ABSTRACT
In this chapter, and using pseudonyms throughout, we introduce our research sample and the research setting - the local education, training and employment market - and discuss some of the issues and difficulties arising from the conduct of the study We also clarify the style and stance of our writing and interpretation of data. The book you are now reading represents one of several possible ways in which our research could be written up. It constitutes the outcome of a variety of compromises and involves 'a deflation of pretences' (Wexler, 1992, p. 1) and at times a resistance of resolution. Most obviously it does not do anything like full justice to the sheer volume of data we collected. Only some aspects of the lives of some of our respondents are represented here. We have written about others in different ways elsewhere but there is considerable scope for further work on and with our data base. We deal only in passing with the providers' perspectives on the post-16 education and training market. (See below for a fuller outline of the research design.) As indicated in the previous chapter, the general backdrop against which our study is set is the ambition of government to increase participation in post-compulsory education as a means of producing a globally competitive, high-skills economy, what is referred to as the 'learning society'.
