Negotiating learner identity in an educational partnership: a qualitative study of pupils learning collaboratively in a school and FEC in Northern Ireland

The institutional context of this study will be examined by looking at how the staff’s management of the collaborative processes influence learner identity negotiations. At the micro level, how students negotiate their learner identity as they transition between the two learning environments is also investigated. As the explicit intention of the Entitlement Framework is to improve students’ life chances, understanding the collaboration at both levels is critical if we are to fully appreciate its efficacy. <br><br>In an attempt to probe the deeper meanings that participants attach to school-FEC collaboration, a qualitative research approach was adopted.

Data collection methods included a series of 23 semi-structured interviews, eight small group interviews with students alongside 15 individual interviews with staff from both the school and FEC environments in the academic year 2017–2018.<br><br>Drawing upon Bourdieu’s theoretical framework and current debates on the vocational/academic dichotomy, three main aspects were evident in the data analysis. Firstly, the study reveals something of the relational dynamic between academic pathways and social status.

This relationship is significant in determining how undertaking a vocational pathway offered under the Entitlement Framework reinforces existing disparities between learners. Secondly, the study lends clarity to how students negotiate their identity as learners as they encounter the practical challenges of transitioning between two diverse learning environments within the collaborative context. Most of the students displayed considerable agency in negotiating the new learning terrain, and in so doing, their sense of themselves as learners improved overall.

Finally, this study creates awareness of practical steps that may be taken to recognise the delicate complexities embedded in the interplay of social status and the vocational pathway. These intricacies are some of the more contentious facets of learner identity negotiations in a collaboration where not all aspects of learner identity may be understood as equivalent.<br>