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Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are construed by policy-makers as a pressing problem about which something should be done. Such young people’s lack of employment is thought to pose difficulties for wider society in relation to social cohesion and inclusion, and it is feared that they will become a ‘lost generation’. This paper draws upon English research, seeking to historicise the debate whilst acknowledging that these issues have a much wider purchase. The notion of NEETs rests alongside longstanding concerns of the English state and middle classes, addressing unruly male working-class youth as well as the moral turpitude of working class girls. Waged labour and domesticity are seen as a means to integrate such groups into society thereby generating social cohesion. The paper places the debate within it socio-economic context and draws on theorisations of cognitive capitalism, Italian workerism, as well as emerging theories of antiwork to analyse these. It concludes by arguing that ‘radical’ approaches to NEETs that point towards inequities embedded in the social structure and call for social democratic solutions veer towards a form of comfort radicalism. Such approaches leave in place the dominance of capitalist relations as well as productivist orientations that celebrate waged labour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses a number of issues concerning policy and curriculum in post-compulsory education and training (PCET). Firstly, it seeks to locate PCET within its socio-economic context as it is this that frames curricula within the learning and skills sector and serves to legitimate its particular form. Secondly, the paper addresses the manner in which state policy impacts upon the sector and is followed by a discussion of curricula issues. It is argued that the rhetoric of competitiveness is over-stated and that this serves to tie educational processes to economic needs. This is reflected in curricular divisions as well as differentiations between learners. These, rather than challenging existing social relations, serve to conserve these resulting in a 'transformist' politics. The paper concludes with a section that explores the struggle for social justice, arguing that a radical educational politics needs to address inequalities endemic in wider society. Localized educational responses are limited and can only take us so far in the struggle for social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws on the findings of a longitudinal study of an opportunistic sample of full‐time further education trainee teachers attending an English new university. The study commenced in 2002 seeking to examine the processes through which trainee teachers entered the profession. Initially the research explored the routes followed and experiences that led trainees to enter teacher training. This was accompanied by an interest in trainees’ experiences in their placement colleges. The final stage of the project draws upon fieldwork conducted in 2004/05, which seeks to examine trainees’ accounts of teaching and working in the sector. This particular paper explores the lived experiences of four respondents and considers the personal trajectories that have led to FE teacher training. This is related to their orientations towards teaching and is followed by a section exploring teaching experiences within particular educational settings. Finally, the article examines respondents’ transitions to FE concluding with the significance of these accounts for the development of a progressive educational politics. It is argued these are equivocal, though respondents concern with care of their students contains progressive possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with changing constructions of teaching and learning in the further education (FE) sector in England. It explores how current changes may be affecting the development of lecturers' professional identity, drawing upon a small-scale study of trainees on a full-time FE teacher training programme in the academic year 2001–2002. Our underlying concern is the possibilities for democratic forms of practice within the changing context of lecturers' work. The paper considers how trainees make sense of pedagogic relations, and considers how such work might inform debates about new forms of professionalism and practice in FE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Further education colleges in England offer a wide range of post-school education and training provision. Recently they have undergone major transformations that have resulted in considerable changes to the work of those teaching in them. In this paper we examine how cultures of learning and teaching in colleges are affected and how the nature of professional identity has changed. The paper considers the formation of professional identity amongst a group of trainee lecturers completing a one-year full-time teacher-training course at a university in the English Midlands. Lave and Wenger's work on apprenticeship to communities of practice is used to examine the effect of trainees' teaching placement on the development of professional identity. Rather than identifying effective processes of increasing participation in existing communities of practice, a strong sense of marginalisation and alienation amongst trainees was observed. The paper argues that this is detrimental both to trainees and experienced lecturers if they are to actively engage in building new forms of professionalism for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores work-based learning in the context of current changes taking place in vocational education and training in England. It seeks to locate these within an understanding of the economy and the way in which work-based knowledge is construed. The article analyses these issues, drawing upon a literature that examines the work-based experiences of young people. This allows an engagement with notions of social justice, providing an opportunity to address the rhetorical question, 'learning to labour', posed in the title. It concludes by suggesting that if work-based learning is to move beyond forms of occupational socialisation there is a need to critique its underlying assumptions and seek out spaces for a progressive practice underpinned by a commitment to social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experiences and understandings of a group of full-time further education (FE) trainee teachers in a university in the English Midlands. The article places the research within its socio-economic and discursive context as well as drawing out parallels with earlier work on FE trainee teachers. The main thrust of the article is concerned with constructions of critical pedagogy and learning and examines the relation of trainees to such constructions. It compares a model of critical practice with trainee teachers' accounts of their practice. It concludes by arguing that it is not enough to hold to an ethic of care or even a concern to engage students, and that there is a wider politics inscribed within pedagogic practice. A critical pedagogy would seek to question the wider social structure that generates systematic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information related to post-compulsory education; curricular forms, modernisation and social difference. In this study the author explores the emerging and contradictory curricular forms present in post-compulsory education and training in Great Britain. Three themes are present. Firstly the author locates those forms within the policy and socio-economic context: the changing patterns of state relations; as well as within the emerging settlement over post-compulsory education and training. Secondly he explores the significance of an implicit alliance between curriculum modernisers and educationalists sympathetic to post-Fordism and managerialism. Finally he explores the significance of these processes in relation to social difference as well as the limits and possibilities for the development of radical practice. An emerging settlement around post-compulsory education and training which hold together an array of constituents ranging from conservative modernisers, industrialists, through to parents and young people can be discerned.

The paper is concerned with student altitudes and views of the certificate of further education and illustrates that the marker against winch students assess both the course and college is school It also explores the nature and forms of student resistance, arguing that for those students who stay the course, the most significant form of resistance is against youthful dependence and the process of infantalisation In addition it is argued that much of student behaviour that is apparently resistant should be understood as a mode of accomodation, as a strategy of survival The paper illustrates that many students have an instrumental commitment toward their course and that in some cases the experience of the course enhanced and strengthened this orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]