D.C. and Sahakian, B.J. (2006) Neuroethics of cognitive enhancement. Biosocieties, 1 (1), pp.113-123

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

The single biggest future interaction between the public and private sectors in education is the possible creation of a marketised state system. In the last 10 years, educational policy has moved away from the idea of competition between schools to collaboration. However, the Conservative Party has proposed supply-side reforms that would expand the number of school places (by 220,000), with the aim of creating greater levels of choice for parents. This would be done through the creation of ‘New Academies’, with capital funds being diverted from the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. This expansion, in conjunction with declining numbers of school age children, would create a surplus of school places (as necessary for a viable choice system), forcing schools to compete for pupils (as funding follows pupils). Although the Swedish ‘free’ school model is referred to, the current Conservative proposals extend only as far as allowing parents and other non-profit providers into the market, but do not allow for the entry of for-profit enterprises into the state school sector. Whether this is considered in the future, depends on political sensitivities around perceptions of the ‘privatisation’ of state education. In the current economic climate, it is highly likely that the proposal would face strong opposition in the short to medium term, though if market reforms prove successful public opinion may shift. A possible shift in this wider direction may have been indicated by the government’s recent decision to allow private sector companies to run small schools for excluded children in a pilot scheme.

The involvement of the private sector could take two routes; for-profit providers establishing maintained schools or a voucher system to be used at either private or state schools. The former appears the most likely under the current conditions, and would most likely see the entry of private education providers already established in this type of provision abroad such as Edison (largest private operator of Charter schools in the US) and Kunskapsskolan (private operator of free schools in Sweden). A voucher system, similar to the Milwaukee Parental Choice Programme, may prove more publicly palatable (as the majority of independent schools are non-profit) and feasible, as it will enable the rapid introduction of a large number of providers without additional capital costs. However, such a scheme would be beset by thorny political issues such as whether parents were allowed to top-up their vouchers. In either system, children from disadvantaged backgrounds would receive greater funding (as is already the case). This may result in for-profit providers targeting this group (though perceptions of greater commercial risk may hamper this), creating a tiered system of non-profit providers in more affluent areas, and for-profit providers in low income areas.

The success of a marketised system is not however, guaranteed. At present, there is no clear evidential base demonstrating that choice and competition raises educational standards and outcomes. The research carried out to date has been limited and the findings mixed. In addition, research on the effect of choice and competition on segregation (whether on the basis of income, ethnicity and ability) has also proved inconclusive.

This means that it is likely to be ideology that will be the main driver of decisions on the role of competition and choice within public education, whether this be a belief in ‘market darwinism’, parental freedom, localism or perhaps a public finance efficiency drive. Another factor in the success of a marketised system will be how the possible side effects are perceived. For example, the line between segregation and personalisation may be blurred if parents seek to establish a school that meets a particular need, such as in Trevor Phillips’ suggestion that black boys would benefit from being taught separately. In certain American states charter schools utilise a positive discrimination strategy, targeting vouchers at the most disadvantaged communities, resulting in their school population being disproportionately African-American and Hispanic. However, it is unlikely that choice in England will see examples of segregation as witnessed in Holland, where Dutch parents sought to educate their children separately from immigrants, as schools cannot set admission criteria. However, it is possible that small niche schools could emerge that by virtue of their size and location will only serve a certain group, for example a small school in a middle class catchment area.

The side effects of marketised approach aside, such a system will require fundamental structural changes to the way education is organised. Some of these changes could be:

a.    LEA funding linked to performance

b.    capitation as well as funding following pupils (alternative to Conservative proposals once BSF funds are used)

c.    LEA control over school funding and organisation removed

d.    curriculum opt-out (included in Conservative proposals)

e.    robust failure management system such as in USA and New Zealand

f.     school opt out from national staff payment agreements

g.    national school bus system (to facilitate choice for low income families)

h.    lowering of barriers to entry

These changes will have a number of consequences. The education workforce will see the end of standard employment terms, probably seeing an increase in temporary workers and greater variation in teacher contracts as schools compete for staff. This can already be seen within the flexibility for academies to determine teacher pay (though they have not yet chosen to challenge national pay settlements) and the DCSF pilot ‘Power to Innovate’ to allow greater management freedom. Developing a suitable failure management process will be crucial, especially as it is highly unlikely that such schools will be permitted to close, but will therefore find themselves in a cycle of lacking funds to improve which then causes further deterioration as pupils (and therefore money) stay away. It is likely that the private sector will be bought in to provide ‘off the shelf’ failure management regimes in many cases, such as in 3Es Enterprises Kings Manor School. (The school was taken over by a non-profit offshoot of a local college, as parents did not want the school to close down.) To enable choice, a school bus system may be required for those who do not live near their preferred school, though this may see the introduction of co-payment into education as some have suggested pupils (except those on low-incomes) should be charged for the service. As mentioned earlier, the motif of education in the UK has moved from competition to collaboration. In a competitive environment, inter-school collaboration may look very different from how it looks at present, possibly with greater collaboration between smaller institutions than larger ones. The example of Hong Kong, (where the majority of schools are government subsided but independently run) suggests that collaboration would be focused within sectors (e.g. CoE with CoE) rather than across sectors (e.g. private with public), where no external mechanisms exist. However, a marketised education environment with varied provision may also run the risk of creating an unstable, piecemeal system with no coherent aim.

The role of the third sector within state education provision

There has been a growth in the number of faith based institutions providing education in Britain over the last twenty years. Faith based schools constitute about a third of the independent, maintained and Academies sectors. However, with public opinion largely opposed to state funded faith schools (with a minority opposing Muslim schools in particular) , and widespread public and political concern about ethnic segregation, integration and religious extremism, faiths schools and the organisations that fund/support them will come under greater scrutiny. In particular, concerns about independent Muslim and Evangelical Christian schools may lead to greater scrutiny of faith-based education and tighter regulation of the sector as a whole, especially as demographic changes indicate that children from these backgrounds are expected to constitute a greater proportion of the school age population in the future.

The third sector’s involvement in mainstream education is varied, though faith based organisations, such as the Church of England, account for the overwhelming majority. At present other forms of third sector involvement in mainstream state educational provision is limited, but look set to expand. Non-profit organisations have begun to engage directly, such as the Royal Society of Arts which has sponsored an academy in Tipton, which it aims to run in accordance with its’ own educational curriculum, and the Young Foundation which is presently developing a series of studio schools, which will teach the national curriculum to about 300 students through interdisciplinary enterprise projects and vocational learning. Third sector organisations (TSOs) look likely to be at the vanguard of radical approaches to education and learning, though the number of organisations with the capability and funding to engage in such projects may be limited. There are, however, newer forms of TSO, that may eventually establish a model that is more easily replicable. The Bolnore School Group and the Elmgreen Secondary School are foundation schools run by parents and carers who established themselves as charitable organisations.

In actuality, third sector involvement in public service delivery is still a largely unproven experiment, with the main drivers being central government rather than service providers, users or even TSOs themselves. Questions remain as to whether whether TSOs have either the capability, the networks or the willingness to provide public services, as well as where accountability for redress lies in the case of a service failure. The extent to which the third sector (beyond established faith organisations) will be a key player in education provision is therefore difficult to judge at this stage.

Where the growth of the third sector is likely to become most firmly embedded is in the contracted provision of supplementary specialist services to schools, such as that offered by Kid’s Company or Notschool.com, which exist separately from ‘official’ provision and caters to a specific need. Both major political parties have expressed their desire to involve the third sector in this way, though tensions may emerge if public spending is reduced and TSOs are relied on a substitute for government funded provision rather than as a supplement to it, especially where TSOs are engaged in a more complex relationship than just providing contracted services.

State Education Infrastructure Provision

To date the largest private sector involvement in education has been capital investment through PFI projects. As of October 2007, the Department

for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) had signed 115 PFI deals, with a value of

approximately £4.8 billion (including the Building Schools for the Future programme which aims to be complete by 2020) . In addition, the Scottish and Welsh Governments had signed more than 20 education related PFI deals. However, this involvement could be scaled back for a number of reasons. Firstly, adverse economic conditions may see public spending cutbacks forcing a reduction in the scope of the project: BSF has already been scaled down once, from its original aim of renovating every secondary school to now renovating/rebuilding those in most need. Changes to government accounting rules have meant that PFI debts must be included on public sector balance sheets, negating one of the key advantages of PFI schemes for local authorities. There is now also the possibility that construction consortia may have difficulty in raising the capital required in the current financial crisis. Alternatively, government may seek to maintain public spending as an economic stimulus. In addition, the HM Treasury and Audit Commission evaluations rated PFIs positively for value for money and on-time delivery, compared with traditional procurements, suggesting that where capital projects are to go ahead PFI may still be attractive, though the era of PFI as the default choice could be over. This may be especially so as the Commons’ public accounts committee found that local authorities were poor at managing PFI contracts. Also, there has yet to be a long term assessment of PFI contracts’ effectiveness. A change to school building programmes could exacerbate attainment gaps, as highly mixed school estate emerges, with some schools teaching in modern facilities and others left behind in inefficient, poor quality learning environments. However, it is also possible that without a focus on capital investment, attention and funding will be shifted to innovations in learning which may have a larger impact on student attainment.

Academies

After PFI, the Academies programme is the next largest public private interaction in the delivery of state education, though arguably the most important as they are central to both political parties’ plans for education reform, despite opposition from parental groups such as the Anti-Academies Alliance. The programme looks set to undergo significant changes from its present form. Academies are essentially philanthropic ventures for private companies but they are not without risk, requiring as they do a significant financial investment and the possibility of reputational damage where performance is poor. Future involvement of the private sector is therefore not guaranteed, as demonstrated by the withdrawal of Amey from Unity City Academy in Middlesborough. Adverse economic conditions may lead other private sponsors to withdraw from either existing or proposed Academy partnerships, as well as creating a shortage of future private sector partners, hampering proposed expansions of the Academy schools. This coupled with changes to Academy requirements (replacing £2million sponsorship requirement with an endowment fund condition and other exemptions for non-profit organisations with an educational track record) suggest that academies will be increasingly sponsored by third sector educational organisations. At present 45 of England’s 88 universities have agreed to sponsor Academies and the Royal Society of Arts sponsors the Tipton Academy, amongst others. Strong political statements in favour of expanding Academies from both parties look set to embed Academies as the school model of choice, at both primary and secondary levels, though increasingly it appears that the role of the private sector in the programme may not be as dominant as it is at present. Other alternative school models such as trust schools may also prove to be avenues for further involvement by both TSOs and public service organisations such as PCTs. It is possible that the autonomy of the Academies model will lead to an increasing variation of teaching across the country, which may free teachers to innovate but equally could lead to a ‘learning lottery’. The development is, in conjunction with the variety of other possibilities

The role of commercial organisation in shaping learning

A factor that will undoubtedly further contribute to the diversification of learning is the interest of commercial organisations in learning and teaching itself. The perception that the global market divides into knowledge producers and knowledge users, and therefore the need for a knowledge economy workforce, is seeing third parties seeking greater influence over curriculums, pedagogy and educational policy. For example, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Musical Futures programme will be influential in developing future curriculums for music in the UK, whilst technology companies such as Microsoft and Cisco see themselves as having an important role to play in transforming learning and education. Cisco recently published its’ own ‘white paper’ (Equipping Every Learner for the 21^st Century) setting out it’s agenda of ‘Education 3.0′, whilst Microsoft’s involvement in BSF focuses on transforming learning as opposed to just providing IT solutions. This is also reflected in the influence employers seek over developing vocational qualifications that will create the workforce they will require for the future, as demonstrated in Hungary in 2004 when their Ministry of Education created an NVQ based on the first four semesters of Cisco’s Networking Academy Programme, the first such development in Europe. As the private sector becomes more involved in the contents and methods of learning, important questions will arise about the ownership of education and its purpose, the suitability of different models for different learners, and how diverse curriculums and learning models can be managed to maintain national standards. This, in conjunction with the opening up of vocational training routes and developments in on-line learning, could see private sector employers offer a challenge to the monopoly of schools on training and accreditation.

Private Tuition

Formal education is of course not confined to schools, with more than a quarter of 11-18 years olds having private tuition at some point in their school lives, with the fastest growing market being at KS1 & 2 (often primary schools children having intensive tutoring for 11+/grammar school entrance exams). Private tutoring in education remains popular, though there are mixed opinions as to its’ effects. Some research has found resulting academic improvements to be small, whilst others argue that tutoring in sports and arts as well as academics is creating an enlarging group of middle-class ‘renaissance’ children, widening educational attainment gaps. Established private providers such as Kumon and Fleet Tutors have been options for families able to afford them, though low cost providers are emerging onto the market, such as EduComp Datamatics (Career Launcher) and TutorVista offering on-line tuition from India for approximately £50 per month for unlimited sessions. This may see an uptake in the use of tutoring in lower income groups, though it is unknown whether foreign online tutoring will be popular or successful, bearing in mind differences in teaching style, learning cultures, the non-personal format and non-familiarity with syllabuses. An increase in the popularity of affordable tutoring could see new entrants to the education market. For example, Explore Learning offers after-school tuition in a branch of Sainsbury’s supermarket in Hampton, which may herald the entrance of supermarkets to attempt to enter the market. Following trends in America, the reach of private tutoring is now spreading beyond school age children to encompass pre-schoolers. Mainstream companies such as Kumon offer ‘pre-reading’ classes and help with reading and numeracy as anxious parents seek to enhance their child’s future school performance. Tutoring is also reaching upwards with an increasing number of undergraduates also utilising it. Private tutoring itself may also play a larger part in state provision. The use of private tutoring may have counter-intuitive effects. Increasing numbers of middle-class parents are choosing not to send their children to independent schools because they feel they are not diverse enough. Private tutoring may therefore increase the number of middle class children in state education, as it enables middle class parents to get the best of both worlds. Private tuition may even become part of mainstream provision, for example Aimhigher funding has been utilised by schools to send pupils for tutoring with an Oxbridge applications company, and government has pledged one-to-one tuition for pupils falling behind. However, technology such as social networking sites, videocams, VoIP, mobile phones and instant messaging may facilitate peer-to-peer alternatives to paid tutoring, where students collaborate to help and teach their peers and younger students, bypassing formal tutoring altogether.

Use of commercial teaching products within the state sector

Within the state sector, the involvement of private companies in delivering education services is mainly confined to the provision of services or products on a straight-forward retail basis, though this relationship may grow more complex over time. As the use of technology in public education increases schools will be dependent on commercial teaching systems and virtual environments such as Blackboard, Talk2Learn and software for whiteboards, school assessment and tracking pupil attendance. This may create an iterative relationship where products and solutions both respond to and shape user’s needs, influencing how learning and teaching develops. Where this is most important will be in the provision of school IT systems. Private sector IT providers such as Microsoft have already made large headway in their provision to UK schools, a trend that looks set to increase due their involvement in the BSF scheme. Microsoft, for example, is part of several BSF consortia, but has been referred to the European Commission by BECTA due to its’ restrictive licensing agreements and inter-operability restrictions. Schools may find themselves tied in to certain service and software provider (whether by design or practicality) forcing a de facto permanent relationship, suggesting that there will need to be regulation to govern such deals. BECTA is however, promoting the development of open source alternatives through the School Open Source Project, and the uptake of other open source platforms for education such as Moodle, and Linux (as has been adopted by Parkhill Junior School in Essex). It is unclear whether open source will be a viable option for most schools, bearing in mind its niche position within the market, specialised nature and unfamiliarity. Schools look likely to continue to have an increasing interdependence with IT providers, who will therefore have a role in shaping the learning environment that schools will operate within.

Marketing and Education

The sponsorship of school activity by multinational companies such as Nike, a trend that has gained ground in the United States, has not been evidenced in the UK beyond familiar promotional activities such as Tesco’s continuing Computers for Schools scheme, and more recently Morrison’s Let’s Grow seed distribution scheme. Attempts by Cadbury’s to promote its’ ’sports4schools’ programme and Walkers’ Books for School have been met with considerable antipathy where there is a perceived conflict of interest and there doesn’t appear to be much evidence that there will be a significant political or cultural shift in this area in the near future. However, more direct private sector partnerships may be used as marketing opportunities within schools, such as the Fitness Industry Association’s school outreach programme which encourages use of gym facilities by school children, recognising it as an opportunity to market gym services to parents and teachers. Companies may also see partnership as an opportunity to access resources or establish themselves in an particular area; Esporta established a gym within the grounds of the independent St. Edwards School, one of the conditions being use of gym facilities by students.

Private Provision of State Education

To date private companies have had a limited role in direct education provision and school management, one of the few being the American education company Edison, which is currently running Salisbury School in London. Other private sector management involvement has focused on the administration of nine failing LEAs (some of these contracts are now finished). There has been a worldwide growth in education services with several multinational providers emerging such as Edison, Nord-Anglia and GEMS amongst others, and venture capital firms are investing in school enterprises abroad. Within the UK, profit margins on running individual schools are unattractive, and so it seems likely that profit making providers would seek to establish chain schools if they were to enter the maintained market. This is the approach of companies such Kunskapsskolan (Swedish ‘free’ school provider, which is currently planning to sponsor a number of Academies) and Edison (the largest single supplier of contract schools in the US), creating viable profit-making schools through a pooling of shared operational functions, such as HR. If either a Labour or Tory government permitted profit-making institutions to run maintained schools, it seems likely that many of these companies would seek to enter the market. Their entrance would place added pressure on maintained schools, could possibly displace parental or third sector opportunities and also pose a challenge to the independent sector (both as a competitor for independent pupils and to independent schools looking to expand into maintained provision).

Cultural Influences of the Private Sector on State Provision

Expectations of schools have also begun to change, as increasingly they are being exhorted to be adopt an entrepreneurial culture within learning, and an entrepreneurial approach to community engagement and funding. This shift looks to be gathering momentum, especially as a result of the Extended Schools initiative and the BSF/PCP programmes. Southfields College in Wimbledon, for example, contains a public gym which employs pupils as staff, and seeks to utilise its’ school and extended service facilities as a revenue generators. A primary school that participates in the Eastfeast project earns £120,000 a year from its recycling programme. Pupils themselves may be fund-raisers for their school, for example, pupils in Durham who cultivate allotments for profit. Teachers themselves may also become marketable assets, as private and public organisations seek expertise in creating cultures of learning. At the most cutting edge schools may seek entrepreneurial opportunities abroad, such as in the case of Bristol Academy which has announced its’ intention to open for-profit branches in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe, following the example of independent schools such as Harrow and Dulwich College which have branches abroad. (In fact, within a competitive system, would maintained schools be able to reverse this and follow a higher education model, teaching paying foreign students as a method of bolstering income?) This shift in culture will have a profound impact on pupils, teachers and school leaders. Definitions of talented pupils may change, and if streaming in academic subjects continues to be common practice in schools, is it possible that pupils could also be streamed by their entrepreneurial flair? For teachers and school leaders a culture of enterprise will require a significant change to the culture of leadership as the roles of headteachers’ changes. However, this may come into conflict with a movement to reinstate an ethos of professionalism which views teaching as an intellectual rather than entrepreneurial activity, perhaps creating tensions over the core role of the school and education. This may perhaps see a division emerging within school leaders of pedagogues and business managers with an increasing involvement of non-teaching staff in school management, and the hiring of management staff from the private sector.

Independent Schools

Independent school provision in England continues to prove popular, seeing a rise in the proportion of privately educated children from 7.1%to 7.3% as of 2007, but a fall in actual numbers. However although the independent school sector has experienced continuous growth over the last 10 years, it has not expanded its’ intake in proportion with the increase in the number of children from professional/managerial backgrounds (who constitute three quarters of independent school intake). This may in part be due to a change in attitude of middle class parents who do not see private schools as socially and ethnically diverse enough. The structure of independent schooling in the UK also looks set to change as growth is forecasted in groups and federations of independent schools. However, where independent schooling has increased greatest is in provision for pre-school children as parents seek to ensure an educational advantage as early as possible. The growth of independent schools also has important consequences for teacher recruitment, bearing in mind that the independent sector employs a disproportionate share of trained teachers (especially in shortage subjects), who are also on average better qualified. An expansion of private provision may see greater stresses placed on teacher training and staff recruitment in state provision.

In the last five years, the number of independent schools that can be classed as being part of a chain has risen by more than a third to 156 at present. Three quarters of this increase was accounted for by commercial groups, such as Cognita and Alpha Plus, rather than by more established federations. It is predicted that these groups of schools will continue to grow, raising the number of children they educate from 3.5 per cent of all independent school pupils to more than 10 per cent by 2017.

Non-educational private sector organisations look likely to develop their own educational provision, possibly as ‘hothouses’ for talented children as in the case of the Premier League, which plans to establish six £25 million boarding schools for talented children. Could this prove an indicator for the start of larger talent recruitment programmes, culminating with sponsorship through higher education and a job for the best students?

Increasingly private schools are being brought into collaborative networks with state schools, through initiatives such as the Independent/State School Partnerships Scheme, which has funded 330 collaborative projects worth £10 million to date. Changes in the requirements to independent schools charity status have meant that the independent schools are considering opening more of their classes and facilities to state schools and the local communities. These closer links and the changes to the Academies funding rules, may encourage the movement of some independent providers into the public sector, such as Colston’s Girls School in Bristol which will become an Academy in 2008. However, polling indicates that only a small number of schools are currently considering this at present. As mentioned above, it is unclear what effect a more marketised state education sector would have on this collaboration, possibly creating greater collaboration between smaller institutions with varied provision and greater competition between larger providers.

Home Schooling

There are parents that have chosen to opt out of both public and private education, and it is estimated that 50,000 children are being home-schooled (exact numbers are not known as there is no duty on LEAs to collect this data), which is a trebling of numbers since 1999. This rise in home schooling looks set to continue, facilitated by the availability of online learning material and more flexible working patterns amongst the population as a whole. The proposed changes to enable parents to establish schools may create space for the formation of micro-schools of between 5 – 30 children, or small sized parent co-operatives as alternatives to traditional home-schooling approaches.

Factors in Higher Education

On the face of it, private sector involvement in the delivery of higher education in the UK is limited, with only one privately funded university in the country, the University of Buckinghamshire. In reality, however British universities are non-profit independent institutions not public sector organisations. The interaction between the private and public sectors in higher education can be spilt into two general themes; how will universities compete as businesses within a globalised higher education market and to what extent will the private sector determine higher education provision in the future.

Markets in UK Higher Education

The funding a British university receives from government is determined by the number of student places it offers, rather than the number of students it attracts, and it is possible that this funding structure may be challenged in the future. It is in the interests of oversubscribed universities to lobby for a more market based system, with government funding following students which would allow them to expand and generate greater income. Elite universities such as Oxford and Imperial, have indicated the possibility becoming privately funded institutions to raise more money, and so governments may alter funding arrangements in an attempt to prevent this.

The move to a market based, competitive environment may see the loss of departments such as chemistry, physics and modern languages if universities are able to make decisions based own their own self-interest, rather than the national interest. At present there are a number of impediments to a more marketised system such as a lack of information to inform the market and no mechanisms to allow funding to follow students.

There is also a risk that market based strategies may adversely affect the social dimension of higher education; universities will be driven by competition for institutional reputation (often determined by the quality of research facilities) rather then being driven by the needs of students or the knowledge society, leading to a diminishment of the contribution of higher education to wider society.

Certain elite universities, such as Oxford and Imperial, have indicated that becoming a private institution is seen a viable possibility. On the face of it this may be possible for elite universities, who could supplement the fall in British students with international students. This would however prove controversial, and could be blocked by government regulation for example specifying a minimum number of domestic students, though already universities such as Imperial have high numbers of foreign students (30% non-EU, 50% no UK total).

Higher Education: Public Good vs. Private Good

Whilst the wider societal benefit of higher education is acknowledged, it is increasingly seen as a private good that primarily benefits the individual. The start of this shift was signalled by the introduction of tuition fees in 1998, and appears to be gathering further momentum. This will have a number of clear implications for higher education. Elite universities, particularly the Russell Group, have indicated their desire for the removal of the current tuition fee cap and a review of funding arrangements. There is also evidence that students themselves also see their relationship with higher education institutions in terms of consumer and service provider, which may have unexpected consequences. A growing number of UK students feel that their university education is not value for money, which may prompt legal action as has happened in the United States and Australia. In a related point, teaching assessment may shift from being institutionally determined to being student determined, as students share negative experiences online and monitor teachers ‘e-trails’ of ability and expertise. Could these cultural shifts therefore cause the value of higher education narrow to qualification and competence rather than as a wider learning experience.

Public/Private Partnerships in Higher Education

In the past philanthropic involvement with universities has been the predominant mode of private sector interaction from the Gates Scholarship for Cambridge University to the controversial funding of the University of Nottingham’s International Centre for Corporate and Social Responsibility by British American Tobacco. Commercial companies have close links with many British universities particularly in fields with industrial applications such as chemistry, physics and biology, often funding research of particular interest to their business. More direct collaborations with the private sector are long established though not widespread or wide ranging, for example the Eisai research laboratory was opened within UCL in 1992, and offers student placements and funds PhD studentships at the University. However, direct partnerships between commercial enterprises and universities are emerging such as the current collaboration between Bristol School of Animation and Aardman Animation Studios, which involves the company co-directing the School and offering students industry links and opportunities. It seems that this will be an area of future growth as Universities seek to fund expansion, with such a policy explicitly promoted by Government.  This may see a greater determination of course content by private collaborators and a utilitarian focus on research and learning with distinctly commercial benefits. The emphasis on the commercial applications of research is already evident by the fact ‘translationality’ is often a condition of research funding.

Such direct partnerships may be impeded by questions over the ownership of any intellectual property, which can be of great value. For example Cambridge University has a consultancy and contracting arm known as Cambridge Enterprise, which offers consultancy services from academics, leverages the Universities IP and offers seed capital to develop ideas originating within the University as does Imperial College (Imperial Innovations).

There are a number of policy developments that appear to pave the way for further private sector involvement in higher education, such as the Leith’s skill reports recommendation that employers should influence, or even determine, higher education offers and that the private sector should co-fund university expansion. In addition, government proposals to repeal the requirement for universities to be active in a number of areas could pave the way for the entry of commercial specialist universities, such as a Microsoft University. Indicators of commercial interest in directly providing higher education can already be seen in the example of advertising agency Weiden and Kennedy’s experimental advertising school, W12 and the Nokia & Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology Design Studio in Bangalore. Ultimately, in an increasingly educated world, integral to universities’ perceived value and reputation, may be not just be education but also the introduction to professional networks and job opportunities via it’s networks and activities.

Competition in a Global Higher Education Market

The biggest issue for universities will be competing as private institutions on the international market. International students will continue to be an increasingly important source of revenue for British Universities, growing from 110,000 in 1995-6 to 250,000 in 2006-7. Globally the number of foreign students is projected to increase, with students originating from India and China being the biggest group (accounting for just under a fifth of international students worldwide).

The number of international students originating from the UK continues to be low, though it is difficult to measure, as complete figures are not collected, though participation in schemes such as Eurasmus has fallen by a third since the 1990s. But this may not always be the case, as in America the number of students studying abroad has increased, especially those studying in China. Private companies in the UK, such as Degrees Ahead, act as agents for overseas institutions promoting foreign study as cost-effective once living costs and tuition fees are taken into account. As the quality of institutions in China and India improve they may prove attractive to some British students. As the market for higher education increasingly becomes viewed as global, is it possible that students who wish to study abroad will seek to utilise their share of government funding (currently subsiding British institutions) and instead use it to part fund study abroad. Could we see a move to an Australian style university system of vouchers and top-ups?

British universities face heavy competition from American institutions and will need to generate large revenues to keep pace in the higher education spending race (Harvard University’s endowment fund is larger than the total annual public funding for all universities in England). This has led to an entrepreneurial mindset in universities, many of whom now see themselves as educators with a global rather than national mission. However, British institutions now face competition from other European institutes adopting this approach, and from many ‘origin’ countries attempting to transform themselves into hosts (China will soon surpass Australia to become the fifth largest host country).

International student demand is for Anglo-Saxon type education (particularly American) provided in English. However, Asian language nations offering cheaper English language training has contributed to a small decrease in the numbers of foreign students studying in the US. In addition, whilst English continues to grow as the international language of choice, UK higher education may need to adapt to a student population that speak variant dialects that such as ‘Hinglish’ (India), ‘Singlish’ (Singapore) and ‘Chinglish’ (China). Students may therefore begin to prefer to learn in English speaking institutions where variant English is spoken rather than ‘British’ English, as it may better meet their immediate needs, such as finding local employment.

The need to compete as global research institutions may also see the formation of ‘megavirsities’ as multiple universities merge. There have already been a number of higher education mergers such UMIST and The Victoria University of Manchester merging to create the UK’s largest single-site University: the University of Manchester, the merging of De Montford and Luton to create the University of Bedfordshire and a number of others underway. Mergers across sectors may also be a viable path; in 2007 Imperial College merged with Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and St Mary’s NHS Trust to become an Academic Health Research Centre, with Nuffield Orthopaedic centre currently proposing a merger with Oxford University.

Overseas Expansion of British Universities

An area of growth is the spread of American, British and Australian universities abroad, such the University of Nottingham in Malaysia and Ningbo (China), Xi’an Jiatong Liverpool University and Queen Margaret University’s plan to open QMU Asia in Singapore. In addition, UK universities have also begun to offer degrees via foreign providers such as the Universities of Wales and Teeside offering degrees through the private education provider AEC in Singapore. However, whilst these ventures are fee charging, many offshore extensions are loss leaders, serving to bolster throughput to domestic institutions or establish a longer term presence. These expansions could serve to destabilise British institutions if they fail to develop a profit-generating model or lose out to either domestic or other foreign competition.

E-Learning and Higher Education

E-learning is a continuing growth area in higher education, opening universities to competition from a vast array of providers from both public and private sector. The current value of e-learning worldwide is estimated to be $20 billion. American universities have been distributing lectures and course material via iTunes for some time, with Oxbridge recently following suit. British universities are in a good position to leverage their brand reputations, especially abroad, though it is not elite universities making most headway in this field. Whilst it appears that students appear to prefer a mixed model of teaching (e-learning and lessons) the example of Ultraversity (the e-learning wing of Anglia Ruskin University) highlights that a 100% online course is possible and that there is demand. It is possible, both domestically and internationally, that e-learning may allow students to mix and match – for example supplementing a local university course with an e-learning module from a prestigious university. A barrier for e-learning expansion, especially in Britain, is the lack of prestige that such qualifications hold, but in a crowded global job market they may prove to be of value.

Lifelong Learning

The dialogue of education has shifted in recent times, increasingly stressing the importance of education beyond the traditional structures of school and university, and advocating lifelong learning. This advocacy has two strands, with one emphasis on skills acquisition to create a highly skilled workforce, and another emphasising the social case for learning (individuals improving their capacities and abilities for their own benefit and well-being). Tension between these two agendas may affect the type of adult learning that is available and taken up, as highlighted by recent falls in arts and language learning, and possible negative impacts on wider mental health.

The role of the private sector in adult learning is currently well developed, with there essentially being an open market for adult learning providers, with courses for first qualifications (such as GCSEs, A-levels and NVQs) and numeracy/literacy funded by government. This area is largely moving in the direction of self-regulation, though how this will impact on standards, accreditation, and transferability of qualifications is yet to be seen. It is also worth considering the impact of a diverse learning market on potential learners:  will there be sufficient information and support for students to assess which course/ qualification will best meet their needs?

Vocational Training

Following criticism that vocational training was failing to meet the needs of industry, the last decade has seen a flurry of activity designed to bring vocational training closer to labour markets. The role of private sector employers in influencing education within this context is therefore pivotal. Internationally, there are four broad models of employer engagement:

• employer involved (voluntarily or statutorily involvement through consultation and financing)
• employer modelled (training modelled on industry best practice)
• employer owned (sectors fund and develop their own training)
• employer driven (public/employer funded training responds to employer demand)

What underpins these different approaches is the purpose of employer involvement e.g. improvement of training supply, improvement of employers services etc. The current UK strategy is a voluntary employer involved approach, based on the understanding from the Leitch review that it is the training system itself that is the block to training. As a result employers have greater influence over qualifications and the shape of the market, focusing on increasing training supply rather than training demand. This has started to shift since Leitch, however, as government recognises the need for demand-led training to meet wider social needs not just employer needs (such as proposals to give employees the right to request (and have considered) training from employers).

Factors involving employers’ engagement with a training agenda are varied and there are tensions not just between employees and employers but also with policy needs. Both individuals and organisations are reluctant to invest in low-level qualifications, due to lack of direct need for more skills, poor returns on low level qualifications, availability of skilled migrants and greater numbers of temporary workers. Employers and employees want short specific courses rather than full qualifications though this then raises concerns over transferability and long-term benefits. At present, employer input into course content through Sector Skills Councils, faces a number of challenges. Defining what skills will be needed and what will be of economic value in the future is difficult due to the unpredictability of labour markets, suggesting that developments such as a market in varied learning products and personalised learning budgets, rather than just an increase in learning providers, would create a more responsive, demand-led learning sector. This also raises the question of balancing an employers immediate training needs (often job and role specific) with the longer term training needs of employees, and meeting demand where there is not a sustainable market to deliver it (e.g. it may be unprofitable to run training course in sparsely populated rural areas. Finally, a reliance on employment based training, leaves out those sections of the population not in employment, possibly increasing the distance between these individuals and the job market.

Alternate Learning Providers

The possible role of the private sector in education outside of the formal structures of school and university have been examined earlier in this report, though there interesting innovations that are worth highlighting. Outside of formal qualifications, learning and education is increasingly being seen within the context of lifestyle choices, with companies providing innovative solutions to meet this need. The US fashion chain Club Monaco ran a short public lecture series on modern culture entitled Urban Studies, whilst a London based store, The School of Life, offers not just courses but educational holidays, public lectures, private dinners with leading thinkers and even personalised ‘reading prescriptions’. The London events company, Intelligence Squared, runs debate events featuring academics and public intellectuals, selling tickets at £25.

