LIZ ATKINS
Biographic Data
| ID | 5913324 |
|---|---|
| NAME | LIZ ATKINS |
| GIVEN NAMES | LIZ |
| FAMILY NAME | ATKINS |
| SIGNATURE | ATKINS L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Derby |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9673-4428 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Beyond subjects and skills or crossing the divide? From additionality to complementarity in college enrichment
This paper reports a longitudinal study, organized around national surveys and institution-based case studies, of ‘enrichment’ in post-16 colleges across England and Wales. These institutions transect general and vocational education pathways, whose curricula are organized respectively around subject disciplines and employment skills. Drawing on social justice perspectives and understandings of curriculum theory and cultural reproduction, the stu…
Enrichment in colleges after Covid
A longitudinal study of enrichment across post-16 colleges in England and Wales illustrates the possibilities and limitations of colleges' societal and cultural impact. Over a four-year study, these activities outside subject curricula, widely intended to compensate for the mobilisation of cultural capital by students in privileged settings, increased in salience whilst responding to post-pandemic crises; but differed across settings in their aim…
Education, Skills and Social Justice in a Polarising World
This book explains how education policies offering improved transitions to work and higher-level study can widen the gaps between successful and disadvantaged groups of young people. Centred on an original study of ongoing further education and apprenticeship reforms in England, the book traces the emergence of distinctive patterns of transition that magnify existing societal inequalities. It illustrates the distinction between mainly male ‘techn…
Addressing in/equalities
Purpose This paper aims to report on a project re-imagining of a Level 1 English-model broad vocational curriculum for low-attaining youth. The project, funded by Rothschild, has sought to develop a knowledge rich and engaging curriculum, which is more consistent with notions of social justice than contemporary low-level vocational curricula. Design/methodology/approach The project utilised a participatory, action-research model of curriculum dev…
Re-conceptualising VET
The paper addresses the impact of Covid-19 on vocational education and training, seeking to discern the outline of possible directions for its future development within the debates about VET responses to the pandemic. The discussion is set in its socio-economic context, considering debates that engage with the social relations of care and neo-liberalism. The paper analyses discourses that have developed around VET across the world during the pand…
Creative approaches to researching further, higher and adult education
Creative approaches to researching further, higher and adult education This special edition of QRJ is reflective of the great breadth of research in the field of further, adult and higher education. In this edition, we bring together work by authors from Australia, Canada and the UK, each exploring a different aspect of research in one of these fields. Apart from the sector in which they are located, the papers for this edition are linked by a co…
The odyssey
Little work on the significance and implications of decision-making has been undertaken since that led by Hodkinson in the 1990s, and the experiences of young people on vocational programmes and their reasons for undertaking them remain under-theorised and poorly understood. Drawing on two narratives from a study exploring young people’s motivations for undertaking vocational programmes, this article explores the relationship between their positi…
Creating feminised critical spaces and co-caring communities of practice outside patriarchal managerial landscapes
The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space to negotiate identities and make meaning from experiences. The exchanges provided a critical space, …
From Marginal Learning to Marginal Employment? the Real Impact of ‘Learning’ Employability Skills
This article explores notions of ‘employability’ in the context of the experiences of those young people who leave the English education system at 16+ with few or no academic credentials. The article contests the conflation of ‘employability skills' with ‘inclusion’ in policy discourse, arguing that the real impact of such programmes is to inculcate attitudes and behaviours consistent with low-pay, low-skill work in already marginalised young peo…
Opportunity and Aspiration, or the Great Deception? The Case of 14–19 Vocational Education
The policy discourse around those young people who are the focus of the 14–19 agenda in the United Kingdom is one of negativity which frames them as low achievers with low aspirations. In tension with this deficit model, policy offers these young people ‘opportunities' in the form of a vocational education which, according to the rhetoric, will lead to high-skill, high-paid work and a lifetime of opportunities. Drawing on original empirical resea…
Tony Wright on Doing Politics Differently
Opportunity and Aspiration, or the Great Deception? The Case of 14–19 Vocational Education
The policy discourse around those young people who are the focus of the 14–19 agenda in the United Kingdom is one of negativity which frames them as low achievers with low aspirations. In tension with this deficit model, policy offers these young people ‘opportunities' in the form of a vocational education which, according to the rhetoric, will lead to high-skill, high-paid work and a lifetime of opportunities. Drawing on original empirical resea…
Creating feminised critical spaces and co-caring communities of practice outside patriarchal managerial landscapes
The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space to negotiate identities and make meaning from experiences. The exchanges provided a critical space, …
The odyssey
