ARTICLE IN PRESS

Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2009) 1–7

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities

Martin Jephcote*, Jane Salisbury
Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff, CF 10 3WT, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study of further education teachers, conducted over a two-year period, captures the realities of their
Received 14 November 2008 working lives and, in particular, draws attention to how teachers reconcile competing pressures. This
Received in revised form contributes to the growing interest in and body of knowledge about teachers’ lives and the formation of
14 May 2009
their professional identities. The study draws on a variety of data including ethnographic observation,
Accepted 26 May 2009
journals and biographical accounts to indicate the nature of their fractured professional base that leaves
them open to exploitation. The ongoing pressure for performativity and constant change destabilises
Keywords:
their work, yet they remain committed to meeting the needs and interests of their students.
Professional identity
Professional learning Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Teacher biography
Occupational socialization

1. Introduction achievement, but also draw attention to their contribution to

This paper explores the conditions in which practising Further
Education (FE) teachers work, their interactions with students and
how they construct their professional identities. We draw attention
to the formation of teachers’ professional identities arising out of
their fragmented professional base, and to their changing working
conditions which shape the context in which their identities are
formed and re-formed.
Overall, our research points to teachers’ professional identities
which emphasise Further Education’s role in compensating for
previous educational disadvantage and teachers’ primary respon-
sibilities for the social well-being of their students. This is seen to
be under threat from growing bureaucracy and from the demands
of an increasingly managerialist institutional regime in colleges.
These competing pressures are reconciled by a renewed emphasis
on an ethic of care and an essentially moral commitment to the
teacher’s role in ameliorating the social disadvantages experienced
by many students, especially in areas such as South Wales.
Indeed, there seems to be a growing recognition and celebration
of the importance of teachers and an assertion that ‘teachers
matter’. This was the title of an OECD (2005) report which
concluded that the most important school variable influencing
student achievement was to do with teachers and teaching. More
recently, Day, Sammons, Stobart, Kington, and Gu (2007) have
asserted that teachers not only matter in terms of students’
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: jephcote@cariff.ac.uk (M. Jephcote), salisburyj@cf.ac.uk
(J. Salisbury).
personal and social well-being. Students, they suggested, ‘learn
because of them – not just because of what and how they teach,
but, because of who they are as people’ (p.1.). As Goodson (2007)
stated, ‘this act of moral re-centring hopes to reinvigorate an
educational enterprise which at the moment seems to be too often
unfocussed and unfulfilling for the teaching force’ (p.xiii). He sug-
gested it was timely to consider what professional learning,
professional knowledge and professional status should look like for
incoming and in-service teachers. Although like Day, Goodson was
referring to school teachers, his point is just as valid in the further
education (FE) sector, where in sometimes different ways to the
school sector, tutors are a ‘major influence on the quality of
learning’ (TLRP, 2005).
2. The study
The account draws on an ESRC/TLRP research study conducted
in the period July 2005 to July 2007. Like Day et al. (2007) this
research recognised ‘the connection between teachers’ private
lives, the personal and biographical aspects of their careers, and
how these intersect and shape professional thoughts and actions’
(pp. 27–28). In so doing, the study followed the lives of an initial
group of 27 teachers from three FE colleges in South Wales chosen
to reflect a range of social and economic contexts. The study also
followed the ‘learning journeys’ of 45 students, chosen because
they were taught by the teachers in the study. It used a multi-
method qualitative approach that involved each of the teachers and
students in an in-depth semi-structured interview at the start and
end of the project; the regular completion of structured learning

0742-051X/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.010

Please cite this article in press as: Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities, Teaching and
Teacher Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.010
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
2 M. Jephcote, J. Salisbury / Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2009) 1–7
journals; and, extensive first-hand ethnographic observation by
a project fieldworker of learning interactions in a variety of settings
including classrooms and workshops. Additionally, following
a project dissemination event a self-selected sub-set of ten of the
teachers volunteered to write an auto-biographical account loosely
framed around the notion of ‘becoming and being’ a teacher.
The initial interview with teachers took a life history approach,
asking them to reflect across their wider life experiences, their
entries into and experiences of teaching and their thoughts on
classroom teaching. In addition, following them over the two-year
period, through first-hand ethnographic observation and interac-
tion, completion of a periodic learning journal and a final in-depth
interview constituted something also of a life-course account.
Unlike some other forms of journal writing, both students and
teachers were asked to respond to broad thematic questions that
were constructed as the study developed. This paper draws mainly
from the teacher data, in particular, from the observational
accounts and from an extended set of biographical accounts
produced by the self-selected sub-set of the teachers.
Engagement with the participants in the study and, in particular,
the teachers, has involved discussion of the progress of the project
during its unfolding. Thus, these participants have not been passive
objects of research, but have contributed actively to its develop-
ment. In part, this engagement has been achieved by formal means,
via ongoing email contacts, and meetings to discuss results-in-
progress, etc. However, given the ethnographic elements of the
study design, it has also been based on everyday encounters in the
FE colleges, involving ‘getting up close’, ‘lingering and loitering’ and
the generation of ‘willing disclosures’ about participant’s working
and wider lives.
3. The ‘further education’ sector
In the UK, children are required to be in ‘compulsory’ education
until the age of sixteen, usually attending a private or state school,
or in home ‘schooling’. Afterwards, they may choose to continue in
school, enter the labour market or go to a college of further
education (FE). FE colleges also cater for adult returners to learning,
such as those seeking to improve their qualifications or gain new
skills later in life. FE colleges provide courses similar to those in
schools but also offer a wide array of vocational subjects with
training geared towards the acquisition of job specific qualifica-
tions. Indeed, the vast majority of students in FE are over the age of
twenty and on part-time vocational courses. They are similar to the
Australian Technical and Further Education College or the American
Community College.
