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Further education has become pivotal to English educational policy with the sector being central to strategies that seek to raise educational standards and widen participation. This article derives from a study of trainee further education (FE) teachers on a full-time, postgraduate certificate course in the Midlands. It seeks to examine trainee experiences of their placement college and of the pedagogic relations in which they are placed. In particular, the article analyses trainees’ initial orientation towards learning and teaching in the sector, and sets this against college experiences. Heuristically, trainees’ understandings of care are located within and mediated by the pedagogic context in which they labour. Conceptualisations of emotional labour, performativity, and the relations between learner and teacher are central to understanding these orientations to care.

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Following the Kennedy Report [indexed at TD/IRD 88.23], the lifelong learning Green Paper [’The learning age: a renaissance for a new Britain’ indexed at TD/IRD 88.177] and the 1999 White Paper ‘Learning to succeed’ [indexed at TD/IRD 88.176], postcompulsory education would appear to be at the forefront of Labour’s education and training policies. This article examines the way trainee teachers at an English university understand the lecturer’s role within the pedagogic, curricular and policy context of post-16 learning. It locates these understandings by comparing them with those held by more established staff as well as setting them against the policy context of further education. It seeks to explore the social justice implications of these differing interpretations. The article is based on research with a group of trainee teachers completing a one-year teacher training course. Their perceptions are analysed and compared with findings from interviews with staff based in further education colleges responsible for teaching practice.

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The current paper draws on data derived from a small-scale ongoing longitudinal study of further education trainee teachers. It examines their experiences during and after the completion of their training. The study was conducted at a university in the English Midlands and sets trainees’ experiences within the socio-economic and policy context. This paper addresses the experiences of six respondents, exploring their trajectory into the sector, orientations towards pedagogic relations and enacted professionality. The paper concludes by suggesting that trainees’ educational commitment to the tenets of social justice need to be accompanied by an expansive and politicised understanding of practice.

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The paper develops a comparative analysis of teacher education for vocational education and training in Scotland and England, which is set within a European context. A 'home international' intra-comparative framework is used for the study, identifying both strengths and weaknesses within both systems. A number of themes are identified and discussed within the study including the issues of governance, regulation, pedagogy and professionalisation. The findings indicate that both countries have responded in different ways to the pressures of neo-liberal competitiveness and globalisation, in particular by adopting different systems of governance and regulation. However, it is argued that although these differences are significant when viewed within a 'cross-border' setting, they also underline how both countries have by and large disengaged from European policy making in vocational education teacher training.

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Background: The paper compares and contrasts the policy context of teacher training for vocational educators (VETT) in Scotland and England and locates this in its European setting. It explores the wider socio-economic context, one that emphasises lifelong learning, competitiveness and social justice. Purpose: In particular, it addresses the UK Coalition government's orientation to vocational teacher education and the way in which this impacts upon VETT in the two home nations. Sources of evidence: It draws on a small-scale illuminative case study of teacher educators in England and Scotland. Main argument: It explores the limits and possibilities for the development of radical and critical practices embedded in VETT policy and practice.

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This article draws on a small-scale case study of English pre- and in-service further education (FE) trainee teachers from a northern university. It explores their understanding of notions of well-being and health. In particular, it examines trainees' orientation to care as well as their constructions of learners. It analyses two contradictory but overlapping discourses, one that constructs learners as in need of care and support whilst the other utilises a 'pathological' model. This is followed by an analysis of the labour process within further education and the emotional labour involved in supporting students as well as meeting the range of demands faced by those working in the sector. Whilst the trainees reflect models of the dual and learning professional characteristic of teachers in the sector, marked by an expanded professionalism, they have as yet not developed a fully politicised notion of teaching.

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This article compares and contrasts the policy context of Vocational Education Teacher Training (VETT) in Scotland and England by setting this within its wider socio-economic context, one emphasising lifelong learning and competitiveness. This facilitates a comparison of the two nations and enables an analysis of VETT responses to globalisation and lifelong learning. It allows an exploration of policy continuities and breaks across Scotland and England, leading to a consideration of the limits and possibilities of the different 'solutions' adopted. In these nations VETT is somewhat marginal having only recently become mandatory, unlike many other European responses. The article's policy analysis is complemented by a small scale illuminative case study of VETT educators in Scotland and England, which explores the way policy is lived and mediated at the site of practice. The research suggests that whilst both systems are compromised, VETT educators seek to work on the 'good' side of the system in which they are placed.

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In this article 93 empirical studies on learning to teach are reviewed. The purpose of the review was twofold. Firstly, the authors sought to establish what is currently known about how people learn to teach and, secondly, to critique the quality of the reporting of that research. An outline of the review methodology and an extensive table containing details of the studies reviewed are included. To present the review results the research papers were grouped within three areas: prior beliefs of beginning teachers; program interventions; and the first year of teaching. Themes emerging from the research papers are identified. These areas were then cut across to discuss more generally what has been learned about the process of learning to teach and to comment critically on the research. The review of the research highlights the tensions between the beliefs and expectations of student teachers and teacher educators and compares the effect of teacher education programs on beginning teacher beliefs. In the final section suggestions are offered for improving research and teacher education programs. Show less

This paper examines lecturers' understandings of their role, their own capabilities, and those of other colleagues, within the pedagogic, curricular, and policy context in which [further education] FE is placed. The research explores the views of three distinctive groups. A group of intending lecturers undergoing a full-time teacher training courses orientated to further education; centre tutors who are responsible for these students teaching practice in the college setting and finally a group of in-service lecturers undergoing part time teacher training courses. The paper explores the contradictions and tensions in the perceptions within each group, and the different perspectives between groups, arguing that these can, in part, be understood by their institutional location. The paper concludes by drawing out the policy implications of the preceding analysis.

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The development of professional identity amongst lecturers training to teach in further education (FE) colleges in England involves processes of adaptation. These partly take place during teaching placement in FE, as trainees navigate between their own anticipated professional identity and the identities which they feel under pressure to assume as they engage in their work with students. This article explores these processes of development, focusing in particular on the identities that trainee lecturers develop in their work with disengaged 16-19 year-old students. Using case studies of two trainee lecturers, the article explores the way in which they are pushed towards adopting what they see as a ‘pedagogic’, ‘teacherly’ identity, which they had previously associated with schoolteachers, in their work with such students. The article suggests that the notion of ‘schooling’ identities and cultures, whilst contrasting with the vocational habitus proposed by others, is a useful way to explore how cultures and identities in general FE are created through similar processes of identity construction and reconstruction.

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