A review and analysis of assessment objectives of academic and vocational qualifications in English further education, with particular reference to creativity
Thirty‐six per cent of 18–19‐year‐old sixth‐form and further education college leavers in the UK currently go on to university. A majority of the remaining 64% apparently go into work or work‐related training. Yet, for this latter group, as with the former, 16–19 education was supposed by the Department for Education and Employment to equip them with the skills applicable in the workplace, where a student’s ability to apply skills and knowledge in a variety of contexts—i.e. creativity—is as important as having a qualification. Creative skills, according to the Construction Industry Training Board, are key requisite skills in the workplace and also key to job and business success. This paper examines the extent to which assessment objectives in the 16–19 education curriculum in England require students to demonstrate creative skills in their work, be it class assessment or external examinations. It finds that all but two subject specifications and syllabuses (in one discipline) explicitly state creativity as an assessment objective, although a few other subject specifications (in other disciplines) required candidates to demonstrate some creative skills in their work.
Creative Approaches to Raising Achievement of Adult Learners in English Further Education
Seventy-two per cent of Britain's further education students on courses funded by the English Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) are adult learners aged 19 or over, yet an average 37% of them currently do not achieve their qualification aims (FEFC, 1999), despite the British government's drive to improve attainment among these cohorts. The price paid by adult learners is disillusion and a feeling of failure, while colleges loose a leg of the FEFC's funding tripod. But a far more worrying prospect is the fact that adult learners will form the bulk of extra 700,000 disciples of learning that the Government is bringing into further education by 2002, at an estimated cost of 2.5 billion over the same period. Will it be business as usual? This paper draws on recent work on improving retention in further education (see Ogunleye, 2000a). It examines the extent of the problem of underachievement of adult learners and the paucity of current colleges' solutions to the problems. It explores briefly the concept of creativity and argues that a solution to improving achievement of adult learners lies in fostering creativity in the learning process through creative curriculum, teaching and instructional techniques. Because of space constraints, readers who are interested in a full discussion on how the current teaching and learning in English education ignores creativity are referred to DfEE (1999b). Also, for a full discussion on examples of good practice and creative teaching approaches that have been tried in particular contexts, readers are referred to Lobuts and Pennewill (1984), Mayer (1989) and James (1999). The words student and learner are used interchangeably throughout this paper.
Measurement and Demonstration of Thermal Expansion Coefficient
There are many classroom demonstrations, such as the ball-and-ring experiment, for showing the existence of thermal expansion of solids. The coefficient of linear expansion α (= increase in length divided by the original length times the change in temperature) may be measured in high school laboratories using a number of methods.1–4 In this paper we describe an especially simple experiment for determining α for a metal rod. It is based on the well-known optical lever method and is suitable for either a laboratory experiment or a classroom exercise.