Teachers enter into FE in a variety of ways, the majority having
had prior experience in the labour market and, often but not
always, in the occupational area in which they teach. The majority
of FE teachers work part-time, are female and in the forty to fifty
age group. Many do not have a degree. Notwithstanding the
inherent problems of defining what constitutes a teaching qualifi-
cation in the FE sector (Bathmaker, 2000) some have prior teaching
qualifications but others embark on their formal and informal
professional learning ‘on the job’ and, as in other professions, are
subject to the processes of ‘occupational socialisation’. Obtaining
data on the numbers in Wales who hold teaching qualifications
such as a PGCE remains difficult. For England, the 2005–2006 Staff
Individualised Record data held by Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK)
show that for teaching staff, the number holding either, a Certificate
of Education, a Bachelor of Education or other undergraduate
degree with concurrent teacher qualification or a PGCE qualifica-
tion rose from 45% in 2003–2003 to 50% in 2005–2006, but with
only 21% holding a PGCE. Clearly, apart from the difficulties in
gathering meaningful data from what is a mainly part-time and
Please cite this article in press as: Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities, Teaching and
Teacher Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.010
often a transitory workforce, its transitory nature also exacerbates
the task of constantly having to provide training. Moreover, given
the predominance of part-time workers, the need is for a model of
delivery and appropriate professional standards.
The FE sector operates in what we have referred to as a ‘deficit’
model of provision, reacting to new economic and industrial
imperatives, broadly to do with bringing about economic growth
and social cohesion. Individually or collectively, colleges do not play
a central role in controlling or shaping the sector’s future. Especially
since the incorporation of colleges in 1993, that turned them into
independent businesses, they have been forced to operate as
competitors with each other and with schools, generating a good
deal of concern about the impact on staff and students and more
generally about the governance of the sector (see Jephcote, Salis-
bury, & Graham, 1996; Jephcote & Salisbury, 2007). More recently
there has been something of a rush to form partnerships and to
collaborate. This is certainly the case in Wales where the National
Assembly has even set out measures to require a level of co-
operation.
4. Teachers’ lives, work and careers: the changing political,
social and economic context
As Ball and Goodson (1985) asserted, any attempt to capture
teachers’ current work, their lives and careers, must recognise the
changing context in which work is carried out and their careers
constructed. Such work attaches importance to the wider social
contexts of teachers’ lives and work and the interplay between
them. Notably, Ivor Goodson has remained consistent in his interest
in and application of these methods from the early 80s through to
to-day and it is his work that has, above others, influenced the
analysis of data and the construction of the narrative presented in
this paper (Ball &Goodson, 1985; Goodson, 1985, 1992, 1995;
Goodson & Walker, 1991).
There are overlapping areas of reform which individually and
collectively appear to have worked to vary the conditions and
stability of FE teachers’ lives, work and careers. Broadly, these
include (i) the incorporation of colleges in 1993, and (ii) associated
external regulation in the form of audit and inspection, (iii) the
ongoing association of FE colleges with the failings of the British
economy and, (iv) more recently the re-branding of FE as the
‘learning and skills sector’ and, (v) the introduction of national
professional standards.
There has been a steady growth in academic research interest in
the FE sector, and from it an increasing flow of publications, but in
terms of what we know about FE teachers they are perhaps only
marginally beyond the ‘shadowy figures’ stage, that is, through the
ways in which school teachers were depicted by research in the
1960s in an aggregated form (Ball & Goodson, 1985, p.6). Notably,
the work of Gleeson and Mardle (1980) and Salisbury (1994a,
1994b) drew attention to the occupational socialisation of FE
teachers, and Ranson (1994), Higham, Sharp, and Yeomans (1996),
Ainley and Bailey (1997), Avis (1999) Avis, Bloomer, Esland,
Gleeson, & Hodkinson (1996) to the impacts of changing policy and
provision. There has been growing interest in the notion of
‘professionalism’ (for example, Clow, 2001; Colley, James, &
Diment, 2007; Gleeson & James, 2007; Hodkinson, 1995; Randle &
Brady, 1997; Robson, 1998; Robson, Bailey, & Larkin, 2004; Shain,
1998) and the impacts of professional standards (for example,
Bathmaker, 2000; Hyland, 1993; Lucas, 2002, 2007). In both the
school and FE sectors there is much recent research into the initial
training of teachers, for example, Parsons, Avis, and Bathmaker
(2001), Maxwell (2005), Bathmaker and Avis (2005a, 2005b, 2007),
and Avis and Bathmaker (2006) but much less into the lives of
experienced teachers. However, it seems that capturing the
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
M. Jephcote, J. Salisbury / Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2009) 1–7
biographies of teachers is becoming more popular, for example,
Avis and Bathmaker (2006), Clow (2005), Jephcote, Salisbury, and
Rees (2008) and Robson (1998).
Briefly, incorporation was a ‘watershed’, the time at which FE
colleges were removed from local education authority (LEA) control
and became independent businesses, marking out a new era for
colleges and those who worked in them (see Jephcote & Salisbury,
2007). Prior to 1993, under the control of the LEA, this was a period
of relative autonomy for teachers and managers and a time when
the curriculum and teaching dominated debate and actions.
Incorporation heralded a new era, essentially introducing a ‘mar-
ketized’ economy, forcing competition between colleges and with
schools and the adoption of associated behaviours. There were new
contracts for staff, changed working conditions and an ongoing
drive for efficiency, that is, increasing student numbers without
corresponding increases in funding. Also in the spirit of securing
the public interest and value for money there was the introduction
of external inspection and other quality measures. One principal of
a college in our study told us that on over two hundred separate
days of the year one body or another was on site monitoring quality,
such as ESTYN, the equivalent of the Ofsted inspection service in
England. The pressure for strategic compliance (Gleeson & Shain,
1999), for example, to achieve a good inspection grading, which are
widely reported in the media, took up teachers’ time and energy.
