Researching APEL routes to becoming professionally recognised as a teacher in Higher Education

This study examines the experience of 19 academics who received postgraduate credits through an Assessment of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) process with portfolios as the method of assessment. The purpose of the study was to inform the design of routes to professional recognition based on experience. Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) was used to analyse the data from the study which was in the form of interviews and portfolios. Key to ANT is the process of symmetry. That is, the principle that human and non-human elements of a network should be analysed in the same way. ANT provided an overarching framework for analysing different approaches to APEL whilst remaining true to the individual realities of the process for participants. ANT concepts such as mediators and intermediaries explained the different roles actors (human and material) had in shaping meaning and action in different networks. ANT facilitated an explanation of the role of evidence as both an enabler and barrier to the process of portfolio-building and made visible the resources used by participants in the process. Thus, ANT concepts were fundamental in explaining how the final portfolios came to be. The outcomes of the analysis provided an alternative to experiential learning models (cf Kolb) for facilitating APEL and hereafter the process is referred to as the Recognition of Prior Learning. Three approaches were identified to the translation and transfer of prior learning from practice contexts to academic contexts. These were Articulating, Demonstrating and Authenticating. These approaches represented as a model for Recognising Prior Learning (RPL) had different implications for individual subjectivities and behaviours. Developed into a typology of pedagogic approaches to RPL they provide ways of thinking about RPL design. The argument made throughout the study is that understanding the learner experience of RPL is key to increasing engagement with the process. Examples are provided from the author’s own practice which used the outcomes of this study to inform RPL design in the context of professional recognition and the award of academic credit.