Non-profit organisations are also moving into the alternate provision space:  the fashionable author/publisher David Eggers has established a series of retail stores as part of his 826 Valencia literacy project (such as Echo Park Time Travel Mart and Michigan Monster Union), which offer a range of instore literacy training for 8-18 years olds as well as being retail venues. In addition, cultural organisations see education as a central part of their purpose; for example, education and learning is explicitly one of the main aims of the Tate Modern 2 developments.

In some areas of education, learners may rely on private providers to only host a platform for education, whilst they teach each other. Online projects such as The School of Everything (connecting learners and teachers), VideoJug (user created instructional videos), eHow (user created instructional content) and Horse’s Mouth (online mentoring) provide avenues for co-creation and peer-to-peer teaching, as opposed to the more one-way lecture websites such as TED or PopTech. This may have important consequences for the interaction between learners and ‘official’ educators, as students perceptions about who is a teacher and what their role is changes, as well as raising questions about how learners decide what sources are valuable and legitimate sources of information and teaching.

Conclusion

As this report demonstrates the role of the private sector in education will be of continuing importance over the next 20 years, carrying with it the possibility of profound change to the way education is both conceived and delivered in the UK.

Clear questions have emerged from the research into this report that will require further consideration by the participants in the BCH programme. As the role of the private sector extends from beyond service and product provision to actively shaping educational agendas, tensions may arise over the ownership and responsibilities of our education system. This will inevitably include wider philosophical questions as the purpose and nature of education, as well as understanding what type of citizens Britain will need in the future.

Market forces look likely to be a continuing influence on state provided education at all levels, with all levels of education provision having to survive in a competitive environment. The implications for both learners and educators are yet to be fully understood, though clearly both will need different skills and capacities to prosper. Whether marketisation as an approach remains unchallenged however is yet to be seen. The impact of the global financial crisis may cause public services to reappraise their relationships with the private sector, and many of the certainties of recent times may be undermined, perhaps decisively.

However the role of the private sector in education develops it is clear that its’ contribution cannot be discounted or overlooked. Utilising the private sectors strengths, whilst maximising the returns for learners will prove a challenge for all those committed to providing the best possible learning experience for children, students and adults. As the divisions and boundaries continue to blur, not just between private and public sectors but also between learners and teachers, it will be vital for policy makers and thinkers understand the potentials and the pitfalls of the public private relationship in education.

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Department for Education and Skills (2007) Faith in the System, The role of schools with a religious character in English education and society

Davies, B. and Hentschke, G. (2006) Public/private partnerships in education: insights from the field. School Leadership and Management, 26 (3) July

DCSF (2007) Schools and Pupils in England. January 2007 (Final)

E-Learning for Leadership: Emerging indicators of effective practice. National College of School Leadership, 2003

European Commission (2004) eSkills Public Private Partnerships: Issue Paper for the European eSkills Forum (eSF)

Fielden, J. et al (2007) Global Horizons for UK Students: A guide for Universities. Council for Industry and Higher Education

Frean, A. (2008) Private school too posh for many middle-class parents, says MTM Consulting The Times, 17^th September

Freedman, S., Lipson, B. and Hargreaves, D. (2008) More Good Teachers. Policy Exchange

Future of Education Institutions (2006) Conference Report, JISC Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards

Gibbons, S. and Machin, S. (2001) Valuing Primary Schools. London School of Economics, Centre for the Economics of Education, August

Gibbons, S., Machin, S. and Silva, O. (2006) Competition, Choice and Pupil Achievement. London School of Economics, Centre for Economics of Education

Gibbons, S., Machin, S. and Silva, O. (2006/07) ‘The educational impact of parental choice and school competition’. CentrePiece (Magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance), Winter

Glatter, R. and Harvey, J.A. (2006) Varieties of shared headship: a preliminary exploration. National College for School Leadership

Goodman, A. and Sibieta, L. (2006) Public Spending on Education in the UK. IFS Briefing Note 71, Institute of Fiscal Studies

Green, C. (2005) The Privatisation of State Education: Public partners, Private Dealings. Routledge

Green, F., Machin, S., Murphy, R. and Zhu, Y. (2008) Competition for Private and State School Teachers. London School of Economics, Centre for Economics of Education

Gunter, H. (2005) Leading Teachers. Continuum

Guruz, K. (2008) Higher Education and International Student Mobility in the Global Knowledge Economy. State University of New York Press

Haldenby, A (ed) School education to 2010 – Absence of Reform, Andrew Haldenby in Public Service Reform 2006-2010. Smith Institute

Hastings, S. (2005) Private tuition Times Educational Supplement, 13 May

HM Treasury (2008) Making changes in operational PFI projects (Thirty-sixth Report of Session 2007-08), Committee of Public Accounts, The Stationary Office

Hockley, T. and Nieto, D. (2004) Hands Up for School Choice! Lessons from school voucher schemes at home and abroad. Policy Exchange

Istance, D. (2001) Work on schooling for tomorrow: trends, themes and scenarios to inform leadership issues. NCSL

Jha, A. (2007) Over the rainbow The Guardian, February 27

Jones, S. and Bradwell, P. (2007) As You Like It. Demos

LaRocque, N. (2007) Infrastructure Public Private Partnerships in the Education Sector: Presentation to the PPPI Workshop, World Bank Institute, (Cairo), June 18-20th

LaRocque, N. (2008) Public-Private Partnerships in Basic Education: An International Review (Literature Review). CfBT Education Trust

Larsen, K., Martin, J.P. and Morris, R. (2002) Trade in Educational Services: Trends and Emerging Issues (Working Paper). OECD, May 2002 (Revised Version)

Leadbetter, C. (2005) The Shape of Things to Come: personalised learning through collaboration. The Innovation Unit

Leadbetter, C. (2008) What’s Next? 21 ideas for the 21^st Century. The Innovation Unit

Lim, C. and Davies, C. (2008) Helping Schools Succeed: Lessons from Abroad. Policy Exchange

Lipsett, A. (2008) Private schools turn their back on academies The Guardian, September 12

Local Government Association (2007) Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) 2007: The Future Role of the Third Sector in Social and Economic Regeneration. Joint submission from LGA, IDeA and LGIU,

Machin, S. and Vignoles, A. (2006) Education Policy in the UK. London School fo Economics, Centre for the Economics of Education

MacLeod, D. (2007) Private school pupil numbers in decline The Guardian, November 9

Marginson, S. and van der Wende, W. (2007) Globalisation and Higher Education (Education Working Paper No. 8) OECD

Marginson, S. and van der Wende, W. (2007) To Rank or To Be Ranked: The Impact of Global Rankings in Higher Education. Journal of Studies in International Education 11 (3/4), Fall/Winter 2007, pp.306-329

Marley, D. (2008) Academies feel the credit crunch bite as first sponsor pulls out Times Educational Supplement, 17 October

MT Consulting Independent Education Sector Report 2007, MT Consulting, 2008

National Audit Office (2007) Local Area Agreements and the Third Sector: Public Service Delivery

Norrington, A. and Paton, G. (2006) Pupils aged just eight in 11-plus cramming Times Educational Supplement, 22 September

OECD (2004) Internationalisation of Higher Education (Policy Brief)

OECD (2004) Internationalisation and Trade in Higher Education: Opportunities and Challenges

O’Shaughnessy, J. and Leslie, C. (2008) More Good School Places. Policy Exchange

O’Leary, D. and Oakley, K. (2008) The Skills Paradox. Demos

Partnerships UK (2007) PFI: The State of the Market

Patrinos, H.A. (2007) Public-Private Partnerships in Education: Presentation for World Bank, June

Perspective UK (2008) Delivery Partnerships Collaborate With Private Sector To Develop High Tech Solution For Tracking Student Attendance & Progress Press Release

PSCA International (2008) Public Service Review: PPP 08

Public Services and the Third Sector: Rhetoric and Reality, Eleventh Report of Session 2007-08, Volume 1, House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, 2008

Razzall, K. and Hannam, L. (2007) Home-schooling on the rise Channel 4 News Online, 26 Sep

Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap (Policy Green Paper No.1), The Conservative Party, 2008

Razzall, K. and Hannam, L. (2007) UK home-school cases soar Channel 4 News Online, 26 Sep

Schwartz, S. (2003) Reclaiming Our Universities. Policy Exchange

Schwarzenberger, A. (ed) (2008) Public / private funding of higher education: a social balance. HIS: Forum Hochschule

Sellgren, K. (2008) Skills drive risks mental health BBC News Online, 22^nd October

Shepherd, J. (2008) No school like home The Guardian, August 19

Sibieta, L. (2006) Choice and Competition in Education Markets.

Sibieta, L., Chowdry, H. and Muriel, A. (2008) Level Playing Field? The Implications of School Funding. CfBT Education Trust

Social Trends 34, National Statistics, 2004

Spear, R., Cornforth, C. and Aitken, M. (2007) For Love and Money: Governance and Social Enterprise. NCVO

Stephens, L. (2008) Co-Production: A Manifesto for Growing the Economy. New Economics Foundation

Thompson, K., Davies, B. and Ellison, L. (2004) Can private companies successfully turn around a failing school? National College of School Leadership

van der Wende, M. (2007) European Responses to Global Competition in Higher Education (Paper for the Crisis of the Publics Symposium). Centre for Studies in Higher Education, University of California at Berkeley)

van der Wende, M. (2008) Rankings and Classifications in University Education: A European Perspective. In: Smart, J.C. (ed) Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. Springer, 2008

van Vught, F.A. (2006) Higher Education: system dynamics and useful knowledge creation. In: Duderstadt, J. and Weber, L. (eds) Universities and Business: Towards a better society. Economica

Vincent-Lancrin, S. (2006) Globalisation, Market forces and the Future of Higher Education (Presentation for CERI expert meeting Lisbon, 4-5 May 2006), OECD/CERI

Whitty, G. (2000) Privatisation and Marketisation in Education Policy (Speech to NUT conference on ‘Involving the Private Sector in Education: Value Added or High Risk?’), University of London, Institute of Education, 21 November

Williams, J. and Rossiter, A. (2004) Choice: the evidence. The Social Market Foundation

Winter, H. (2008) Premier League plan for elite boarders The Telegraph, 8th Oct

Wood, C. (2005) Making Choice a Reality in Secondary Education. The Social Market Foundation

Woolcock, N. (2008) British universities lose ground to their richer foreign rivals The Times, 9^th October

‘Special offer at the supermarket … extra lessons for children‘, London Evening Standard, 28^th January 2008

The Next Practice in Education Programme: Learning, Insights and Policy Recommendations, Innovation Unit, 2008

APPENDIX

This report was informed by interviews with the following individuals, though the report does not necessarily reflect the views of the individuals named.

Interviewees

Professor Stephen J. Ball, Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, Institute of Education

Valerie Hannon, Director of Strategy, The Innovation Unit

Professor Stephen Heppell

Tony Howell, Chief Education Officer, Birmingham City Council

Paul Roberts, Director of Strategy, IDeA

David Walker, Managing director of Communications and Public Reporting

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap (Policy Green Paper No.1), The Conservative Party, 2008

School pupils: by type of school, Social Trends 34, National Statistics, 2004

‘Sin bins’ to be run privately, Polly Curtis, The Guardian, October 23 2008

The Education Debate: Policy and Politics in the 21^st Century, Stephen Ball, Policy Press, 2008

Milwaukee Parental Choice Program Homepage, Wisconsin Department of Instruction

‘The educational impact of parental choice and school competition’, Stephen Gibbons, Stephen Machin and Olmo Silva, CentrePiece (Magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance), Winter 2006/7

Choice: the evidence, Jonathan Williams & Ann Rossiter, The Social Market Foundation, 2004

Making Choice a Reality in Secondary Education, Claudia Wood, The Social Market Foundation, 2005

Making Choice a Reality in Secondary Education, Claudia Wood, The Social Market Foundation, 2005

School education to 2010 – Absence of Reform, Andrew Haldenby in Public Service Reform 2006-2010, Andrew Haldenby (ed), Smith Institute, 2006

More Good School Places by James O’ Shaugnessy and Charlotte Leslie, Policy Exchange, 2005

Making Choice a Reality in Secondary Education, Claudia Wood, The Social Market Foundation, 2005

More Good Teachers, Sam Freedman, Briar Lipson and Professor David Hargreaves, Policy Exchange, 2008

More Good School Places by James O’ Shaugnessy and Charlotte Leslie, Policy Exchange, 2005

Level Playing Field? The Implications of School Funding, Luke Sibieta, Haroon Chowdry, Alistair Muriel, CfBT Education Trust, 2008

Making Choice a Reality in Secondary Education, Claudia Wood, The Social Market Foundation, 2005

Can private companies successfully turn around a failing school? Case study: Kings College for the Arts and Technology, Guildford, Ken Thompson with Brent Davies and Linda Ellison, NCSL, 2004

Charging Ahead? Spreading the cost of modern public services, Jessica Asato (ed), SMF, 2006

Helping Schools Succeed: Lessons From Abroad, Cheryl Lim and Chris Davies, Policy Exchange, 2008

Faith in the System, The role of schools with a religious character in English education and society, Department for Education and Skills, 2007

Guardian/ICM Poll 2005 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/23/schools.faithschools)

Submission to the Public Administration Select Committee Inquiry: Commissioning Public Services from the Third Sector, March 2007, Local Government Association

Public Services and the Third Sector: Rhetoric and Reality, Eleventh Report of Session 2007-08, Volume 1, House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, 2008

Public-Private Partnerships in Basic Education: An International Review (Literature Review) Norman LaRocque, CfBT Education Trust, 2008

HM Treasury: Making changes in operational PFI projects (Thirty-sixth Report of

Session 2007-08), Committee of Public Accounts,The Stationary Office, 2008

‘Academies feel the credit crunch bite as first sponsor pulls out‘, David Marley, Times Educational Supplement, 17 October, 2008

‘Balls’ academy revolution to bring “university culture” to schools gathers pace’ (press release), Department of Children, Schools and Families, 10 September 2008

See: http://www.thersa.org/projects/education/rsa-academy—tipton

eSkills Public Private Partnerships: Issue Paper for the European eSkills Forum (eSF), European Commission, 2004

Work on schooling for tomorrow: trends, themes and scenarios to inform leadership issues, David Istance, NCSL, 2001

‘Private tuition‘, Steven Hastings, Times Educational Supplement, 13 May 2005

‘Pupils aged just eight in 11-plus cramming’, Alison Norrington and Graeme Paton, Times Educational Supplement, 22 September, 2006

‘Private tuition fails results test’, Adi Bloom, Times Educational Supplement, 8 April, 2005

‘‘Renaissance children’ on the rise‘, Elizabeth Buie, Times Educational Supplement, 10th October 2008

‘Special offer at the supermarket … extra lessons for children‘, London Evening Standard, 28^th January 2008

‘Private tuition booms‘, Amy Binns, Times Educational Supplement, 21 September 2007

E-Learning for Leadership: Emerging Indicators of effective practice, Angele McFarlane, Anton Bradburn and Agnes McMahon, NCSL, 2003

Hidden Privatisation of Public Education (Preliminary Report), Stephen Ball and Deborah Youdell, Education International, 2007

See FIA website: http://www.fia.org.uk/activity-programs/active-at-school/key-benefits.html

Hidden Privatisation of Public Education (Preliminary Report), Stephen Ball and Deborah Youdell, Education International, 2007

Hidden Privatisation of Public Education (Preliminary Report), Stephen Ball and Deborah Youdell, Education International, 2007

Public-Private Partnerships in Basic Education: An International Review (Literature Review) Norman LaRocque, CfBT Education Trust, 2008

Making Choice a Reality in Secondary Education, Claudia Wood, The Social Market Foundation, 2005

Privatisation and Marketisation in Education Policy (Speech to NUT conference on ‘Involving the Private Sector in Education: Value Added or High Risk?’), Geoff Whitty, Institute of Education, University of London, London, 21 November 2000

What’s Next? 21 ideas for the 21^st Century, Charlie Leadbetter, The Innovation Unit, 2008

The Next Practice in Education Programme: Learning, Insights and Policy Recommendations, Innovation Unit, 2008

‘Schools will hire private sector Chief Executives’, Jon Boone, The Financial Times, 25^th July 2006

DCSF: Schools and Pupils in England: January 2007 (Final)/ ‘Private school pupil numbers in decline‘, Donald MacLeod, The Guardian, November 9 2007

‘Private school too posh for many middle-class parents, says MTM Consulting‘, Alexandra Frean, The Times, 17^th September 2008

Competition for Private and State School Teachers, Francis Green, Stephen Machin, Richard Murphy, Yu Zhu, Centre for the Economics of Education, London School of Economics, 2008

MT Consulting Independent Education Sector Report 2007, MT Consulting, 2008

‘Premier League plan for elite boarders’, Henry Winter, The Telegraph, 8th Oct 2008

‘Private schools turn their back on academies‘, Anthea Lipsett, The Guardian, September 12 2008

‘Private schools turn their back on academies‘, Anthea Lipsett, The Guardian, September 12 2008

No school like home, Jessica Shepherd, The Guardian, August 19 2008

HEFCE, and the Regulation of Higher Education in  a Market Environment, Bahram Bekhradnia, Higher Education Policy Institute, 2005

‘Higher Education: system dynamics and useful knowledge creation’, F.A. van Vught, in Universities and Business: Towards a better society, J. Duderstadt and L. Weber (eds.),

Economica, 2006

‘Over the rainbow‘, Alok Jha, The Guardian, February 27 2007

UK higher Education in the Global Economy: Far Sight or Myopia, Bahram Bekhradnia, Presentation September 2008

Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards, Future of Education Institute Conference Report: Topic 5: The human angle: what will the educational experience be for learners, academic and admin staff in the future?, 2006

Demanding questions: Employers’ needs must not decide what we teach, Bahram Bekhradnia, The Guardian, May 22 2007

Implications of the Government’s proposals for university title:  or What is a University?, Bahram Bekhradnia, 2003

Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards, Future of Education Institutions Conference Report: Topic 1: Wider global and societal trends affecting future educational institutions, 2006

Global Horizons for UK Students: A guide for Universities, John Fielden et al., Council for Industry and Higher Education, 2007

Reclaiming Our Universities, Stephen Schwartz, Policy Exchange, 2003

‘British universities lose ground to their richer foreign rivals‘, Nicola Woolcock, The Times, 9^th October 2008

Higher Education and International Student Mobility in the Global Knowledge Economy, Kemal Guruz, State University of New York Press, 2008

Higher Education and International Student Mobility in the Global Knowledge Economy, Kemal Guruz, State University of New York Press ,2008

As You Like It, Samuel Jones and Peter Bradwell, Demos, 2007

‘Skills drive risks mental health‘, Katherine Sellgren, BBC News Online, 22^nd October 2008

A Review of the Year 2007/08, Association of Learning Providers, 2008

The Skills Paradox, Duncan O’Leary and Kate Oakley. Demos, 2008

Prime Minister’s speech to the House of Commons announcing draft legislative programme, Gordon Brown, 14^th May 2008

www.theschooloflife.com

www.826valencia.org

The profile of the creative and cultural (C&C) sector has for a combination of economic, social and educational reasons, risen dramatically since New Labour came to power in 1997 (Bilton, 2007; Garnham, 2005; Hesmonhalgh, 2005). Economically, the sector has presented itself, and been perceived by ministers, as a paradigmatic example of the ‘information/knowledge-based’ industries which economic gurus assume will be the basis of nation states’ prosperity in the 21^st Century (Porter and Ketas, 2003). Socially, the sector symbolizes the type of cultural diversity that New Labour’s quasi-social democratic project aspired to foster because it generates new cultural products and services and new culturally diverse audiences for those products and services (Guile, 2006). Educationally, an increasing number of young people aspire to enter the sector (DCMS, 2001). Taken in combination, these developments have led the government to accept that all young people should be offered an opportunity to ‘express and channel their creativity through a wide range of activities’ in primary, secondary and tertiary education to both support their creative aspirations (DCMS, 2001, foreword), and to maintain that higher-level qualifications are the vehicle to assist them to gain access to the C&C sector.

This paper questions the link that policymakers assume exists between qualifications and access to employment in the C&C sector. It first identifies how labour market conditions in the C&C sector do not reflect the prevailing conventional wisdom that qualifications are the ‘magic bullet’ (Keep, 1999) for securing employment. Secondly, it demonstrates how the dynamics of policy formation in the UK impose a straitjacket on the education and training (E&T) system thereby denying E&T agencies the autonomy to intervene to assist people post-qualification to gain access to the sector. Thirdly, it identifies the way that non-government agencies -’intermediary organisations’ – address this problem by providing new spaces and pedagogies to assist aspiring entrants to develop the requisite form of ‘vocational practice’ and ’social capital’ to enter the sector (Guile and Okumoto, 2008). The paper concludes that, if the government wants the C&C sector to realize the aforementioned economic and social goals, it will have to foster more ‘heterarchical’ (Jessop, 1998) governance cultures to support demand-and-supply side E&T partners to work together to develop innovative strategies to enhance entry routes into the C&C sector.

The creative and cultural industrial sector

The distinctive features of the sector

It is widely accepted that although some industries in the C&C sector, for example, art and design, broadcasting, film, music, etc, have been a longstanding feature of the UK and for that matter the American, European, and Pacific Rim economies, the process of industrial convergence, centred around the use of digital technology, which began in the late 1980s has gradually established the conditions for these sectors to be to be intertwined economically and technologically in radically new ways (Coffee, 1996; Tapscot, 1995). The C&C sector is a paradigmatic example of this type of convergence. Sometimes the sector is defined in terms of the outputs achieved by the following fifteen industries: Crafts, Design, Fashion, Film, Music, Performing Arts, Publishing, Research and Development, Software, Toys, TV and Radio and Video Games (Howkins, 2002). On other occasions it is defined in terms of the occupations that generate the new ideas that enable those industrial segments to flourish (Florida, 2002). Irrespective of which view of the C&C sector is adopted, it is generally agreed that it is now worth worldwide about $2.2 trillion and, according to the World Bank’s estimation, is growing at 5% per year (Florida, 2002). The largest market is America which is now worth in excess of $1 trillion while Britain is ranked third in the creative economy behind Japan. The UK’s creative and cultural sector generates revenues of around £115 billion and employs 1.3 million people. They contribute over £10 billion in exports and account for over 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and, moreover, output from these sectors grew by more than twice that of the economy as a whole in the late 1990s (DCMS, 2001).

Trans-nationally, the profile of the clusters and sectors that comprise the C&C sector are rather different from the historical profile of conventional economic sectors such as the automobile and pharmaceutical industries (Florida, 2002). The latter industries are characterised by strong national identities and vibrant corporate sectors, with strong ’strategies’, ’structures’ and ’systems’ which facilitated the manufacture of standardized products and services (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1997). Whilst globalization has transformed competitive strategies and work organization in those industries significantly, they still tend to be involved with large-scale production. In contrast, the profile and structure of the C&C is characterised by a mix of a small number of global corporations and national organizations and a very large number of SMEs and freelance work, which is concentrated in specific regions, and who continually form value chains and networks, often for a short duration, to develop a continual flow of new products or services (Florida, 2002).

Furthermore, unlike industrial sectors such as the automobile, engineering and medical sectors which have historically been characterized by very strong ‘occupational labour markets’ (OLMs) and firm-specific ‘internal labour markets’ (FILMs) (Ashton, 1995), the creative and cultural sector is characterised predominantly by ‘external labour markets’ (ELMs). These labour markets function in rather different ways from one another. OLMs enable new entrants to be trained in a range of skills which provide competence in specific occupations. This process of occupational socialization results in the development of an identification with an occupation, for example, engineer, nurse, mechanic, as well as a ’skill base’ that can be enhanced through further training within firms. FILMs provide a series of job or career ladders which, following further training, enable young employees to be promoted and to progress within an organization.

These labour market conditions are only really found in those segments of the C&C sector which have developed equivalent professional identities and education and training traditions, for example, broadcasting and printing, although even here OLMs are no longer as an entrenched feature of these industries as they were in the 196/7/80s (Sutton Trust, 2006). In the main, large swathes of the C&C sector are characterized by ELMs. These markets are formed where the buying and selling of labour is not linked to jobs which form part of a FILM or a long standing and clearly defined OLM. Movement of labour in ELMs is determined by the price attached to the job and/or contract on offer and the requirements of the individual concerned and such jobs/contracts in the creative and cultural industries tend to run the gamut from high to low skill. Traditionally, ELMs were seen as constituting the ’secondary labour market’ and labour market economists tended to treat them as less desirable work contexts for young people than OLMs and FILMs because they did not offer the same form of employment protection and structured opportunities for development (Ashton, 1995, p15).

The impact of globalization, new forms of work and out-sourcing has, however, profoundly increased the prevalence of ELMs within the UK economy in general (Ashton, 1995) and in the creative and cultural sector in particular (Bilton, 2007), with the result that even organizations such as the BBC, which in the past offered its employees permanent contracts, is now inclined to place new recruits on short-term and temporary contracts. The net effect has been the emergence of less structured careers and greater economic uncertainty. Marsden (2008) has characterized this shift from OLMs to ELMs as the introduction of a ‘tournament’ culture in the C&C sector. By this he means aspiring entrants are prepared to seek out a mix of unpaid internships and/or work experiences and tolerate the uncertainties of low-paid freelance work, in the hope that it will enable them to develop the appropriate mix of vocational practice and social capital to secure either a permanent position or longer contracts and better pay as a freelance worker.

Government policy for education and training

The national policy cycle and its implications for E&T policy

The UK’s national policy cycle has been predicated since the late 1980s on a ‘cycle of state intervention’ (Keep, 2006). Both the previous Conservative and New Labour administrations have ascribed a centrality to upskilling that is not shared by other actors, particularly employers, and which render all assumed stakeholders in the upskilling process, for example, educational institutions, Local Learning and Skills Councils (LLSCs), merely as delivery agents for national policy, rather than active contributors to the formulation of public policy. To realise this upskilling agenda, successive governments have engulfed the E&T system with an escalating series of policy dictums which they are obligated to address. These supply-side measures and levers, which reflect the well-established belief amongst policy makers in the efficacy of centrally imposed planning regimes, specify targets, explicitly interface funding, with targets, and severely restrict the scope for any discussion of the direction of policy (Keep, 2006).

The net effect has been to produce a crippling paradox. On the one hand, the UK government’s commitment to free-market neo-liberal policies renders unavailable the potential policy interventions used in other countries – for example, training levies, strong trade unions and statutory rights to collective bargaining on skills, strong forms of social partnership – or a targeted industrial policy to support high skill sectors. On the other hand, the government’s concern to micro-manage all aspects of E&T policy predisposes SSCs and LLSCs to work with the DCSFs to realize national E&T targets by allocating funding in line with those targets, thereby denying them the opportunity to sponsor initiatives which might offer an alternative vision and set of practical measures to facilitate access to the labour market.

This mismatch between demand and supply of E&T has a number of unintended consequences. At present, although the national policy rhetoric constantly affirms the centrality of ‘choice’ and ‘flexibility’ if the UK is to respond to the demands of the knowledge economy, E&T policy is tightly circumscribed by policymakers assumptions there are clear and functioning OLMs and FILMs in all areas of the UK economy whose needs can be met through the creation of sector skills agreements and qualification blueprints. As a consequence, all that the government’s much vaunted rhetoric of choice and flexibility amounts to is an opportunity for the demand-side to tailor pre-given blueprints to reflect their needs. Moreover, when the government encounters opposition to or a reluctance to go along with its E&T agenda, it rarely pauses to consider whether policy is correct for all industrial sectors. Instead, the government tries to realize its goals by offering a limited number of financial inducements, the form of a public subsidy for E&T programmes such as the AAP and task-specific adult training to employers in an attempt to secure greater employer investment in training (Keep, 2006). Consequently, the above labour market assumptions and ideological no-go-zones mean that the UK policy severely restricts stakeholders’ scope to experiment or innovate in relation to their perception of their needs.

Operating within this framework, New Labour’s rallying cry to E&T stakeholders has been that policy must intertwine competitiveness and social inclusion on the grounds that education is the best policy to support employability in, and growth of, the knowledge economy (Lauder, 2004). The emphasis in the first decade of educational policy from 1997 to 2007 fell upon making the supply-side more responsive to government priorities. Firstly, universities were encouraged to address social exclusion by widening participation so as to attract non-traditional learners, for example, learners whose families have little or no previous experience of university study, into HE, rather than to target measures to facilitate access into specific subjects or occupational sectors. Broadly speaking, the widening participation initiatives have been fairly successful in achieving their goals, although non-traditional access tends to have been skewed towards ‘new’ rather than ‘Russell Group’ universities (Burke, 2000). Moreover, new vocational qualifications such as the Foundation Degree (FD) were introduced to address perceived skill deficits at intermediate (associate professional and technical) level and also as a strategy to help the Government to meet its target of ensuring that at least 50% of the population entered HE (DfEs, 2003). FDs have proved to be an effective strategy for ‘credentialising’ high volumes of experienced workers’ knowledge and skill in the public sector (Gallagher and Reeves 2006), and a flexible framework for employers to align degrees more closely to niche needs in the private sector (Evans et al, forthcoming).

Secondly, the government has forced (and continues to force as the announcement on 7.1.2009 demonstrates) the Local Learning and Skills Councils (LLSCs) to present the Apprenticeship/Advanced Apprenticeship Programme (AAP) as a vehicle to attract those young people not proceeding into further and higher education, whom the government perceives to be vulnerable to social and economic exclusion. In this respect, the AAP has become a strategy to secure volumes, in terms of apprentice numbers and participating sectors, rather than on skill formation in those sectors committed to securing economic growth (Fuller and Unwin, 2003). In the past, ‘apprenticeships were demand rather than supply-led. Employers decided when and if they needed apprentices’ (Fuller and Unwin, 2003b). Thus, apprenticeship was very responsive to labour market demand. In contrast, at the present time the prevailing orthodoxy of centrally imposed planning regimes and national targets for education and training, coupled with the nexus of quangos, for example, Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) with responsibility for devising sector skills agreements to deliver those targets and whose livelihood depends on meeting their target quotas, serves to underpin a decidedly supply-side conception of E&T. This has a number of pernicious effects as regards apprenticeship: most employers, despite having a degree of representation on the boards of SSCs and LSCs, and particularly employers in the C&C sector, rarely feel any particular ownership of apprenticeships (Fuller and Unwin, 2003a; Hutton, 2006); and the hands of the SSCs and LSCs are tied as regards financially supporting any new initiatives for learning and development that do not directly support government targets for education and training or their own financial position.

The publication of the Leitch Report (2006), however, inaugurated a shift away from a concern for, on the one hand, incentivising and pressurising the supply-side to respond to government targets and, on the other hand, encouraging individuals to invest in their own training and development. These foci were replaced by a concern to put employers in the driving seat through the Train to Gain initiative and by enhancing the role of the SSCs in order to make the E&T system more demand rather than supply-led (Delorenzi, 2007). Specifically, adult learning policy is now focused on two Public Service Agreements (PSAs) targets – to increase the number of people with basic skills, and to increase the number with level 2 qualifications. Whilst the equity and social justice arguments that underpin a concern for increasing the proportion of the population that have basic skills and hold Level 2 qualifications are unquestionable, the Leitch Report perpetuates the straitjacket that the government has imposed on the E&T system. It fails to acknowledge that the most effective strategy for enhancing regional and national competitiveness is to support adults who already hold Level 3 qualifications to broaden the base of their expertise (Delorenzi, 2007) and that this frequently requires access to short un-accredited provision (Mason, 2008).

The ‘cycle of intervention’ and its implications for the C&C sector

Despite the shift to demand-led E&T that Leitch purportedly inaugurated, the direction of educational policy for the C&C sector continues to remain firmly under the hand of the government. This is, in part, because SSCs and LLSCs in general, and in the C&C sector specifically, perceive that their primary purpose is to function as a delivery agent for government policy, rather than an institutional tier capable of mediating between central government and other groups in the E&T system or even a bulwark against the arms of Whitehall. It is also in part because both organisations are subject to the constantly changing direction and priorities of national E&T policy. This state of affairs is clearly evident from the way in which Skillset, who represents broadcasting, film, video and multimedia, and Creative and Cultural Skills (C&CS), who represent advertising, crafts, cultural heritage, design, music, performing, literary and visual arts, have either responded to their E&T remits or have in the case of HE been affected by other aspects of policy.

In the case of HE, C&C-related degrees have been growing annually since 1994 and resulted in a 55% increase in enrolments in creative and art and design subject areas by 2005 (Universities UK, 2005). Moreover, this growth continues independent of any action on behalf of either of Skillset or C&CS. This is partly because universities have or have established strong links with the C&C sector and therefore have been able to identify/respond to emerging demands. Nevertheless, despite universities’ close links with the C&C sector, studying for a C&C-related degree rarely provides an expectation or understanding of what is required in vocational contexts (Raffo et al, 2000). Hence many graduates with C&C degrees have a post-graduation ‘vocational need’: to acquire the ‘vocational practice’, that is the mix of knowledge, skill and judgement, employers are looking for, via a mix of unpaid internships, work placements, etc (Guile, 2009).

The one, albeit small, area of influence SSCs have in relation to HE is with respect to the design of FDs. Here some very successful, albeit very low volume, FDs have been designed, for example, Skillset and the London College of Communication’s FD in Media Practice. This FD has a strong track record of assisting new entrants and ‘career switchers’ to gain access to their desired niche in the C&C sector (Evans et al forthcoming). The FD’s success is due to its ability to offer learners work placements in the heart of the UK’s C&C sector. This assists them to develop not only their vocational practice, but also the social capital in the form of a network of contacts who might offer them or recommend them for contract/project-based employment.