Increasingly, resources were diverted away from classrooms and
into the burgeoning support structures and support staff. College
principals, now ‘chief executives’, had no option other than to look
at their colleges as commercial enterprises and to look for flexibility
in their teaching workforces, resulting in its overall casualisation
(see Shain & Gleeson, 1999). Taken together, these changes were to
reposition and change the nature of and relationship between
teacher and manager. There were also implications for students.
Many colleges reduced the amount of time given to the teaching of
subjects and in our own work we came across the (re-) invention of
the fifty-minute hour. This meant that whereas a subject might
have been allocated five one-hour lessons a week, it was now
reduced to five fifty-minute lessons, with an overall loss of fifty
minutes. For teachers, however, this was fifty minutes that could be
allocated to other duties. Students also found that the courses they
wanted to enrol on were more likely to be withdrawn if it failed to
recruit a stipulated target. Moreover, the increased pressure now on
teachers to ensure that students attained qualifications, which was
itself linked to income, caused some teachers to adopt teaching
styles to maximise this outcome.
Once something of a hidden sector, FE has gained more political
and even some media attention. Successive White Papers reposi-
tioned the role of FE, and like other sectors of education, was not
just seen as a means to bringing about a change in Britain’s relative
economic decline, but was re-cast as part of the problem (Jephcote
& Abbott, 2005). Thus the reform of FE was part of a broader project
and as Gleeson, Davies, and Wheeler (2005) noted, its reform an
attempt to position it within a global discourse of economic
improvement, re-skilling and social inclusion. The Leitch Review of
Skills (2006) entitled Prosperity for all in the Global Economy: world
class skills is evidence of this point as are the contents of responses
to it across the UK (Brown, Lauder, & Ashton, 2008). For example in
Wales, the Webb Review (2007) of further education called Promise
and Performance emphasised the need for lifelong learning if Wales
is to ‘compete effectively in the global economy’ (p.4). And, Skills
That Work for Wales: a skills and employment strategy and action plan
(2008) sees further education as ‘the key driver for skills’ (Minis-
terial foreword) to ensure that Wales can compete on a global stage
and ensure its economic growth. Whereas there can be little doubt
about the importance of developing an appropriate skills base this
is likely to herald yet more reform, pressures on the sector and, in
Please cite this article in press as: Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities, Teaching and
Teacher Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.010
3
particular, on teachers. Moreover, without a significant investment
in the recruitment, training and retention of vocationally well
qualified staff, these aspirations are not likely to be met. At the
same time, there is the possibility that the narrowing of focus on
skills delivery, driven by a state economic discourses, will not only
emasculate other discourses, but also marginalise non-vocational
subject areas, and undervalue the wider purposes of further
education for learners of all ages.
Goodson and Hargreaves (1996) noted the important difference
between teachers’ professionalism and their professionalization,
the latter a means of government control that, in the case of school
teachers, led to their deprofessionalization. The prescribing of
professional standards, they asserted, marginalised the important
emotional aspects of teachers’ work and the care they show for
students’ learning and lives. The attempt to ‘professionalize’ the FE
workforce, as in the case of the development and introduction of
professional standards, was initially undertaken by the Further
Education National Training Organisation (FENTO) in 1999, one of
the many National Training Organisations (NTOs) which, at the
time, were charged with mapping occupational standards across all
areas of activity. The requirement in England for all new FE staff to
have a teaching qualification followed in September 2001 but was
done so without any real knowledge about becoming a teacher in
the sector (Maxwell, 2005). Citing Docking (2000), Maxwell made
the point that the standards discourse was underpinned first by the
assumption that raising professional standards would translate into
economic competitiveness in the global economy and secondly, the
government’s definition of what constitutes effective practice. An
added concern was that the introduction of national standards
became an additional means of control rather than providing
a basis for professional development (Bathmaker, 2000). Much of
the ensuing reform, now embodied in standards produced by
Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) derived in part from criticisms made
by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted, 2003, 2006), no
doubt informed by their experience of inspecting initial teacher
training for the schools sector. For Lucas (2007) in a sense, the
standards did not go far enough in that they failed to capture the
diversity of learning contexts in FE, including community and
work-based provision. Also, until 2007, it was the case that in FE
there was no central body, such as the General Teaching Council
(GTC) for school teachers, to promote the professional nature of
teaching (Lucas, 2002) and to provide an antidote to what are in
effect, employer-led standards. Now, the Institute for Learning (ifl)
is the professional body for teachers, trainers, tutors and student
teachers registered to teach in the now called ‘Further Education
and Skills Sector’ in England. To continue their registration
members ‘must demonstrate evidence of continuing professional
development which links to subject specialism, teacher training,
organisational and national requirements. Failure to comply with
this is a ‘disciplinary offence’ (www.ifl.ac.uk). The effects of these
reforms are most likely to be felt on hard pressed teachers partic-
ularly if they are thought to undervalue their attention to student’s
well-being, which they see integral to attainment and achievement.
5. Tales from the field
Goodson has also been influential in the context of the TLRP
‘Learning Lives’ project. Although the focus here was on adult
learners and their learning through the life course, there is a sense
in which FE teachers’ biographies can, in a similar vein, shed light
on the interactions between professional identity and agency and
how this impacts on their professional practices in times of change.
But as Tedder and Biesta (2007) reminded us, this sort of bio-
graphical learning does not necessarily arise out of conscious and
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
4 M. Jephcote, J. Salisbury / Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2009) 1–7
reflexive approaches, but can be implicit and tacit and may not be
understood until after the event.