Little work on the significance and implications of decision-making has been undertaken since that led by Hodkinson in the 1990s, and the experiences of young people on vocational programmes and their reasons for undertaking them remain under-theorised and poorly understood. Drawing on two narratives from a study exploring young people’s motivations for undertaking vocational programmes, this article explores the relationship between their positi…
From Marginal Learning to Marginal Employment? the Real Impact of ‘Learning’ Employability Skills
This article explores notions of ‘employability’ in the context of the experiences of those young people who leave the English education system at 16+ with few or no academic credentials. The article contests the conflation of ‘employability skills' with ‘inclusion’ in policy discourse, arguing that the real impact of such programmes is to inculcate attitudes and behaviours consistent with low-pay, low-skill work in already marginalised young peo…
Tony Wright on Doing Politics Differently
Opportunity and Aspiration, or the Great Deception? The Case of 14–19 Vocational Education
The policy discourse around those young people who are the focus of the 14–19 agenda in the United Kingdom is one of negativity which frames them as low achievers with low aspirations. In tension with this deficit model, policy offers these young people ‘opportunities' in the form of a vocational education which, according to the rhetoric, will lead to high-skill, high-paid work and a lifetime of opportunities. Drawing on original empirical resea…
From Marginal Learning to Marginal Employment? the Real Impact of ‘Learning’ Employability Skills
This article explores notions of ‘employability’ in the context of the experiences of those young people who leave the English education system at 16+ with few or no academic credentials. The article contests the conflation of ‘employability skills' with ‘inclusion’ in policy discourse, arguing that the real impact of such programmes is to inculcate attitudes and behaviours consistent with low-pay, low-skill work in already marginalised young peo…
Creating feminised critical spaces and co-caring communities of practice outside patriarchal managerial landscapes
The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space to negotiate identities and make meaning from experiences. The exchanges provided a critical space, …
The odyssey
Little work on the significance and implications of decision-making has been undertaken since that led by Hodkinson in the 1990s, and the experiences of young people on vocational programmes and their reasons for undertaking them remain under-theorised and poorly understood. Drawing on two narratives from a study exploring young people’s motivations for undertaking vocational programmes, this article explores the relationship between their positi…
Creative approaches to researching further, higher and adult education
Creative approaches to researching further, higher and adult education This special edition of QRJ is reflective of the great breadth of research in the field of further, adult and higher education. In this edition, we bring together work by authors from Australia, Canada and the UK, each exploring a different aspect of research in one of these fields. Apart from the sector in which they are located, the papers for this edition are linked by a co…
Re-conceptualising VET
The paper addresses the impact of Covid-19 on vocational education and training, seeking to discern the outline of possible directions for its future development within the debates about VET responses to the pandemic. The discussion is set in its socio-economic context, considering debates that engage with the social relations of care and neo-liberalism. The paper analyses discourses that have developed around VET across the world during the pand…
Education, Skills and Social Justice in a Polarising World
This book explains how education policies offering improved transitions to work and higher-level study can widen the gaps between successful and disadvantaged groups of young people. Centred on an original study of ongoing further education and apprenticeship reforms in England, the book traces the emergence of distinctive patterns of transition that magnify existing societal inequalities. It illustrates the distinction between mainly male ‘techn…
Addressing in/equalities
Purpose This paper aims to report on a project re-imagining of a Level 1 English-model broad vocational curriculum for low-attaining youth. The project, funded by Rothschild, has sought to develop a knowledge rich and engaging curriculum, which is more consistent with notions of social justice than contemporary low-level vocational curricula. Design/methodology/approach The project utilised a participatory, action-research model of curriculum dev…
Enrichment in colleges after Covid
A longitudinal study of enrichment across post-16 colleges in England and Wales illustrates the possibilities and limitations of colleges' societal and cultural impact. Over a four-year study, these activities outside subject curricula, widely intended to compensate for the mobilisation of cultural capital by students in privileged settings, increased in salience whilst responding to post-pandemic crises; but differed across settings in their aim…
Beyond subjects and skills or crossing the divide? From additionality to complementarity in college enrichment
This paper reports a longitudinal study, organized around national surveys and institution-based case studies, of ‘enrichment’ in post-16 colleges across England and Wales. These institutions transect general and vocational education pathways, whose curricula are organized respectively around subject disciplines and employment skills. Drawing on social justice perspectives and understandings of curriculum theory and cultural reproduction, the stu…
Sociology (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · Pedagogy (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics (7 works) · Education Systems and Policy (5 works) · Public relations (5 works) · Vocational education (5 works) · Gender Studies (3 works) · Gender Studies (3 works)