In the case of apprenticeship, Skillset and C&CS are struggling to persuade employers to participate in the AAP. The C&C sector lags significantly behind traditional sectors associated with apprenticeship such as Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction as well as other non-traditional sectors such as Business Administration. There was not one C&C industry in the list of the ‘top ten’ participants in the AAP (Fuller and Unwin, 2003) and this situation has not subsequently improved; moreover, even in the list of the ‘top forty’ sectors where apprentices begin at age 18 and over, the C&C sector is only represented by industries which have either historically been characterized by a combination of strong OLMs and FILMs, for example, broadcasting and newspapers or recent high growth sectors such as IT where certain segments have developed fairly robust OLMs and FILMs over the last two decades.

This is partly because the flexible blueprints and the provision of a public subsidy has failed to encourage participation in the AAP on behalf of those sectors that are characterized by a high proportion of SMEs, very strong ELMs, and little history of involvement in nationally accredited apprenticeship programmes such as Art and Design, Film, Fashion, Film, Music, New Media, Performing Arts, etc. SMEs are reluctant to participate in the AAP because firstly, they lack the financial and human resources to be convinced that they would benefit from participating in the AAP (Hutton, 2006). Secondly, the mandatory qualification outcomes in the blueprint for AAP – NVQs, Technical Certificates and Key Skills – are perceived in the sector as serving ‘educational’ goals because they are promoted by the DCSF to enhance academic progression, rather than attempts to develop sectorally-relevant vocational knowledge and skill (Guile and Okumoto, 2007). Thirdly, the onus from central government on SSCs and LLSCs to secure high volumes and to roll out apprenticeship frameworks nationally severely inhibits them from supporting employers’ demands for bespoke apprenticeships. SSCs are reluctant therefore to invest in such schemes because they are not guaranteed to offer a sufficient return on the investment when it comes to achieving AAP targets. As a consequence, it took over four years, for example, for the first ever Advanced Apprenticeship in Media Production, which was developed by Skillset in collaboration with the BBC, North West Vision and Media and the LSC, to be launched (Damners, 2008).

Skillset and C&CS have both supported the development of the first creative and cultural Diploma. This is a new qualification that was launched in September 2008. Its aim is to promote diversity, opportunity and inclusion by offering pathways to support learners to enter occupational sectors or progress into HE, including work-related learning opportunities (Huddlestone, 2008). The Diploma in Creative and Media (DCM) has therefore to square the government’s circle of developing vocationally relevant skills and positioning learners to progress at some point in the future into HE. Although it is too soon to judge on the basis of any empirical evidence, the exigencies of the C&C labour market described in the previous section suggest that achieving this goal is a tall order. The DCM promotes the impression that intermediate-level qualifications are the stepping-stone to employment in the C&C sector. Yet, it is clear that not only is access to the C&C sector difficult for people who hold a degree, but also difficult to sustain a career in the sector (Galloway et al, 2006; Lindley and Galloway, 2005; Guile and Okumoto, 2006). For this reason, graduates and recent entrants often resort to ‘multiple job holding’ to supplement their income stream whilst they break in or establish themselves in their chosen niche (Baines and Robson 1999; Creigh-Tyte and Thomas 1999). Thus, Skillset and C&CS run the risk of inadvertently increasing social frustration rather than assisting young people to achieve their social aspirations, as young people discover that DCM does not necessarily constitute a qualification to secure their employment in the C&C sector.

The root of the problem that Skillset and C&CS jointly face is the assumed link that the government believes exists between qualifications and access to the labour market. This is predicated on a notion that there are functioning OLMs and FILMs in the C&C sector, that these labour markets will channel the flow of highly qualified students towards their preferred occupational destinations, and that employers will use qualifications as a proxy measure for vocational practice in the recruitment process (Guile, 2009). These assumptions are, s we have seen, wide of the mark and, as a consequence, Skillset and C&CS’s efforts to support aspiring entrants to gain access to the C&C sector are floundering.

New spaces, pedagogies and expertise

Given this difficulty, aspiring entrants have recourse to two main strategies to gain access to the sector: to exercise their own agency and identify and negotiate internships and work placement to develop their vocational practice and social capital, or to participate in the development activities that ‘intermediary agencies’ offer (Guile and Okumoto, forthcoming). These agencies have grown in number over the last decade as it has become apparent that aspiring entrants require help post-graduation to realise their ambitions (Guile and Okumoto, forthcoming). The term intermediary agencies encompass a diverse range of organisations. Some are found in (i) the formal education sector, for example, education-industry liaison units in universities (ii) the not-for-profit sector, private companies with a sectoral specialization, and possibly some industry funding, providing a range of learning and development programmes for aspiring entrants and longstanding members of their field (iii) the non-formal sector, colleges that do not receive statutory funding, and (iv) the public sector, for example, local government funded community-liaison agencies.

Intermediary agencies are rather different from traditional forms of community education (CE) that is usually delivered by cohorts of trained educators employed by local authorities (Tett, 2002). In contrast, intermediary agencies attempt to co-ordinate segments of the labour market by acting as catalysts to bring conglomerates, SMEs, freelancers and networks together to forge partnerships. The aim of these partnerships is two-fold: to assist aspiring entrants to supplement their qualifications or prior experience to develop the forms of vocational practice and social capital that will help them enter the creative industries, and to increase the flow of experienced people into the sector. Over the last decade, they have achieved this goal by:

• securing funds from sources such as the European Union, UK government departments, charitable foundations and the private sector to provide new spaces for learning. These can include (i) the provision of short courses that usually do not result in a recognized qualification (ii) offering bursaries/access to master classes, and (iii) negotiating internships/work placements with companies
• employing experienced professionals such as tutors/mentors to support aspiring entrants in ways that are appropriate to the needs of the sector
• working closely with employers and educational institutions to design innovative forms of education and training that address pressing skill needs.

The next section of the paper illustrates the vital contributions that intermediary organisations make by summarising research from four case studies undertaken as part of The Last Mile Project (Guile, 2006). This was a three-year project funded via the EU EQUAL Programme.

One example of the work of an industry-education funded intermediary agency is the Jewellery Industry Innovation Centre (JIIC). The JIIC is attached to the University of Central England, Birmingham and has a remit to provide support in research and development in the UK jewellery industry. The jewellery industry presents aspiring entrants with a very specific kind of challenge. Much of this sector depends upon a value network of ‘horizontal’ collaboration between SMEs and freelancers who create new products and services, and ‘vertical’ collaboration between large firms who act as suppliers and distributors (Bilton, 2007). This generates a pattern of economic activity based on local ties where SMEs and freelancers are committed to the creation of new jewellery products and the larger firms are concerned with their manufacture and distribution.

Working in partnership with the Innovation Unit (IU), part of Birmingham City Council’s Economic and Development Department, and funds secured from the European Social Fund, the JIIC designed a new un-accredited project – the Design Work Placement (DWP) Project. This project ran for six months and based on a three-way partnership (a) participating manufacturers gave recently qualified jewellers an opportunity to develop a new range of commercial products based on their research because they had faith in the JIIC’s track record in identifying new talent (b) recently qualified jewellers worked for a small bursary in order to learn how to incubate (ie create, cost, and monitor the fabrication of their designs) because they appreciated that this would provide an invaluable opportunity to develop their vocational practice and their social capital within the sector, and (c) the JIIC acted as project managers and mentors for the participant jewellers (Guile and Okumoto 2008).

The scheme involved an iterative mix of learning strategies. The JIIC ran workshops to support the recently qualified jewellers to develop an industry-relevant approach to designing new jewellery collections. It introduced them to more commercially-orientated methods of working, encouraging them to attune themselves more to the way in which cultural trends influence how people incorporate jewellery into their fashion style, supported the process through one-to-one mentoring, and ran showcasing events with industry representatives for the participants at the end of the project. The jewellery companies provided the participating jewellers with, on the one hand, very demanding commercial projects, for example, graduates enrolled on jewellery degrees usually have a whole term to produce the final design for their degree whereas the company expected forty new designs to be produced within twelve weeks, which the companies expected to be manufactured within the next twelve weeks; and, on the other hand, opportunities to become familiar with up-to-date techniques of production that they had never encountered in college and to participate in production planning meetings. The aspiring jewellers had to learn to take advantage of this mix of formal pedagogic strategies and workplace-generated pedagogic strategies in order to formulate and instantiate their designs.

In addition to achieving its stipulated goal of assisting the participating companies to enhance their product ranges and the participating jewellers to develop their vocational practice, the DWP also achieved another goal. It assisted the participating jewellers to decide whether to remain a jewellery designer and as a consequence become a freelance worker, or to enter management within a jewellery company and therefore be in a better position to secure a full-time position. Moreover, the jewellers who took the former decision recognised that life as a freelancer required them to develop what has been referred to as ‘moebius-strip’ expertise (Guile, 2007), that is the entrepreneurial expertise to demonstrate to national and international jewellery companies and journalists that they are sufficiently versatile to use their expertise to meet the requirements of any contract.

The work of Slough Borough Council’s Arts Development Team (ADT), which is a regional arts partnership receiving some core funding from the local council to ensure that the arts in Slough have the best grounding, resources and connections, is an excellent example of how the networking undertaken by intermediary agencies can result in innovative strategies to facilitate access into the C&C sector. Because the UK’s four largest film studios are located within fifteen minutes of Slough, Creative Academy (CA), one of ADT’s partners, prioritized film as an industrial sector where they were keen to secure employer support to assist young people from the Slough area to gain access to the industry. This led George Kirkham, Director of CA, to meet Carlo Dusi, Director of Aria Films, and negotiate work placements for ten aspiring entrants on Carlo’s forthcoming production.

Carlo was responsive to George’s pitch for work placements because he was aware that ‘the film production community is not a nurturing one’ and that it is difficult ‘to establish a career in the industry unless one can find an opportunity to work within the industry (Guile and Okumoto forthcoming). The aim of the partnership between Aria and CA was to enable people with Level 3/4 qualifications in a film-related field, for example, Special Effects, Make-up Design or Television and Production, or people who had experience of working in television and/or on the production of advertisements, to move into the film industry. To realize this goal, Carlo offered them a two-week work placement on either the ’shoot’ or the post-production for the film he was producing Kill Kill Faster Faster. The film was shot in Rotterdam for six weeks in June/July 2006 with the budget of £3.7 million. Seven participants undertook technical positions in Rotterdam, while three were involved in post-production work in London once the filming was complete.

Given that Carlos’s film crew had no previous experience of supporting interns on a film shoot and the participants equally lacked any experience of such work, George and Carlo devised a multi-faceted system to support both parties. Prior to the Rotterdam shoot, the CA ran a series of workshops to support the participants in understanding the aims of the scheme, and prepared for their roles through one-to-one meetings with experienced professionals in the field of lighting, filming, sound, etc. During the shooting, the CA offered on-site mentoring support by visiting the participants and helping to iron out any misunderstandings and/or difficulties that arose. Post-placement, the CA arranged for information on seminars, events and job vacancies to be sent to the interns. Prior to the participants arriving in Rotterdam, Carlo briefed the experienced technical staff that he had recruited for the film as regards his rationale for agreeing to provide work placements, explained his expectations of the interns’ ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ role, and the technical staff’s coaching and modeling role. Subsequently, he split his time between overseeing the production process and acting as the participants’ mentor throughout the shoot and post-production phases.

This work placement supported the participants in developing their vocational practice and social capital in order to be in a position for an employer to offer them a contract for their services. In the case of the former, the placement demonstrated that although film-related qualifications can provide a conceptual understanding and orientate aspiring entrants towards key issues about the history and social conventions that inform film-making, such knowledge has to be supplemented by experience of practice. This is because much of the knowledge that is an integral feature of forms of vocational practice such as sound, lighting, direction, is invested in action, and involves developing the form of judgement that are inimical to professional performance. In the case of the latter, the opportunity to hear experienced professionals’ ‘war stories’ about which film events to attend and which networks to join, enabled participants to realised the link between vocational practice, social capital and moebius-strip expertise: the latter provides the network that may generate a demand for their services providing they are perceived as someone who can creatively deploy their expertise in a range of situations.

One example of the work of a non-formal intermediary agency is WAC Performing Arts and Media College. WAC specialises in the field of performing arts and raises its income from a mix of EU, Local Learning and Skills Council, and industry sources of funding. In recognition that many of its graduates, who were active in the field of world arts, were unable to supplement their freelance income streams through securing employment as a teacher/teaching assistant because they lacked a recognized qualification, WAC decided to create a degree in world art forms. To do so, WAC turned to the framework provided by Foundation Degrees (FD).

WAC drew on its accumulated experience in running non-accredited courses and designed the FD around an integrated learning-teaching curriculum (Guile and Okumoto 2009). The hallmark of this curriculum was the way in which WAC mobilised its accumulated social capital (ie the number of ex-WAC graduates who were experienced professionals in the field of world arts forms) to work as teachers. Their involvement enabled participants to develop their vocational practice to industry-standards as well as to expand their network of contacts and thus position them to gain access to the performing arts’ notoriously tricky external labour markets. WAC achieved these two goals by using the expertise of its staff and ex-graduates to (i) explain the discipline-based knowledge and skill that underpins different world art forms in ways that extended their existing vocational practice and developed their professional identity and confidence (ii) provide opportunities for learners to plan and then perform in a wide range of contexts and for culturally diverse audiences. This opportunity to participate legitimately, albeit peripherally, with a range of different world art forms in authentic settings enabled participants to develop the forms of judgement that are integral to the development of their practice, and (iii) provide opportunities for learners to bridge and link their existing fledgling network to other existing and successful networks.

The wide variety of learning opportunities enabled FD participants to firstly, develop new forms of vocational practice and bridge and link their existing and new social capital in ways that could, in future, result in them being invited to contribute their specific vocational expertise to a dance, music, etc, contract that others had secured. Secondly, the diverse learning opportunities also positioned the FDs’ participants to develop the entrepreneurial expertise to start looking at themselves as not just performers searching for contracts for their specific world art expertise, but also as arts practitioners who have developed broader-based capabilities that could assist them to secure employment in art-based project management and/or community education.

Finally, the partnership between Birmingham’s Innovation Unit (IU) and the city’s Repertory Theatre (REP) provides an excellent example of how to devise an innovative project to assist aspiring entrants enter the C&C labour market. Using ESF funding, the IU and REP developed a ‘Technical Apprenticeship’ (TA) that offered eight apprentices, none of whom held a qualification above Level 3, to successfully enter the C&C sector. The Rep devised the TA outside the national blueprint for apprenticeship for two main reasons. It felt that the AAP had firstly, been designed to serve ‘educational’ goals because it is promoted by the DfES to enhance academic progression, rather than as genuine attempts to develop the sector-specific vocational knowledge and skill that they feel it is important for apprentices to develop (Guile and Okumoto 2007). Secondly, work in the theatre (and, for that matter, live events in general) is characterised by a ‘project culture’. This work context means that the AAP with its attendant package of NVQ assessment and the requirement for day-release is not a practical option, because it is utterly impracticable to release apprentices to attend courses in FE colleges or private training providers or to stop and assess apprentices’ competence in the middle of a production. To do so would deny the apprentices the opportunity to develop key aspects of vocational practice which are unlikely to surface again within the life span of a production.

To realize its vision of creating a modern culturally diverse and inclusive traditional craft apprenticeship which reflects the realities of the new work context in which it operates, the Rep appointed a Project Coordinator, John Pitt, who had worked as Production Manager previously in the Rep as well as having extensive knowledge and experience in training and development. Working with the Technical Heads of Department (THDs), for example, Lighting, Costume, Wigs, Sound, etc, John designed an apprenticeship that immersed apprentices in the ‘work flow’ of the Rep theatre life so they are involved in every stage of mounting a production. John negotiated with the THDs for the apprentices to have the opportunity to be: (i) ‘legitimate peripheral participants’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991) within their department, that is, activity engaged with the production process and supported in situ by modeling and demonstration activities in order to develop their technical expertise, and (ii) ‘boundary crossers’ (Tuomi-Gröhn and Engeström, 2003) between departments, that is, provided with opportunities to grasp the connections between different forms of vocational practice that exist within the Rep and how they all contribute to the success of a performance.

John also arranged for the apprentices to enhance their on-the-job learning in the down-time between productions by offering them access to a bespoke curriculum consisting of a mix of generic knowledge and skill about the process of production, and occupationally-specific knowledge and skill relating to their technical specialism. Furthermore a programme of limited work rotation and visits to other theatres and events across the country were arranged. These experiences enabled the apprentices to locate their understanding of vocational practice in a wider context and lay the foundation for them to transfer their knowledge and skill into other theatrical contexts.

The Rep’s model of apprenticeship supported the apprentices’ skill formation and transfer because it not only developed distinctive forms of occupationally-specific knowledge and skill which are in short supply and hence for which there is a high demand in the global C&C economy, but it also developed their social capital and entrepreneurial ability. Recognising that the UK’s national system of repertory theatres is characterised by the type of strong mutually self-supporting networks, characterised by high levels of trust amongst all levels of specialism and seniority, the Rep bridged and linked their apprentices into as many of these networks as possible. They did so in the knowledge that, on the one hand, these networks would accept that an apprentice ‘trained’ at Birmingham Rep was well trained and sufficiently experienced to be offered a contract for their services; and, on the other hand, that the apprentices had acquired the ability to demonstrate to prospective employers that they were sufficiently versatile to operate effectively in a range of settings, for example, theatres, television studios and live events.

Coda to the Case Studies: all the participants are now active in the C&C sector with contracts for their services.

Learning to work in the C&C sector: future challenges

The future context

The trend away from OLMs and FILMs and towards ELMs and ‘tournament’ competitions is likely to continue rather than diminish, for a number of reasons, over the next ten years. Firstly, this trend, although not necessarily as pronounced and entrenched in other parts of Europe, is nevertheless occurring globally throughout the C&C sector. The net effect is to position aspiring entrants to the C&C sector, as the EU commissioned report from KEA (2006) observes, as “new workers”/”new entrepreneurs”, between capital and labour because:

“The traditional categories of the “full-time job society” (“here the worker, there the employer”) no longer apply; the cultural content worker is suddenly also a (cultural) entrepreneur (without capital). In academic literature the “new worker” is described as multi-skilled, multifunctional and flexible in working time as well as often being self-employed” (KEA, 2006, p91).

Secondly, policymakers continue to affirm the importance of expanding these industries without paying any attention to labour market conditions and the way in which they inhibit people from learning to work in the C&C sector (Hesmondhalgh, forthcoming). Even the KEA (2006, p9) report that has, as we have seen above, very presciently identified the new conditions in which aspirant workers find themselves, falls back on the current European Union version of the UK conventional wisdom and argues that workers will require higher levels of knowledge and skill. Thus the report ends up perpetuating, rather than offering any fresh thinking on how to overcome, the dilemma described in this paper.

This suggests that the transition of any young people into the labour market, which many researchers had noted even before the impact of the ‘credit crunch’ had become more extended than in the post-war period during the 1990s (Evans, 2000; Chisholm, 1999), is likely to become even more extended in the future. Moreover, given the opacity of the C&C labour market and the fact that access is dependent on the development of the forms of social capital that provide people with access to the networks that gate-keep and facilitate employment in the C&C sector, it also suggests that access is likely to become even more competitive as the C&C sector gradually comes to terms with the implications of the ‘credit crunch’.

Assuming that the depiction of the above trends is correct and that the mismatch between the UK’s national policy cycle and the government’s assumptions about the role of qualifications as a proxy measure for vocational practice continues, then access to the labour market is likely to be exacerbated rather than diminished in any great respect. In the case of graduates, this is in part because the massification of higher education has generated a continual flow of graduates who are prepared, because they are financially cushioned by their families or are prepared to engage in multiple job-holding, to accept fairly insecure and temporary positions in an attempt to develop the forms of vocational practice and social capital to gain access to the C&C labour market (Oakley, 2007). In the case of students holding Level 3 qualifications, the combination of the flexible conditions of the UK labour market, coupled with employers’ preferences to recruit graduates in non-graduate roles (Mason, 2004), is exerting considerable ‘downward’ pressure on such students and has the effect of denying them access to the port-of-entry positions that would otherwise be commensurable with their qualifications and experience. Taken in combination, these developments suggest that there is likely to be an increased demand for the forms of intervention activity and provision of learning and development activities that intermediary agencies have been providing.

New principles for E&T

In light of these circumstances and irrespective of any change of government, there will have to be new direction to E&T policy if policymakers are to support aspiring entrants and career-switchers to realize their ambitions to work in the C&C sector and support the sector to continue to serve as the ‘engine’ of post-industrial growth in the UK. Based on the argument presented in this paper, this new direction presupposes a series of new principles for UK E&T policy. The principles are as follows:

1. The rebalancing of the tension between market (ie ‘demand-led) and state (ie supply-led) provision through the introduction of ‘heterarchical’ (Jessop, 1998) modes of E&T planning and delivery.

The problem generated by the state/market dichotomy in governance strategies has been widely recognized for some time. Jessop (1998, 2000) has argued that this has resulted at the macro government level in the constant substitution of one with another. He argues that rather than trying to manage the relative change between states, markets and globalization within one overall structure, what is required is the introduction of ‘new balancing points’ that enable policymakers to involve stakeholders more directly in the coordination process. Jessop offers the principle of self-organisation, in his terms’ heterarchy’, as an alternative mode of governance. From Jessop’s perspective, heterarchical governance, coupled with the autonomy at the regional level to determine how to deploy national fundings streams, offers a potential key to unlock the totality of the state/market interface at the macro-level.

There is not sufficient space here to do justice to the complexity of Jessop’s argument. I want to suggest, however, that his notion of heterarchical governance can be usefully extended to the way in which E&T policy and provision could be addressed in future in the C&C sector. This claim can be illustrated by returning to the example of Birmingham Reparatory Theatre’s Technical Apprenticeship.

It was argued earlier that in its desire to make apprenticeship part of a vocational ladder within the education and training (E&T) system, the government firstly, overlooked that (i) the primary purpose of apprenticeship is to develop vocational practice, and (ii) the project-based nature of work in much of the creative and cultural sector requires a ‘project-based’ approach to education and training and that existing arrangements and funding patterns for on-and-off-the-job training are incompatible with this type of work. Secondly, the government imposed a policy making cycle, funding constraints and targets that totally limited the scope of regional stakeholders to respond in innovative ways to their pressing needs.

If the principle of heterarchy was used to rebalance the current E&T system, this broadening of the principles of governance would offer E&T stakeholders the opportunity to ‘co-configure’ (Engeström, 2008) innovative solutions to the issue of access. In the case of the reservations expressed in the C&C sector about the AAP Blueprint, this new space could be used to enable employers, working in conjunction with intermediary agencies and Further Education Colleges, to design models of apprenticeship that actually reflect their needs. Such a development would introduce a slightly different twist to the notion of ‘employer leadership’ advocated by the Leitch Report. Instead of assuming that qualification blueprints are the definitive solution to employability in the knowledge economy and arguing that employers should take the lead over FE colleges/training providers implementing the AAP Blueprint, this broader system of E&T governance would create the conditions for employers to develop bespoke models of apprenticeship based on a clear articulation and specification of the principles of occupational skill formation and skill transfer. To ensure that employers do not interpret this new freedom as a license to create a host of new ‘restrictive’ apprenticeships (Fuller and Unwin, 2003), Local Learning and Skills Councils could be required by central government to devise regional ‘kite marking’ systems for such alternative models of apprenticeship. These systems would be based on clearly defined criteria for skill formation, skill transfer and employability so that apprentices developed the requisite form of vocational practice and social capital, thereby reassuring policymakers that the new schemes are educationally robust and offer value for money.

The introduction of these new principles of governance would also mean that E&T funding regimes for apprenticeship and other programmes would have to be re-thought. At present policymakers operate with ‘Welfarist’ notions of labour markets (ie that all employers will or can be persuaded to recruit regular numbers on an annually recurring basis), and ‘Fordist’ mechanisms to control the E&T system (ie funding FE Colleges and private training providers on the basis of enrolling ‘training volumes’ and achieving ‘training completions’). These assumptions about the operation of the labour market and this accountability and funding model is completely at odds with the growth of ELMs and project work in the C&C sector, let alone elsewhere in the economy. Heterarchical principles of governance would involve a shift away from these centrally controlled auditing and funding mechanism. Instead they would require the devolution of budgetry oversight to regional E&T stakeholders and the provision of ring-fenced budgets to support E&T innovation. These conditions would provide E&T stakeholders with the relative autonomy to design bespoke E&T solutions that reflect the needs of the C&C sector at the regional level.

2. Reconceptualising ‘vertical’ (ie education to work) and ”horizontal’ (ie work/unemployment to work) transitions as the development of vocational practice, social capital and moebius strip expertise rather than the acquisition of qualifications.

The recent debate about the role of qualifications and access to the labour market has forgotten that although qualifications are important because they are the long standing way to certify the forms of knowledge and skill students acquired in education, they do not constitute proxy measures for vocational practice, social capital or entrepreneurial ability, despite policymakers and some researchers views to the contrary. Moreover, policymakers have also failed to detect that the growth of ELMs is creating a new type of post-degree vocational need – opportunities for graduates to supplement the forms of knowledge and skill certified by qualifications with opportunities for vocational enculturation and the development of social capital and entrepreneurial ability – an issue that does not currently figure in the post-Leitch E&T agenda.

It has long been recognized that vocational practice, social capital and entrepreneurial expertise cannot be broken down into discrete units of study and taught independent of any contact with workplaces. This is not to suggest that study and simulation cannot provide a grounding and inspiration for learners, rather it is an acknowledgement that vocational practice, social capital and entrepreneurial expertise have to be developed in situ, that is in conditions of work or through the provision of opportunities to gain access to networks and specialist advice, rather than through study or simulation.

Enacting this insight, however, presupposes a further shift in the government’s E&T policy. It requires the introduction of a more multifaceted and differentiated strategy based on an explicit recognition of the different contribution that the following activities play in facilitating access to the C&C sector. They are:

• accreditation activities (ie academic or vocational qualifications)

• industry-recognised activities (ie knowledge and skill acquired from non-accredited activities such as work placements, internships, master classes)
• network activities (ie the development of a personal occupational labour market as the basis of securing contracts and the forms of entrepreneurial expertise to promote oneself in ELMs).

The first step to implement this strategy is for the government to stop predetermining the type of output (ie qualifications), the type of provider (i.e. Colleges of Further Education and accredited training providers) and the funding regime for all aspects of E&T. The second step is to relax the reigns of policy and offer all E&T stakeholders the opportunity brokered bespoke E&T solutions, for example, identifying how to incorporate, what this paper has referred to as access to industry-recognised and networked activities either as integral parts of accredited programmes (see the WAC Case Study) or as part of non-accredited programmes (see the CA and JIIC Case Studies). Because these activities develop vocational practice and social capital in a way that educational programmes in colleges and universities struggle to do so, they need to become a supplement to the national E&T framework of provision rather than a marginal, albeit highly effective, way of supporting transition into the labour market.

3. A shift from conceiving learning as consisting of the accumulation of pre-specified outcomes to seeing it as the development of judgement.

In addition to the UK’s tendency to conceive learning as consisting of the accumulation of pre-specified outcomes, the introduction of the European Qualification Framework (EQF) is resulting in pressure on educational institutions to standardise qualifications throughout Europe through the use of programme specifications and learning outcomes. This development is likely to reaffirm the idea pan-Europe that qualifications constitute a proxy measure for vocational practice and hence access to the C&C sector. This is deeply worrying because, as the case studies presented in the paper demonstrate, the knowledge associated with any field of vocational practice is always broader than any qualification. It requires opportunities for people to ‘conduct inquiries’ rather ‘rehearse procedures’ and, in the process, to develop the forms of judgement that are inimical to practice (Sennett, 2008).

What is required, therefore, is the formulation of a language of description for vocational practice that will offer researchers, policymakers and practitioners a resource to identify the different contributions that accredited, industry-recognised and network activities make to supporting vertical and horizontal transitions into the labour market. The first step towards such a language of description has already been taken (Guile, 2009). It has resulted in the formulation of three concepts of vocational practice. They are the evolutionary (ie the gradual development of a practice through individual and collective agentic activity), laterally-branching (ie the explicit use of professional/vocational field-specific forms of knowledge and skill (ie codified and non-codified) to develop a practice in ways that can be recognised in the field, and envisioning (ie inter-professional activity to envision a new form of practice).

These conceptions offer a way to capture the different modalities of practice and the forms of judgement associated with them. They could be used by E&T stakeholders to (i) identify the forms of working and learning that have to occur outside of educational institutions to facilitate their development; (ii) consider how to build strategic partnerships at the regional level to provide people with access to these forms of working and learning, and (iii) to press the case for the greater recognition for pedagogic activity within national and international E&T policy formation.

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Rosanvallon (2008), a historian and political philosopher, talks about the need to reinvent democracy: elections are not enough to ensure the system’s legitimacy and it is urgent to develop a democracy of “interaction”. His position, close to a form of deliberative democracy, also implies the reform of the current functioning of the representative system. This theoretical framework is different from one that opposes a liberal and individualist conception of citizenship to a communitarian conception. Nevertheless, it can be associated with Haste’s argument (2004) that one becomes a citizen through praxis. Haste and Hogan (2006) linked the moral to the political dimension, in relation to young people and citizenship. They argue that the distinction of private and public spheres in Western thought is not useful for addressing the motivational dimensions of political behaviour.

For the purpose of this paper the author adopts the normative and Western view that democracy, as a way to become autonomous, can only exist through constant re-invention, and a citizen can only “be” when she is empowered to participate in the creation of common rules. This is a way to say that meaning and central symbolic meanings are constructed, and only when we accept our responsibility as meaning-makers, can we exist as persons and not subjects. In this way, a human being is seen as a social animal, as communitarian arguments would suggest, but not every community or participation meets the criterion of autonomy that in Castoriadis’s thought has a Marxist and psychoanalytic dimension and is not linked to liberal perspectives as Taylor (1991) implies.

The concept of the “self” is used as dialogical, as a product and producer of a changing social and cultural context, for the purpose of this paper. This position derives from the socio-psychological tradition of social representations (Moscovici, 1984), but also from recent developments in the perspective of the dialogical self. The other is thus conceptualized as a constitutive part of the self in terms of a multiplicity of voices emerging from global-local dialectics. Hermans and Dimaggio (2007) alternate the concept of “self” with that of “identity” as in the title of their article “Self, Identity, and Globalization in Times of Uncertainty: A Dialogical Analysis”. In this review paper this author also alternates the term “self-efficacy and citizenship” as a dimension of a social identity. In an era of increased globalisation, the number and nature of voices of the self have expanded and increasingly involve mediated forms of dialogue. From the perspective of critical psychology, Papadopoulos (2008) provides a non-essentialist definition, of “identity”, inspired from the work of Vygotsky (1934). The main idea is that “identity” is never “identical” to what it used to be. The sense of self is on the move in a way, more than something stable.

Although self or identity as concepts can be highly ambiguous and imply tensions and contradictions, at the level of lay thinking, the self needs to be represented as a narrative with a certain continuity, in order to have a sense of well being, at least in western cultures (Hermans and Dimaggio, 2007). What is more, the possibility of projecting oneself to the future is essential not only for an individual sense of well-being, but is also an important dimension for a society or community (Mead, 1934; Butterworth, 1992).

Other conceptualizations of self that can be useful are those of Lahlou and Slevin. Lahlou (2008) proposes a conception of the representation of the self for lay thinking that enables us to make a link with technology and citizenship. He claims that the issue of identity is complex because it refers both to how we define ourselves from a subjective point of view and how we define ourselves to others. He distinguishes three dimensions: a physical (subject as body), a social (subject as a social position), and a biographical (subject as the product of past experiences and desires). Slevin (2000) draws from Giddens (1991) and views self as a symbolic project in late modernity. He refers to the distinctive tensions and difficulties which people have to resolve in order to preserve a coherent narrative of self-identity, what Giddens calls “dilemmas of the self” that can also be related to the “dialogical self” perspective.

This review paper is particularly interested in citizenship as the social dimension of the self and the way a sense of self-inefficacy, or a lack of recognition as an actor, can be constructive or destructive in re-establishing a sense of power for young people. This feeling has to do, on the one hand, with the dissolution of traditional ways to structure symbolic meanings after the end of the Cold War such as the left-right spectrum in Western society (Haste, 2004). On the other hand, it is linked to the intensification of globalization with the feeling of uncertainty that it brings (Hermans and Dimaggio, 2007). The understanding of what is positive or constructive is related to everything that enhances life and diversity that allows a construction of the “self” which is both a creation and creator of society. This derives from the political philosophy of Castoriadis, who links the notion of individual and collective autonomy and liberation, to democracy (1987).

The notion of citizenship cannot be limited to the nation-state. Citizenship implies a community, a group where someone can be a member, a citizen, but this paper focuses more on the socio-psychological dimension of the concept, especially since globalization and technology allow different representations of the communities we create and belong to. Local, national, global, but also virtual and imaginary communities can be taken into consideration.

Where things stand: Do young adults have a feeling of inefficacy in the public sphere?

If autonomy is a normative objective, this review starts from the premise that the feeling of inefficacy at the public sphere (Bandura, 1997) alienates youth from more conventional forms of participation in the representative democratic system. In that way, the social dimension of the self, “citizenship”, becomes problematic. The feeling of inefficacy is based in a number of “realities” that young people face in different European countries:

1. The formal education system is still inspired by a mentality of authority and hierarchy that is not accepted not only by the more disadvantaged youth but also from those who are materially and culturally more fortunate (at least in Greece) (Fragoudaki; Dragonas, 1997). Although it provides knowledge about the functioning of the political system through a range of different classes, it does not empower young people (Condor and Gibson, 2007). Since citizenship is conceptualized as dialogical (Hermans and Dimaggio, 2007) and action oriented (Haste, 2004), it is through the possibility of changing their everyday realities that young people could be empowered and this could lead to their being recognized by significant others as existing, acting citizens.