However, Denzin’s sharp criticism of a biographical approach to
understanding lives still rings in the ears of contemporary
researchers. Denzin (1991, cited in Goodson, 1992) was critical of
the way that biographers had diverted attention away from the
social structures that had valorised and oppressed the subject of
study. Following Goodson’s (1992) defence, importance is attached
to the contextualising of life history, so that, as Stenhouse stated, it
becomes a ‘story of action within a theory of context’. In this way,
taking a social constructionist perspective to the study of teachers’
lives and work is to set them against the story of reform and the
political, social and economic contexts in which they live and work.
To ignore what teachers tell us is to accept ongoing reform as
prescription. Rather, listening to what teachers tell us is to chal-
lenge the dominant power relations that exist between policy
communities and their over concern for performativity, FE college
managers and their managerialist perspective, and teachers’ own
interests, which work to reposition and re-label both ‘worker’ and
‘manager’ (Gleeson, 2001).
From the outset of our study, like Knowles (1992) we found that
biography played a role in determining and explaining how
teachers undertook their work in classrooms and in the formation
of their teacher identities. As our study unfolded, over time it began
to show that the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie, 1975) was
only part of the process of their occupational socialisation and the
shaping of their professional identities. To be clear, the existing
culture of the college, long-standing organisational arrangements
and the impact of colleagues already experienced in the setting did
have an impact. However, we also found that teachers’ own values
systems structured their professional identities, such as in
privileging the needs and interests of their students, often at the
cost of their own work-life balance and often under the stress of the
risk of alienating them from managers. Many of our teachers drew
on their own formative experiences of schooling to illustrate their
own values, attitudes, and beliefs as well as their educational
ideologies and classroom practices. Perhaps characteristic of the
nature of the FE workforce, many also drew on their occupational
experiences, for example, as engineers to inform their attitudes
towards teaching building studies, as nurses to inform how they
taught social care and zoo keeping to illustrate a commitment to
animal care as a subject of study (see Clow, 2001), and many
maintained an allegiance to their former occupational identity
(Robson, 1998). References to the prevalent standards in their own
areas of professional practice were often used to justify their
expectations of what their students should aspire to and to make
clear to students when their work was below par. Thus we have
tended not to adopt either of the dichotomous positions that, on the
one hand, emphasise contextual factors, such as the character of
training, the structure of the system or the institution, or on the
other hand, give emphasis to prior beliefs and practices. We have
found that biography exemplifies both, and understanding the
formation of teacher identities can be seen as an outcome of
understanding all those experiences that have impacted on
teachers’ thinking about their work in colleges.
Teacher participants included full and part-time staff from
vocational and academic curriculum areas whose ages ranged from
mid-20s to late 50s. Many of the teachers in the ‘core participant’
group had chequered educational biographies, characteristically
describing themselves as ‘late developers’. As James and Biesta
(2007, p. 127) reported, many ‘slipped into the role through a range
of unplanned and unforeseen events’, taking advantage of ‘an
opportunity at a particular moment in time’ (Gleeson et al., 2005,
p.449). Typically, one of our participants stated that she ‘fell into
teaching’ and another ‘it was by accident that I started to teach’, and
Please cite this article in press as: Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities, Teaching and
Teacher Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.010
far fewer reported that it had been planned or a long term aim. Not
surprisingly, a substantial proportion, especially amongst those who
taught on vocational programmes, were late entrants to the teaching
profession, following on from extended periods in other employ-
ment. They saw this sort of biography as providing a powerful role
model for their students. Many of them, again primarily in the
vocational areas, emphasised that processes of learning in FE
embodied the ‘acculturation’ of students into established occupa-
tional communities, paralleling the academic analyses of this kind,
without, of course, any explicit reference to them. Other teachers,
albeit the minority, had followed much less complex routes into the
profession, progressing from school to university, to initial teacher
training and to employment in FE, although even here, a number had
experience of other occupations too.
We draw here on three of the teachers in our study to illustrate
how they conceived their own professional identities. This data
principally arises from a sub-set of our core teacher participants
who, by their own choice, accepted an invitation to join the project
team for an off-campus discussion about the early findings. With
their agreement we audio recorded these discussions and invited
them to undertake an extended piece of reflective, biographical
writing. As with our learning journal, a very broad writing frame
was provided asking them to reflect on how they became a teacher,
the training they received, their ongoing development and their
own sense of professional identity. As Avis and Bathmaker (2006)
found, our respondents’ teacher identities were forged in part by
previous experience, and for some informed by work-based iden-
tities reflecting, for example, academic and especially vocational
orientations, how they embraced changes in their working envi-
ronment and working conditions. Perhaps for intrinsic reasons, all
had a commitment to their students and ‘went beyond’ what was
merely required to meet a programme specification, thus ‘adding
value’ by developing the ‘whole person’ (Robson et al., 2004, p. 189).
Mary, who taught animal care, suggested that being the eldest
of three sisters engendered in her the ability to show others
what she had learned. Even though she had to attend special
classes at junior school because she could not read and write,
she thought herself lucky to have had teachers who focused on
what she could do rather than what she could not. In secondary
school ‘excellent’ science teachers generated her own interest in
the subject but she rejected the idea, suggested to her by her
career skills test that she should become a teacher. It was the
meeting of who was to become her husband and their shared
passion for reptiles that took them into the world of zoos, visitor
education and part time lecturing and, at an early stage of this
part of her career, enrollment onto a Further Education Teachers’
Certificate (FETC) course followed by a PGCE. This experience led
to confrontation with another member of staff who ‘thought of
me as a competitor; someone trying to gain more teaching
hours’. Mary continued to pursue her personal and professional
development by undertaking a bachelor’s degree in education at
the college she now worked at. As she stated: ‘I was amazed that
I finished the thing really, as by now I was teaching full time,
managing a few courses, had responsibility for marketing, key
skills coordination for the whole section and internal verifica-
tion for horticulture and animal care’.
