Beyond locutionary denotations: exploring trust between practitioners and policy

• Published in: Research in Post-Compulsory Education Vol. 16; no. 2; pp. 263 - 274
• Main Author: Ade-Ojo, G.O.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01-06-2011; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Adverse Impact; Communication (Thought Transfer); Content Analysis; Education policy; Educational Policy; Information Theory; Leadership; locutionary and perlocutionary imports; policy; Power Structure; practitioners; Program Effectiveness; Skills; Skills for Life; speech act; Speech Acts; Studies; Trust; Trust (Psychology)
• ISSN: 1359-6748; 1747-5112
• DOI: 10.1080/13596748.2011.576582

This study reports the findings of a research on the trust relationship between practitioners in the Skills for Life (SfL) area and the policy that informs their practice. The exploration of this relationship was premised on an extended notion of trust relationship which draws from the Speech Act theory of Austin (
1962
; Searle
1969
; Kissine
2008
), leading to the claim that the existence of different layers of imports in textual analysis makes it possible for a trust relationship to exist between the human/physical and the non human/non physical. The study found that the majority of practitioners in the SfL field trust policy to deliver its inherent policy only to a limited extent. Amongst others, the study identified the impact of the perlocutionary import of policy text on practitioners as a viable reason for this limited level of trust. Such perlocutionary imports, it also found, have adverse impact on practitioners who are considered to have drawn from previous experience to mediate the import of contemporary policies.