This dimension is not always present for a number of reasons. Resistance to authority as it was conceived in the past and materialized by institutions is one of the characteristics of younger generations according to authors such as Sanford (2007). The use of computers among high school students, according to Wighting (2006), contributes to the development of a sense of community that can be linked to academic success. However it does not change the structure of an education system that could be defined as “monological” in the sense that accurate information and knowledge is “top down”. On the other hand, education can lead young adults to higher and more sophisticated expectations of the political system than older generations (Bennett, 2008).

2. The material condition of young people and the less young that is characterized by mobility, the sense of the ephemeral and insecurity.

Youth as a social construction

Youth, as a sociological category, seems to extend at least to 30 year-olds, according to the way researchers in the social sciences set up their categories in Europe. Although there are researches that still refer to 12 to 21 year-olds as the young people (Haste and Hogan, 2006), there are many others in different European countries that define young adults as the 18 to 30 year olds: for example, the research report of Laaksonen (2000) on young people in Finland, Sweden and Germany refers to young people as “18-29 years-old”. In other cases, there is reference to the “generation of 20-40 years-old”, as Generation X (Sanford, 2007).

Concerning questions of life style, the 20-40 years-old could have a lot in common: this has to do with their precarious life-style that is extended more and more not only in Europe (ie Laaksonen, 2000), but also in the United States (Heiman, 2001). A stable relationship, job and independence from parents that used to be the criteria for entering the world of adults, seem to be postponed indefinitely, since youth is not only a biological but also a cultural value and social construction (Galland, 1993; Cicchelli, 2001). In that way, an ageing European population extends youth further and further, so there is no clear limit since certain “youth” lifestyles are adopted by older populations. Jobs are less and less stable, in different levels of the social hierarchy, as is income.

Changing jobs is also related to mobility, within the same country or abroad, or between different professions. Sanford’s report (2007) concerning the USA concludes that mobility is only going to increase with higher levels of education. The decline of fixed benefit pensions and increasing globalisation imply that social capital definitions that rely on more stable residency patterns put them at variance with individual realities and engines of economic growth. Even for more fortunate, well paid young adults, there is an alienating effect of the question “which is the community I belong to?” and a work affiliation that alternates with unemployment is not enough to offer an alternative to the weakening of more “traditional” social identities, national or local. Relationships can be less stable due to this fact. For the more disadvantaged, this feeling of the ephemeral, and the inability to project oneself to the future, gives a feeling of marginalization. Why vote for tax laws if one doesn’t pay taxes? Bennett (2008) and Heiman (2001) imply that this position could be a sign of sophistication.

Class differences exist, of course, and so does gender, but the author’s hypothesis is that there is no category excluded from this trend or from the feeling that they don’t matter. Apart from income, other characteristics differentiate the social dimension of the young generation’s representation of the self: there are many differences related to their culture, gender, religion, and their interaction, to give a few examples. Minorities, for example, or young Muslims could face different challenges from the majority of young people. Hopkins and Hopkins (2006), mention the lack of studies on how minorities conceptualize stigmatized identities, for example, British Muslims’ conceptualization of “Islamophobia”. This tension is related not only to the traditional public space of the nation-state but also to the local and to the global or cosmopolitan space.

3. A sense of inefficacy and “empowerment” through violent communities, or a subversive way to practice democratic values.

Could the “Local” dimension be the solution to autonomy and empowerment? Sauvadet (2006), in a series of interviews and participant observation with “dangerous” youth (that for him extends at least to the age of 35) of the French banlieus, the suburbs, insists on the link between the material conditions that lead to a lack of a space of their own and to them being on the streets, the prolonged periods of unemployment and especially the fact that they cannot become materially independent from their parents, for which they are criticized. But most problematically they lack the facility to project themselves into the future (Wakslak et al, 2008). The community they belong to, their “gang”, could represent a community where they matter, but in a destructive way since they are stigmatized by the larger society.

This sociological research is relevant to social psychological findings (eg. Klandermans, 1997; Stümer and Simon, 2004) that individuals for whom group identity is more relevant are more likely to participate in collective action than individuals for whom group identity is less relevant. However, there are different types of “collective action”. Van Zomeren, Spears and Leach (2008) who study two psychological mechanisms of collective action, differentiate two ways to deal with collective disadvantage: one, problem-focused coping and two, emotion-focused coping that seems relevant for the angry youth of the “banlieus”. Studies on the affective component of relative deprivation show that it is linked to collective action (Smith and Ortiz, 2002). What is more, the power of collective identification to mobilize people for collective action has been proved to derive partly from processes of identity affirmation (Simon, Trötschel, Dähne, 2008). So, the young disadvantaged and migrant youth who organize either in drug dealing enterprises, or in violence, practice collective action and certain values of a democratic community.

A study that involved participant observation with a crack gang, done in Chicago by Venkatesh (2000), a social anthropologist, comes to similar conclusions concerning the life of the community: the gang was one of approximately 100 branches or franchises, of an organisation. The college educated leader of the franchise reported to a central leadership that was called the board of directors. Three officers reported directly to the franchise leader. Beneath them were 20 foot soldiers, dreaming of becoming officers, and 200 members who paid dues to the gang for protection, or for the chance to become a foot soldier. Although certain aspects of this organisation are similar to that of a business, the way the leader took care of his people and their families is similar to that of a community where each member counts: the gang invested in “community events” which would include paying for a dead member’s funeral and giving a stipend of up to three year’s wages to the victim’s family: “Their families are our families, we been knowing these folks our whole lives, so we grieve when they grieve”.

In that sense communities can be of utmost importance, and “helping with the community” a sign of civic involvement, but the type of community could also differentiate the outcome. The particular character of a community could have different effects on their members and enhance (or not) democratic values and autonomy. The way in which the local community relates to the national or global level could also be an important variable of the configuration.

4. At the level of the nation-state, disaffection from conventional political parties whose role is traditionally to be a channel of participation and legitimate expression of contest in the public sphere, means disaffection from traditional forms of contest. It seems that dissatisfied youth do not use them to mediate their anger. The public sphere becomes the “macrocosm” where they are not important (Magioglou, 2008). Feelings of belonging to a national community such as the British, the Greeks, the Japanese, do not always signify confidence in the state and the importance of participating in elections that do not change their everyday life. Single issue politics are the result; (for example French youth demonstrating against a law of the Right Wing government in 2006 that proposed a special “youth” job contract of limited duration, or Greek youth demonstrating against changes to the education system, or the anti-war movement).

Several studies in the last ten years have demonstrated political apathy, cynicism and the lack of political participation by young people in the political system. Their results refer to “conventional” forms of political participation that include voting and party affiliation. The MORI Omnibus survey in 1996, for example, demonstrates that age is a key determinant of involvement in formal politics. 40% of 18-25 year-olds did not vote in the 1997 election in Britain; until 1997 the average age of party members was 48 for the Labour Party and 62 for the Conservative (Fahmy, 1999). This research has drawn attention to the consequences of growing economic marginalization of youth in terms of their access to social rights of citizenship (Haste, 2004).

Political apathy is related to the impact of economic and social hardship, according to Pacheco and Plutzer (2008), using data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey, 1988-2000 for the United States. A random set of 80% of respondents was selected for follow-up interviews and 50% of those students completed the entire panel. Their results show that disadvantage in the family of origin is correlated with later markers of disadvantage and all have negative impact on turnout for voting. Bontempi and Pocaterra (2007) found that youth voter turnout in most European countries has declined significantly, despite rises in education and income, particularly in long-established democracies like the United Kingdom.

In a more recent study concerning the forms of political participation in England, such as the MORI polls for the Nestlé Family Monitor (2003), the figures for expected “conventional” political activity were similar to the international average but for “unconventional” activity including legal and illegal protest they were well below (28% for England, compared to 44%, the international average to participation in non violent protest). Haste (2004) argues that this data prove the change of the notion of citizenship and democracy for young people, together with the way they co-construct narratives that make sense of experience. This interpretation can be applied to the way other European young adults, such as the young Greeks, represent democracy (Magioglou, 2008).

However, if the notion of “political” is extended in order to include a “moral” dimension, there are results that claim that the young people are politically active. Haste and Hogan (2006) have argued that alienation, or a feeling of inefficacy, could be associated for the case of the British youth with the “conventional” forms of political participation, such as voting. On the contrary, there are other forms of civic engagement, such as helping with the community and making one’s voice heard, in which the British youth engage. The findings are based on research carried out in 2005 using on-line questionnaires and interviews in schools. Participants were from 11 to 21 year’s old. Only a quarter of the population was inactive in the civic domain as defined by the study. Although these findings are very optimistic, certain items were linked to a normative action and the attributes of the “good citizen” questionable: for example, a vast majority of the participants thinks that obeying the law is very important (90%) but only 48% would protest against a law they believe unjust. Obeying the law could be a way to respect common rules, or a way to respect a reified “power” one has nothing to do with. More qualitative analysis could illustrate the meanings related to that. At the same time, helping the community could be extremely important unless the young person is taking up predetermined, “monological” roles. In this case it is far from being an act of citizenship the way it is usually understood.

A study that focuses on the representation of political participation with a qualitative approach is that of Condor and Gibson (2007). After a conversation analysis on interviews with young white adults from 18 to 24 years old, and following Billig’s perspective on ideological dilemmas, (Billig, 1988), Condor and Gibson argue that everyday understanding of political participation showed dilemmatic tensions. These tensions were situated between values of active citizenship, on the one hand, and norms of liberal individualism on the other. More specifically, Marquand (1991) argues that the British liberal individualist ethos is associated with a “passive” model of citizenship: one in which the public sphere is understood to be populated by autonomous individuals who, far from having a duty to participate in public affairs, are accorded rights to protect them from interference by the community. Concerning political efficacy, the respondents expressed the view that their vote would not make any difference or it made no difference which party was in power. Although they justified political disengagement as usual or appropriate for people of their age or stage of life, these same individuals also tended to orient to a normative assumption that political engagement was a marker of maturity and civic responsibility. In conclusion, the authors questioned whether everyday understandings of responsible citizenship entail injunctions to political action.

These findings are similar to results on the meaning of democracy for young adults in Greece (Magioglou, 2008). Part of the participants, a group that was defined as using a “consensual” way of thinking, saw themselves as citizens “to be”. They considered that for now, they would apply democratic values in their “microcosmos”, waiting to be fully integrated socially, to be effective in the public sphere. They had a strong feeling of political inefficacy, but that didn’t matter for the time being because they belonged to a group with justified optimistic aspirations of upper social mobility. Either their family was well off, or they were in a sector with job opportunities, and they focused on becoming more independent financially and socially from their family. This group was considered to be in a state of a “waiting room”, postponing their life as citizens. However, for the bigger part of the sample, this situation was associated with anger and feelings of alienation.

Trends: the role of new technologies and self efficacy construction

The public appeal of films of popular culture such as ‘The Matrix’, is an example of the link between a feeling of inefficacy and the fears of the digitalised world to come. Philosophers such as Zizek (2004) have analysed its importance using a Lacanian method of reading the reaction of the public: the role of ‘The Matrix’ is seen as the reduction of the subject to a total passivity, of its use as an instrument. Is liberation possible? Can the digitalized world, on the contrary, provide the means to a form of liberation from the state of subjection and inefficacy, and contribute to the creation of autonomous citizens? It is interesting that the scenario of the film is so close to a case of paranoia reported in 1919 by the psychoanalyst Victor Tausk: a group of schizophrenics believed that their problems were caused by an “influencing machine” operated by alien forces. The patients saw the machine as feeding on the emotions and “souls” of human beings unconscious of their true state. Indeed for these patients, knowing about the machine that is “seeing” the real, could be fatal because … it revealed the givens of everyday reality to be fabrications. Sanal (2008), who mentions this case, concludes that to this day, the use of machine metaphors marks persistent fears of invasion, possession and authoritarian control.

Lahlou (2008), a social psychologist, considers that there is a process of digitalization in society where three levels, the physical, the mental and the institutional guide subjects into their activity track. The physical level refers to material reality and artifacts, it provides affordances (Gibson, 1982). Representations and practices provide possible interpretations of the situation and enable subjects to elaborate and plan behaviours. At a social level, institutions set the rules to be applied to maintain order and foster cooperation and communities of interest. He points that ten years ago Google did not exist and that now, children’s sociability is made up of SMS, blogs, chats and instant messaging. Although these systems are designed tec-down, teenage sociability is one of the outcomes of these techniques. At the cognitive level, Alexandrov’s findings (2008), based on experiments conducted on animals in neuroscience, concern learning processes. They show that by training our children with digital-learning techniques, using them on an everyday basis, we are modifying at the neural level, the very way we perceive the world. The brain for him is a system in which every new learning is built on existing structures and modifies the previous organization. Therefore, previously formed behaviour is modified by forming a new behaviour. Even “classic” objects take on a new meaning in this new context of practice.

Lahlou (2008) adds the notion of “face” and “persona” as dimensions of a person’s notion of “identity” in the digital world. If a person’s physical “identity”, the body, is of limited value in the digital world, according to Lahlou, the social, psychological and subjective dimensions become the useful cues for transactions and interactions in the digital world. “Face” is more than the mere presentation of self as considered in Western psychology, following Goffman (1963). He includes in this notion the Eastern Asian sense of moral integrity, intention, position, propriety and outward behaviour.

The notion of “Persona” has also been used in the ICT literature, especially for interaction in media spaces. It is either considered as a partial individual construct, a sub-self or alias, created as an agent or proxy by the subject, or as a passive identity created by gathering activity traces of a subject (Clarke, 1994). The “Second Life” game is a virtual space where Personas are used. However, it is considered that in both cases of “face” and of “Persona”, there is an active role of the person who is creating and using them in the digital world, giving a sense of power and efficacy. Negative experiences are also possible (Helsper, 2008), but that does not limit the possibilities for a new sense of efficacy.

Possible directions with the help of digital media towards a feeling of efficacy and empowerment in new “spaces”

Magioglou’s data in Greece (2005; 2008) show that the reaction of young adults to the sense of inefficacy is taking two directions that could be expressed in a constructive or destructive way:

a) the exercise of democracy in the private sphere of the “microcosm” which means one’s physical self, the family, circle of friends, communities one belongs to (face to face or virtual, connecting through the internet). The microcosm can become extended through the possibilities technology can offer in the digital world, and the “personal becomes political” as Giddens has argued. In this way, the delimitation of what counts as moral and political change, together with the meaning of the political itself (Haste and Hogan, 2006).

b) Refusal of the actual national or international political system and adoption of a mystical, spiritual and virtual conception of democracy, associated to the meaning of life, to love and beauty. Violence is not excluded as a means to an end, but no participants could find an alternative that was worth or plausible to fight for.

In both cases, Maglioglou considers that technology is used either as a means to escape from the feeling of inefficacy, even in destructive ways, or as a means to create new realities, and it is closer to the notion of citizenship as a form of autonomy. An example is the participation in alternative groups and communities that organise altermondialist manifestations.

The sense of inefficacy and the physical dimension of the self

Contrary to Lahlou (2008) who underplays the role of the physical dimension of the self in the digitalized world, several studies show its importance. The body, as part of the self and a means of interaction with otherness, could be a dimension where one could feel important, using different ways to dress and express oneself (Riley, 2008); having eating disorders, using drugs or stabbing, having sex. There is a sense of immediacy and a sense of control that is a possible way out of the feeling of inefficacy. The facility of younger generations with new technologies offers another option where one could “matter” by creating or participating in already existing communities, based on new forms of subjectivity. The case of the “pro-ana” (pro-anorexia) websites is a combination of both dimensions for a creative, but destructive form of “citizenship” and empowerment that combines one’s physical and virtual reality. Giles (2006) describes how people who share experiences of eating disorders create a cyberspace community where they can meet virtually in a positive and supportive environment. The community creates specific rules of inclusion-exclusion and the result is, as the author says, a “rich tapestry of identity work”. Different subgroups are created and the boundaries between them are contested. This example is a way of creating a community where one “matters” but in a very self- and group-destructive way. Hermans and Dimaggio (2007) mention a big increase in cases such as eating disorders, which are associated with identity problems.

In the case of disadvantaged young people, there may be a lack of access to technology (Bennett, 2007) because of the absence of material (computers, space to work on the computer); and the family TV is not very accessible since they share it. Violence could take more or less digitalized forms. In the case of violent youth (stabbing for adolescents, drug users) there is a possibility of feeling that one “matters’ and a sense of negative efficacy through the destructive use of one’s or other people’s bodies. Terrorist groups networking through the internet could be a digitalized way to express anger and construct a positive self identity, by relinquishing one’s autonomy.

In contrast are the examples of globalized altermondialist social movements which organize through the internet and bring together many people from different geographical areas which share cultural, ideological and political characteristics. They show how virtual communities are also real and participate in the public sphere, proposing a point of view in a constructive way. The work of Della Porta (Della Porta et al, 2006) on “globalization from below”, shows in a series of studies how altermondialist demonstrations were organized in Italy against the G8 in Genoa and the ESF in Florence, protesting against a certain form of globalization. The demonstrations expressed a strong demand for political participation that political parties no longer seemed able to respond to. Protest developed outside the parties and presented strong criticism of representative democracy. Although exhibiting a slow start, some concerns start to be debated by left wing parties.

What is the percentage of young adults in this movement? Taking into consideration the importance of communication through the internet, and the facility of younger populations with it, we assume that they form an important part of it. At the end of the book the authors affirm that citizens’ trust and interest in conventional forms of democratic participation seem to be reduced and that “the new cycle of protest is witness to a growing demand for politics, albeit of a new, unexpected type, in particular from the new generations”. Held’s notion of cosmopolitan democracy could be close to this kind of civic engagement at the global level (Held, 2008).

New forms of efficacy in a new kind of public space: digital mobs and dialogic publicness

Self efficacy could be strengthened through the use of control and the expression of one’s opinion that the internet allows. However, if the formation of a digital public opinion becomes the “Panopticon” of Bentham, this could be another negative way to practice self-efficacy. Dennis (2008) mentions the case of the “dog-shit girl”, name given to a girl by South Korean bloggers who refused to clean her dog’s shit on the subway,. A passenger took a picture of the girl and posted it on a popular Korean website. Soon after, people started searching for her identity until they found her, in order to “punish” her for her behaviour. Within days, her pictures and parodies where everywhere, and were soon transferred to Western sites. The girl in question had to quit university because of the humiliation and even contemplated suicide. Dennis, using also other examples, raises the question: are we facing the constitution of “digital mobs” with a mass psychology, which find new techniques to exercise their power? This kind of “public opinion” amplified through the use of new technologies such as mobile phones with digital cameras and the internet could have destructive or constructive aspects, depending on the way they are used. The result also depends on whether the social dimension of the selves, this tec-citizenship, does or does not involve a notion of responsibility (Haste, 2004).

In a more positive framework, Slevin (2000) speaks of the dialogical mediated publicness, the possibility to create “dialogical spaces” through the internet, which was not the case with the television and the radio. Sanford (2007) found through written surveys and oral interviews with young people in Austin, from 2000 to 2003, that the respondents thought quite deeply about public life and civic involvement when given the opportunity. Her research objective was to test Putnam’s assumption regarding the typical characterizations of Generation X actors (which includes for her 20 to 40 year-olds). She claims that the respondents are actively involved in a new form of civic life. In the contemporary economy, increased mobility is a fact of life. Increasing educational levels have long been associated with higher levels of social involvement but also with higher levels of mobility. A “just in time” social capital activities will become the norm.

However, the population she refers to, and the categories of “tech elites”, “cyber-democrats”, “wireheads” and “trailing Xers”, is composed of young people who belong to social and cultural elite. They lead technology companies, work in the intersection of politics and technology, are cubicle dwelling functionaries or students. Instead of privileging the vote, they place greater value on the work ethic and on being politically informed and active. They reject formality and structure in favour of greater responsiveness. They see technology as a powerful tool and they are creators rather than joiners. They place personal choice over transcendent obligation and they embrace a more personal sort of reciprocity where one asks for help to animate a personal cycle rather than do something nice and animate an abstract social cycle. They look for low social barriers of entry and exit and they enjoy creative work, easily blurring the lines between work time, social time, personal time and community time. The author has an “individualistic” conception of this generation that is quite different to the young public who participated in the humiliation of the “dog-shit girl”.

Conclusion and future prospects

The question that should be raised is in what ways education could empower young people so that they become “autonomous” citizens, confident that they matter, and creators of meanings and narratives instead of meaning-consumers and subjects. The question is also how the feeling of inefficacy could be overcome in a way that respects “democratic values” and doesn’t result in the physical or symbolic destruction of self and others in order to feel empowered. The more mobility becomes the norm and youth becomes extended as an in-between unstable category, the more education could become dialogical and reach young and less young populations on the move.

The young people who watched ‘Matrix‘, and adhered to the conception of a reality of alienation and relinquishment of one’s autonomy by a digitalized world, those who were seen in the US as “slackers” (Heiman, 2001), were, with the dot.com generation, or the “digital natives” those who also massively voted for Barak Obama. In ‘Matrix‘, resistance starts from an awakening from the false consciousness to a “new” reality, that has a common point with the old one, it is exclusive and it is the “truth”, a way to see things that extinguish ambiguity. However, uncertainty seems to increase as people become more mobile and communities can both threaten and sustain autonomy. A youth gang of drug dealers can be an example: young people learn their respect for a sense of hierarchy, courage, solidarity, even a notion of business and deliberation. The community enhances their self-esteem and also makes them feel empowered, that they matter. Fundamentalist communities could also function as a haven where certain values of participation can be learned and practiced. The pro-ana virtual communities are another example of a creative form of identity construction that combines a physical with a symbolic dimension. In the past, fascist and Nazi regimes took pains to integrate the youth into some forms of organisation and participation was often obligatory.

However, there is a problem with this kind of communities. They do not work towards a form of autonomy or some kind of “liberation” both of the self and of the group or society one belongs to. That is why it is alarming that the category “obey the law” is deemed important for a good citizen for 90% of the British youth. If the law is something that is imposed from outside, a kind of reified power, this is the way a subject of an authoritarian rule would also answer.

The results of the USA elections in November 2008, show a different direction and could be considered a “surprise”, or what Haste (2008) has characterized as a “knight’s move”, with the proof of massive mobilisation of the younger generations for Barak Obama. The internet seems to have played an important role for this mobilisation. Is this a proof of the “return” of the American youth to the traditional ways of political participation? Is it something exceptional or will it create a phenomenon that will also influence young people in other parts of the world? It is already significant that young people outside of the US have manifested their support, so it could be an event that will change the way younger generations have related to politics in the last two decades.

Bennett (2008) finishes his chapter on changing citizenship in the digital age with a question: “are politicians, parents, educators, policymakers, and curriculum developers willing to allow young citizens to more fully explore, experience, and expand democracy, or will they continue to force them to just read all about it?” The question for this review is: are we supposing that we have a perfect political system and our only preoccupation as societies is how to replicate it and indoctrinate young generations? But even if the answer is yes, maybe democracy is about re-invention, creation and re-creation of the self and our communities in a way that we take responsibility for our meaning and policy making in our every day lives. Digital media offer new possibilities by being “dialogical” and groups with less power that can use them such as young people could enlarge their political “power”.

Education, which used to be related to school and university, could become also more dialogical and flexible. Formal education could turn to a “laboratory of a polis” instead of restricting civic education to the transmission of knowledge for a world that seems to be out of reach, or that does not concern young people’s everyday life (Coleman, 2006). Concerning the future, the way the different actors will interact, the role of specific events and their symbolic power, could show if we take the direction of greater autonomy for self and society. However, the risk of higher degrees of flexibility could be overwhelming for persons or groups who seek ready-made ideological and heteronomous ways to relate to one another.

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This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

The authors of this review commissioned us to write this review based on arguments we developed in the book, where we identified an array of examples in policy texts, popular culture, everyday educational practices and the experiences of friends, family and colleagues that we argue demonstrate the rise of therapeutic approaches to the management of emotions amongst children, young people and adults. We argue from the basis of these examples that a fundamental shift is taking place in ideas about what education is for, and in ideas about what it means to be human from which the purposes of education at various points in history are derived. Drawing on Wittgenstein, we developed a methodology based on giving examples to shift people’s perception of what was happening in schools, colleges, universities and workplaces. The power of examples is that they enable people to look and see for themselves by making them sensitive to similar instances in their personal experience. As Wittgenstein said, the solution to problems in the way we misunderstand the world was to follow the advice: ‘don’t think, but look!’ (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p66).

We now aim to carry out systematic empirical work and further theoretical exploration, to test out the arguments and propositions we developed in the book. We recognise that the arguments are both original and controversial and we ask readers not to reject them outright, as some of our critics have done, but to consider what our arguments, and the numerous examples we have collected, indicate if they do not identify a therapeutic shift in education and its consequences for the future of education which we address in our book and take further in this review.

A new emphasis on emotional well-being

Diverse concerns

Former adviser in the British Prime Minister’s policy unit, Geoff Mulligan, argued in February 2008 that the well-being of populations would come to be the main preoccupation for national governments, just as military prowess had been in the nineteenth century (The Times, 15 February 2008). This mirrors calls by international bodies such as UNICEF for official indicators of children’s happiness and well-being, where children feel loved, safe and respected, to be the hallmark of civilised societies (2007). Other international bodies also present well-being as key to progressive and prosperous societies (OECD, 2001).

In the United Kingdom, support for policies to develop emotional well-being throughout the education system emanate from very diverse concerns. A core influence since 1997 has been the British government’s particular conceptualisation of social justice, where social policy has connected emotional well-being to a view that social exclusion emerges from destructive influences that damage self-esteem and emotional well-being and is therefore a key characteristic of social injustice (see Blair, 1997; Furedi, 2004; O’Connor and Lewis, 1999). Policy makers attribute ‘complex needs’, including low self-esteem and feelings of vulnerability and risk, to a complex cycle of material, social and emotional deprivation that both creates and exacerbates marginalisation and exclusion (see SEU, 1999). Advocates of interventions and measures to develop well-being argue that emotional deprivation is as, or more, important than social and material deprivation and that the latter account for only 15% of people’s sense of well-being (see Layard, 2007; Huppert, 2007).

In keeping with such arguments, the government argues that children with emotional problems will be prone to mental illness, marital breakdown, offending and anti-social behaviour, and that the scale of emotional deprivation and illiteracy may be so great that schools and other agencies can no longer leave children’s emotional skills to parents (DfES, 2005; DCFS, 2008). These concerns resonate with those expressed by the World Bank, UNICEF and the OECD where well-being is presented as integral to equity and social justice and embedded in legislation for human rights, aid interventions and reconstruction programmes (UNICEF, 2007; OECD, 2001; Pupavac, 2001, 2003).

In Britain, a spate of widely-publicised reviews reveals concerns about the unhappiness and levels of emotional ill-health affecting children, young people and adults (see UNICEF, op cit; Alexander and Hargreaves, 2007, DCFS, 2008). In 2006, the book Toxic Childhood by child psychologist, Sue Palmer depicted children as over-stressed, over-tested, unhealthy, materialistic and under-nurtured emotionally and was promoted through a letter to the Daily Telegraph signed by 100 experts in the fields of education, neuroscience, psychology, care and social work. Such themes also appear in popular books on mental health and psychoanalysis (see, for example, L. James, 2007; O.James, 2007; Connelly-Stephenson, 2007).

A strong influence on government interest in emotional well-being is the work of economists Andrew Oswald and Richard Layard, and the pressure group Antidote who have helped create consensus amongst supporters of the New Labour government and some supporters of other political parties that the State should address the public’s happiness, self-esteem and well-being as integral to healthy citizenship and economic prosperity (see Antidote, 2007; Layard, 2005; Oswald 2007). Defined by Antidote as “becoming aware of our inner experience, so as the better to understand other people and through them to experience a sense of connection to the wider community”, emotional literacy enables people to

• Find ways to feel connected to each other and [to use] their relationships to deal with emotions that might otherwise cause them to lash out in rage or withdraw in despair

• Deal with the emotions that can render them unable to take in new information, access emotional states such as curiosity, resilience and joy that lead to a rich experience of learning

• Engage in activities that promote physical and emotional well-being and broaden the range of what they can talk about with each other in ways that make it less likely that they will abuse drugs and alcohol, bully their peers, or engage in other forms of self-destructive activity (Antidote, 2002, p2; see also Weare, 2004; DfES, 2005a; OfSTED, 2007).

An important recent shift has been to embed emotional literacy and self-esteem in the broader notion of emotional well-being and to depict schools as a key site for developing them, alongside de-stigmatising mental health problems for certain groups and dealing more effectively with the behaviour of others, such as disruptive boys who are seen to mask emotional vulnerability and poor emotional literacy (see Cowie et al, 2004; Spratt et al, 2007; Francis and Skelton, 2006).

In summary, our review of policy texts and texts from those advocating different interventions for emotional well-being in educational settings shows that such interventions have become prominent because diverse constituencies seek numerous goals and make strong claims for the various interventions they promote. Aims include:

• addressing the mental health problems of a minority of children and young people
• remedying assumed emotional deficiencies and emotional ‘illiteracy’ of families and particular groups singled out as emotionally vulnerable or lacking emotional well-being and therefore marginalised and excluded
• motivating people to learn and achieve more effectively
• making people feel good about themselves
• exploring the factors that affect children and young people’s sense of self and identity in negative or debilitating ways and which affect motivation and capacity to learn and which are a prime cause of social inequality
• promoting a range of social, economic, occupational and personal benefits that are claimed to arise from better emotional literacy and/or emotional intelligence and/or emotional competence and/or emotional well-being
• engaging people with education by elevating emotional dimensions of their experience in a system widely seen to be arid, over-rational and test-driven for all children, or irrelevant and demotivating for those deemed to be disaffected.

Emotional interventions

Emanating from these aims, we identify four types of intervention appearing in schools and colleges. First, specialist interventions for children and young people diagnosed with behavioural and emotional problems include ‘nurture groups’, group counselling for children with family and personal problems, psychological assessments of individual children and accompanying interventions such as circle of friends (see, for example, Boxhall, 2002; Bailey 2005, forthcoming).

Second, generic interventions through the SEAL include circle time, Philosophy for Children classes, peer and non-peer mentoring and buddy schemes, mediation and anti-bullying schemes, drama workshops for transition between sectors and stages, special assemblies and the harnessing of traditional and new subject areas (the latter include personal, social and health education and citizenship) as vehicles for emotional well-being and emotional literacy (see Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008 for detailed analysis; also Claxton, 2002; www.jennymosely.com; SAPERE, 2005; DfES, 2005).

As part of this second category, while government and professional concerns about emotional deprivation and vulnerability remain, a new general intervention is emerging from a rapid shift from interventions to build self-esteem and address emotional problems to a more upbeat emphasis on interventions that develop and assess characteristics such as resilience, stoicism, optimism and ‘being in the moment’ (Huppert, 2007). This shift in tone and focus reflects the growing influence of academic expertise in positive psychology and neuro-science as a basis for government attention to well-being through specific activities to foster them, dubbed in the media as ‘happiness’ classes (see, for example, Guardian, 30^th September 2008).

Third, there is growing use of support services such as counselling, the use of retention officers, learning managers and classroom assistants, disability support officers and mentoring schemes, as well as stress workshops for examinations and other initiatives such as the use of animals as ‘emotional support’ for university students diagnosed with depression. The government has proposed recently that all schools have a counsellor to identify those with ‘low level’ emotional disorders such as stress and anxiety and to prevent the emergence of these into more profound mental health problems.

The fourth type of intervention encourages broader curriculum and pedagogic changes within mainstream subject teaching in order to develop and assess dispositions, attitudes and characteristics that are believed to be essential for well-being, social equity and integral to an education relevant and fit for modern life. Such interventions include learning to learn and some strands of assessment for learning.

The rise of emotional and personal skills

Learning to learn

In parallel to interventions that address emotional problems or which aim to develop emotional literacy and emotional well-being overtly, other trends aim to broaden the role of educational institutions. There are growing concerns about the need for schools to pay attention to emotional needs and to ‘personalise’ students’ experiences of, and feelings about, learning. Guy Claxton, one of the leading proponents of ‘learning power’ justifies an emotional turn in education:

It is not too fanciful to see, behind the youth culture of raves and drugs, sport and celebrity, the rise of teenage pregnancy and fundamentalism, the shadow of insecurity: the feeling of not being able to get a grip on the miasma of choices and opportunities … No wonder so many young people clutch at the first kind of boy or girl, the first shallow ideology that comes along. It’s not so much that young people live in poverty … as they do not know where to turn for direction and value. In such a state, algebra and parts of speech can seem a little beside the point (Claxton, 2002, p48, our emphasis).

From this perspective, adults fail young people by not ‘listening enough’ to what they are telling them. Citing a survey of 3,500 11-25 year olds by the Industrial Society which reports young people as fearful of challenge and future opportunities and trends, Claxton argues:

Schools are seen as failing to equip young people with the ability to learn for life rather than for exams … That last sentence is key. Remember this is the voice of today’s youth (not some sociological theory). They are telling us they are floundering, and that we are not teaching them how to swim. That’s why they turn off from school … they are not intrinsically lazy or bolshy or lacking ability: they are disappointed in our reactions to their predicament and flailing about (ibid, p48 our italics).

From this perspective, classroom strategies and assessments need to develop ‘good learners’, where: “being a good learner is not just a matter of learning a few techniques like mind mapping or brain gym. It is the whole person: their attitudes, values, self-image and relationships as well as their skills and strategies” (2002, p15, our emphasis). It is important to stress that although Claxton writes in terms of learning and motivation, at the heart of his concern is the idea that we are not giving due attention to pupils’ feelings.