Mary was surprised at how for much of the time she was left to
get on with the job and, in turn, the lack of feedback she got. By
way of keeping herself up-to-date she had applied to undertake
a master’s degree, which she had to pay for herself. Training
provided by her college was pre-occupied with new legislation
and changes to qualifications. Like her wish to do a master’s
degree, her frequent requests to undertake counseling training
‘in order to better deal with the mountain of problems our
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
M. Jephcote, J. Salisbury / Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2009) 1–7
students seem faced with’ was only likely happen if she funded
it herself and did it in her own time. Training provided by the
college ‘feels like continued additional pressure’ on top of
teaching 27 hours a week, and doing everything else that is
required causing her to state: ‘I am not one to complain, nor-
mally I just get on with it. but in this last year my health has
really started to suffer. running our own business with two
small children was far less pressure than this’.
What made it all worthwhile for Mary was to see ‘when
students grow and develop right in front of your eyes. become
self confident, capable adults. many achieve more than they
thought themselves capable of’. At the same time she wondered
if ‘Working your lecturing staff to a standstill. (was) the best
use of your most valuable asset?’. Like many of the teachers in
our study, Mary thought that FE colleges provided a ‘sanctuary,
a place of second chances.’ and that colleges do a good job
despite their lack of resources because ‘staff have to be more
resourceful, use their initiative, or invest personally in the
colleges as we have’.
Deb, a teacher of sociology, was always a prolific writer, one of her
learning journal entries extending to twenty-nine typed pages.
She entered into FE teaching after completion of a full-time
PGCE(FE) and her account was testimony to the impact this had
on her thinking and reflective approach. Although she trained
and qualified in 1993, she was struck at how similar the diffi-
culties of a beginning and experienced teacher were and that
they had not disappeared. Teaching mainly part-time students
dictated that she did a considerable amount of evening work, in
turn finding it difficult to maintain a work-life balance, with her
social life and friendships paying the cost. Moreover, ‘preparation
and marking are two tasks that still predominate my leisure time
as the increased bureaucracy in my professional life prevents
these tasks being carried out in general duties hours’.
Deb has encountered many ‘challenging’ learners and even
though they have ‘taxed’ her, was pleased that FE has given
them the opportunity to mature. Approaching the end of her
Open University master’s degree in education she has found it
difficult, compounded by the fact that self-improvement of this
sort is carried out in her own time. At times, the job has been
stressful. She tries to solve problems herself, as often, involving
others can take too long and the consequences can be
‘detrimental’.
Emma, an art teacher, completed her degree in illustration and
became a freelance illustrator but later took the advice of her
teacher parents to undertake a PGCE in further education ‘as
a way to develop myself personally and professionally’. For her,
learning to become a teacher comprised several stages. Initially,
she reflected on being a learner herself, recounting what
‘switches us on, engages us, who inspires us, the teacher that
makes our lives change.’. More ‘formally’, was the impact of
the PGCE, ‘learning theory to gain insight and understanding
into the whole ethos of teaching’. Then, to the ‘the first three
years of teaching, when you develop, learn and refine most’. This
is about fulfilling a contract, fitting in within an organization,
refining ‘your rougher edges’ and realizing that teaching ‘entails,
unfortunately, a lot more paperwork and administration than
you would ever have imagined’. At the next stage Emma
reflected on realizing that she hasn’t learned much about being
a teacher, but was ‘still learning, still evolving. new challenges,
new students, new initiatives. that is one good thing about FE,
it never lets you relax into a ‘‘comfortable’’ teacher, it’s always
moving forward, sometimes a little too fast’.
Ten years into the job, Emma noted that she is expected by her
college to continually improve year on year. Now working as
a cluster manager and not sure if she quite fits in, she attends
Please cite this article in press as: Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities, Teaching and
Teacher Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.010
5
training events and conferences with ‘real managers’. In her
view, compulsory college training events focus too much on
‘peripheral issues’ such as bilingualism and student data, with
too little emphasis on teaching and learning. The main diffi-
culties she faced were related to workload, feeling that her work
was never finished. She regularly worked a 12 hour day, taught
some evenings, never took her half-term break and only four
weeks off in the Summer.
Emma’s professional identity ‘comes from my students. so
many people write-off teenagers and just don’t listen to them’.
She felt privileged to be part of people’s lives when they are at
a critical point of development. Her own sense of achievement
came not just from the results but ‘in the experiences the
students have had. I want them to feel valued and important to
me’. Although she ‘loves’ her job, she felt that she has had to
undertake many duties that are not any longer expected of
school teachers, such as administration and enrolment. More-
over, she felt that she is comparatively under paid, not receiving
any allowances for being a cluster manager and has no possi-
bility of applying for performance related pay.
From all our data sets (see, www.FurtherEducationResearch.org
for working papers and publications) it was apparent that most of
our teachers shared with their students the view that FE provided
a significant educational ‘second chance’. Notable, was the extent to
which our teachers were disparaging of schools and the teachers in
them, which may well have important implications for the viability
of constructing more collaboration in the delivery of 14–19
education and training, which is currently a major policy pre-
occupation in Wales. Whilst expressed in different ways, their
‘professional identities’ embodied a strong commitment to the
notion that FE provided opportunities for their students to
compensate for the shortcomings of their previous educational
experiences. It follows from this that they conceived of their proper
professional role primarily in terms of establishing supportive
relationships with their students, rather than in terms simply of
imparting a body of knowledge on the basis of subject expertise. It
may be that the strength of this compensatory commitment
reflected the wider social democratic ethos in Wales, as in Scotland,
which is also manifest in other aspects of the Welsh educational
system, such as the maintenance of ‘community comprehensive
schools’ as the overwhelmingly dominant form of secondary
education. Certainly, the majority of our teachers were biographi-
cally rooted in Welsh society. As they presented it, ‘successful’
teaching and learning was based on establishing appropriate rela-
tionships, as it was these which provide the necessary basis for
changing students’ understandings of themselves as learners and
their learning behaviours.
