6.3 In particular, if teaching does become more of a ‘portfolio’ career, it may also become a more middle-class profession that is less attractive to graduates from working-class backgrounds; we know that in order to build up such careers, types of entry level remote jobs individuals may require substantial inherited cultural, social and material resources to navigate the complexities and insecurities they will face (Power et al. As Smethem (2007: 476) notes, the perspectives of the ‘portfolio’ teachers cast doubt upon the outdated but still dominant notion of a linear teaching career derived from more stable times; importantly, if Smethem’s (2007) findings prove to be representative of a wider and continuing trend whereby teaching becomes more like many other graduate-entry level social media jobs in new york city professions with an increasingly contingent workforce-and there is some support for this to be found within other studies (e.g. Smart et al. One may see this, to some extent, as a result of the relative ‘massification’ of HE in the UK and of the broadening of the student social base; as Bourdieu (1986: 33) notes, when class fractions which previously did not enter the race for academic qualifications begin to do so, they force those groups whose reproduction was traditionally reliant upon educational capital to increase their investments in order to preserve the relative scarcity of their qualifications.
So, if you absolutely need to talk and surf at the same time, you’re stuck on AT&T in the US. In the United States, Apple partnered with AT&T and Verizon to offer 3G data for the iPad 2. When they released the third generation iPad with a Retina display, they also added 4G LTE support. AINLEY, P. & Allen, M. (2010) Lost Generation?: New Strategies for Youth and Education. Critics who argue that there is an over-supply point to the ‘graduatisation’ of jobs-the process whereby jobs not previously requiring degree-entry qualifications come to demand them (Ainley & Allen 2010). The weight of opinion appears to point towards a degree of credential inflation within the graduate labour market, and a concomitant weakening of any linear relationship between learning and earning (Lauder et al. For example, there is evidence (GTCE 2010) that many primary phase NQTs have found themselves unemployed or under-employed, and it may be reasonable to infer that some of them have opted for employment in nurseries, for which they are ostensibly ‘over-qualified’, rather than suffer unemployment. One could argue that the problem of an over-supply of primary school teaching aspirants in Wales, which the Furlong Report and the subsequent cuts in ITT places aimed to resolve, has not gone away: rather, it has simply been channelled to some extent by the Education Studies degree.
It will be recalled that, according to the Furlong Report, the aim of this qualification was to offer a broader range of education-related study and potential employment outcomes than the B.A Education degree; however, while these curricular aims have clearly been met in the Education Studies degree at the case-study institution, the employment-related aims have met with much more limited success in that, as this study has found, over two-thirds of the third-year student cohort expressed an ambition to become teachers (mostly in the primary sector). 5.7 Finally, there was a strong perception across all four focus groups that a teaching qualification such as a PGCE was not sufficient by itself to secure a teaching position: credentials had to be supplemented by evidence of ‘hands-on’ experience if a candidate was to stand a realistic chance of getting a job: ‘Margaret’: It’s difficult as well ‘cos they want hands-on experience. She indicates an intention to return to her previous job as a nursery nurse after graduation, but expresses concerns that she will be ‘over-qualified’ for nursery teaching (and not receive a wage that she believes to be commensurate with her degree qualification); on the other hand, she is concerned that she may not get a teaching job and thus be ‘left in limbo’: The only problem with our degree is, especially the Early Years side of it, is I guess I’m worried that we’re all going to come out, like, too qualified and that there’s not going to be a suitable job for me.
This sense of a perceived shift in the rules of the competition for teaching jobs, brought about by a changing balance in the relative importance accorded to an individual’s formal educational capital, on the one hand, and their capacity to convert social and cultural capital into personal employability on the other, is neatly captured in the comments by ‘Jean’ below: Start at the bottom and work your way up most of the time. While hands-on experience was considered vital, it was also generally believed that social contacts within the teaching profession were the only realistic way to get it. It may be argued, for instance, that it is even more important for the social composition of the teaching workforce to reflect that of the wider population than for most other professions; this is because there is now a wealth of evidence to suggest that teachers from middle-class backgrounds can (often unconsciously) position working-class pupils within a deficit discourse, with consequently negative implications for their education (Reay 2006; Dunne & Gazeley 2008; Smart et al. 5.10 Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that the focus group comments indicate a perception that teaching is becoming more like some other types of entry level remote jobs of graduate careers, e.g. within the media, arts or law, in which entry-level access is gained through some form of internship (often unpaid) and which, in turn, favours individuals with high levels of financial, social and cultural capital (Cabinet Office 2009). Moreover, evidence from previous research certainly seems to indicate that the students have a realistic view of the competitive demands of the teaching jobs market in this respect; as Devine (2004: 140) notes social contacts were instrumental in helping her research participants establish teaching careers.
So, I’m going to try and go back to the early years of nursery nursing, say for a while, and then I think I’m going to find that with my degree, they won’t want to pay me what I should be paid. So, it is like being in limbo, just not being able to get a job! As a result, some students (as in the comments of ‘Jean’ above) are sensitive to the increasingly fine but also arbitrary line between being ‘under’ and ‘over’ qualified for a job. 5.5 The sophisticated level of some of the students’ understandings of the complex, and increasingly misaligned, relationship between the fields of education and employment is apparent in the comments by ‘Jean’ below. Despite efforts by those working within the field to position Education Studies as a distinct field of study (Griffin & McDougall 2009), it is apparent that the students at the case-study institution subscribe to the predominant view of the subject as ‘the waiting room for teacher training’ (Hodkinson 2009: 14). In light of the difficulties in accessing teaching employment, this raises the question of whether Education Studies in Wales is simply exacerbating the problem of a demand that cannot be met.
This, however, raises its own issues with regard to the particular position and role of Education Studies degrees in Wales. CHARLES HUGHES the leading supplier of Portwest safety wear, workwear and outdoor leisurewear is currently seeking applications for the position of Graphic Designer, which will be based at our headquarters in Westport, Co. Mayo . Along with leading their team, they meet with clients to learn more about their wants and needs. It’s more to do with your connections than it is your qualifications. The students’ (quite realistic) perceptions of the necessity for evidence of work experience to complement qualifications stems from the belief, discussed earlier, in rising credential inflation and in the value of qualifications as no more than a ‘basic minimum’. Such an apparent shift in perceptions among working-class undergraduates (acknowledging, of course, limitations of present sample size generalisability) offers a clear exposition of Bourdieu’s (1990: 66) claims for the ways in which the habitus will constantly adjust itself to the demands of the field-the graduate labour market-through a ‘feel for the game’. It requires a lot of skill to decode and to discriminate between the confusing and contradictory messages imparted by, on the one hand, official and institutional policy rhetoric-in which a degree is a valuable positional good within the labour market-and, on the other hand, the ‘hot’ knowledge (Ball & Vincent 1998) of the labour market gained from (in this case) a degree of exposure to labour market realities, and which may offer a much less positive outlook.