Learning is high on the political agenda for post-compulsory education and training in England. Official discourses about learning assume a predominantly individualist stance, despite the development of theoretical models that stress the contextual and situated nature of learning. In a study following 50 young people through further education over 4 years, it became apparent that the institutional culture of the colleges had a significant impact upon students' dispositions towards their learning. In this paper, we explore the nature and significance of this impact in a case-study sixth form college: an under-researched sector of educational provision. This is followed by a brief discussion of the implications of our analysis for issues of access, widening participation and inequality in relation to current proposals to reform age 16-19 educational provision in England. We conclude by identifying some of the questions about the fine-grained nature of that college culture that our data does not permit us to address directly.
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