The teachers were equally consistent in their view that their
‘professional identity’ was threatened by the encroachment of new
institutional regimes within the colleges. At one level, this was
reflected in their accounts of how new bureaucratic requirements,
relating especially to the provision of numerical data, distracted
from their engagement with the students: as one interviewee put it
‘. grappling with the data prevents you from preparing for
teaching.’ Perhaps more fundamentally, the development of insti-
tutional regimes which render individual students in terms of
‘numerical outputs’ were seen as inimical to the kinds of teacher–
student relationships that express their ‘professional identities’.
Similarly, the increasing regulation of pedagogic practices by
target-setting and the implementation of initiatives such as
learning styles inventories were viewed as antithetical to ‘appro-
priate’ professional practice.
Certainly, there was little sense in these accounts that what is
often described as a distinctive and more consensual policy
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
6 M. Jephcote, J. Salisbury / Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2009) 1–7
approach to FE in Wales was experienced in this way by teachers.
The Welsh funding regime was widely described as punitive and
the Estyn inspection system as not serving the best interests of FE
students. Teachers described what seemed to them like an
unending sequence of changes to programmes, revised assessment
requirements and the introduction of wholly new schemes, such as
the Welsh Baccalaureate, in terms remarkably consistent with
those reported from elsewhere in the literature (see, for example,
Edwards et al., 2006; Gleeson, 2001; Gleeson et al., 2005; Jameson
2006; Jephcote & Salisbury, 2007; Lumby & Foskett, 2005).
For the most part, our teachers reported that they reconciled
these conflicting pressures by privileging what they understand to
be the needs and interests of their students, even where this
involved subverting the demands being made on them by college
managers. This adoption of a principled ethic of care was reflected
in the extent to which teachers engaged with the frequently very
pressing social problems experienced by their students. For
example, classroom observation revealed that it was not unusual
for substantial parts of lesson time to be taken up by essentially
pastoral work by teachers. One teacher described ‘horrendous
personal circumstances’, including alcoholic parents, the murder of
a relative, sexual abuse, and attempted suicide. Whilst she felt that
she would rather not know about these intractable problems, she
felt it proper to engage with them. Such engagement embodies not
only a characteristic ‘professional identity’, but also the very real
emotional commitment to individual students which derives from
it. It was also clear that, for many teachers, this involved significant
‘emotional labour’ (Hargreaves, 1999; Hochschild, 1983; Salisbury
et al., 2006), in the sense that they felt obliged to disguise the
frustrations that they felt in being diverted from teaching more
conventionally understood.
They certainly experienced a range of emotions in this regard:
irritation with students who arrived late or who were not properly
equipped or had missed submission dates for coursework; intense
sadness about those who experienced personal tragedies or were
forced to drop out; and, equally, joy when individuals responded to
encouragement or demonstrated progress and achievement.
Nowhere were these tensions more clearly illustrated than in
relation to assessment practices. Many of the courses being
undertaken were based upon assessed coursework or had signifi-
cant elements of this kind. On the one hand, teachers expressed
their commitment to supporting students by marking seemingly
endless drafts of assignments; on the other, their learning journals
expressed their intense frustration at how slowly their students
were progressing and how difficult it was to get them to under-
stand what was required.
6. Concluding remarks
FE teachers do not constitute a professionally organised body.
Their varied educational and occupational backgrounds and their
different entry routes into teaching point to a rather fractured
professional base, leaving them open to the assertiveness of
college managers or the agents of professional standards writing.
The resulting constructions of professionalism, and especially
their commitment to their students alongside other aspects
of work intensification leaves them open to exploitation
(see Clow, 2001).
Faced with what seemed like endless change, teachers felt
under pressure from college managers and from external moni-
toring to ensure that their students remained on courses and
attained qualifications. This pressure for performativity intensified
their workload and destabilised their work. At the same time,
accommodating what they believed to be the complexities of
students’ wider lives undermined and restructured FE teachers’
Please cite this article in press as: Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities, Teaching and
Teacher Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.010
professionalism, professional identities and classroom practices.
Teachers invested heavily in emotional labour as a form of coping
strategy to deal with the pressures from both managers and from
what they perceived to be a growing number of challenging and
reluctant learners. In turn, believing in the transformative capacity
of FE to enhance an individual’s labour market position, increase
earnings and raise quality of life, teachers established nurturing
relationships and adapted their teaching styles. Thus on a day-to-
day basis they were more concerned with giving support to
students than they were in meeting college manager’s mandates.
Their professional identities emphasise FE’s role in compensating
for previous educational disadvantage and a primary responsi-
bility for the social well-being of their students. The extent to
which this can be maintained or notions of professional be
reworked, depends on teachers’ ability to withstand pressure from
inside and without FE colleges (Gleeson et al., 2005), and at least
some might be unable to sustain their commitment (Goodrham,
2005). It also depends on their willingness to continue to teach in
the FE sector, rather than move to management positions, move to
another sector or leave it altogether. Indeed, those who move or
leave tell a rather different story of their ‘unbecoming teachers’
and their ‘outward trajectory’ are not just a matter of individual
agency, but also relate to changes both inside and outside of the
college (Colley et al., 2007).