Other advocates of activities to develop dispositions and attitudes associated with emotional literacy, such as developing a positive self-concept, social skills and emotional sensitivity and empathy, also connect these goals with learning to learn. For example, Weare argues that traditional subjects can be vehicles for this through discussion: teachers setting up discussion of how the teacher and learners feel when learning and encouraging students to see how they learn ‘emotional control’ (through waiting their turn and being persistent through difficulties) and resilience by ‘bouncing back’ when learning goes badly (Weare, 2004). Recent promotion of these ideas uses the vocabulary of positive psychology: ‘giving young people the means to be their own happiness creators and maintainers’, where strategies for learning power encourage pleasure, joy, flow, optimism, curiosity, self-efficacy, engagement, resilience and stoicism, mindfulness, holistic approaches, and developing the means to flourish (Claxton, 2007; see also Huppert, 2007).

Assessing soft outcomes

Interest in the personal, social and emotional outcomes of participating in education is integral to some interpretations of ‘assessment for learning’ as a vehicle for assessing crucial outcomes of education. A recent study explored desirable outcomes for pupils identified by a group of trainee teachers:

Empathy; self-awareness; social competence; resilience; creativity; reflectivity; the ability to self-evaluate/self-assess; enthusiasm for learning; being a good citizen; happiness; being caring; being respectful, tolerant good team players; applying knowledge; learning to learn; problem-solving; communication; self-management; making a positive social contribution (Hargreaves, 2007, p190).

Supporters of these goals advocate their development through subject knowledge. For example, the task of sharing meanings from a text students have read “[builds up] a rich picture of collaborative learning … students take responsibility for knowing what needs to be known and for insuring (sic) that others know what needs to be known” (Hargreaves, 2007, p189). Designing formative and summative assessments to capture these outcomes improves students’ abilities to retain subject-knowledge and to make more flexible use in its application, and, therefore, leads to better success than traditional learning (ibid). Integral to these processes and outcomes are notions such as ‘allowing a learning voice’, ‘learning about their own learning and being socially active and responsible’ (2007, p191). According to Hargreaves, ‘for an assessment for learning [method] to be valid, its learning outcomes must be socially appropriate for learners of the 21^st century’ (2007, p185).

Such outcomes are broader than those encompassed by conventional assessments of attainment and methods to assess and record them were designed originally for diagnostic and formative purposes based on self-report by learners (see Daugherty et al, 2007, 2008). Despite the significant difficulties this raises for valid and reliable assessment, soft outcomes are increasingly a focus for developing summative measures, including proposals to assess emotional well-being as part of a citizenship qualification at Key Stage 4 (see Layard, 2007).

Changing the curriculum subject

The lines between learning to learn and associated notions of ‘assessment for learning’, and a view that the emotional outlook, attributes and skills associated with them are as, or more, important than subject content, is blurring rapidly. This challenges ‘old’ ideas about teaching and assessing subject knowledge:

‘I am questioning whether a version of learning as acquisition and using information and skills still has the social currency it had before the information revolution in which information is readily available but wise application of it still depends on choices made by social beings’ (Hargreaves, 2007, p191).

Advocates of emotional literacy as a central goal for schooling also focus on traditional subjects as vehicles for developing the attributes and dispositions assumed to comprise it:

• the arts (dance, painting, music, literature) through seeing, listening and taking part, expressing emotions through movement, sound and picture, rehearsing personal problem-solving, developing empathy by reading and hearing about others with the same experiences and understanding the causes of emotions

• English Language by developing ‘an emotional vocabulary’, developing a positive self-concept through talking and writing about the self, creating a sense of coherence through family history, increasing empathy by writing stories

• biology through understanding the physiology of emotion including own body reaction, understanding how the brain works and the centrality of emotion to how we think, learn and experience the world, emotion in animals and our ‘common ancestry’

• history through understanding the cause of emotion through biography and the relative impact of individual versus social forces in shaping events, developing personal coherence through family and local history, understanding emotion in major events such as war, terrorism and atrocities and the role of positive emotion in humanitarianism such human rights and the abolition of slavery (Weare, 2004, p92).

In a recent keynote presentation to a European conference on assessment, Dylan Wiliam, an influential academic in the field of formative assessment, argued that pedagogy associated with developing skills and attitudes for learning to learn was ‘curriculum and subject neutral’. From this perspective, assessment processes within subject domains, such as questioning and feedback, become vehicles for generic and affective outcomes that are both relevant to employability and to lifelong learning (Wiliam, 2008).

Some go further, and call for radical changes to traditional subjects. The latest review of the primary curriculum by academics at Cambridge University calls for a reduction in time spent on traditional subjects in order to develop personal and emotional aspects of children’s lives. In secondary education, a book from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), appropriately titled Subject to Change: New Thinking on the Curriculum sets out the proposition that ‘Education is assumed to be primarily about the development of the mind’, but … this is a ‘misunderstanding’ (Johnson et al, 2007, pp69-70). A new skills curriculum is needed for all children, which will be relevant and different:

The major difference from previous curriculum models is that it should consider the needs of the whole person without assuming that the academic or intellectual aspects should have a higher status than the others. The first truly comprehensive curriculum should rebalance the academic, situated in the mind, against those parts of humanity situated in the body, the heart and the soul. Curricula may well be designed by people for whom the mind predominates, but those designers should see that the 21st century requires a population with higher levels of social, emotional and moral performance, and a regenerated capacity for doing and making (2007, p71).

The authors state ‘We need a bit of honesty in this analysis. Most people are not intellectuals. Most people do not lead their lives predominantly in the abstract, It is not clear that it is preferable to do otherwise: the world cannot survive only through thought. (Johnson et al, 2007, p72). John White has a similarly sceptical view of the importance of subject disciplines and criticises the ‘Victorian elitism’ and irrelevance of old school subjects (2007; see also Hegarty, 2006).

In a more conciliatory vein, the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET) responds to the demands of ECM by arguing that secondary school teachers will need to ‘adjust’ the way in which allegiance to their subject asserts their specialist expertise. Rejecting popular caricatures of teachers only interested in examinations and ‘crowding heads with facts’, they reassure teachers that subject study remains integral to education, and that ’subjects are educational resources of remarkable power, offering unlimited scope for realising an enormous range of educational purposes …’ (Kirk and Broadhead, 2007, p13).

Yet, after loading this ‘enormous range’ of purposes (which encompasses all the soft outcomes discussed above) into subjects, they continue:

under ECM, the educational purpose of learners will depend on how resourcefully teachers will be able to draw on their subject knowledge base, and how readily they will jettison the monocular professional vision that is associated with blinkered use of the subject …’ in order to develop an extended professionalism that removes ‘old dichotomies’ between … ‘teaching a subject and enabling pupils to learn how to learn, or even being a learning coordinator or consultant; between the cultivation of learners’ achievements and fostering their well-being; and between personalisation and the promotion of high standards’ (2007, pp14-15).

Accounting for soft outcomes

Another important influence on the rise of affective and emotional aspects of education emerges from those who propose system-level monitoring of differences in how children and young people learn to deal with failure and the factors to which they attribute achievement or failure. In this vein, Tim Oates cites evidence from the Centre for the Wider Benefits of Learning to argue that differences in psychological outlooks and attitudes and the behaviours they lead to in relation to educational effort, lead to differential acquisition of personal capital, thereby causing under-performance and social inequalities. He goes on to argue that while it is possible to assess the soft skills that comprise personal capital, this is not desirable. Instead, he advocates ‘benchmarking’ them through surveys at institutional level and possibly at national level as a way of seeing whether educational approaches moderate the impact of social background (Oates, 2007).

Calls to assess soft outcomes or to bring them into accountability measures, together with wider calls to either harness subject knowledge for emotional purposes or to reduce it to fit in a more emotionally-based curriculum, relate to interventions for emotional well-being in three ways. First, the constructs that are claimed to underpin ’soft outcomes’, together with the teaching and assessment processes that lead to them, are frequently elided, along with behaviours and dispositions, values and attributes that also appear in the long lists of so-called ’skills’ associated with emotional well-being. Second, calls to change pedagogy and assessment, and concerns about the well-being of children and young people, both reflect the same disaffection about the content and purposes of schooling amongst growing numbers of academics, teachers and professional groups. Third, classroom activities and assessments of dispositions, attitudes and skills associated with learning to learn and soft outcomes respond to, and encourage, images of humans as emotional rather than rational subjects who need an appropriately affective curriculum.

Influences on the rise of affective, emotional and personal skills

Policy and practice around emotional well-being have been fuelled by, and encourage, a rapid rise of activity to promote these developments and their underlying images of the human subject. As we pointed out above, these developments are not taking place in a coherent way, as part of a strategy to elevate the emotional and affective aspects of learning. Instead, they are ad hoc, emerging from different concerns about the state of childhood generally and children’s well-being in particular, concerns about rising levels of disengagement and disaffection with schooling, and from adults’ own concerns about the future and schools’ abilities to prepare people for it. In these concerns, a target for scepticism is the relevance and usefulness of traditional subject disciplines.

This lack of coherence is exacerbated by the way in which developments outlined above are promoted by a large number of diverse organisations. Over 70 are involved in promoting various initiatives for well-being, learning to learn, emotional literacy, etc. These include university departments and research centres in positive psychology and well-being, children’s charities and campaigning organisations, local authority psychologists, private therapists and psychologists. They are creating a flourishing industry of courses and consultancies in interventions for emotional well-being. Unlike other commercial ventures in education, such as ‘products’ associated with learning styles or thinking skills, the beneficiaries of emotional well-being and associated notions such as emotional literacy and self-esteem are enjoying unprecedented influence and government-sponsorship.

The important observation for this review is that the knowledge base for the rise of affective and emotional aspects of learning is extremely diverse, and incoherent in aims and claims, and that these are dominated by different branches of psychology, counselling and therapy. Its very incoherence enables disparate initiatives to be promoted and funded by government.

The socio-economic content of a therapeutic culture

Although it is important to understand the sources and aims of developments, their effects in the form of growing calls to dismantle or reshape subject knowledge and content cannot be divorced from wider socio-political and philosophical shifts in ideas about the human subject. It is here that the most profound changes are going on, and these have hitherto been unexplored in educational analysis.

Whilst all the interventions summarised above come from diverse sources and concerns, they all draw, in varying degrees of coherence and expertise, on an eclectic range of principles and practices derived from d,ifferent branches of counselling, therapy, cognitive and educational psychology and positive psychology. In our book, we analysed how the underlying psychological base of interventions, and the claims that accompany them, resonate powerfully with, but also draw upon, populist therapeutic ideas about the emotional effects of life on ourselves and others. These are reflected in, and promoted through, the ever-expanding genre of self help books and ‘tragic life stories’, lifestyle and health magazines, television and books, and texts to help people diagnose and deal with emotional and mental problems. We argued in our book that therapeutic assumptions and explanations have become part of an everyday cultural mindset about the emotional self and its problems and have been taken up through government policy.

From this perspective, interventions for emotional well-being are the latest turn in a ‘therapeutic ethos’ which has emerged over forty years throughout Anglo-American culture and politics and increasingly influences the public’s constructions of the self and others (see Rieff, 1966, 1987; Lasch, 1979, 1971; Nolan, 1998; Furedi, 2003). We also argued in our book that the British institutionalisation of a therapeutic ethos through educational policy and practice is unprecedented.

An obvious feature is the exponential extension of counselling, psychoanalysis and psychology into more areas of social and personal life, policy and professional practice. In education, parenting classes and the SureStart and Connexions personal advice strategies blur boundaries between teaching, welfare and applications of therapy, while interventions summarised above are rooted in counselling and therapeutic techniques and assumptions (see, for example, Turner 2007; Watts 2001). Yet, the significance of a therapeutic ethos is much more far-reaching than this: it also offers a new sensibility, a cultural vocabulary, explanations and underlying assumptions about appropriate feelings and responses to events, and a set of associated practices through which people make sense of themselves and others (Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008).

This therapeutic mindset is evident in largely unchallenged assumptions that are translated into interventions. These include:

• children’s feelings about the world, life and learning are ‘baggage’ that get in the way of learning subjects

• it is important to deal with these feelings before ‘learning can take place’

• feelings of ‘not being listened to’ are barriers to acceptance of adult and teacher authority

• more and more children have emotional problems that must be dealt with by eliciting and processing them, preferably with others, either through specialist interventions, or through generic interventions like circle time.

These assumptions might be couched in terms of ‘paying attention to the whole child’, ‘bringing pupil voice into educational processes and organisation’ or ‘bringing the affective dimensions of learning into the classroom’ but they are informed, we argue, by an underlying therapeutic ethos.

Curriculum initiatives and policy statements that have pointed teachers and educationalists towards a concern with emotional well-being may have begun as ad hoc responses to societal or cultural changes but they now have a theory behind them. In a therapy culture, initiatives undertaken for a variety of educational reasons often take a therapeutic form. We are tempted to make the claim that such initiatives must take a therapeutic form except that it is possible to resist a dominant culture; nevertheless, the first premise in developing any form of resistance must be an awareness of what has changed.

Many critics of our arguments point to the positive personal or educational aspects of interventions. They also claim that these address psychological or affective aspects of learning, or that they foster ‘personal outcomes’ or ‘personal capital’ and are not ‘therapeutic’. Yet, our critics miss the point that not only are the claimed value and successes of these interventions only established through a circular logic, but also that their emergence from a therapy culture strengthens the turn towards the emotional, towards feeling and away from the intellectual. We have defined the therapeutic turn in education as the emphasising of the emotional, of feelings, over the intellectual.

This broad but useful pointer is meant to contextualise all interventions for emotional well-being, including recent ones arising from ‘positive psychology’, as interventions that arise from, and reinforce, therapy culture. The circularity in the defence of positive psychology and other interventions for emotional well-being is that they are based upon assumptions about a generalised psychological need in society that needs therapeutic responses. Therapy culture both produces that need, since no one can escape its assumptions, and, in turn, therapeutic interventions of a crude popular sort as well as skilled psychological interventions become welcomed, desired and lead to successful outcomes within that culture.

The shift to a therapy culture, according to Rieff, marks a ’sharp and probably irreparable break in the continuity of Western culture’ (1966, 1987, p261). We have traced the development and full flowering of therapy culture in the present time elsewhere (Ecclestone and Hayes 2008). We argued in our earlier analysis that this full flowering is distinctive in that it not only pervades education but education is the main site for reinforcing it. This strengthens therapy culture not merely because it makes it ubiquitous but because it embodies a misanthropic theory of human beings (see also Furedi, 2003).

Promoting a theory of the diminished subject

One of the most difficult and controversial aspects of our analysis to both convey and convince listeners or readers of its validity is our argument that, however well-meaning and however much couched in the language of ‘empowerment’ and ‘learner voice’, a view of humans as ‘diminished’ lies behind the emotional turn in education. Of course, this is never directly articulated at policy levels or by educational thinkers. Indeed, such a theory is difficult to express directly in relation to children and subjects taught in schools.

Instead, we argue that this theory is mediated through the variety of pedagogical initiatives we describe in this paper. Although these seem similar in form to many initiatives in personal development or affective education from the past, they differ in their content. This is also why many critics of our thesis think that nothing has changed, and that current interventions such as learning to learn, assessment for learning and activities to teach the attributes of emotional literacy and well-being are merely the latest manifestation of a progressive focus on the affective aspects of life and learning.

Our attempt to convince them is based on a need to look at the explicit theorising of the diminished human being that does exist at the level of philosophy and which articulates what we see as an attack on human subjectivity in its proper sense. By its ‘proper sense’, we mean that the human subject is not merely in the past but also in essence, an active agent who seeks to control and change the world. Malik makes this clear in his essay on What is it to be human?:

‘For the past 500 years, scientists and philosophers have taken it for granted that human beings are exceptional creatures, not simply distinct from other animals but superior to them because of our possession of reason and consciousness, language and morality’ (Malik, 2001, p13)

This was the philosophy of humanism, a desire to place rationally autonomous human beings at the centre of philosophical debate, to glorify human abilities and to view human reason as a tool through which to understand nature; a conviction that humankind can achieve freedom, both from the constraints of nature and the tyranny of Man, through the agency of its own efforts …’ (ibid.). Education systems that aim to develop the full potential of rationality and autonomy have been a goal for western societies since the Enlightenment.

Yet, the idea of the human subject as an active agent of change has been under sustained and increasing attack for the last five decades. An extensive treatment is given in Heartfield’s The ‘Death of the Subject’ Explained (2002) and we draw on this for our overall analysis. We cannot detail this attack here but it is worth noting that it comes during this period of 50 years from the Western philosophical left and then more powerfully and crudely from the political right. Here, we provide just three brief examples, two from the ‘left’ and one from the ‘right’.

Marx criticised the bourgeois human subject as being constrained by capitalism but the French Marxist thinker, Louis Althusser, considered that Marx rejected entirely the individual human subject whether an economic, historical, ethical or philosophical ‘Subject’ and that he ‘replaced the old couples individual/human essence’ as factors in history with the impersonal new ‘concepts (forces of production, relations of production, etc)’ (Althusser, 1969 p229). In this way, Althusser removes human agency as a bourgeois phenomenon.

Feminist thinkers also see the subject not as bourgeois and replaceable by the impersonal, but as being the subject of oppression so that ‘[t]he identity of the feminist subject ought not to be the foundation of feminist politics’ (Butler, 1990, pp5-6). Yet this claim makes it impossible for women to act since they are said to have a bourgeois and oppressed identity so cannot act from that degraded position. So what can women do? Heartfield comments that ‘What began as a criticism of the monopoly over freedom exercised by men has turned, paradoxically, into a criticism of freedom as such (2002, p43).

Both these accounts criticise the ‘Subject’ as an active agent. The evolution of such views means that we cannot assume that a left wing view will necessarily be based on the idea of promoting an active human agency under repressive capitalism.

Yet, while an attack on human agency has come from the political and philosophical left, it is most explicit on the right. In the writings of philosopher John Gray, it reaches new levels (Gray, 2002, 2003, 2004). For him, humans are just one among many animals. In Straw Dogs: Thought on Humans and Other Animals, Gray tries to ‘present a view of things in which humans are not central’ (2002, p.x); that our ‘core belief in progress is a superstition’ (2002, p.xi) and to undermine the assumption that we have the power to remake the world’ (2002, p.xiv). Humanity as the collective subject is done away with … ‘ “Humanity” does not exist. There are only humans, driven by conflicting illusions and subject to every kind of infirmity of will and judgement‘ (2002, p12).

From this perspective, even Islamic terrorists are motivated by the illusion that their actions are a prelude to a new world. For Gray, the problem is science which ‘By enlarging human power … has generated the illusion that humanity can take charge of its destiny‘ (2003: 119). Humanity comes off badly when compared to animals because ‘Other animals do not need a purpose in life‘ (2002, p199). Through his popular misanthropic polemics, Gray aims to reverse the perspective that Malik says has been the basis of humanism for 500 years. His ideas are the nearest to a theory of the diminished human subject at the present time.

Educational thinkers also draw on philosophy to question whether the purpose of education should, or can be, to develop rational human autonomy and ask whether humanism as an attempt to define the essence of what it means to be human is possible, or even a desirable aim. A view that what it means to be human should be an ‘open question’ and that education should be a process of bringing each person ‘into being’ is based on arguments that rationality cannot and should not be a measure of humanity, not least because it excludes those who cannot achieve whatever standards of rationality pertain at any given time (see Biesta, 2006).

Whether as individuals, groups, or as the whole of humanity, ideas from the philosophical and political left and right question not only the notion of an active human subject but also whether education can or should aim to foster it. We intend in other work to look at how these arguments change the purposes and processes of education in more detail (see also Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008, chapter 8). However, from what we have outlined here, it is possible to argue that the attack on the human subject is taken up in advocacy of emotional and affective aspects of education as a dual attack on children and young people as potential rational agents in the world, and on what they learn.

Current and potential future impact of these trends on knowledge, creativity and communication in educational contexts

The dual attack on the subject

It is important to reiterate that proponents of an affective and emotional turn in education never present their view of children in this diminished way. Yet, a dual attack on the subject, as the universal pursuit of a body of knowledge and as a human being, is, nevertheless, we argue, behind their advocacy of new interventions. There has been no serious debate about the developments we have outlined: indeed, there is active and widespread support for the dismantling of subjects in primary schools and their use in secondary schools for an array of attitudes, dispositions and attributes (presented as ‘personal and learning skills’). The Rose Review of primary education, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s promotion of personal, learning and thinking skills, and the ATL’s calls to dismantle subjects have not, so far, received any public challenge.

Lack of challenges to these developments change public, political and professional ideas of what comprises ‘knowledge’, ‘creativity’ and ‘communication’ across the education system. Supporters of the affective and emotional turn in education regard personal knowledge, creative pedagogies and assessments that elicit and develop it and communication that changes the relationship between teachers and students into a much more personal and emotional one as ‘progressive’.

Yet, these claims are not the only aspects of knowledge, creativity and communication that need critical examination. The therapeutic culture that we have outlined here, drawing on a body of work from sociology and political studies, engenders a much deeper change in what we regard as knowledge, reflected in a dual attack on the ’subject’. This, as we have argued, is an attack on the human subject and also an attack on humans’ ability, either in wanting to understand or in being able to be educated in order to understand the world as rational, autonomous beings. It is a simultaneous and symbiotic attack on the knower and the known. In education, the attack on knowledge, on the curriculum subject, has preceded the attack on the human subject. This means that what is to be known requires changes in the knower in terms of dispositions, attitudes and behaviour.

It is this new attack on children and young people as ‘knowers’ that we address in the balance of our critique, and in our evaluation of its implications for knowledge and creativity in education.

We have argued that changing ideas about both the place and purpose of subject knowledge in schools and ideas about the human subject are, simultaneously, reflected in, and reinforced by, a therapeutic ethos. This ethos embodies populist orthodoxies rooted in psychoanalysis and psychology about the emotional self and therapeutic explanations for dealing with it, thereby reflecting and reinforcing images of human beings as ‘diminished’. Preoccupation with emotional well-being in education inserts a cultural perspective that ‘regards most forms of human experience as the source of emotional distress … [where people] characteristically suffer from “an emotional deficit and possess a permanent consciousness of vulnerability’ (Furedi, 2004, pp110/414). From this perspective, a diminished self finds exposure to uncertainty and adversity, including disappointment, despair and conflict simultaneously threatening to ‘the integrity of the self’ and inhibiting of it (see also Nolan, 1998; Pupavac, 2001, 2003).

We argue that, whatever the good and well-meaning intentions of proponents, this diminished human subject now dominates thinking about schooling, curriculum content, teaching activities and assessment. We have emphasised throughout this review that calls to change the subject do not promote this diminished view overtly but we argue that behind such calls are either images of children and young people as needing more and more emotional support to learn at all, or as being so instrumental that they will only learn what is personally and emotionally relevant to them. Either way, the emotional self becomes the subject of education because children are no longer seen as able to cope with traditional forms of subject knowledge that have, until now, been seen as the main purpose of education.

Eroding humanist education

In the context of developments explored in this paper, the renaming of the Department of Education and Skills as the Department for Children, Families and Schools is extremely significant. It removes ‘education’ as a social and political aspiration in the remit of government’s organisation for the first time since 1863, and replaces humanist aspirations with humanitarian interventions based on perceived transgressions to children’s rights.

Taken together, we argue that these concerns and the interventions they lead to are redefining fundamentally what it means to educate the ‘whole person’, and through this, they redefine the subject. Humanist goals of learning a body of worthwhile and inspiring knowledge as a route into understanding the human subject and recognising its potential for agency in the world, learning to love particular subjects, or aspiring to excel in them, are increasingly regarded as dubious goals. Even UCET’s apparent support for subjects turns knowledge into an instrumental vehicle for soft outcomes.

When aligned with the idea that personal capital is integral to social justice, humanitarian perspectives that place well-being at the heart of human rights cast ‘old-fashioned’ humanist education not merely as irrelevant, elitist and demotivating but as socially unjust.

Profiting from the emotional turn

Beneficiaries of the therapeutic turn in education tap into guilt that schools and adults do not listen enough to young people’s anxieties and are not dealing with their feelings of being worried and scared. They also reinforce beliefs that stressed-out and anxious young people cannot cope with, and do not want, a traditional subject-based curriculum. Instead, there is a growing orthodoxy that they want a more personally relevant and ‘engaging’ education where adults and their peers listen to them and affirm them. This view erodes subject disciplines and encourages a curriculum which assumes that topics and processes can only be engaging if they relate to the self.

The creation of an emotional epistemology

Finally, we argue that the interventions, and their implications for education, summarised in this report and exemplified in our book, are an outcome of the emergence of what we call an ‘emotional epistemology’. This reflects an un-philosophical distortion by educationalists of the search for a foundation for knowledge in epistemology. The most famous example of the search for foundations or grounds for our beliefs and our being is Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’ (cogito ergo sum).

Although numerous philosophers including Heidegger, Dewey, Foucault and Habermas have questioned this foundation for humanism, we see a new, and for us, dangerous tendency towards another sort of grounding of beliefs and our being in ‘I feel, therefore I am’ (sentio ergo sum). We do not go here into epistemological matters, such as Russell’s famous critique of the cogito, that all that can be claimed is that ‘There are thoughts’ with no ontological implications. In parallel, the claim that ‘There are feelings’ tells us nothing about the self although it seems to say something important about the self in a therapeutic culture.

We see the need for more philosophical work to be done on the analysis of the turn towards emotions and for clear distinctions to be made between things often called ‘emotions’, such as feelings, sensations, moods, inclinations and motives, in relation to the therapeutic educational literature (Ecclestone and Hayes, forthcoming). This is because we fear that the unphilosophical assumption behind the therapeutic turn is to stress the primacy of unanalysed and perhaps unanalysable feelings in analogy with bodily sensations or ‘feelings’.

Emotional epistemology seems to be the celebration of the authenticity and authority of feelings as somehow increasingly determinant of the self. We hope to undertake more work on the nature of this determination and, in particular, the developing frameworks for the assessment of the emotions of children and young people and for the likely rise of evaluation and accountability measures of these (see, for example, OfSTED, 2008).

Future trends

It is too soon to tell whether the rise of therapeutic interventions and a political, public and professional preoccupation with emotional features and outcomes of educational experiences will be more than a passing fad. Indeed, the sheer number of initiatives introduced in different parts of the education system by the Labour government might suggest that emotional well-being might be replaced by something else. Yet, if we are right that the dismantling of subjects in favour of an ever-widening array of dispositions and attributes is part of an emotional turn in education, and if we are right that this is, in turn, part of a more profound philosophical and cultural crisis of confidence in humanism, then the emotional turn is going to be more enduring than a fad.

For the next few years, we predict that, whatever government is in power, concerns about the poor state of people’s emotional well-being are too deeply embedded in popular culture, psychology and politics to go away quickly or at all.

This suggests some practical implications for educational institutions and curriculum developers. First, the ad hoc nature of developments and the range of concerns that drive them could erode subject disciplines in unintended ways because of the lack of an overview of how they are changing. Second, as children progress through compulsory schooling into further and higher education, too much emphasis on their emotional well-being could undermine their motivation and ability to respond to the cognitive demands of subject learning. Third, they could simply become bored with attention to their emotional needs through education and find education disengaging and demotivating. Finally, if our arguments about the underlying diminished images of the human subject are valid, there are more profound implications for what teachers, the public and policy makers regard as the purposes of education which undermine a humanist belief in its transforming potential.

Conclusion

Educational activities have always produced personal and social outcomes as the by-products of cognitive or practical ones, and education institutions and their teachers have, to a greater or lesser extent, taken account of emotional and affective aspects of their students’ lives and learning. Yet, contemporary disillusionment with a traditional subject-based curriculum and traditional assessment, together with an intensifying belief that children and young people are both disaffected and distressed by humanist education, are creating a hollowed-out subject curriculum into which a plethora of instrumental personal and social attributes, values and dispositions can be inserted. In the name of humanitarian rights, the search for “true sources of satisfaction” will become more popular as the core value of schooling, where the overarching question is “are the children happy?” (Layard, 2007).

Attacks on the human subject as too diminished to learn, and on the curriculum subject as irrelevant, elitist, unjust and inimical to well-being, currently enjoy the sponsorship of the British government. Commercial and political interests in developments we have explored here make critical debate about the impact of emotional well-being on the subject harder but more necessary than ever.

In conclusion, our analysis shows that what policy makers, professionals and parents regard as valid knowledge is being changed fundamentally and perhaps irrevocably by the affective and emotional turn in education. A secondary school history teacher said to us “you know that something has changed when children want to know more about themselves than about the world”. Yet, his lament, like our critique, is increasingly a minority view. An epistemology of emotion is replacing old forms of knowledge, rooted in profound pessimism that children are either able or motivated to know the world. This, in turn, changes pedagogy and assessment and casts new approaches to pedagogy and teachers’ and students’ communication as ‘creative’ and ‘progressive’.

At the very least, this review should be used to create a public and political debate about our analysis: we find an increasing number of teachers and parents agree with the examples we have marshalled to illustrate our arguments and further empirical work and debate will reveal further implications of the translation of an emotional and affective turn in education for knowledge and pedagogy and assessment (see Ecclestone et al, 2008b; Ecclestone et al, 2008b; Ecclestone and Hayes, 2008b; Ecclestone and Hayes, forthcoming).

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This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

Getting to know Web 2.0

The technological innovations that have enabled what we call Web 2.0, or the Read/Write Web, are perhaps best understood in the context of the costs of contribution to the earlier incarnations of the World Wide Web. In the early days of the web, which we can call Web 1.0, posting information online was expensive, time-consuming, and required specialized knowledge. One had to register a domain name, hire a hosting server, learn HTML, and use FTP tools to upload files to a Web server in order to put a page on the World Wide Web. These barriers were not overwhelming, hobbyists could learn the skills and commit the resources to participate, but as a result of these barriers, only a tiny portion of the community which used the web was responsible for providing the content. Most people just went to read, and then later, as bandwidth grew, to listen and watch.

Over time, web developers increasingly added functionality to websites that allowed people to more easily contribute content to the web. Some of the earliest of these sites were discussion boards, a feature of the internet from even the days before the web, which allowed multiple users to easily contribute information to the web without needing to learn how to program in HTML or register a domain. These simple discussion spaces embodied the crucial design principle that has driven the development of Web 2.0: make it as simple, as time-cheap, and inexpensive as possible for ordinary Web users to contribute. We’ll soon turn to how this principle has found expression in a diverse variety of platforms – blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, virtual worlds – but first it’s worth teasing out the significance of designing for simplified contributions.

Lowering the costs of communicating and barriers to participation

To sum up the Web 2.0 phenomena in a sentence: lower communication costs have led to opportunities for more inclusive, collaborative, democratic online participation. Economists would say that when developers made it easier to contribute to the web, they were lowering the interaction costs of communication. As the costs of communicating online decreased, more people, millions more, decided that it was worth their while to participate in these communication networks. These people did not just communicate more, they started communicating in qualitatively different ways than before. As these millions found new media for expression and collaboration, they opened possibilities for a more inclusive, open, democratic society, possibilities which may or may not be realized. Understanding these social possibilities requires better understanding the technical design principle that has enabled them.

The dramatically lower costs of communicating information over the web can be illustrated with a simple thought experiment: how would you share a video with all of your friends in 1980 and today? In 1980, sharing a video message with your friends would involve the following steps: filming on a tape, transferring the tape to VHS, copying each individual VHS tape, packaging and addressing each tape, and mailing the tape to everyone you know. The time costs of such a venture were basically prohibitively high. People certainly had an interest in seeing each other’s video clips – recall the remarkable run of Bob Saget and America’s Funniest Home Videos – but they were simply too expensive to share within individual social networks.

Now consider the costs of adding video to YouTube. Click: I start my Web Cam, and I spout wisdom. Click: I save it. Click: I open YouTube. Click: I upload the file. Click: I label it with a “tag” so that others can find it (tagging is discussed further below). And for bonus points, Click: I change my Facebook status update to alert everyone in my social network that I’ve just added a video. There is some degree of learning curve to figure out how all of these applications and services work. But as people learn their way around one Web 2.0 service, they realize that Web 2.0 tools share many common features and it is increasingly easy to learn the next. Compared to the economic costs of these kinds of interactions in the past, global communication today is almost impossibly free.

Lowering communication costs doesn’t just lead to more communication, it leads to qualitatively different behavior by web users. For instance, it turns out that if you make it extremely time-cheap to contribute an article to an online encyclopedia, that people will create a Wikipedia with 2.5 million of them. It also turns out that if you make the editorial process decentralized and consensual, that people will anonymously and collaboratively edit those same 2.5 million articles and come to editorial loggerheads over only a tiny percentage of them. It turns out that if you make it time-cheap to post short updates about your day and read at a glance all of the updates of your friends and colleagues, that millions will start following the daily and hourly turns of people’s lives through tools like Facebook and Twitter (both to be discussed further). By itself, little updates like “Struggling with my statistics assignment,” are rather dull and prosaic. But aggregated into thousands of little updates, friends are tracking each other’s lives through Web 2.0 tools much more closely than has ever been possible by all but the closest social and working relationships. As a final example, the ease of producing and sharing online videos has allowed for the new social phenomena of viral videos, publically available online videos which are seen by hundreds of thousands or millions of people, which are typically created, published, and distributed outside of the traditional studio/publisher information networks. Because cheaper communication allows new communication media and practices, we have a whole new set of shared cultural texts created and distributed outside of the traditional, hierarchical publication networks.

