Labouring to Learn? Industrial Training for Slow Learners, P Atkinson et al, 1981, Vol 2 Reader, p3

Last century, 14 years before the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) and this centuries' amendment (2005) and the Commission was established, and before mental health was incorporated and the Acts were enforced on educational institutions too, there was concern over the disadvantages that slow learners had in the industrial job market.

"Slow learners, along with the mentally and physically handicapped generally, experience special difficulties in competing effectively in the labour market."

Indeed, the authors considered positive discrimination advisable!

The authors set out a chapter in a book to examine an Industrial Training Unit and consider how effective it was in preparing transition for slow learners from education to the workplace and how valid similar studies were, such as those by the then existing government agency, they conclude the mixed sex Unit was a failure and most studies do not internally critique their own aims and objectives.

There sources and authorities included the Manpower Services Commission and the National Advisory Council on Employment of Disabled People, particularly a document called Positive Policies (1977). The Disabled Persons(Employment) Acts of 1944 and 1958 were statutory authorities of their day.

This is a thick description qualitative research paper, and much of what is recounted is merely telling us where they were and what they found without particular judgment. Indeed, much of what they find they consider to be atypical e.g. the Unit was not typical... the lectures were not typical ... the allocation of jobs was unusual (seemed to be as a reward for behavior). Notwithstanding that, I got the impression that accounts were selected to suit the empirical generalisation the authors wished their chapter to have, namely that the Unit failed to prepare slow learners for the world of work, conveying them no positive advantages in mindset or skill sets. This may be incorrect; it may be that its values are prescriptive rather than evaluative. The details read now more like a social history of past generations than useful data for contemporary researchers.

The Unit's failure was put down to not progressing slow learners in competence with industrial machinery or improving performance. And skills taught were inappropriate for the workplace.

Pretty bleak really - seems the authors wasted their time on the face of it.

Critique

1. Did they waste our time? On the whole, yes. They argue that they wish their results to be of "general interest". To be useful to us, surely the article needs to have generalisability. I think it is the former but is not the latter.
2. In 1981 it may have been of general interest due to the clime of high unemployment and a disquiet that disabled people were discriminated against in the workplace, but by 2007, the report is not of general interest. So, in 1981 it may have met its goal of general interest (but not generalisability, as I shall discuss later). But, arguably, it ceased to be of general interest in 1995 when the DDA made its findings redundant, and certainly this century when unemployment is low and even the terms slow-learners and handicapped are unusual because they may harbour pejorative, judgemental, prejudicial inferences, post DDAs.
3. At the time they wrote, the authors were of a mind that young people were often failing to get industrial employment because of bad skills, attitude and personality flaws, and, significantly a poor attitude to work within an industrial environment. This was supported by MSC data, and I see no reason to doubt that. I do challenge the authors using that to support the investigation focus on an Industrial Training Unit in South Wales (why not England where most of the MSC data pertains?) that is exclusively for slow learners and the handicapped. Young people are statistically not slow learners, nor handicapped, so the factual data underpinning the motivation for the research is inappropriate.
4. They deliberately chose an atypical Industrial Unit to study, a fundamental flaw to achieve generalisability and a specious choice for general interest outside of Wales too.
5. They opine failure of improvement of student personality/work-preparedness and machine-competences without use of pre- and post- diagnostic instruments.
   
6. Generalisability for such a mixed descriptive-evaluative case study seems an excellent goal, but it was not the goal of Atkinson et al; they chose atypical foci of study and aimed for general interest. However, had they aimed for generalisability they would have failed because the study has not precise location (we are there with them, but we do not where that is other than in a pat of South Wales); has no precise time line (we do not know when we are there, unless, presumably, 1980, and we do not know how long we stayed with them); it has no addenda of schemes of work, or even an example timetable (so we do not know precisely what we observed along with them, only what they select to suit their agenda of general interest); and I could go on and on about what is missing for one to be able to transfer from their results any fit to any other time or place or institution. A good generalisability test is to check for a study showing what is, what may be and what could be (J W Schofield, 1989). This study is non-generalisable because it only arguably shows what is, does not really attempt to show what may be, and does not begin to question what could be.
   

This paper is an article in a book from the previous century and is more a journalistic piece than a proper study.

However, the authors found that such Units and studies set up to help the disadvantaged learners were need. They may well have contributed to the positive improvements and revolution that culminated in the DDA and Commission by writing a piece of general contemporary interest.