From our study, we tend to agree with Gleeson and James (2007)
who suggested that ‘professionalism is being reworked from within
and outside the changing conditions of further education practice’
(p.451). As they suggested, on the one hand, we see FE teachers as
professionals increasingly subject to external standards and codes
of practice, and, on the other, FE teachers exercising their own
agency, in control of and constructing their own professional
identities. We do however, lean towards the latter. Teachers in our
study privileged the needs and interests of their students. This was
not just a process of mediation between outside control and exer-
cise of their agency. Indeed, in this account, as in much of the
literature, we have perhaps been too focussed on teachers and have
not given enough attention to students, their interactions, and the
impacts on classroom teaching and learning. Our contention has
been not just that teachers accommodate students’ wider lives, but
doing so results in what we have termed ‘negotiated regimes of
learning’ (Jephcote & Salisbury, 2008) in which students are
themselves proactive in constructing. In other words, attention has
to be given to the social context and social processes of learning in
further education. So, as we suggested, the conditions under which
students participate in FE are influential not only on their own
learner biographies and identities but, when coupled with teachers’
biographies and identities, create a particular learning regime. This
is similar to the conclusions drawn by James and Biesta (2007,
p.127) who, from their cultural theory of learning approach, noted
that the composition of teachers in FE was ‘an important and
distinctive feature of the learning culture’, where, for them,
learning cultures are the social practices through which people
learn, constrained by prevailing cultures/s, structure/s and ideol-
ogy/ies. Indeed, in our own symbolic-interactionist understanding,
learning can only be understood when viewed in the cultural,
economic and social settings in which it is generated and when it
encompasses the interactions of both teacher/s and learner/s. In
this approach it is the interaction of individuals at the centre of
analysis. Through symbolic interaction teachers develop a view of
‘self’ as they make sense of the responses and actions that others
take to their own actions so that being a teacher is not static, but
responsive to the wider context and an interpretation of the social
processes inside their classrooms. Thus, but not necessarily for all
teachers, classroom interactions can play an important part in
identity formation and re-formation.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
M. Jephcote, J. Salisbury / Teaching and Teacher Education xxx (2009) 1–7
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the FE teachers who shared their biographies
and experiences with us and to the ESRC/TLRP programme for
supporting this research project.
Gareth Rees, Cardiff University and John Roberts, University of
Wales, Newport, were members of the project team.
References
Ainley, P., & Bailey, B. (1997). The business of learning. London: Cassell.
Avis, J. (1999). Shifting identity: new conditions and the transformation of
practice – teaching within post-compulsory education. Journal of Vocational
Education and Training, 51(2), 245–264.
Avis, J., & Bathmaker, A. (2006). From trainee to FE lecturer: trials and tribulations.
Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 58(2), 171–189.
Avis, J., Bloomer, M., Esland, G., Gleeson, D., & Hodkinson, P. (1996). Knowledge and
nationhood. London: Cassell.
Ball, S., & Goodson, I. F. (Eds.). (1985). Teachers’ lives and careers. London: Falmer.
Bathmaker, A. (2000). Standardising teaching: the introduction of the national
standards for teaching and supporting learning in further education in England
and Wales. Journal of In-Service Education, 26(1), 9–23.
Bathmaker, A. M., & Avis, J. (2005a). Is that ‘tingling feeling’ enough? Constructions
of teaching and learning in further education. Educational Review, 57(1), 3–20.
Bathmaker, A. M., & Avis, J. (February, 2005b). Becoming a lecturer in further
education in England: the construction of professional identity and the role of
communities of practice. Journal of Education for Teaching: International
Research and Pedagogy, 31(1), 47–62, (16).
Bathmaker, A. M., & Avis, J. (2007). ‘‘How do I cope with that?’’ The challenge of
‘schooling’ cultures in further education for trainee FE lecturers. British
Educational Research Journal, 33(4), 509–532.
Brown, P., Lauder, H., & Ashton, D. (2008). Education, globalisation and the knowledge
economy: A commentary by the teaching and learning research programme.
London: TLRP.
Clow, R. (2001). Further education teachers’ Constructions of professionalism.
Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 53(3), 407–419.
Clow, R. (2005). Just teachers: the work carried out by full-time further education
teachers. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 10(1), 63–77.
Colley, H., James, D., & Diment, K. (2007). Unbecoming teachers: towards a more
dynamic notion of professional participation. Journal of Education Policy, 22(2),
173–193.
Day, C., Sammons, P., Stobart, G., Kington, A., & Gu, Q. (2007). Teachers matter:
Connecting lives, work and effectiveness. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Denzin, N. K. (1991). Deconstructing the biographical method. A paperpresented at
the Amercan Educational Research Association conference, Chicago, April 1991.
Docking, J. (2000). New labour’s policies for schools: Raising the standard? London:
David Fulton.
Edwards, S. F. Coffield, R. Steer, & Gregson, M. (2006), Coping with endless change:
the impact on teaching staff in the learning and skills sector, Research Report 2,
Impact of Policy on Learning and Inclusion in the Learning and Skills Sector.
Gleeson, D. (2001). Style and substance in education leadership: further education
as a case in point. Journal of Education Policy, 16(3), 181–196.
Gleeson, D., Davies, J., & Wheeler, E. (2005). On the making and taking of profes-
sionalism in the further education workplace. British Journal of Sociology of
Education, 26(4), 445–460.
Gleeson, D., & James, D. (2007). The paradox of professionalism in English further
education: a TLC project perspective. Educational Review, 59(4), 451–467.
Gleeson, D., & Mardle, G. (1980). Further education or training? A case study of the
theory and practice of day release. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Gleeson, D., & Shain, F. (1999). Managing ambiguity: between markets and mana-
gerialism – a case study of middle managers in further education. Sociological
Review, 47, 461–490.
Goodrham, M. (2005) Using research to enhance professionalism in FE: what kinds
of FE professionalism are available to FE practitioners?, a paper presented at the
TLRP Annual Conference, 28–30 November, University of Warwick.
Goodson, I. F. (1992). Studying teachers’ lives. In I. Goodson (Ed.), Studying teachers’
lives (pp. 1–17). London: Routledge.
Goodson, I. F. (1985). The story so far: personal knowledge and the political. In J. A.