Lowering the interaction costs of communication leads to perhaps the most important feature of Web 2.0: its inclusive, collaborative capacity. The new Read/Write web is allowing people to work together, share information, and reach new and potentially enormous audiences outside some of the traditional structures of power, authority, and communication in our society. The social developments that have resulted from the Web 2.0 phenomena are best understood through a lens of democratization, but we must keep in mind the caveat that democracy means many different things in many different places (Haste and Hogan, 2006). Democratizing the web may mean one thing for the wealthy in the West with instant access to the web through wireless-connected laptop computers, and another thing for the poor in the West who access the web through public connections in schools and libraries (Jenkins, 2007). Democratizing the web may mean one thing for students in rural Africa with dial-up modem connections on cast off computers from Europe, and another thing for bloggers in China whose content is scrutinized by an army of government censors and language police. While democratization may mean different things in these diverse areas, certain commonalities hold as well. More people are getting involved in a series of increasingly global conversations, more people have the capacity to share their thoughts and insights to the world, and more people have the capacity to weigh in on the value and virtue of media and commentary. In older media forms the boundaries between authorship and readership, speaker and listener, producer and consumer remained quite clear. “The new Web”, as professor Leon Watts notes “has broken down the authorship-readership roles into degrees of contact and reciprocation of infinitely variable granularity” (Personal Communication). In decentralizing the control over the flow of global information, Web 2.0 holds tremendous potential to shift the balance of power from the elite to the masses, with all of the chaos, creativity, exceptionality and mediocrity that have marked the expansion of political democracy.

Whether or not this potential is realized, whether or not the key Web 2.0 design principle of simplify contributing leads to gains in democratization depends on how developers, publishers, telecommunications companies and users negotiate the evolving spaces that allow for all this communication. Before considering possible scenarios for the future impact of Web 2.0 platforms on society, we should now examine what some of these platforms are and how they are evolving.

Instantiations of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 technologies may be animated by a single design principle, simplify contributing, but they take a wide array of forms. Some of the most visible Web 2.0 tools are categories of platforms. One of the first platforms of the Read/Write Web was Web logs, or blogs, which are websites that are like public journals. Blog authors, or bloggers, post chronologically-ordered journal entries to a site, and each entry has a feature that allows readers to comment, allowing for two-way interaction. Blog hosting services like Blogger, now owned by Google, developed around the turn of the century and allowed even people without any programming skills to create and publish blogs. Wikis, websites which are authored by a community of people, emerged as another platform that allowed for easy, collaborative publication of information. The most famous wiki, Wikipedia, is authored by millions of anonymous contributors, and indeed anyone can click on any page in Wikipedia at any time and add anything that they so desire. Podcasting tools allowed for the uploading and syndication of audio files, and podcasts are a kind of audio blog. YouTube pioneered online video sharing by creating a space where people could upload small video files and make them publically available. These diverse spaces have fostered new forms of global, multimedia, communication and publication.

Online social networks also fall within the domain of Web 2.0. In America, the two largest sites are MySpace and Facebook, where users create a web page profile, invite friends to connect to their profile, and use the page as a space to publish personal content and connect with friends and co-workers. While broad scale online social networks are the most well known, niche social networks exist as well, and services like Ning allow users to create their own mini online social networks, such as Classroom 2.0, a social network for educators interested in Web 2.0. Virtual worlds, including online games, are, to some degree, other forms of online social networks, where users create avatars which inhabit three-dimensional virtual worlds. Second Life is the largest online virtual world community, and World of Warcraft, with over 10 million members worldwide, is the world’s largest online game community. Both virtual worlds are also integrated with other forms of Web 2.0 tools like discussion boards, blogs, and wikis.

For those who have not closely followed the growth of Web 2.0, the scale of adoption is staggering. In America in 2006, over 50% of teenagers – across racial and socioeconomic lines – have created pages on online social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and in all likelihood this percentage has increased in the last two years (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, and Smith, 2007). As of October 2008, Wikipedia had over 2.5 million pages, over 250 million page edits, over 8 million registered users, and over 150,000 people who had made an edit in the last 30 days. In February of 2008 Technorati was tracking over 112 million blogs, which doesn’t include as many as 73 million Chinese blogs (Helmond 2008). Even in the US education sector, which was rated dead last out of 30 sectors in technology adoption by the Department of Commerce in 2003, Web 2.0 is growing exponentially. PBwiki reports hosting over 250,000 education related wikis; Wikispaces reports that they have given away over 100,000 free wikis to K12 educators and they plan on donating 250,000 more; and Edublogs hosts over 100,000 education related blogs. And while these are statistics from some of the largest Web 2.0 service providers, they represent only a fraction of online applications within the education sector.

Web 2.0 refers to these simple, often free tools for adding content to the Web, but it also refers to systems that allow users to evaluate content. Tagging refers to the process of allowing users to apply key word labels to discrete bits of content. The service del.icio.us, for instance, allows users to tag Web sites such that del.icio.us community can bypass search engines like Google and instead search the Web using user-generated key words. This form of content organization has been dubbed “folksonomy,” a taxonomy generated organically by a community. Tagging is an essential feature of many Web 2.0 content sharing sites, like Flikr, a popular service for sharing photos.

Indeed this kind of convergence is one of the most common features in the evolution of Web 2.0 tools. User-generated videos from YouTube are embedded in wikis; podcasts are hosted by blogs, commerce sites like Amazon.com allow users to tag products and post reviews. Facebook attempts to serve as an individual’s one-stop Web 2.0 hub, allowing users to chat, post updates, blog, share links, host photos, share videos, coordinate events, share music, and so forth. As Web 2.0 develops, many features of the various platforms are converging and overlapping.

The development of Web 2.0 is also characterized by new innovations. Right now in America, one of the fastest growing Web 2.0 services is Twitter, which allows for micro-blogging. Users post, either online or through mobile phones, status updates of 160 characters or less. Individually, most posts are trivial. Taken collectively, they allow users to track the daily ebb and flow of another person’s life, creating a remarkable sense of intimacy and familiarity (Thompson, 2008). Twitter is now being integrated with Facebook and other tools, so that microblogging is just now entering the Web 2.0 milieu.

The ownership of these diverse spaces deserves careful consideration. Many of these platforms are created and managed by teams of volunteers who release their products under licenses like GNU or creative commons that allow others to share and build upon their achievements. Wikipedia is run by a non-profit agency funded by user donations, Wordpress gives away their blogging platform, and MediaWiki gives away a wiki platform. Other platforms are proprietary and for profit: Google owns Blogger and YouTube, Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace, and so forth. The transmission of data that enables these communications is made possible by telecommunications companies that are regulated by governments around the world. In many dimensions, the newly enabled communications of millions of users depend upon the infrastructure provided by corporations and governments, and the boundaries and possibilities of new communications will be negotiated by users, corporate interests and governments. Corporations may seek to constrain communications in ways that maximize profits and governments may seek to constrain communications in ways that maximize state control. Whether or not the democratic possibilities of Web 2.0 are realized depends a great deal upon the degree to which users can negotiate for freedom and autonomy within the networks created and controlled by established political and corporate interests.

The broad future direction of Web 2.0

The driving force behind Web 2.0, the desire to lower the costs of communication, will continue to be a force shaping the web in the decades ahead, and innovations in time-cheap communications are going to present a future full of new surprises. Three other trends at various levels will continue to act on and shape this driving force. First, new platforms will continue to emerge. Second, the functionality in platforms will continue to converge. Third, we should expect to see greater integration between Web 2.0 tools and handheld devices. Finally, we should consider the efforts to those who seek not to extend the Web 2.0 regime, but to transcend it.

Platforms

It’s hard to guess which web communication platforms are going to stick and which are going to fall to the wayside – the book has been pretty durable, the 8-track less so – but we can make some guesses. To step back and think broadly for a moment, platforms are essentially defined by their level of automation. Automation makes certain communication acts time-cheaper, but automation also acts as a constraint on communication forms. Blogs are highly automated. They take new posts and new comments, and they place them in chronological order. This means that making an online journal with collaborative comments is quite time-cheap, but it also means that it’s difficult to make a blog anything other than an online journal. Wikis, by contrast, are the blank canvases of the online world. Almost nothing is automated in a wiki, and so they have a tremendously flexible format which is much more time-expensive to manually design.

Blogs and wikis are two of the formats which seem to have a great potential to prove quite durable. The free, flexible nature of the wiki means that it will likely continue to be suitable for innovative new structural arrangements. The enduring nature of the journal across time and cultures suggests that blogs will long have a place. Likely developers will find new ways to make communication within these platforms cheaper and easier, but these durable platforms seem well-poised to endure.

Some of the more proprietary platforms are perhaps more vulnerable to replacement. Online social networks are probably going to persist in the decades ahead, but five years ago one might have predicted that MySpace would dominate in America, whereas Facebook has begun to very successfully compete broadly with MySpace, especially amongst the demographic of Americans with higher levels of education. As more adults join Facebook, it may be that youth look to escape to a new network (Friending your parents is very uncomfortable… not friending your parents even more so), and perhaps a new space will be born.

Undoubtedly new platforms will also emerge as people develop new ways to make certain forms of communication time-cheap. Some of these may be rather obvious in retrospect, like Goodreads, which allows readers to share lists of what they are reading, lists of their favourite books, and lists of the books on their to-read list. Others applications, like Twitter, may appear quite strange as they appear because they represent new forms of social communication.

Convergence

Virtually all wiki platforms have built-in discussion boards. The Wordpress blog editor has a built-in static web page creator and publisher. Facebook integrates seamlessly with Twitter and a 1,000 other applications. Podcasts can be distributed through blogs. Platforms which began as serving one particular function are increasingly being combined and woven into other platforms. Teens used to send instant messages through systems like AOL Instant Messenger, but increasingly chat online through integrated chat in Gmail or Facebook. In America, Facebook seems well posed to be the primary launching point to the Web 2.0 world for many Americans, and other services like the start page for Google Apps is competing for the same title of home base. Some of the clear distinctions which now exist among platforms may cease to exist as tools increasingly adopt the functionality of other tools.

Handheld devices

Gcast is a service that allows any phone user to dial a phone number, record a message, and have that message published as a podcast within minutes. Jott is a service that transcribes and emails or publishes phone messages. Twitter updates can be made and read by text message, email, or on the web.

As handheld devices develop more sophisticated interfaces, increased functionality, and the ability to transmit more information more quickly, it’s likely that handhelds are going to make Web 2.0 platforms increasingly portable. Right now the clunkiness of thumb pads, the small sizes of screens, and the low bandwidth of mobile phones are limiting their integration into Web 2.0 platforms. It’s not time-cheap to add an article to Wikipedia through your mobile if you have to type out a whole article with your thumb and can only read 20 words of it at a time on your screen. However, as developers overcome these hurdles, mobile phones and other handheld devices will increasingly become integrated into the Read/Write web. At some level, this will simply mean more communication, but we should also expect qualitatively different forms of communication to emerge as well.

Web 3.0 and beyond…

Predicting the “knight’s move,” the radical changes that will reshape social phenomena is always a difficult task, though in the realm of science and technology we at least have the advantage that researchers and developers who are working on new breakthroughs are toiling in plain sight. Tim Berners-Lee, for instance, one of the founders of the World Wide Web, has been working for some time on developing tools to allow a “Semantic Web,” or a version of the web where computers would be able recognize the meaning of data at some level (Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila 2001). For instance, search engines can currently find every web page where the word “cat” appears. Clever programmers can even get computers to recognize that the work “cat” appears so frequently with the word “pet” that those words probably have some relationship. Computers cannot however, know what cat means or figure out that cats are a subset of pets. In the Semantic Web, computers would be able to identify these types of relationships, and thus one could do a web search for the phrase “all the types of pets” and the computer would not merely search for websites with those exact words, but would search throughout the data of the web to find all of the data considered a subset of pet, and then return that data to the user. Such a web would dramatically increase the meaning-making capacity of computers, allowing humans to focus even more of their time and energy on higher order thinking tasks, just as search engines on the web have allowed humans to find massive amounts of information in much less time.

Web 2.0 across the sectors

No facet of modern life will remain untransformed by the innovations of the Web 2.0. That’s a strong claim, but in the face of the scope and scale of the social transformations wrought by Web 2.0, it increasingly appears to be a defensible one. Across nearly every sector of the world, Web 2.0 is changing the way people interact and relate.

Business

Web 2.0 tools are sparking two major changes in business practices: how employees collaborate, and how businesses interact with customers. At the MathWorks near Boston, MA, software engineers are designing their entire products on wikis. Programmers no longer email snippets of code back and forth as they attempt to create and debug new features. Instead, programmers post their work to a wiki, which allows the entire MathWorks engineering community ready access to the entire database of code for their products. At BestBuy, the sales force of “Blue Shirts” participates in an online social network called Blue Shirt Nation, where employees can share strategies, give feedback to management, react to new products and campaigns, and help to shape the overall direction of the company (Li and Bernoff, 2008).

These practices represent both new efficiencies and new relationships within firms, and as of this moment it’s not yet clear which of these innovations will prove transformative. New efficiencies produced by collaborative work environments may be merely useful or they may be essential. Can a consumer durable retailer which has not harnessed the collective intelligence of its sales force compete with one who has? We may find that in certain economic sectors harnessing collective intelligence is more important than in other places, or we may find that firms who can use new Web 2.0 tools to empower their employees consistently out-compete those who do not.

Online networks may also upset hierarchical corporate structures. Will online communities within firms represent a new avenue for employee advancement? Will the Best Buy sales rep with the highest numbers be passed over for manager in favour of another employee who made several critical contributions to Blue Shirt Nation? Will the MathWorks wiki allow the most creative, productive programmers to be identified and recognized for their work, rather than the project manager who compiles and presents the final project to executives? These new platforms may allow different kinds of talents – talents related to online networking, communication and collaboration – to be more highly valued in the work place. They also may allow for employees at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy to more easily bend the ear of those at the top, and the examples of both Linux development and the Toyota production system lend support to this hypothesis (Evans and Wolf, 2005). These flatter, more democratic, more meritocratic social organizations may allow firms to draw out the strengths of their employees with less regard towards their position in the organization.

Lowering communication costs is also likely to accelerate the pace of globalization and outsourcing. As it becomes increasingly easier to collaborate online, both asynchronously and in real time, firms can employ people around the world and have those teams work together. For developing countries, this represents an incredible new opportunity for nations that can build the infrastructure for people to participate in this phenomena. For developed countries, it means greater competition in the global labour market.

Web 2.0 tools are also changing the ways that firms interact with consumers. For one rather silly example, take the case of the American film “Snakes on a Plane.” When New Line Cinema published that title amongst their list of films in development in 2005, it captured the attention of a segment of film buffs on the internet. Perhaps it was the way the title succinctly captures the central conflict of the film; perhaps it unlocked some deep psychological tensions around flying in post 9/11 America. In any event, blogs about the film sprouted, fans started generating and sharing content about a film that had not even been created yet. Fans knew that Samuel L. Jackson was to play a lead role, and one fan produced a sound clip where he imitated Jackson saying “I want these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane!” The clip went viral – it spread rapidly through social networks and outside traditional publication channels – amongst fans of this yet-to-be movie, and the fans demanded that the line be added to the movie. So the studio went back into production in order to add the line, which became the signature moment of the film.

That moment represents a powerful symbolic change in the relationship between producers and consumers. The fans were not the simple recipients of the movie; instead, they helped to design the film. They were co-constructors of the product, and through that co-construction not only did they improve the product (in a marketing sense, if not an artistic one), but they also felt a greater sense of investment in the product. These fans, with their blogs, fan sites, and media clips, became a free marketing arm for New Line, and produced a buzz around the movie that few campy B-movies can hope to achieve.

Web 2.0 tools allow many variations on these kinds of two-way communication amongst firms and consumers. At Snorg T’s, about 1/3 of their ideas for new t-shirts, sold over the internet, come from consumers. At threadless.com, consumers not only submit t-shirt designs but vote on the ones that they want the company to produce, market and sell. Companies as diverse as Dell and Stonyfield Farms use blogs to talk and listen to consumers (Scoble and Israel, 2006). Proctor and Gamble launched Beinggirl.com as a space for girls to talk with each other and with health care professionals about issues of relationships and sexuality, sponsored throughout by advertisements for beauty and feminine care products (Li and Bernoff, 2008). As I write this, JetBlue airways has just announced its first flight from its new terminal at JFK via Twitter, sending the message directly to its 6,000 followers on Twitter. In these conversations, firms not only have the chance to learn from their consumers, but also to communicate directly with them, unfiltered through the media. In the best of circumstances, firms can help consumers feel like partners in the life of corporate products; consumers become part of the team.

Looking towards the future, if all that corporations do with these tools is find new ways to sell their products, then that won’t constitute a significant change in the economic sphere. If companies, however, go further in terms of listening to consumers, towards building partnerships with them, towards responding to their concerns and ideas, then we may see new ways for the marketplace to better serve consumers. If firms discover that they can draw strength from the ideas of consumers, that they can grow by building partnerships from consumers, and that they are vulnerable to widespread, online criticism of consumers, then that may shift the balance of power in capitalist society from the producers towards the consumers.

An alternative future where producers simply use Web 2.0 as a new medium to share advertising and propaganda with consumers is equally imaginable. BeingGirl.com may develop as an open forum where girls have a chance to speak with each other and with professionals about the challenging issues of adolescence, and Proctor and Gamble may get some incidental benefits from fostering this open space. On the other hand, Proctor and Gamble can exert powerful editorial controls over the content on BeingGirl in order to manipulate conversations towards the celebration of P&G products and the positioning of young girls as deficient beings without those products. We have to expect that Proctor and Gamble only cares about the interests of young girls to the extent that those interests coincide with their fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder profit. In these corporate sponsored spaces, which include Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, and many others, users and corporations will negotiate the norms of each space, and in the best possible future these negotiations will result in consumers working with producers to create a better marketplace. In the worst possible future, producers will use online spaces as a forum for cynical advertising to penetrate ever more deeply into the lives of consumers.

Politics and the civic sphere

Those who research the emerging Web trends in society are going to spend a considerable amount of time unpacking the role of the internet and other communication technologies in the Barack Obama presidential campaign. The Obama campaign reached out to voters through a wide variety of existing web platforms. The campaign has pages and groups on a variety of social network sites, posts regular updates on Twitter (where Obama has 100,000 followers), posts videos on YouTube, uploads pictures from the campaign trail to Flickr, and participates in other niche platforms like Faithbase and BlackPlanet. After Obama’s victory, we have good reason to believe that Web 2.0 tools will be an established feature of political campaigns.

The Obama campaign built a proprietary online community of over 1,000,000 members called my.barackobama.com (myBO). Users at myBO could join groups based on states, neighbourhood or interests (like Tango dancers or air traffic controllers). They signed up to contact local undecided voters in their neighborhood and received “Walk lists” in seconds. Users could create a fundraising page which tracked their efforts at getting friends and family to donate to the campaign, and they could create their own blogs with which to share their thoughts with others. While myBO posed a number of strong constraints within the network in order to maintain their message and brand, they allowed remarkable freedom to users in creating their own blogs and fundraising messages. These messages were screened, and objectionable language was removed and led to users being banned, but on the whole the campaign allowed users to craft their own personal message of support in the service of a shared goal.

All of these messages were also shared outside the bounds of the official Obama network. In some cases, users shared the Obama message by posting Obama updates to their own social network profile, or sharing YouTube videos from the campaign by email. At the same time, Obama supporters also took ownership of his message and created their own groups and communication platforms. Many people individually created their own blogs or groups, like the Obama-Mama blog or the Facebook group “I have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.”

These tools allowed the Obama campaign to achieve two objectives. First, they used communication tools to speak directly to millions of voters and potential voters without being filtered through the media. The decision to announce Obama pick for V.P. via text message at an early morning hour allowed the Obama campaign to send their message directly to the voters, rather than mediated through some kind of press release or press conference. Consider the costs of sending all of the words, images and videos distributed by the Obama campaign through a combination of media ads and direct mailing: it would be a staggering sum. The costs of transmitting these materials become entirely manageable using the web, and in fact, Obama volunteers and supporters absorbed much of the cost of those interactions.

The role of volunteers in sharing the message speaks to the second online objective achieved through Web 2.0 tools: getting a small army of grass-roots supporters involved in the campaign. The online tools dramatically reduced the cost of mobilizing huge numbers of volunteers and supporters. Those volunteers worked both through official channels, like those who volunteered to print out Obama walk lists, and through unofficial channels, like those who posted an Obama video to their social network profile or blog outside of myBO. The Obama campaign’s online efforts gave supporters an online stake in the campaign and even gave them some control over personally shaping their version of the Obama message. By sharing this stake, the campaign unlocked entirely new bases of small donors, of volunteers, and of new voters.

While the Obama campaign is certainly the most prominent example of online civic mobilization, many other examples exist as well. On February 12, 2003, the largest coordinated protest in human history occurred across the world in opposition to the Iraq war, where somewhere between 12 and 20 million people took to the streets (Bennett, 2007). The protest was organized in a matter of months, and online communication played a critical role. At www.350.org, activists are mobilizing people to demand action on greenhouse gas emissions and reduce atmospheric carbon down to 350 ppm. At 350.org people can join the movement, find out about upcoming actions, organize their own actions and spread the word. Facebook has an application where individuals can create profiles dedicated to causes, where people can invite their friends to donate to or join in an action or effort. These tools will play an increasingly important role in grass-roots action over the decades ahead.

Just as we could imagine two alternative futures for Web 2.0 tools in the economic sphere – one which enhanced consumer power and one which co-opted consumer energy in the service of corporate power, so can we imagine two futures for these new political media. Whether you believe that Barack Obama is The One, That One, or just the next one, one has to assume that he’ll be under constant pressure to use his online network as a tool for generating support for his agenda rather than as a medium for developing his agenda. If myBO becomes another media for the Obama administration to spread a centrally constructed message, then it becomes another instrument of elite political power. If, however, myBO morphs into my.americangovernment.gov, a space where citizens have the opportunity to contribute and collaborate on solving problems and speaking truth to power, then the democratizing power of Web 2.0 tools may indeed lead to a more democratic republic. Given the pressure on politicians to consolidate their power, one has to assume that the better future will only come about if the citizenry organizes to demand that it happen.

Journalism and the media are also being profoundly affected by the emergence of Web 2.0 tools. In some cases, new media are simply being integrated into old media. Many New York Times columns are also published as blogs, and readers can comment back on the blogs, and columnists can respond to those responses in future columns. Certainly this kind of dialogue happened with letters in the past, but the communication is now faster and at a greater scale. More importantly, anyone can now read almost all of the comments left behind by others, so nearly the entire communication stream is publically available. The editorial control over the “letters to the editor” is greatly loosened, so hundreds of comments are published rather than just a few letters. Anyone who is willing to avoid vitriolic personal attacks and foul or hateful language can have their say on the pages of NYTimes.com and dozens of other newspapers.

Web 2.0 tools also allow new journalism platforms to emerge outside of the traditional media. The Drudge Report and the Daily Kos are two examples of partisan blog networks providing political news and opinion outside of the traditional corporate journalism structure. Blogs that provide coverage of niches, like particular celebrities, trends, or market sectors, have proven to be particularly successful in finding readerships in the media marketplace. In some cases, this citizen journalism has proven to be a powerful check on the mainstream media, such as when bloggers discovered and then demonstrated that documents that Dan Rather used to criticize George W. Bush’s Texas Air Guard record were fabricated. In other cases, Web 2.0 tools have been the source of media stories, such as when Senator George Allen called a young Indian man a Macaca at a campaign event, a racial slur which was captured on video and published on YouTube for the media to pick up on. Web 2.0 tools have both allowed new voices into journalism, and they have created a new bank of user-generated media to inform journalism. Established media conglomerates will undoubtedly attempt to harness, control and profit from these new domains, but the ease of creating and publishing widely available media suggests that media consumers will have a far wider array of media choices in the future, and they will have more opportunities to interact with others in national and international conversations about news events.

Relationships and identity

Friend is now a verb. To “friend” someone is to solicit or accept an invitation from another person on an online social network that denotes that person as one of your friends. In this context, friends are not necessarily friends as in other contexts. Friends may be acquaintances from school or work rather than people who you choose to have a social, affectionate relationship with. Yet the power of these online friendships is that Web 2.0 tools can allow them to have a degree of intimacy that offline friendships may not necessarily have.

For instance, this past summer I took a group of students to India. While in India, I left new status updates from the road, and when I returned I posted a series of photo albums to my Facebook site. I have several very dear, close, offline friends who know nothing about this trip; we have not been in touch since then. I also have several acquaintances in my Facebook network who I have not spoken to in years, who I don’t feel particularly emotionally close to, who followed this expedition quite closely. If I run into them, they can ask about what it was like to cross the high pass at 16,000 feet in the India Himalaya or about my relationship with Lado, the Indian mechanic who helped us with our service project. In several important respects, my Facebook friends know the shifting landscape of my moods, activities, and journey through life better than some of my offline friends with whom I have close emotional bonds but only a weak sense of the contours of their current life. For those outside the world online social networks, it’s easy to imagine that Facebook friends aren’t real friends. But when I look at who understands my life right now, the question “who are my real friends?” becomes much more complicated. In a sense, I have a whole new category of friends with whom I share a whole new category of intimacy. Social capital theory gives us a robust framework to understand how these relationships work as weak ties (Putnam, 2000), but social capital theory in its present form does not necessarily account for the significance of the new levels of intimacy that I have development with my acquaintances. As online social networks transform our social landscape, fundamental and remarkably durable notions of relationships and identity may evolve.

For many young people especially, the online world now is a parallel social space to the offline world. Just as teenagers carefully cultivate an image in school, through dress, activities, friendships, and conversations, so do teens carefully cultivate a second image offline. In shaping their MySpace or Facebook page, teenagers carefully choose which photos of themselves to display, what books and movies to list as their favorites, who to accept and reject as friends, and what other information and images should adorn their “profile.” Just as students may express one identity in the classroom, another in church, and another on the basketball court, so students can experiment with new identities online. In many cases, the lack of instant social feedback from acts of identity-shaping may allow people to be bolder in experimenting with self-expression; you might be taunted immediately for wearing an Arsenal jersey in the halls of a Manchester high school, but you have some insulation from insults if you post a picture of Adebayor on your profile, at least until your online friends find you. Certain online spaces are specifically designed for this identity experimentation and role-play. James Gee, writing about video games, describes the capacity to create “projective identities” in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft or Second Life, where people can experiment with designing new identities for virtual representations, or avatars, of themselves (Gee, 2007). These games, which require communication not only in game, but through other mechanisms like guild sites, forums, wikis, and blogs, allow people to experiment with new identities in new domains.

Exploration of how these online networks are reforming notions of identity has only just begun, but as one example of the changing social landscape consider the notion of persistence. The mobility of modern life in the West has allowed many people the opportunity to “start over” with a new identity. High school kids go off to college, people change jobs, switch schools, move to a different town. Someone who tires of being the class clown in middle school can try to shape a new identity in a new high school; someone who was a chess nerd in high school can join a party fraternity in college. Part of what enables these new experiments is the chance to abandon an old identity. But what happens to the nature of these changes if people travel from one offline social world to another while maintaining a consistent online social identity? What does it mean to have a single Facebook page from middle school through one’s working life? Is one’s Facebook profile sufficiently malleable to allow significant changes in identity, or does the durable nature of one’s public, online identity constrain people’s efforts to experiment as someone new? Some initial research suggests that the complexity of privacy setting tools in Facebook restricts people’s ability to maintain old ties while entering new communities with different expectations, but we have much more to learn (DiMicco and Millen 2007). Answering these questions will be critical to psychologists and other social scientists, to educators and parents, and to young people in the years ahead.

Over time, the English language has developed such that “virtual” is the antonym of “real,” and if social scientists accept this opposition, they will miss some of the most important phenomena developing in modern social relationships. Relationships developed in virtual or online worlds are not pale reflections of “real” world phenomena. They are a new class of meaningful and profound interactions which researchers will have to consider seriously as they try to understand the evolving nature of society in a Web 2.0 world.

Education

On the slow pace of adoption

There is a subversive joke told amongst education technology advocates that if Rip van Winkle awoke today, he wouldn’t recognize or understand the work in an architect’s office where the drawings are done by AutoCAD, in a mechanic’s garage where computers run diagnostic tests, or at a retail counter where sales are made and tracked by computer. All of these places and interactions would be radically different from the world the Rip fell asleep in, but if Mr. van Winkle walked into a classroom where students were sitting in rows listening to teachers lecture by the blackboard, then Rip would finally feel right at home.

As Web 2.0 technologies reshape nearly every aspect of modern life, their adoption has been relatively slow within the classroom. “Relatively” needs to be put into perspective: three providers alone, PBWiki, Wikispaces, and Edublogs claim to host nearly half a million education-related blogs and wikis. In all likelihood, millions more are hosted on other large public services, on course-management systems like Moodle or Blackboard, on proprietary systems for particular schools, and through other means, though there is no certain way to count. So on the one hand, in terms of raw numbers we are seeing an exponential growth in the adoption of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, and on the other hand we are seeing very little evidence that this adoption is penetrating normal classroom routines. Reconciling this tension will help us understand the present and future of these tools in the classroom.

Hypothesised benefits

Very little academic research has centered on Web 2.0 tools in education. From the literature that does exists though, one can unearth hypothesized benefits for using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom with students, which can be organized into four major categories. The first category involves increasing engagement. On the one hand, we have some evidence that by allowing students to publish in a public space over which they have some control and ownership, students are motivated by the chance to work in Web 2.0 environments. Several small studies and experiments suggest that students who write using these technologies write longer pieces, write more frequently, claim to take greater pride in their work, and claim to enjoy the process more (Cole, 2004; Dunleavy, Dexter, and Heinecke, 2007; Grant, 2006; Olander, 2007). Students enjoy the chance to use tools in schools that they use socially in the rest of their lives, and they enjoy the opportunities to connect and collaborate (Reich, 2008) . They are also pressured, usually in a positive way, to perform better when their work is public. They appreciate opportunities to connect with the world outside their classroom. At the same time educators also have observed that Web 2.0 tools allow increased participation in class discussions, since those who struggle to communicate orally have another avenue to contribute (Ellis, Goodyear, Prosser, and O’Hara, 2006; Reich, 2008).

Building on this increased engagement, Web 2.0 tools provide new avenues to teach fundamental skills, like writing, communication, collaboration, and new media literacy. One small recent study showed that students who blogged improved their writing skills more than students who completed assignments by hand or through word-processing (Roth, 2007). The author argued that these gains were largely connected to motivation, and while the sample of the study may be small, the results are suggestive if not conclusive. Another recent study showed that students may learn reasoning skills in online communication with their peers more than they learn such skills when modeled by adult instructors (Ellis et al 2006). The capacity of these tools to nurture collaboration skills has been noted by several authors (Reich and Daccord, 2008; Richardson, 2008) who argue that the communally-constructed nature of Web 2.0 spaces forces students to figure out how to work together to create final products. Several researchers have investigated the promises and challenges to use Web 2.0 tools to develop these kinds of collaboration skills (Armetta, 2007; Coyle, 2007). In addition to these established skills, other researchers, like Henry Jenkins at MIT, have noted that the proliferation of new media has necessitated learning a whole new set of literacies, like understanding distributed cognition and transmedia navigation, and of course it makes sense to study new media literacies in the context of new media platforms (Jenkins, 2007).

In addition to developing both old and new fundamental skills, students also need to rehearse for 21^st century situations. As noted above, businesses are adopting Web 2.0 tools at an astounding rate, and students in schools need to have access to the communication media that are at least similar to the types of environments that they will be expected to use in the future (Laurinen and Marttunen, 2007). In one specific example, several researchers have noted that most classroom writing instruction looks absolutely nothing like the kinds of writing that employees are expected to do in the work force. Collaborative writing where iterations are workshopped by multiple people using online media are the norm in many workplaces, whereas these practices are the rare exception in education (Garza and Hern, 2005). Researchers have also recognized that collaborative digital media is an increasingly important part of the civic sphere, both nationally and globally, and Civic Life Online (2008) provides numerous examples both of how people are organizing in the 21^st century to meet civic goals and some early efforts to ready students to participate in these new efforts (Bennett, 2007).

Underlying all of these proposed benefits is the notion that the normal routine of school life is insufficient for preparing students for the new labour force and civic sphere. As Levy and Murnane (2004) argue, computers are increasingly replacing many of the repetitive tasks that used to be performed by significant parts of the human labour force. As a result, schools need to prepare students with new skills where humans have a comparative advantage over computers, especially in terms of complex communication and critical thinking. Since Web 2.0 tools offer new mechanisms for teaching these critical skills which schools so often fail to teach, emerging Web tools can enlighten the critique of the contemporary state of education. The best Web 2.0 projects, which we will turn to in a moment, demonstrate the extraordinary capacity for communication tools to enrich our learning, especially in contrast to an educational system grounded in print technology and an industrial infrastructure. While technology may play a role in highlighting the needs for change, technology alone will not provide reform. As Prof. Barry Fishman has argued, “Technology needs school reform more than school reform needs technology” (Personal Communication).

The potential and reality of Web 2.0 tools

The best instantiations of Web 2.0 tools are extraordinary, and the bulk are, unfortunately, quite ordinary and quite well suited for fairly standard instructional models.

There are hundreds of exemplary examples of Web 2.0 projects (many of which can be found at edublogawards.com), and I’ll highlight just one here. The Flat Classroom Project of 2007, hosted at flatclasroomproject.wikispaces.com, was a collaboration amongst eight classrooms in America, Shanghai, Austria, Qatar, and India. Students in the classroom were divided into 10 teams of students from around the world in order to study the 10 world flatteners from Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat (Friedman, 2007). Each team took one of the world flatteners and explored its impact by creating a wiki page which included video, images, and collaboratively composed text. The videos were shot in one country and then “outsourced” to another for editing, so a student might film something in Qatar to be edited in America. The essays that followed the videos were written collaboratively, and the discussion pages “behind” the main project pages show the various project management, communication and teamwork skills that students needed to practice in order to successfully complete the project. In the process of designing the wiki page, students undertook a critical examination of an important phenomena and then worked together to create a multimedia performance of their understanding.

