1.Understanding the problem:

Compulsory or Post-compulsory?
Susan Wallace (p.91; 2003) lists the most commonly cited examples of behaviour which disrupts learning, according to a survey of one hundred teachers currently teaching in Further Education (F.E.):

• Talking while the teacher talks and/or talking about things irrelevant to the lesson
• Arriving late
• Using or answering mobile phones
• Distracting other students' attention
• Complaining and refusing to work
• Expressing boredom and lack of interest

Further Education is theoretically "a second chance to achieve", post-compulsory education that follows on from school education. It is not compulsory; in theory. But if it is not compulsory why do so many students behave in the ways quoted above? An investigation of "post-compulsory" could provide part of the answer.

Even though learners may in theory have a choice about whether they study at F.E. level or not, it could be considered as "Hobson's Choice". In colloquial English, Hobson's choice is an only apparently free choice that is no choice at all (Webster's-online-dictionary; 2009). Whereas some students will genuinely attend an F.E. college to learn, others will be challenging, confrontational, disengaged and unmotivated. Of forty one trainee F.E. teachers questioned about their experience of sitting in on an F.E. class for the first time, every single one reported in their reflective journal that they had witnessed student behaviour of the kind quoted above (Wallace, 2002). If there was a genuine choice of whether learners needed to attend an F.E. college or not, disruptive behaviour would be more difficult to understand, but the "free choice" of whether to attend or not is not that at all. At the end of Year 11 in compulsory education the choice most 16 year olds face is whether to stay on at school or go to an F.E. college. Employment is not a realistic option for most 16 year olds because of the ineligibility to claim any financial support. Apprentices likewise require attendance in some way shape or form at an F.E. institution. Some students will have an unwillingness or an ineligibility to stay on in school. This could be because of a particular curriculum area they wish to pursue, or simply that students did not like, or haven't succeeded in, school. There is also of course the possibility that the school does not want them. Post-compulsory education is therefore not always what it seems, or appears, to be.

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