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This article focuses on a virtual research environment (VRE) and how it facilitated the networking of teacher educators participating in an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research capacity-building project. Using the theoretical lenses of situated learning and socio-cultural approaches to literacy, participants' ways of engaging with this technology are described, and the reasons why their existing technical expertise did not unproblematically transfer to the new technology are explored. We argue that three main factors affected the use of the VRE, and in particular its wiki tool: the individual's motivation to learn and to engage with (more) new technologies; the emerging dynamics of each research group as they developed shared working practices; and the institutional climates, which supported or discouraged the individuals' engagement with both the technology and a regional Teacher Education Research Network that used this technology. In conclusion, we suggest that successful engagement with new technologies in future academic communities of practice might well benefit from a shared commitment to agreed working practices across the group and the provision of brokerage and championing of the technology by key individuals who are in the position to inspire, motivate and support others. (Contains 1 figure and 1 note.)

This paper draws from the "Literacies for Learning in Further Education" research project, funded through the Teaching and Learning Research Programme. Drawing on the empirical study of literacy practices in eight childcare courses in Scotland and England, we seek to demonstrate that, integral to the learning careers of students are literacy careers through which their learning is mediated. In the process, by drawing upon the lens of literacy, we also challenge some of the common-sense understandings of learning in childcare. In particular, we suggest that the literacy practices of lower level courses can be more diverse than those of higher level courses, producing potentially confusing literacy careers for the students involved. We also highlight the complexity of the range of literacy practices in childcare, which can go unrecognised as requiring explicit tuition, and unacknowledged even when students use them appropriately. Courses in childcare are textually mediated in many different ways, which vary depending on the level of study. A greater acknowledgement of this multiplicity and diversity could lead to more appropriate forms of assessment, and more relevant ways of interpreting the curriculum. We argue that students on vocational courses have more complex literacy careers than is often assumed and that a literacies approach to learning helps to reveal this complexity. (Contains 2 tables and 2 notes.)

Students in Further Education colleges in England read and write in many different kinds of ways in different areas of their everyday lives. As part of their participation in Further Education, these students face a multitude of literacy demands: through the bureaucracies of the college, the pedagogic content of their courses, the textual nature of assessment, and the development of new practices of reading and writing relating to their intended workplaces. Drawing upon evidence from research with students and staff at four FE colleges in England and Scotland, this paper presents the argument that students actively participate within this textual world. They elect to engage with some texts and to ignore others, depending upon the value they judge the text to have, the relevance they think it holds to their lives or courses, and the extent to which they are able to access the text and its meanings. This challenges a popular deficit discourse which assumes FE students' lack of literacy: rather than seeing the student as the "problem" behind the lack of engagement with some texts, the text can be seen as the "problem" if it has failed to engage the student. (Contains 2 notes.)

In engaging in research we draw upon and develop meanings and concepts that help to frame what we do, how we do it and the meaning we make of it. In the process of framing, we exclude other possibilities from our research practices. To do research, then, is to engage in the fashioning of conceptual boundaries. This article explores the dilemmas of boundary-making in the context of a research project aimed at exploring the border literacy practices of students in UK further education, those boundary-crossing practices which relate to the everyday and more formal demands of the curriculum. This discussion is related to wider debates in the social sciences on the significance of boundaries and borders and their powerful effects on identities and actions.