While no studies have looked widely across Web 2.0 tools, there is anecdotal evidence that this kind of project is a very rare exception to two normal states. The first normal state with Web 2.0 is failure. Of the hundreds of thousands of blogs and wikis created, most die on the vine. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as one of the advantages of Web 2.0 is that they are both inexpensive and time-cheap to create, and so one can fail repeatedly before finding a model that works. That said, these failed instantiations are not realizing any of the aforementioned hypothesized benefits. The second normal state for Web 2.0 tools are applications that fit neatly into standard, industrial models of education. In these states, a wiki might be used as an easy way for a teacher to create a website as a one-way delivery device for content, rather than a collaborative medium. Or perhaps a student creates a blog as a kind of online portfolio, but her writings are never published widely, never shared with others, or never commented upon by classmates. In a sense the blog has allowed the student to pass in her homework online, but none of the potentially benefits of publishing within a larger critical, collaborative community are realized. If these two states are indeed the norm, then right now Web 2.0 tools may offer tremendous potential for education, but this potential is not much realized.

There is also anecdotal evidence that the distribution of the use of these tools, sophisticated or not, is skewed towards wealthy, suburban communities rather than poorer rural or urban communities. In theory, free and simple Web 2.0 tools that can build learning communities within and beyond schools should be able to benefit a wide variety of students equitably. Indeed, under-resourced schools might plausibly even benefit disproportionately, since networked computing technologies can be used to bring a wide variety of intellectual resources into low-income communities, where higher-income communities can afford to bring more of those intellectual resources directly into the classroom. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the scenario currently unfolding.

I hypothesize that the distribution of Web 2.0 tools is indeed uneven, and that schools that are more wealthy, more white, more selective, and more suburban are more likely to employ Web 2.0 teaching tools than schools where students are poorer, non-white, and from urban or rural communities. Though no empirical research has been done on this topic, my hypothesis has been shaped by anecdotal evidence from conversations with educators, online discussions amongst academic technology integrationists, and evaluations of renowned education-related wikis, blogs and social networks. At a first glance, it appears that new opportunities afforded by Web 2.0 tools are primarily available to those students with access to many other types of opportunities. Henry Jenkins (2007) has raised similar concerns around this “participation gap” between wealthy and middle class students with access to participatory online communities and working class students who are being left behind.

Moreover, I expect that there is not only a difference in the distribution of these tools, but qualitative inequities in their application. Researchers have found that instruction in poor, non-white, urban schools is dominated by didactic, teacher-centered forms of instruction, where white, suburban students enjoy more interactive, student-centered teaching (Diamond 2007). I believe that these inequities will extend into the digital domain, and that urban schools in low-income communities will use Web 2.0 tools in more teacher-centered, less collaborative ways than suburban schools in higher-income communities. Furthermore, it seems likely that this didactic instruction in under-resourced schools will be focused on training students on basic skills, and the more interactive instruction in wealthier school will involve nurturing students in the critical thinking and complex communication skills that are essential to the 21^st century (Levy and Murnane 2004). Thus in the absence of policy interventions, it may be that low-income students will have less access to educational experiences with Web 2.0 tools, and the experiences that they do have will be less collaborative, less empowering, and less relevant to the future needs of society.

Future scenarios for Web 2.0 in education

The picture painted above is a fairly gloomy picture of Web 2.0 in education: these tools have tremendous potential to nurture the skills that students will need for the 21^st century civic and economic spheres, and yet these tools remained largely under-utilized, especially in under-resourced environments. And without fairly dramatic intervention, there is no reason to believe that this will change in the future.

Educational institutions are conservative ones. In many systems, teachers are not fully professionalized, and very few systems have incentives that reward teachers for innovative instruction. A teacher who lectures at the front of the class gets paid the same as one who pours his heart into developing multimedia, cross-cultural collaborative projects. So classrooms prove remarkably resistant to change.

Changing the orientation of schools towards 21^st century skills and teaching methods would be hard enough, and it’s made even harder in America by standards-based instruction which directs schools to focus more on 19^th and 20^th century basic skills. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law forces schools, especially schools serving low-performing students, to focus on preparing students to take standardized tests in basic skills almost to the exclusion of every other goal. Within schools who feel threatened by the NCLB regime, there is a strong disincentive to focus on 21^st century skills that will not be measured by standardized tests. The principle at work in America and applicable across all contexts is that education regimes which measure success through standardized tests that demand performances of rote memory are unlikely to produce teachers who prepare their students for performances of 21^st century skill demonstration.

As a result of these disincentives, teachers who want to wisely incorporate technology into their instruction are something of a rarity, and they tend to appear in wealthy, suburban schools where the teachers and administrators face little threat of having any significant number of their students fail to pass state tests. As a result, students who already attend schools with a variety of resource advantages, enjoy the additional instructional advantages of using Web 20 tools to develop fundamental skills and rehearse for 21^st century environments, while their less well-off peers enjoy fewer opportunities in schools with fewer resources. Even extraordinary efforts to put more computers and bigger network connections in urban schools will provide little amelioration to the inequity because the appearance of machines is not going to change the incentive structure which rewards teachers who use computers for drilling students on basic math problems but not for involving them in collaborative, public performances of their understanding. In the most likely scenario unfolding in the United States, and perhaps in other Western countries, free Web 2.0 tools are likely to exacerbate the opportunity/achievement gap, since only schools with the luxury to largely ignore testing requirements will be able to afford the time to experiment with these new tools.

Changing this future scenario would require making some significant changes in the entire educational system. The most likely alternative scenario is one where business leaders demand that the educational system shifts its focus to 21^st century skills, as groups like the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills are trying to do in America. The growing gap between the applications of Web 2.0 tools in the world and in schools may be a critical part of the argument for more 21^st century instruction. Based on that call, national standards and laws would change to reward schools for trying to go beyond the basic skills to teach critical thinking and complex communication, or perhaps teach the basics in the context of these new, critical skills. From there, schools and teachers would have to conduct a campaign of education technology professional development for teachers that used a proportion of resources similar to those invested in getting computers in schools in the first place. Schools of education would need to do more to prepare pre-service teachers for using technology, which would of course require many of the professors in schools of education to learn something about how to go about doing so. These technology reform efforts, however, would need to be driven by a desire to reshape the goals of education, rather than the desire to simply integrate technology. Technology can abet school reform, but it cannot replace it.

There are several other factors which may nudge the future towards or away from greater educational adoption of Web 2.0 tools. As more young teachers, digital natives, enter the teaching service with their technological experience, they may find it easier to adopt new technologies. That said, it is unclear that there is a strong relationship between technological know-how and the use of technology in the classroom. Most teachers learn to teach from their own experience and from mentors, neither of which usually provide an exemplary model for technology use in the classroom.

Certain technological advances could give a nudge towards using more technologies. If the cost of computers drops dramatically, such that 1-1 computing models in schools become broadly feasible, that may allow for greater adoption of a wide variety of computing technologies. It would also help if school adopted software that gave teachers better control over computers, such that teachers could restrict and allow access to certain applications, websites etc. in real time during a class period. Those kinds of structures would make it easier for students to stay on task and easier for teachers to structure and scaffold learning. Internet filters are currently a serious obstacle towards using websites in the classroom. Most filters are knee-high fences around the internet which tech-savvy children jump over easily and which older teachers trip over. In many schools, filters serve to keep teachers off of the internet and away from employing novel teaching strategies while students happily employ proxy servers and other tricks to evade filters. Depending on these technological advances and policy decisions, we may see greater or lesser adoption of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms.

From the perspective of the university, the last thing that might be done to encourage a future where 21^st century skills are taught through practices involving Web 2.0 would be to provide research to the education policy community that can show the benefits of learning 21^st century skills in collaborative online environments and the inequitable distribution of these opportunities.

Gauging the future of the web

The collected works of Shakespeare include three categories of plays. In the comedies, things get better, and in the tragedies things get worse. It is in the histories that we find stories where some people are winners and others are not, and these histories probably provide the best models for predicting the future.

The driving technical principle behind the evolution of Web 2.0 tools is the reduction of the interaction costs of communication, and these costs will continue to be driven down. As these costs are driven down, we will continue to see the emergence of qualitatively new behaviors and the products of these behaviors will be as or more bizarre to future peoples as Wikipedia and Twitter are to us now. These new behaviors will be at some level democratizing, as they will involve harnessing collaborative energy and collective intelligence to meet cooperative goals. Many of these innovations will level hierarchies and include and involve more people in social systems. They will accelerate globalization by making cross-cultural, cross-content, cross-time-zone conversations even cheaper and take less time to achieve.

In some cases, business will use these tools to manipulate people into buying all manner of worthless products, and in other cases business will use these tools to allow consumers to participate in the design of new products that more effectively satisfy human needs. Global warming activists will use the tools to rally massive numbers of people to work to attend to this major crisis, and hate groups will use the tools to rally people together to oppress others. Some schools may use these tools to nurture new skill sets in their students, which may be essential and beneficial to national competitiveness, but create greater inequities between those who have, and those who lack, these 21^st century skills. Other schools will use new media to continue herding students through an outdated, industrialized mode of education. Individuals may develop wider networks of online friends and fewer close ties, and those without reliable internet access may be locked out of the social networks of prestige and power. Web 2.0 tools will erase some of the challenges of collaborating and communicating across time and geography, and they will enact a series of new challenges in the stead of the old.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

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Leisure and consumption

Traditional anchors for identity, such as occupation or region, now compete with, or are replaced by, identities based upon consumption, lifestyle and leisure (Giddens, 1991). Leisure-based activities have increasingly become important indicators of who we are and our place in society, including how we understand civic and political participation. A series of shifts have occurred which have further strengthened the relationships between consumption and identity for young people. These include delaying responsibilities associated with adulthood and independent living, an increase in communication media, and developments in advertising and marketing.

The cost of living and of higher education are two factors that have led to British youth delaying their participation in responsibilities associated with adulthood, such as independent living, home ownership or parenthood. Depending on their socio-economic status, on average, young people remain either financially dependent on their parents, or contribute financially to the parental home, until their late twenties (Parker, Aldridge & Measham, 1998). Without the need to pay for mortgages or children this delayed access to adult responsibilities means that young people often have more time and money for leisure than had previous generations.

The ability to consume has been further enhanced through developments in technology that have given young people unprecedented access to information on a multitude of consumption and leisure practices and to the people and communities who participate in them. Such technologies include the internet, increases in the number of television channels, and changes in publishing that have reduced production costs, making specialist smaller readership magazines commercially viable.

Young people are also targeted by those interested in commercially exploiting youth markets, including, for example, regional governments who have seen young adults’ consumption in bars and clubs as the solution to city centre regeneration (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003). A range of aggressive and insidious marketing techniques have been developed and used to target young people, including, for example, giving popular children free products to promote to their peer group. So while there has always been a complex interaction between the media, consumer interests and ‘authentic’ youth culture (Riley & Cahill, 2005) young people today experience unprecedented exposure to commercial pressures (see, for example, discussions of ‘ethnographic marketing’, ‘viral advertising’ and ‘KGOY’ (Kids growing older younger).

Branding and other marketing practices have intimately linked identity with consumption. For example, young men may identify as a ‘rebel’ by buying particular clothes rather than having participated in any act considered rebellious (Gill, Henwood & McClean, 2005). There is considerable debate over the agency young people have regarding consumption and identity. Young people are not necessarily passive consumers and while they may be attracted to particular identities associated with branded materials they may take these items and rework them in various ways, including parody. Others argue however, that the notion of agency is itself an illusion of discourses of consumption, or at the very least, subversion through consumption has limitations. (For an example of the debates on agency and consumption in relation to young women and sexualised clothing see Duit & van Zoonen (2006, 2007) and Gill (2007)).

The relationships between traditional anchors of identity and those produced through consumption and leisure are also disputed. Indeed, analyses of ‘changing times’ tend to be anecdotal, with limited empirical work available (www.identities.org.uk). It is likely, however, that young people’s subjectivities are constructed through a variety of identities shaped by ‘traditional’ orientations to class, region, family and gender, and more ‘liquid’, flexible ones orienting around leisure-based activities, such as sports or shopping. Thus, leisure and consumption-based identities may not have replaced traditional anchors for identity, rather, when young people had access to them these identities may sit alongside each other, being drawn upon when contextually relevant (Riley, Griffin & Morey, 2008). Having access to, and being able to participate in, both traditional and liquid identities is subject to a complex interaction of personal and social variables, but is linked to social inequality. For example, working class children are more likely to have a TV in their bedroom, increasing the amount of advertising to which they are subjected (Mayo, 2005).

Multiplicity

As well as opening up opportunities for leisure and consumption increases in communication media have offered a plethora of ways of understanding ourselves. In having access to, for example, history programmes about life in ancient Egypt, soap operas with evil twins, or channels dedicated to extreme sports, young people grow up in a world in which they have literally seen it all before. Thus, the proliferation and globalisation of near instant forms of technological communication make available a dynamically-shifting range of stories and forms of knowledge that can inform young people’s identity management. Subjectivity, then, is not considered to be constructed from pre-formed essences which exist independently outside of time, talk or other social activity, but are constantly (re)produced in interaction, constructed from the range of subject positions available to the individual, which may be contradictory or only partially formed.

Developments in communication technologies have intensified relationships between subjectivity and technology. There has always been a link between subjectivity and technology, for example using a hammer allows a person to experience their arm as a lever (Burkitt, 1999). However, distinctions between bodies, selves and technology have increasingly blurred, leading analysts to talk of cyborg as a metaphor for understanding contemporary subjectivity in which the boundaries between organism and machine are transgressed and from which new senses of self emerge (Gergen, 1991). For example, mobile phones can give us the sense of never being alone, of carrying with us the potential of always being able to connect to others.

For contemporary young people, exposed to and consuming a range of communication media, consumption and leisure practices, the traditional move from identifying with one’s family to one’s peer group is now one that is likely to involve multiple peer groups. It is therefore more appropriate to think of youth cultures in the plural in order to foreground the multiplicity of identities that orient around the notion of youth and to think of young people moving dynamically between these communities. In previous eras, subcultures, such as hippies or punks, bestowed meaningfulness on those who clearly identified with one group, locating authenticity in those who most closely approximated the permanent alternative lifestyle that reflected the norms associated with this group (McKay, 1998). Now such an understanding of authenticity may be less valued and meaningfulness may be as easily located in temporary, fluid and multiple identities, identities facilitated through technology and consumption practices. So while some people may still strongly identify with one group, others adopt a more playful pick-and-mix approach, moving through a kaleidoscope of fractured scenes and taste cultures (Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2004).

While youth cultures have multiplied and fractured, other, homogenising forces have come into play, including the globalisation of youth cultures and the blurring of adult and youth activities. Communication technologies have aided the globalisation and commercialisation of youth cultures, working as homogenising forces that enable youth cultures to be formed and communicated almost instantly in more or less similar ways across the world (see, for example, Studdert’s (2006) discussion on African Chelsea football club supporters). There has also been a blurring of adult and youth interests and activities. Just as young people delay taking on adult responsibilities and so extend their adolescence into adulthood, older generations too have been less inclined to relinquish youthful activities. The music video game ‘Guitar Hero’, for example, recently advertised itself as cross-generational entertainment for parents and their teenage children to use while queuing together for a festival. Successful movement across these boundaries is not, however, a given. Instead, scenes usually fracture and multiply to accommodate niche markets, for example ‘Baby Raves’ – electronic dance music daytime events held for parents with small children.

Having a range of identities has traditionally been understood as psychologically healthy, since a person can maintain positive self esteem by drawing on other aspects of self if one aspect experiences failure (see, for example, work on Social Identity Theory by Tajfel & Turner, 1986). The increase in opportunities to experience multiple identities may therefore be considered to have positive potential. Creating different identities, such as online avatars or Bluetooth monikers, allow people to construct different senses of selves that represent or allow them to engage in different behaviours and activities. For example, different DJ names can represent different types of music played by that person, freeing the DJ from being pigeon-holed while also allowing him/herself to communicate to his/her potential audience what kind of music to expect on a particular night. However, concern has been raised that the number of identities a person may be expected to dynamically and, in a 24 hour culture, perpetually, move through, can create over-demanding situations, causing stress. Furthermore, some understandings will inevitably clash with others, so that multiplicity is associated with contradiction. For example, young women are expected to both have ‘girl power’ and to be heterosexually attractive, thereby reproducing traditional expectations of femininity (for examples, see Gill 2006, or http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/newFemininities/).

Problems associated with consumption are also implicated in the management of multiple identities, since these different aspects of self are often facilitated through the ability to consume. Participation requires, for example, entrance to clubs, appropriate clothes, or technological equipment. School children regularly use social networking sites after school to communicate with each other, creating social exclusion for those without access to the internet at home. Thus, there are significant structural inequalities in the ability to adopt a playful ‘pick-and-mix’ stance. Indeed significant inequalities may be produced at the most basic level of self-storying, since the most excluded in society may struggle even to tell one, let alone, multiple narratives about themselves.

Neo-liberalism

The need to story oneself with multiple narratives, whether drawn from traditional- or consumption-based identity markers, is particularly relevant because of the dominance of neo-liberalism. Identity has always been an important marker for young people, and engaging in leisure and consumption, such as in choices around appearance and clothes, has played a significant role in this. What is different for today’s youth is the tightening of meaning around identity and consumption that has been facilitated through neo-liberal rhetoric of risk, responsibility and individualism.

Neo-liberalism describes the idea that people are encouraged to see themselves as if they are autonomous, rational, risk-managing subjects, responsible for their own destinies and called “to render one’s life knowable and meaningful through a narrative of free choice and autonomy – however constrained one might actually be” (Gill, 2006, p.260; see also Kelly, 2006). From this position, the social context in which a person lives is reduced to their immediate interpersonal relations, and any personal, social or health problems, and their attendant solutions, are located within the individual. Neo-liberalism allows people to make sense of themselves in individualistic and psychological terms, understanding their consumption practices as freely chosen markers of their identity (Cronin, 2003). Neo-liberal rhetoric of individual choice and responsibility now dominates much of post-industrial sense making about what it means to be a good person. Such changes have been identified as powerful new forms of governance (Rose, 1989). For example, being asked to work excessive and low paid hours may not be considered exploitation but accounted for in terms of a worker’s psychological characteristic of being a helpful person (Walkerdine, 2002). Thus, young people are developing their sense of self in a context in which wider discourses in society encourage them to understand themselves through psychological and individual discourses, rather than those that are communal or sociological.

Neo-liberal subjectivity has been associated with an increased focus on the body as an important site for identity management. For example, there has been a coupling between neo-liberal values of rationality and responsibility and the cultural valuing of slenderness, so that a slender and toned body has come to represent a person who has rational control over their appetites and who acts responsibly in relation to maintaining a healthy body. These associations mean that body size has come not just to signify physical health, but also mental health and morality (Riley, et al, 2008).

The relationship between the body and identity may be particularly important for young people, given that in comparison to adults, young people tend to have less control over other aspects of their lives. Young people may employ a range of body modification techniques, from dieting and weight training to cosmetic surgery or body art. As an example, body art, an umbrella term for a variety of practices including tattoos and piercings, has become increasingly popular as a way of articulating personal and social identities (Riley & Cahill, 2005) and with continued developments in technology and cosmetic surgery may produce ever more creative forms of body modification (for example, the use of implants to create horns).

Youth cultures are often associated with pleasure and hedonism, and the body is central to these issues. For example, electronic music dance culture (also known as ‘rave’) employs technologies such as sound systems, lasers, electronically manufactured music and ‘designer’ drugs to produce hyper real communal and embodied experiences (Wilson, 2006). These experiences allow participants to develop identities and experiences of self that may be incorporated into neo-liberal narratives of self. Neo-liberal rhetoric can also be employed to justify such pleasures, as it can be argued that the individual has the right and freedom to engage in escapism through extreme but pleasurable intoxication (Riley, Morey & Griffin, 2008). Given the excessive weekend drinking seen across Britain’s city centres such a ‘culture of intoxication’, in which people collectively seek and celebrate a loss of control, may be considered normalised for many young people (Measham & Brain, 2005). Paradoxically then, neo-liberal rights and responsibilities discourses may be employed to justify embodied, communal, intoxicated and even ‘mad’ selves, selves that are the antithesis of the rational neo-liberal subject.

Neo-tribalism

Neo-liberalism has arguably come to dominate much of contemporary western thinking about subjectivity, however, it is not without competing discourses. For example, sociologist Michel Maffesoli, while also emphasising the informal and local, argues that contemporary social organisation is highly social. Maffesoli’s theory of neo-tribalism challenges notions of society as increasingly alienated and individualistic and instead characterises daily life as a continuous movement through a range of small and potentially temporary groups that are distinguished by shared lifestyles, values and understandings of what is appropriate behaviour (Maffesoli, 1996). These groups give a sense of belonging and identity, examples of which include gathering to watch football in a bar, participants on service user websites or regular commuters sharing public transport. What distinguishes neo-tribal social formation from traditional social groupings is that people belong to a variety of groups, many of them by choice, so that neo-tribal memberships are plural, temporary, fluid and often elective (Riley, Griffin & Morey, in submission).

Within neo-tribal theory people are understood as moving dynamically through a series of groups, some more partially formed than others, which are in the person’s locality. However, technologies such as the internet make the notion of being ‘local’ relative, since people may share physical or virtual proximity. That neo-tribes are distinguished by the grouping, however temporary in time or space, of people who share lifestyles, values and understandings of what is appropriate behaviour leads Maffesoli to analyse such groups as engaged in moments of ’sovereignty over one’s own existence’. Neo-tribal gatherings provide sovereignty because they create temporary pockets of freedom to engage in behaviours and values associated with that group, which may be different from the values and expected behaviours of other groups (that participants may or may not also be members of). For example, a person may shout aggressively when watching football in a bar, but would not raise their voice at a family meal.

Creating spaces in which to practice one’s group values requires a turning away from other groups in order to ‘do your own thing’. The resultant lack of engagement with other groups, in particular more dominant groups, often leads to youth cultures being constructed as problematic. First, because it is read as a sign of young people failing to engage with adult groups or adult led activities deemed good for the young people. Second, these groups are often understood as challenging the dominant culture or celebrating values at odds with the dominant culture, creating moral panics that construct young people as ‘folk devils’. However, analyses of these groups often show a complex blending of values that both reflect and challenge dominant values. For example, pro-ana websites, which are created by young women to promote the concept of anorexia as a lifestyle choice, are an example of young women engaging in valued practices of being pro-active and employing technological skills. However, they are applying themselves to the promotion of a cause that can lead to serious illness or death. Similarly, setting up an illegal rave requires the bringing together of a diverse set of resources that include entrepreneurial, organisational, musical and electrical engineering skills, skills used to facilitate parties that are unlicensed, held on other people’s property and involve high levels of illicit drug use.

Dominant values themselves are, of course, constantly being negotiated and Maffesoli (1996) argues that there is currently a general move by the ‘masses’ away from the institutional power and rational organisations that defined the modern age to a zeitgeist that celebrates sociality, proximity, emotional attachments and hedonistic values. Thus, when groups create opportunities to practice sovereignty over their existence they are creating spaces in which to engage in values that orient around sociality, emotionality and hedonism. In relating neo-tribalism to young people, it may be useful to recognise the similarities between Maffesoli’s concept of sovereignty and Hakim Bey’s ‘Temporary Autonomous Zones’ (TAZ), a term he uses to describe transitory unsanctioned self-governing sites (Bey, 1991). In coming together to participate in acts of sociality and hedonism, TAZs or neo-tribal gatherings can be understood as providing sites of resistance to a neo-liberal sensibility based on rationality, rights, responsibility and individualism.

The creation of temporary and fluid spaces in which to participate in one’s own values, can be understood as an emerging form of political engagement, an ‘everyday politics’ that focuses on the local, informal or personal, rather than engaging with official organisations and institutional power. Personal lives have been used previously as the basis for political activism (examples being the ‘identity politics’ of feminism, gay/lesbian liberation and black power). However, such forms of political activism, like traditional political activities, often focus on a social change agenda. What distinguishes the new personalised form of politics is that the focus is on creating temporary spaces in which to participate in ones’ own values and associated behaviours – to be able to ‘do your own thing’ – thus participants do not necessarily need to engage with other groups or organisations of governance. Everyday politics is thus about creating spaces in which to live out alternative values, shifting political participation to the ‘everyday’ individual or informal group level.

An ‘everyday politics’ may be particularly relevant for young people because of a perceived lack of attention from those involved in traditional politics to issues of concern for young people (eg the environment). Furthermore, as Harris argues, when young people engage with state institutions to effect social change, their action problematically works to both endorse these systems and to locate themselves in a subordinate position within them: “young people may well have their own ideas about how states and citizenry should operate, and to ask to be included or to participate in the current order is to endorse a system that may be fundamentally at odds with these other visions. Further, it is to accept one’s subordinate position as a fringe dweller who can only ever hope to be invited or asked to participate, but who can never do the inviting themselves” (2001, p.187). Like Maffesoli, Harris argues that one solution is not to engage with institutions associated with governance and power, but to create one’s own spaces of autonomy. Harris’s (2001) work on girlzines is such an example. Harris (ibid.) argued that the young women involved used internet magazines to create their own space from which to negotiate, redefine and reclaim politics, citizenship and novel gender subjectivities. Harris’s work suggests that leisure and entertainment based activities can provide sites for young people to engage in practices that relate to participation and citizenship, providing the opportunity to produce ‘counter stories’ that act as “forms of politics, often misrecognised as entertainment” (Harris, Carney & Fine, 2001, p.12). Neo-liberalism is implicated in ‘everyday politics’ since neo-liberal rhetoric of focusing on the personal through discourses of individual choice and personal responsibility provides the ideological context in which locating political participation at the individual or informal group level makes sense. However, arguments for these forms of political engagement are controversial and empirical work is scattered and underdeveloped (a special issue of ‘Youth’ on everyday politics edited by Anita Harris is currently underway; also see Riley et al, in submission).

Implications

Adolescence and early adulthood are traditionally conceptualised as making up an important time in identity development. Today’s youth experience this time in a context in which the culturally dominant model of the self is of an autonomous, rational, psychological subject who bears ultimate responsibility for the self and who must manage multiple identities, many of which are made available through consumption and technology.

This context provides a range of opportunities for pleasurable and playful engagement with identity, allowing the young people who can take these opportunities to construct a sense of place in the world. However, this construction of self also creates certain stressors. First, locating every success or failure at the personal or psychological level absents other ways of making sense of oneself and masks the impact of structural inequalities on life ‘choices’. Second, the constant pressure to (re)make yourself and manage multiplicity is both demanding and requires the management of contradictory identities. Third, structural inequalities mean that some people do not have the resources to do this kind of identity management.

In masking the impact of structural inequalities neo-liberalism sets the scene for a shift towards a personalising of politics. Locating oneself at the personal and psychological level, coupled with a general move away from engaging with traditional institutional power, creates the context in which it may make sense for young people to focus their political energies on informal acts, such as recycling or benefit gigs for small charities. This shift can be read as reflecting an alienation from traditional politics that is a part of the contemporary British political landscape (Colman & Gøtze, 2001; Harris, 2001), or more positively, as a sign of a zeitgeist swing away from one form of political engagement to another (Maffesoli, 1996).

Although neo-liberalism has come to dominate our understanding of the subject it is one concept amongst many. One alternative to neo-liberalism that also has political potential is neo-tribalism (Maffesoli, 1996). Neo-tribalism argues that our identities are made from moving through a variety of local groups to which we have an emotional attachment, these groups are conceptualised as creating temporary pockets of sovereignty in which to celebrate values of hedonism and sociality. Youth cultures can be conceptualised as neo-tribes, in which young people carve out temporal spaces in which to practice particular sets of values and behaviours. In creating these spaces neo-tribes can be considered as new forms of political participation, since they allow alternative values systems to survive. Young people may therefore create their own neo-tribes in which to celebrate identities that offer an alternative to the rational risk managing neo-liberal subject, the ‘culture of intoxication’ being one such example.

The moral panic that ensued from today’s culture of intoxication is part of a long history of representing ‘youth as problem’ and can be seen to inform tensions around how contemporary young people appropriate space and technology. While being youthful is a valued commodity, young people themselves are often represented as deviant, representations that are classed and gendered – sexually active females, criminally active males, for example (Griffin, 1993). (For a contemporary example, see the very particular and narrow reading of youth in the World Bank’s World Development Report, which locates solutions to problematic youth in formal institutions, absenting the possibilities that youth cultures themselves provide positive spaces for identity development (Luttrell-Rowland, 2007)).

Hedonistic youth cultures can, however, be analysed as attempts to use pleasure as a vehicle for creating positive social alternatives. Rave culture, for example, exhorts the values of PLUR – peace, love, unity and respect (Wilson, 2006). Similarly, excessive weekend drinking in city centres has been analysed as a sign that working class youth have the confidence to use these public spaces in a way that previous generations did not (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003).

However, such forms of resistance may reinforce the overall dominance of neo-liberalism. For example, engaging in intoxicated excesses at the weekend may release tension created by the stress of being a neo-liberal subject, facilitating participants to return to work on Monday. Participants of hedonistic resistance to neo-liberalism often account for their behaviour with neo-liberal rhetoric of rights and risk, arguing that if one is ultimately responsible for oneself then one also has a right to do what one wants with that self (Riley, Morey & Griffin, 2008). There is therefore a complex interaction between alternative and dominant discourses of self since one may be enabled by the other. Young people may be snatching spaces to be ‘free’ but they are using the masters’ tools to do so. Thus, while neo-tribal memberships provide participants with a sense of belonging they may not challenge the neo-liberal construction of self as a project. Furthermore, neo-tribalism still requires the subject to manage multiplicity (in this case of group/tribal based identities) with the attendant stressors of multiplicity described above. Neo-liberal constructions of the self and multiple subjectivities are thus likely to continue into the future as significant ways of understanding oneself and place in the world.

There are examples of young people participating in collective action, a recent example being the anti-Iraq war ‘Not in My Name’ campaign. However, it has been argued that the impact of locating responsibility at the personal level has reduced young people’s ability to make collective challenges since they are less likely to be exposed to discourses of collective experience and struggle, including, for example, those of feminism (McRobbie, 2008). Neo-liberalism may also foster a culture in which the social contract between citizen and government is weakened – if successes or failures are reduced to the interpersonal, then the citizen owes the state nothing.

The proliferation and globalisation of near instant forms of technological communication combined with the multiple and fragmented nature of social lives means that we have available to us an ever shifting kaleidoscope of understandings from which we can draw on in the (re)production of neo-liberal subjectivities. These subjectivities are reduced to their immediate interpersonal relations, to the realm of the personal and psychological, but not necessarily to the private. Communication technologies allow the self to be (re)produced in the public sphere, for example though entries in social network sites such as Facebook, blogs or personal and work websites. Just as every aspect of life can already be seen on TV, so we replay it back using technology to make partial and fractured narratives of ourselves that span space and time. See, for example, ‘FutureMe.org’, an online resource for sending emails to yourself in the future. The ‘best’ of these messages are made public in an anonymous form for entertainment. Indeed it may be that communication technologies are creating a situation where people understand aspects of themselves as only truly meaningful when offered up for the consumption of others. It is possible therefore that communication technologies, such as Web 2.0, are creating a new shift in which the private may only be meaningfully experienced when in the public.

Developments in technology are likely to enhance this process. For example, the ability to store a lifetime of video on an iPod will allow an individual to consume their own life experiences (Cliff, O’Malley & Taylor, 2008). Fear of social exclusion if one doesn’t participate in these technologies, plus surveillance technology, such as CCTV and the use of finger print scanners to ID children in schools, means that there is only limited opt out from these forms of technology. Furthermore, communication technologies do not provide unlimited ways of self-storying. Rather the technologies themselves and the cultural valuing of particular traits create powerful scaffolding around which people build their self-narratives. For example, there are international internet dating websites that require participants to describe the colour of their hair and eyes, despite these being primarily defining features for Caucasian people. Similarly, research on online gaming shows that participants regularly create avatars that fulfil conventional definitions of heterosexually attractive gendered attributes (for example, women create female avatars that have slender, toned bodies) (Waskul & Edgley, 2000).

In the future young people will therefore have to negotiate a self that is splintered off into a series of surfaces that reflect both the technologies that enable them and the cultural mores in which they are located. Sociologist Norbert Elias argued that changes in social structures during the Middle Ages led to a shift in human subjectivity in which the public and private became compartmentalised. Responses to actions such as public defecation changed, so that people moved these behaviours to the private sphere. These changes led to a shift in consciousness in which thoughts could also become private, making, for example, the experience of ‘repressed anger’ a possibility, since previously anger was a public act and not a private experience (that one may or may not express). Changes in contemporary social organisation, enabled through communication technologies, have the potential to create similar radical changes in subjectivity. Notably, a fractured and multiple self experienced in the public sphere and reflected through technology across a range of temporal physical and virtual locations.

Already the internet has produced a situation in which aspects of our selves are created through technology and distributed across time and space. Some of these selves have connections to each other, as in the past selves communicating with future selves as via FutureMe.org. With other selves the connections to the original source(s) are broken or new connections are made, such as forgotten photographs uploaded onto public domains and re-appropriated by friends, colleagues or people unknown. An example of re-appropriation I found was a young girl’s homepage that had a photograph of another (attractive) child on it, with the explanation that ’she looks a bit like me’. It may be that young people will experience fractured and multiple subjectivity in the same way that they are encouraged to consider high street clothing – as tools of identity to be temporarily appropriated, experienced and then cast off in favour of some new look or experience. Future subjectivity may therefore be conceptualised as a collection of multiple, diffuse selves existing across time and space, that have differing degrees of relationships with each other and perhaps no longer needing to be held together by the concept of a ‘core self’.

It is likely, therefore, that in the future young people will need to find ways to exist in the plural. In a preferable future they will be able to develop a sense of being valued and of having opportunities to participate positively in the many social worlds that will be potentially available to them. Schools and other educational institutions will have a duty to help facilitate this.

