A spotlight on post-compulsory and lifelong learning
Research Intelligence issue 141

The special section of this issue of Research Intelligence focusses on post-compulsory and lifelong learning, showcasing the strength and depth of recent research in this area with perspectives from across the higher (HE) and further education (FE) sectors.

The contributors’ guiding concern, editors Samantha Jones and Matt O’Leary note, is social justice – seeking to empower, give voice and improve access to knowledge.

A number of articles engage with the idea of ‘positionality’: of a researcher in relation to the FE sector and their participants; of a newly qualified FE lecturer in a sector in which pedagogical development has been marginalised; of leaders in relation to both teaching staff and adults with learning difficulties.

Other contributors to this issue:

• reposition and develop collegeHE as a site of scholarship and applied research
• explore the position of parents and parental behaviours in students’ FE experience
• explain why the academic–vocational divide results in ‘alternative’ qualifications that fail to meet stakeholder requirements
• argue that the disconnection of vocational industries from vocational qualifications undermines their legitimacy
• by considering apprenticeship standards, ask what is required to create an ‘educated’ workforce.

Elsewhere in this issue – introduced by new BERA president Dominic Wyse – we present award-winning research on the use of manipulatives to support understanding of early number, living and teaching in Iran under the Islamic Republic, and student experiences of internationalising South Korean universities. There’s an extended Early Career Researcher Network feature on identity development and belonging during doctoral study, a view from Nigeria on the persistence of the Oyinbo (white) man’s pedagogy as an indicator of quality education, and a photo feature looking back at the 2019 BERA Annual Conference.