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The paper captures the professionalisation of teachers in the further education sector by shining a light on their everyday struggle to uphold their ethical goals in support of their students in a climate of performative and regulatory expectations. It reports on a small-scale qualitative study in which the six participants were either on the Postgraduate Certificate in Post Compulsory Education course (PGCE in PCE) or on the Masters degree in Professional Practice and Lifelong Education (MA PPLE). They were therefore either student teachers or experienced teachers with different lengths of experience. Students were asked to rank order a set of cards and clarify their decisions. Semi-structured interviews were then undertaken in which the participants were asked to bring artefacts of their choice (potentially from their course of study). Reflection points included the construction of self as teacher and the tensions and impact of a range of expectations nationally and locally. Participants shared responses to continuous change in the sector, their institutions and within their practices. All expressed a common and sustained mission to make a difference, no matter how small, to their students' lives.

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This article reports on a study into literacy education for young people identified as not in education, employment or training (so-called NEETs) and who were attending courses with further education (FE) providers. The study aimed to gain insights into how literacy is being taught to NEET students, to identify factors that influenced delivery and to gather teachers' and student teachers' views on what constituted effective practice in this area. This small-scale study researched the ways in which literacy classes were delivered in 14-19 provision across a range of further education settings. It focused specifically on foundation learning and functional skills classes. The participants worked in 11 different FE settings in the West Midlands region of England. These settings included colleges, training providers, a sixth form college and a dedicated 'unit' within a college with a distinct curriculum offer.

The data was gathered from student teachers' reflective journal entries and follow-up interviews. Interviews were also conducted with experienced literacy teachers in different providers. The data showed that much of the provision for NEET students taught literacy through a technical approach that included a focus on grammar, word classes and apostrophe use. Teachers in these same providers also reported low levels of engagement amongst their students. More positively, the research also discovered literacy provision that engaged with students through innovative holistic curricula. However, existing funding and assessment regimes as well as traditional notions of literacy were found to present barriers to this kind of provision. The study concluded that existing marketised funding arrangements and prescriptive curricula militate against the (re)engagement of students that fall into NEET categories.

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