One way to increase young people’s access to traditional and liquid identities from which to story themselves would be through the creation of more personalised education. In the same way that technologies are enabling increasingly more individually tailored medical interventions, a personalised educational system could be developed in which each student would in effect be their own portfolio manager, managing themselves as a project. The aim for educationalists would be to help young people identify their values, interests and talents and to find ways of using these to develop the various skills they need to become critical and engaged citizens who feel valuated and located in their world.

By drawing on young people’s own interests educators may use leisure and consumption as a way to excite them about education, creating holistic ways to develop young people’s understanding and engagement with their world. Pop music, for example, is often a key site for young people’s interest and identity. Music technologies now allow people to compose music without needing knowledge of musical theory. Creating music with this technology can be used as a starting point for students to gain a sense of self-efficacy, from which they might develop their education holistically, exploring a range of associated subjects including musical theory, socio-political history and practical learning through organising and performing in a concert. It may therefore be an advantage to blur education with entertainment, particularly given the expectation, at least in some sections of society, that work should be enjoyable (Tapscott, 2008).

Future education may require different relations of authority between educational institutions and their students. Already communication technologies have reduced teachers’ control over pupils. For example, school pupils have created a mobile phone ring tone that their teachers cannot hear by recording the ‘mosquito’, a high pitched noise used to keep teenagers away from public amenities like late night shops. Technologies are likely to increase young people’s autonomy, like some contemporary adults they may work (or study) from home, or in the future, they may use biologically embedded technologies only viewable to themselves (Cliff, O’Malley & Taylor, 2008). A personalised education system that incorporates the values and interests of the student is likely to enhance self-motivated study and create more egalitarian relationships with educational institutions. However, respecting the values and interests of students may bring challenges, given that youth cultures are often a complex blend of dominant and counter cultural values. After all, one can confidently predict that young people will sometimes do things not expected or approved of by their elders.

Communication technologies mean that educators and students can draw from a huge range of resources of expertise. For example, lectures from world renowned academics are available on ‘YouTube’. The role of future educators in a personalised educational setting would then be to help young people identify which sites may help them develop the skills they most need to meet their educational interests, values and needs. Educators would also have the role of helping students make links between their personal portfolios and the wider world. For example, identifying transferable skills, connections to the job market and developing critical analytical skills that would help them negotiate their way through their virtual and physical worlds. One way to do this is for students to be encouraged to explore the power of language in structuring the way people understand their world, so that students can critically evaluate the texts that they use through the analytics of argument, reflection and doubt (Gergen with Wortham, 2001; Postman, 1995). Postman (1995), for example, argues for a curriculum that constructs knowledge as historically multiple, borrowed and intermingled. Such a curriculum would introduce plurality and set a framework for understanding one’s own multiplicity, contradictions and socio-historic context.

Drawing on Postman would allow future educators to help young people develop a critical framework to negotiate and manage both their personal and social identities, while challenging some of the individualism of neo-liberalism and allowing young people to explore the impact of taking up particular identities in particular ways. This approach would prepare young people to both positively engage with the requirements of neo-liberal subjectivity, while also having the critical skills to explore alternative discourses, such as those associated with collective identities or spirituality.

In helping young people locate themselves as persons in relationships, embedded in a range of local and global communities educators would act as ‘community enablers’. An example of using communication technologies to develop positive social identity based narratives comes from California, where young Hispanic pupils, living in a context in which their families have lower socio-economic status in comparison to their white counterparts, worked with Web 2.0 technology to produce positive narratives of their ethnic identity, which were then shared between themselves and with their wider community (Rodriguez, 2007). A similar project could, for example, be used with young people in the UK who struggle to find positive self-narratives in their communities (for example, young unemployed working class men in post-industrial Britain (Winlow, 2001)).

Helping young people form positive relationships with their community could be enabled through setting assessments that connect individuals together to demonstrate the values and necessity of group cohesion. Efficacy of group work would be further enhanced if assessments were directly linked to involvement in community action, either in the school or wider community, so that young people were encouraged to consider themselves has having meaningful connections to their communities (see action research and social constructionist approaches in education, eg Gergen with Wortham, 2001; Reason and Bradbury, 2008). Such projects would explicitly or implicitly teach students about social citizenship, and have the potential to tap into neo-tribal values of sociality, emotionality and the pleasures associated with creating pockets of sovereignty over one’s own existence.

Neo-tribal theory argues that as people move in and out of the various groups to which they are affiliated their understanding of what is right and acceptable behaviour becomes relative, since it shifts for each group (Maffesoli, 1996). This form of relativist morality replaces the universal distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ on which modernist notions of morality are based. Maffesoli’s argument is that such a relativist perspective facilitates tolerance, since it allows for, and indeed normalises, a diversity of values and practices across different communities and social groups. If this hypothesis is correct it would be possible for educators to help young people identify their various memberships and to facilitate pride and positive identities in these memberships, without the need to negatively construct out-groups. An ideal outcome of neo-tribalism, then, is to enjoy confidence in one’s own memberships while maintaining an interest in others, a standpoint that may protect young people from being attracted to more fundamentalist orientated identities that provide a sense of security through the creation of a negative ‘Other’.

Future educators could therefore value and work with what students bring to their classes, facilitate successful management of the self as a project and act as community enablers. In a preferable future they would also take on the role of protector. Young people will need protection and guidance in terms of managing their public selves, including the implications of how they present themselves online, as well as managing the stresses of multiple identities (which may include class related expectations of over- or under- achievement). Students will need support in how to engage with technology without getting lost or consumed by it. Young people will also need to be protected against bullying facilitated by technology (eg mass ‘hate’ texts), privacy invasions (by both individuals and government institutions) and virulent advertising.

A preferable future then, is one where schools are fun, interesting, relevant and safe. Places where it is recognised that young people bring a range of interests and values to their educational setting, which are engaged with in order to facilitate the development of positive personal and social identities. A personalised portfolio model of education in which the educator acts as a facilitator may help students gain the skills for successful management of the self as a project, so that they may enjoy the rights and responsibilities attached to neo-liberal subjectivity. However, educators would also need to provide alternative discourses to neo-liberalism, helping young people develop critical faculties and to explore other ways of understanding themselves, in particular as persons in relationships embedded in communities. Educators will also need to act as protective stewards, shielding young people from some of the more aggressive and insidious aspects of technology, surveillance and commercialisation, helping young people develop skills to safely negotiate their identities across the various mediums they will inhabit.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

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This is being used for example at a City Academy in Bristol to replace taking the register and for ordering lunch.

See Gergen with Wortham (2001) for a discussion of social constructionist approach to education, which includes the principles of making education relevant to student’s lives, taking a holistic approach, encouraging reflexivity and making links to activities and actions outside the classroom.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

The starting point for this review is the assumption of a globalised world characterised by interdependent network spaces, the diminished importance of distance, and the existence of multiple spatialities of organisation and practice, as well as the availability of multiple geographies of belonging (Amin, 2002). From a theoretical perspective, Bourdieu’s (1990, 1999) work on fields and the concept of habitus recurs due to an increased sociological research emphasis on and interest in embodied practices in a world characterised by fluidity and flexibility. This fluidity has also been recognised by Cliff, O’Malley and Taylor (2008: 18) who argue that:

“…the blurring of distinctions between boundaries, at multiple levels: blurring between the personal/private and the public; between the individual identity and group identity, and therefore between individual output and group output; between what is part of the digital landscape and what is “reality”; between formal and informal learning; between work, play and education…”

will be key issues in the future. The flexibility of residence and increasing mobility is present in contemporary society in the form of migration and the fact that today’s societies are both emigrant and immigrant societies. The new kind of migration characterised by extra-territoriality and anchors instead of roots for identification then “casts a question mark upon the bond between identity and citizenship, individual and place, neighbourhood and belonging” (Bauman, 2008). Another trend which has been recognised by academic and policy circles alike is the decline in formal political engagement (Cornwall, 2008) and therefore “alternative ways of ensuring that voices are heard are required” (National Consumer Council, 2004: 10 quoted in Clarke and Newman, 2007).

Argument: locality, place and territories matter through virtual and material boundaries

Although globalisation processes are characterised by a diminished importance of space, they are also evident in a “transformation of practice and experience which is felt actually within localities” (Tomlinson, 1999, p9, emphasis in original). While there is an argument for the blurring between public and private spheres, there is also a debate about the growing diversification of social fields (Fowler, 1997). As people occupy multiple relationships and multiple subject positions, there are two opposing trends: a striving for belonging (feeling similar) and a striving for distinction (feeling separate).

Conceptions of citizenship and belonging need to be rethought as the nation-state as the preferred scale of political involvement has been de-centred. This means including practices such as social action, volunteering (Lister et al, 2002) and other than nominally formal political practices in the community (both real and virtual) in the notion of citizenship as well as allowing belonging to multiple communities (cf. Pell, 2008; Purcell, 2003). This leads to the evolution of different political practices in emerging public spheres – sites of emergent democratic citizenship.

Citizenship is an embodied practice and can be seen as a consequence of dispositions acquired in the private sphere. In this sense, the boundaries between public and private are indistinct and thus the personal is political and the political personal. Technology facilitates and exacerbates this blurring and thus opens avenues for direct democracy and widened access but unevenly distributed access can also reproduce existing hierarchies of power (cf. Cass, Shove and Urry, 2005).

Accessibility then becomes the main concern. Penetration of digital technologies has increased over the years but access to technology remains linked to patterns of social exclusion, with the most socially disadvantaged being the least likely to have or use access to digital technology. Barriers to access are then not only determined by inappropriate market provision and affordability but also by lack of confidence, skills and support. With the lack of digital technology skills becoming the new illiteracy stigma (OPM, 2008), the digital and social divide amplify each other.

Studies and data

1. Communities and place

The concept of community

There is an extensive sociological and anthropological literature on the changing meanings of community (Davies and Jones, 2003; Pahl, 2005; Philipson and Thompson, 2008) paying attention to the questions of disembedding and de-territorialisation of social relations in modernity which seem to have become accepted trends in the field (starting with Bell and Newby, 1971 and continued in Giddens, 1990; Tomlinson, 1999). Diminishing importance of space has also been claimed by Castells (1998, 2001), with special reference to the influence of ICT and the internet as appropriate medium of communication for the type of society and social relationships that he envisaged. Despite the ubiquity of the disembedding and de-territorialisation claims, local identifications, ie “communities-on-the-ground” (Pahl, 2005; Savage, Bagnall and Longhurst, 2005) and attachment to place have remained salient.

These questions have also been examined in the context of socio-economic transformation and regeneration where place identity and the forms it takes through community engagement have been considered central issues. Such studies have covered deprived neighbourhoods especially in old industrial regions (eg the author’s own research; Bennett, Beynon and Hudson, 2000; Harding, 1997; Waddington, 2003) and dynamic city centres (e.g. O’Connor and Wynne, 1996, Binnie and Skeggs, 2004) as well as (middle-class) residential areas (Savage, Bagnall and Longhurst, 2005).

A particularly promising attempt seems to be an approach which links networks, ie people’s interconnectedness, class and place as suggested by Blokland and Savage (2001). Liepins (2000) examines different approaches to the concept with particular reference to rural communities, and highlights the move away from community as a “fixed object” to a scale of inquiry, a symbolic construction (eg Cohen, 1985) or investigations of power where the politics of contrasting voices, spaces and actions can be considered. Neal and Walters (2008) also deal with the contentious nature of community, stressing the need to explain it rather than seeing it as the explanation (Alleyne, 2002). They highlight the importance of the material aspect of community, ie the actual social relations and groupings in addition to the symbolic aspects of community as repository of meaning. Community remains both a discourse and a practice; it operates on the symbolic and the personal (and therefore physical) level. This means that places continue to matter as the basis of shared socio-spatial practices.

There seem to be two trends concerning the challenge of the meaning of place and space for individual and collective identities and their expression in “communities”: a re-definition of the local and the development of cosmopolitan identities.

Redefining local identity and belonging – ‘elective belonging’

In a society characterised by flexibility, mobility and fluidity the construction of local identity has become more precarious – less inherited and based on a shared past, but more practised and performed. The argument is that the emergence of mobile fields and the disjunctures between a growing number of fields has led to a heightened importance of “ordinariness”, a heightened importance of the commonality of shared positions. Belonging is fluid and contingent. This provides for a community of strangers, according to Simmel, those who come today and stay tomorrow. It also, however, presupposes agency and choice. Choice is here seen as a value, a sign of achievement – mobility is the norm (cf. Beck, 2000), staying in the place you were born and brought up in is deviant:

“[a]ll of us are , willy-nilly, by design or by default, on the move. We are on the move even if, physically we stay put: immobility is not a realistic option in a world of permanent change. And yet the effects of that new condition are radically unequal. Some of us become fully and truly ‘global’; some are fixed in their ‘locality’ – a predicament neither pleasurable nor endurable in the world in which the ‘globals’ set the tone and compose the rules of the life-game.” (Bauman, 1998, p2)

In tune with the idea of the “elective biography” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002), local identity, too, has become a choice – “elective belonging” (Savage et al, 2005). This starts from the fact that (social and geographical) mobility has increased and thus life-long connections with one place to establish a particular “fixed” local identity and sense of belonging are becoming less likely. Referring to a study of middle-class residential areas in Manchester (Savage et al, 2005) Savage (2008) argues that “the actual lived history of the place in which they [interviewees] lived was less important as the way in which they could define the place as belonging to them through their conscious choice to move and settle in it” (p.152). For the “mobile classes” place then remains important as manifestation of their “lifestyle” or consumer choice. The element of choice is essential in this identification and understanding of place because according to Savage (2008: 153) for those who do not possess the necessary resources, “nostalgia becomes the counterpart to elective belonging.”

To juxtapose this story of nostalgia, a look at post-industrial, formerly “traditional” working-class communities is necessary. Valerie Walkerdine’s research on communities in the South Wales valleys and my research on mining communities in Kent has shown that individuals do not stay in these places out of a longing for an idealised past but due to the persistence of social networks linking family, friends and (former) work-places (see also Strangleman, 2001; Parry, 2003). Research participants explained how the social infrastructure which used to be supported by the economic infrastructure (ie the colliery or the local steel plant) is now predominantly linked to the particular village and individual residents’ commitment – and in this sense to a notion of local citizenship. There are opportunities and threats in this very local notion of belonging. On the one hand, this should strengthen the need for all local residents’ involvement in local affairs, including children and young people. On the other hand, in my study, this facilitated a sense of insularity and lack of awareness of similar issues and experiences in other places. Here, digital technologies can help to bridge gaps and facilitate links between “local citizens” within and between localities.

In Savage et al’s (2005) study individuals are assumed to be free in their choices – to move or to stay. This does not take into account economic or social necessities. It is presupposed that moving socially requires moving geographically while staying put equals displacement. Constraints posed by power hierarchies are neglected. Mobility and the capacity for mobile/multiple identities, however, are dependent on resources. In their study of East German youth, Hörschelmann and Schäfer (2007) conclude that young people’s desire to travel, to become “cosmopolitan/global”, was shaped by different motivations and expectations, which in turn were influenced by education, parental influence and material opportunity, or, in other words, social, economic and cultural relations of power. Mobility has a class dimension. DIY biographies and mobile selves are accessible to those with the necessary economic, social and cultural capital – and this is true for the offline and the online world, as those most socially disadvantaged are also those most likely to be digitally excluded.

Cosmopolitan identities

Szerszynski and Urry (2002, 2006) argue for the emergence of a spatially dispersed culture of cosmopolitanism which involves awareness and knowledge of other places, cultures and people. It combines abilities and dispositions, eg a willingness to take risks, curiosity about other places, as well as an ability to read different images (Szerszynski and Urry, 2006). Such cosmopolitan ways of thinking need to be incorporated into people’s identities, everyday practices, rituals and dispositions to become an effective force in the world (Beck and Sznaider, 2006). As with the concept of elective belonging, spatial mobility and spatial awareness become paramount to the knowledge and understanding of a particular place’s history/histories. Being part of a cosmopolitan community is not dependent on a shared and collectively remembered past but on the experience and appreciation of similar socio-spatial practices and rituals. From a negative perspective, this can take on the semblance of tolerance when this actually means tolerance of a similarly “open” lifestyle, eg similar political, ethical, consumption choices. Thus, the internationally mobile professional can feel at home anywhere suitably cosmopolitan, eg New York, London, Berlin or Sydney, among other suitably cosmopolitan professionals. They might, however, face difficulties in participating in the leisure and work patterns of small rural hamlets.

The aims of education then become instilling a disposition towards, an acceptance of, and an ability to deal with, mobility – intellectually, physically, virtually. Education needs to prepare for flexibility and the possibility of multiple trajectories and ideally counteract the fact that the access to choice is still “heavily circumscribed by social, cultural, and economic relations of power” (Hörschelmann and Schäfer, 2007, p1869). As much as the global is increasingly present in the local and in young people’s daily experience, this experience is also structured by existing power hierarchies where choice is easily turned into necessity and the tourist turns into the migrant or vice versa (cf Bauman, 1998).

2. Questions of citizenship

“The common conception of citizenship is that of belonging to a political community, with the ensuing rights and responsibilities of membership.” (Pell, 2008, p143)

Citizenship is a political project as much as it is a sociological concept. It is inextricably bound up with the powers that be at any point in time. Therefore, future projections of the meaning of citizenship are particularly difficult. It can be assumed, however, that “traditional” notions of citizenship have become problematic. There are different ways in which citizenship is currently being reconfigured:

• (a) A (passive) notion of citizenship which is based solely on citizenship activities which are predetermined and contained in the institutions of the state (Pell, 2008), eg voting rights and participation in the electoral process, has become obsolete.
• (b) Membership of traditional collective organisations such as parties and trade unions has been replaced by alternative forms of engagement, eg social movements, issue-based politics and the politics of the everyday.
• (c) Citizenship is being rescaled, re-territorialised and re-oriented away from the nation-state as the predominant political community (Purcell, 2003).

Following on from the argument above, ie that place retains meaning both as a basis of a particularly local as well as a cosmopolitan community, this has implications for citizenship. As belonging to place is performed and thus contingent, so is citizenship. It is no longer solely defined by the nation-state but by other forms of engaging with state power, which opens up opportunities for multiple belongings and thus multiple citizenships.

As the role of the state shifts and as more complex and ‘messy’ governance mechanisms evolve (Woods and Goodwin, 2003), future forms of citizenship might be based on mundane, proto-political forms of engagement and community-making, especially as a manifestation of belonging. While Bauman’s (2008) analysis stresses the diversity of lifestyles and options, ie the fact that territorially determined citizenship turns into the right to remain different, Savage et al (2005) see this as the basis for solidarity and potential for collective action. Bauman emphasises the precarity and ephemeral nature of such bonds as “it is a moot question whether it is fit to conceive group solidarity in any other form than that of the fickle and fray, predominantly virtual ‘networks’, galvanised and continually re-modelled by the interplay of individual connecting and disconnecting, making calls and declining to reply [to] them.” For Savage et al (2005) the potential for collective action lies in the fact that a lack of feeling at home all the time increases the importance of feeling at home some of the time. This would motivate individuals to opt into shared practices. Place thus becomes valuable to the individual even if they are no longer part of a community rooted in place, the community is rooted in practice.

Place and residence becomes the basis for civic engagement (cf. Purcell, 2003). Pahl (2005) argues that common awareness of a social situation is required for any community to act as collectivity. Such common awareness, if it is no longer provided by a shared past, can only be drawn from a shared present, the co-presence in the everyday which is manifest in local social capital. This is evident in community participation, especially in local planning and governance processes, which has been seen as indicative of a combination of local identification and social cohesion. Another example is parental involvement in schools which can also be redefined as proto-political, civic engagement (cf. Savage et al, 2005). These practices are not place-specific but place-bound in that they have to be enacted in a particular place and thus provide the basis for “community” in contrast to “local” involvement. Sociological literature has dealt with the concept of active citizenship in the context of mechanisms of governmentality (Marinetto, 2003).

This is often linked to ideas of the state enabling and empowering citizens but the notion of empowerment through engagement has been heavily criticised and contested. In this conceptualisation the state confers the status of citizenship onto the individual, which highlights the passivity assigned to citizenship. New forms of engagement, however, are more creative and proactive and are linked to individuals creating their own political spaces, their own emergent public spheres, virtual or material. An example of this is the trend towards the citizen-consumer. Here citizenship is found in life-politics (eg Giddens, 1991) and the everyday act of consumption is a site for individuals’ political involvement. The supermarket becomes a political space. Digital technologies and especially the internet then provide access to a greater consumer choice and information which will enhance the (political) power of the consumer (Scammell, 2000).

Part of the drive for active citizens has been the emphasis on inclusive and accountable networks for citizens, ie the manifestation of different practices of citizenship. Davies (2007) describes this as the current network ‘orthodoxy’ in UK policy studies. The citizen-consumer as envisaged by New Labour, ie the individual exercising choice in pursuit of individual wants (Clarke et al, 2006), can be motivated to be involved in the institutions providing public services. Recent research has therefore focused on the partnership approach as one form of democratic inclusion/deliberative democracy (Ball and Maginn, 2005; Perrons and Skyers, 2003). Davies (2007) and the author’s own research showed that “community” knowledge and understanding of partnerships or the regeneration/planning process can contrast dramatically with policy understanding and knowledge. Residents in a former mining community in Kent who were included in the local regeneration forum still felt excluded from the actual decision-making process. Their idea of involvement also meant ownership of the regeneration outcome, the regenerated space (in this case through heritage displays, ie a performance of a shared past). As their plans were not incorporated for a number of economic/political reasons, the residents felt powerless rather than empowered and thus ultimately disadvantaged.

Thus particular forms of community participation reproduce existing power inequalities rather than empower the residents. The problem arises because the gap between the cultural capital needed to participate in “legitimate” nominally participatory structures, and the cultural capital available in those groups which are supposedly most able to benefit from those structures is not acknowledged or articulated (cf Davies, 2007). Questioning the empowerment effects of particular governance mechanisms then leads to questioning the neo-liberal idea of “active citizenship”. Active citizenship might not be achieved within the constraints of state institutions but requires the creation of political and public places which resonate with the social and cultural capital of the affected communities. Here, access to and use of digital public spaces might be particularly helpful as a recent community campaign in Kent (www.save-wye.org) has shown.

As residence and the politics of the everyday take on more prominence in the constitution of citizenship, the question of permanence and sustainability arises. Amit and Rappaport (2002) emphasise the short-lived nature of circumstantial associations such as with neighbours, work colleagues, club members and also fellow parents at parents’ associations. The importance and feeling of belonging of such consociate relationships depends on the continued involvement in the contexts in which they were formed. This is of particular importance in communities undergoing major socio-economic transformation where the traditional forms of association (trade unions, working-men’s clubs) lose their centrality. In these cases a focus for the maintenance of community becomes essential. Neal and Walters (2008) argue that the material relationships are enhanced through the dual belonging to a material place and an imagined community, in their case the rural community (cf.also Anderson, 1983).

In my research, this is similarly true, as the notion of the (symbolic) mining community was regularly mobilised and referred to in the description of everyday life in the village. The symbolic community is then constructed through campaigns for statues representing the preferred image of the village, village carnivals or newsletters. These place-making activities also need to allow space for young people as citizens and competent actors within the community, so that they can make their own communities as part of (or even in spite of) the local everyday spaces of (adult) community (cf. Panelli et al, 2002). As Weller (2003, p164) describes, “local boundaries shape the everyday spaces of citizenship and belonging for the teenagers (…) [so that] in the immediate future citizenship will be acted out at the local level.”

In conclusion then, citizenship is increasingly linked to the local and local, everyday practices. So the emphasis is then placed on recognition of citizenship practice rather than the bestowal of citizenship rights and it could be argued that this citizenship practice is undergoing transformation in the light of technological advances. Community-making practices encompass both community responsibility and care, and social pleasure and conviviality. The line between a citizen and someone practising community then becomes blurred as the proto-political, small-scale activities as a result of convivial practices make the social and political capital of social organisations visible. This means that social organisations can wield power and influence in local governance processes despite being nominally outside of the political process which illustrates the idea of the emergent public sphere. Although Neal and Walters (2008) discuss this in the rural context they also draw parallels to Thrift’s (2005) analysis of “lighter touch urban politics”.

The common denominator in studies of participation and citizenship seems to have become the importance of everyday activities and the resonance of the everyday in the political sphere and vice versa (cf Macnaughten, 2003). The argument is especially important when coupled with the recommendation by FreshMinds (2008) which highlights the importance of meaningful benefits of digital technologies in mundane activities for non-users to integrate them into their daily life. If, therefore, small-scale activities which lead to a feeling of belonging and an affective connection with place- or non-place-based social groups can be enhanced by digital technologies this can facilitate their uptake and prohibit a deepening of the digital divide.

Conclusions and directions

“Technology alone does not transform government, but government cannot transform to meet modern citizens’ expectations without it … The vision … is also about making government transformational through the use of technology…” (Cabinet Office, 2005)

As I discussed above, the role of the state in the construction of community and citizenship is changing. Digital technologies can drive this process forward and the integration of ICTs into the mechanisms of government has been described as a goal for transformational government. Enhanced ICTs can have particularly beneficial effects for organisations, institutions and for individual citizens, employees or social groups in the form of access to new opportunities and capabilities (CIOC, 2006). An important potential benefit is the integration of “direct democracy”, ie citizen engagement and polling, with the existing form of representative democracy where decisions are made via elected representatives. Commentators on the Obama campaign emphasised the successful engagement of the grass roots through digital technologies. Citizenship education, therefore, will mean making visible all the different routes to political participation with digitally enhanced ways of community-making and political action providing particularly fruitful opportunities for the creation of new public spheres.

Digital inclusion is linked to social inclusion. FreshMinds (2008, p5) argue that digital equality can mitigate “social inequalities derived from low incomes, poor health, limited skills or disabilities.” There could therefore be a virtuous circle: digital inclusion can enhance social inclusion and thus community engagement and social cohesion. Digital inclusion does not only mean the provision of ICT skills, it also means building up of trust among disadvantaged groups – in the public service providers as well as ICTs (DIT, 2007) so that the danger of a reproduction of offline exclusion in the online world can be addressed, and the potential of virtual communities as providing open, accessible, more democratic, alternative and safe spaces (Evans 2004) can be achieved.

Active citizenship does not only require cultural capital in the sense of openness and awareness of spaces for creative engagement but also digital literacy. This is becoming necessary to participate in contemporary and future society as lack of ICT skills is perceived to “greatly restrict” what adults can do privately and professionally (FreshMinds, 2008, p34). This suggests a particular subjectivity to participate fully:

“Access is still not enough: nearly two fifths of non-users fail to see the need or benefit of using the internet and other ICTs or feel that they are not the right kind of person to use them. The greatest share of the population who hold this view is the elderly and those on low incomes. These groups were also the most likely to not use the internet – even if they had a connection at home.” (2008: 37, my emphasis).

This means that attitudes towards technology are as important as affordability: both cultural and economic capital are required to deal with the information society. Here it is possible to refer to the discussion of “Digital Natives” by Prensky (2001) and Ellen Helsper in the context of this project. It could be argued that the 65+ generation of 2030 will have been socialised into the use of digital technologies and therefore the problem of lack of motivation and perceived need might not arise. This, however, does not address the lack of motivation and perceived need for those on low incomes – the digital divide is deepening for those who are not included and are not using digital technologies and thus are at risk at being left behind even further (FreshMinds, 2008, OPM, 2008). There remains a spatial element to social inclusion, however. As long as affordability of access rather than motivation to access is an issue, rural areas miss out on the availability of cheaper technology which is based on residential clusters. If these inequalities can be reduced then motivation becomes the main factor in digital inclusion.

Trends, surprises, predictions

“Attention to continuity is important for a number of reasons, among which is the capacity of social arrangements to persist despite expectations to the contrary.” (Crow, 2005, p3.2)

Trends

Places, territories and boundaries – both symbolically and materially – will continue to matter in everyday practices

In the discussion above, socio-spatial practices matter for the performance of citizenship has been regularly highlighted. The notion of the nation-state based citizenship is becoming obsolete as a result of the parallel tendencies towards localised and cosmopolitan identities. Residence becomes the basis for the political community (cf. Purcell, 2003). At the same time, the political is being redefined to include everyday and so-called “proto-political” activities. With regard to the interplay of belonging and technology, Savage et al (2005, p207) illustrate that fields of practice vary in their spatial extension, while some fields (eg cinema, music) “deploy IT to permit considerable spatial extension, yet other fields, notably that of residence, do not.” Following from this, then, it is possible to say that locality and boundaries remain important for identification. This can be translated into the digital world and efforts to construct and conceptualise digital territories are evidence for this: “without digital boundaries, the fundamental notion of privacy or the feeling of being at home will not take place” (Beslay and Hakkala, 2007, p69, emphasis in original). Beslay and Hakkala (2007) therefore suggest the concept of a virtual residence to tackle concerns about privacy, security and identity.

Belonging, whether offline or online, is performed through everyday practices. Therefore notions of citizenship need to be linked to the everyday, the individualised, embodied experience of social/political issues. Citizenship is thus no longer a status that is granted but a practice that is performed. Top-down-initiated participatory regimes will falter as more and more “community” activists will chose an exit-action strategy (Davies, 2007) and build their own stages and public spheres – both offline and online – for engagement and action.

Accessibility matters – social and cultural capital becomes digital capital and vice versa

Communities and engagement are both based on sharing of, and access to, information. Future technological developments open up a range of avenues, eg the ubiquitous access to information via ambient intelligent systems. The question remains, however, whether the fact that access can be limited to certain groups of people on the basis of their membership of the information-”owning” (producing) institution or their access to the technology is qualitatively different to mechanisms of distinction and exclusion available and practised now. FreshMinds (2008) argue that the digital divide between those who are confident and motivated to use digital technologies and those who are not is deepened despite being narrowed. Although there are fewer people who are excluded, those who are, are so on a deeper level. This also applies to the idea that communities can become the basis of participation. Therefore, engagement is based on information and the access to information. “In the future, people will be able to leave virtual yellow post-it stickers where they want to. The only difference is in the visibility; they may be seen by everybody or only those who are allowed or only those who are able to see them” (Beslay and Hakkala, 2007, p75). This highlights the importance of equal access to technology and the necessary skills and confidence.

Surprises

Discussions of residence as the basis of citizenship and political engagement have neglected the class dimension. Little has been said about the geometries of power and social, economic and cultural constraints in building multiple identities and citizenships, especially for young people. There is a need to bring this dimension into any discussion of belonging and paths to citizen engagement. Class remains one of the determining factors of the embodied experience of the everyday and especially manifest in the places we live in. It therefore also remains a determining factor in the social relationships and communities that individuals form.

Predictions: possible – plausible – preferable futures

In the future, digital technologies will be part of everyday life, more so than now. From a dystopian perspective then, if the current importance of consumption as dominant mode of expression is combined with the proliferation of citizenships which are based locally but can also be exercised through digital technologies, then there could be a market for online political engagement and expression. Multiple identities and citizenships can then also mean a proliferation of interest groups which cater for ever more extremist tastes and interests. A more positive view would see a growth in political awareness and literacy through a sense of global citizenship. This would lead to mass grassroots mobilisation for global issues such as the environment, poverty, and human rights as digital technologies make the actual embodied experience of these issues accessible for everyone, even the privileged middle class in Western democracies.

Access to digital technologies is dependent on confidence, skill and dispositions. It is therefore plausible that cultural capital will become “digital capital.” Skill refers here not only to digital literacy but also to the ability to live in a globalised world and deal with mobility and flexibility. Digital technologies will enable multiple identities as several places “happen” at the same time and several time periods can “happen” at the same time with information about past, present and future on constant display.

Access to the past provides a basis for a shared awareness of one place and thus “community”, awareness of the relevance of everyday actions for a potential future can mobilise social action, and combining this sense of shared issues and their impact on a shared future can enhance the sense of the “global imagined community.” The response can be in self-reflective individuals building their own DIY biographies (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002) which are expressed in socio-spatial practices characterised by mobility and thus enabling openness and creating opportunities to deal with the o/Other rather than constructing imaginary boundaries, be that virtually or materially. Technology can help prepare for change and movement but can also provide a much needed anchor in a de-territorialised world and biography. The availability of multiple citizenships and the increased engagement through everyday practices and experiences facilitated through technology then also means a greater sense of ownership in more and more personalised campaigns around social issues.

Before such a normalisation of ICTs in everyday practices is achieved, however, it is of utmost importance to close the digital divide and motivate non-users to engage with digital technologies and promote transcending the offline/online dichotomy. Only when those who are perceived to be excluded and who perceive themselves to be excluded from the digitised world can be motivated and access for them can be facilitated can digital technologies contribute to dealing with social inequalities. Without the necessary (state-led) support to develop skills and confidence to deal with the opportunities and the threats of the risk society, then young people might “stay put” which will pose significant risks for personal biographies in locations where work and training opportunities are scarce (cf Hörschelmann and Schäfer, 2005).

The role of education is then the provision of skills and abilities to deal with plurality, ambiguity and the adaptability to change (Springate, 2004). This means training for collaborative environments, understanding of complex systems and the encouragement of creativity. Society is faced with the consequences of complex political-economic systems and everyone, not only young people, needs to be prepared to be willing to learn about, understand and engage with them to enable change. The citizens of the future need to be able to navigate fluid material and virtual worlds and therefore need to be adaptable, familiar with complex systems and creative in their creation of engaging and engaged places.

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.

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Another interesting point here is an issue around ownership: while Andrew Harrison in his submission to Futurelab argued that ownership of property is becoming less and less important, it is interesting to note as Angus Cameron (2008) does that even virtual universes such as Second Life are based on land ownership principled copied from the politico-economic system of the “real” world.

The scenario painted by them is very much reminiscent of Marge Piercy’s He, She, It (1991).

This document has been commissioned as part of the UK Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Beyond Current Horizons project, led by Futurelab. The views expressed do not represent the policy of any Government or organisation.