Hatch, & R. Wiseniewski (Eds)., Life history and narrative. London: The Falmer
Press.
Goodson, I. (2007). Series editors’ preface. In C. Day, P. Sammons, G. Stobart,
A. Kington, & Q. Gu (Eds.), Teachers matter: Connecting lives, work and effec-
tiveness. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Goodson, I. F., & Hargreaves, A. (Eds.). (1996). Teachers’ professional lives. London:
Falmer Press.
Goodson, I. F., & Walker, R. (1991). Biography, identity and schooling: Episodes in
educational research. Basingstoke: The Falmer Press.
Hargreaves, A. (1999). The psychic rewards (and annoyances) of classroom teaching.
In M. Hammersley (Ed.), Researching school experience: Ethnographic studies of
teaching and learning (pp. 87–106). London: Falmer Press.
Please cite this article in press as: Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., Further education teachers’ accounts of their professional identities, Teaching and
Teacher Education (2009), doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.05.010
7
Higham, J., Sharp, P., & Yeomans, D. (1996). The emerging 16–19 curriculum: Policy
and provision. London: David Fulton.
Hochschild, A. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialisation of human feeling.
Berkley: University of California Press.
Hodkinson, P. (1995). Professionalism and competence. In P. Hodkinson, & M. Issitt
(Eds.), The challenge of competence: Professionalism through vocationalism,
education and training (pp. 58–69). London: Cassell.
Hyland, T. (1993). Professional development and competence-based education.
Educational Studies, 19, 123–132.
James, D., & Biesta, B. (2007). Improving learning cultures in further education. Lon-
don: Routledge.
Jephcote, M., & Abbott, I. (2005). Tinkering and tailoring: the reform of 14–19
education in England. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 2(57), 181–
202.
Jephcote, M., & Salisbury, J. (2007). The long shadow of incorporation: the further
education sector in devolved Wales. The Welsh Journal of Education, 14(1), 93–
109.
Jephcote, M., & Salisbury, J. (2008). The wider social contest of learning: beyond the
classroom door. The International Journal of Learning, 15(6).
Jephcote, M., Salisbury, S., & Graham, I. (1996). Principals’ responses to incorpora-
tion: a window on their culture. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 20(2),
33–48.
Jephcote, M., Salisbury, J., & Rees, G. (2008). Being a teacher in further education in
changing times. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 13(2), 163–172.
Knowles, J. G. (1992). Models for understanding pre-service and beginning teachers’
biographies: illustrations from case studies. In I. F. Goodson (Ed.), Studying
teachers’ lives (pp. 99–152). London: Routledge.
Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Lucas, N. (2002). The introduction of national standards and compulsory teacher
education for further education college teachers in England: issues and chal-
lenges. Teacher Development, 6(3), 459–473.
Lucas, N. (2007). Rethinking initial teacher education for further education
teachers: from a standards-led to a knowledge-based approach. Teaching
Education, 18(2), 93–106.
Lumby, J., & Foskett, N. (2005). 14–19 Education policy, leadership and learning.
London: Sage.
Maxwell, B. (2005). Becoming a teacher in the learning and skills sector: comparing
policy assumptions and trainees’ actual experiences of knowledge develop-
ment, paper presented at the BERA Annual Conference, 15–17th September,
University of Glamorgan.
OECD. (2005). Teachers matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective
teachers’ – Overview of final report. OECD Publishing.
Ofsted (2003). The initial training of further education teachers: a survey.
Ofsted (2006). The initial training of further education teachers: findings from
2004/05 inspections of courses leading to national awarding body
qualitifcations.
Parsons, J., Avis, J., & Bathmaker, A. (2001). Now we look through the glass darkly:
a comparative study of the perceptions of those working ion FE with trainee
teachers. A paper presented at the 4th International Conference, Vocational
Education and Training Research, University of Wolverhampton, 16-18 July
2001.
Randle, K., & Brady, N. (1997). Managerialism and professionalism in the Cinderella
sector. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 49(1), 121–139.
Ranson, S. (1994). Towards the learning society. London: Cassell.
Robson, J. (1998). A profession in crisis: status, culture and identity in the further
education college. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 50(4), 585–
607.
Robson, J., Bailey, B., & Larkin, S. (2004). Adding value: investigating the discourse of
professionalism adopted by vocational teachers in further education colleges.
Journal of Education and Work, 17(2), 183–195.
Salisbury, J. (1994a). Chasing credentials. In J. Aaron, S. Betts, T. Rees, &
M. Vincentelli (Eds.), Our sisters’ land. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Salisbury, J. (1994b). There is more than one way to kill a cat: making sense of post
experience professional training. In A. Coffey, & P. Atkinson (Eds.), Issues in
occupational socialisation. Aldershot: Avebury.
Salisbury, J., Jephcote, M., Rees, G., & Roberts, R., (2006). Emotional labour and
ethics of care: work intensification in FE colleges, working paper No.5, Learning
and Working in Further Education inWales (www.FurtherEducationResearch.
org).
Shain, F. (1998). Changing notions of teacher professionalism in Further Education
Sector, a paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual
Conference, Queen’s University Belfast, 27–30 August, 2008 (Accessed at www.
leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000000939.htm).
Shain, F., & Gleeson, D. (1999). Under new management: changing conceptions of
teacher professionalism and policy in the further education sector. Journal of
Education Policy, 14(4), 445–462.
Tedder, M., & Biesta, B. (2007). Learning from life and learning for life: Exploring the
opportunities for biographical learning in the lives of adults, Working Paper 7,
Learning Lives: learning, identity and agency and the life course.
TLRP. (November, 2005). Improving Learning in Further Education: a new, cultural
approach. Teaching and Learning Research Briefing(TLRP), No.12, November
2005.