Caliban’s Dance: FE after The Tempest

Abstract

This contribution to the field of further education (FE) literature marks the final in a trilogy which maximises the use of metaphor to explore and critique the (predominantly English) sector as it was, as it is, and – as this volume professes – what it could be free of constraints. The first volume, Further Education and the Twelve Dancing Princesses (Daley, Orr, and Petrie 2015), identified spaces for resistance in a sector permeated by neoliberal dominance. The second, The Principal: Power and Professionalism in FE (Daley, Orr, and Petrie 2017) used Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ as a trope for leadership to examine the impact of new managerialism. This final volume plays with themes within Shakespeare’s The Tempest to explore FE as a colonised space, and to imagine utopian possibilities for a liberated sector. From the play, the island’s indigenous inhabitant, Caliban, is variously cast as the student, the teacher, the college and the sector itself; to represent the marginalised and disenfranchised. This offers authors the opportunity to imagine what would happen could the sector speak for itself. Academics, researchers, and teachers from across the FE wilderness unleash their inner playwrights, poets and artists; playfully applying their expertise to arrive anew at the age-old problems facing post-compulsory education. In doing so they bring the contested nature of FE to the fore; and the struggle to address the perennial question of purpose in the sector. A book of three acts, the authors wrangle with this question across nineteen essays with permission to think unbounded to conventional wisdom. In so doing, they set about creating a new paradigm much needed not just for FE, but for a world in existential crisis. That the conclusion of this book coincided with the global COVID-19 pandemic gives questions of this kind a renewed sense of urgency. While the themes discussed predominantly concern the English FE sector, the message of this book has a broader purpose and speaks to issues in vocational education that will be recognisable to colleagues across national contexts. I.