Studies in the Education of Adults Vol. 46, No. 1, Spring 2014 91 Positioning further education and community colleges: Text, teachers and students as global discourse CAROL DENNIS University of Hull, UK Abstract This article explores how ideas about quality in further education and commu- nity colleges are articulated by two policy texts. Published in 2012, How Colleges Improve examines the factors that have contributed towards sustained high per- formance or improvement in further education colleges in the UK. The Heart of Student Success: teaching, learning and college completion, published in 2010, focuses on a similar set of concerns for community college students in the US. Both documents are analysed as enactments within an extended policy process through which the use of language separates the pedagogic encounter into two distinct activities – teaching and learning – strips it of its grounding in social, political and material relations and, through the demands of quality, ensures that a disaggregated pedagogy loses its emancipatory potential. I make use of a quali- tative comparative methodology to explore how this is accomplished through three textual positionings: the positioning assumed by the documents themselves, the positioning ascribed to teachers and the positioning that defines students. Keywords quality, further education, community colleges, textual positioning, teaching and learning Introduction This article explores how ideas about quality in further and adult education are articulated by two policy texts in the UK and the US, by drawing on conceptual framings derived from critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1996). The explora- tion questions the policy understanding of quality that surrounds publicly funded organisations. Such an exploration argues that, while educational policies appear to be driven by a relentless pursuit of efficiency, facts, indicators and effectiveness grounded within an all-encompassing discursive frame, such anchoring emerges from fiercely fought battles on both sides of the Atlantic for the soul of teaching 07_Dennis.indd 91 07_Dennis.indd 91 3/3/2014 2:43:26 PM 3/3/2014 2:43:26 PM