Beyond compliance: teacher education practice in a performative framework

publication-status: Publishe

The state of professional practice and policy in the English further education system: a view from below

This paper addresses a recurring theme regarding the UK’s Vocational Education and Training (VET) policy in which Further Education (FE) and training are primarily driven by employer demand. It explores the tensions associated with this process on the everyday working practices of FE practitioners and institutions and its impact on FE’s contribution to the wider processes of social and economic inclusion. At a time when Ofsted and employer-led organisations have cast doubt on the contribution of FE, we explore pedagogies of practice that are often unacknowledged by the current audit demands of officialdom. We argue that such practice provides a more enlightened view of the sector and the challenges it faces in addressing wider issues of social justice, employability and civic regeneration. At the same time, the irony of introducing laissez-faire initiatives designed to remove statutory qualifications for FE teachers ignores the progress made over the past decade in raising the professional profile and status of teachers and trainers in the sector. In addressing such issues, the paper explores the limits and possibilities of constructing professional and vocational knowledge from networks and communities of practice, schools, universities, business, employers and local authorities, in which FE already operates

Locating post-16 professionalism: public spaces as dissenting spaces

Locating post-16 professionalism explores the ways in which teachers in the UK and the USA engaged in digitally mediated communication incidentally narrate their professional selves during extended exchanges about the process of post-qualification registration. Drawing on a theoretical framework derived from participatory democracy, the study is mindful of how citizens in public spaces express support or opposition to government policies. During their extended and intense discussion, the teachers involved discuss who legitimately defines and what justifiably bestows professional status. The paper is intent on questioning the location of professionalism rather than its definition. This spatial dimension is central to the argument that unfolds. Teacher professionalism is most frequently positioned within the classroom; a space that was once conceived as offering scope for strategic compliance. More recently, the classroom has become conceptualised as a diminutive space enabling of little more than teacher survival through tactical resistance. My argument is that teacher professionalism may also be located in other spaces, spaces that allow teachers to transcend the scripted pedagogies of the classroom. In these other spaces, teacher professionalism is located within open critique, defiance and dissent, which allow teachers to extend their pedagogic focus and explore dimensions of professionalism that matter to them: what it means, how and by whom it is conferred