What does professionalism mean to teachers within Further Education

This piece of research seeks to understand the concept of professionalism in relation to trainee teachers currently undertaking Initial Teacher Training (ITT) within Further Education (FE). In particular, it focuses on their reasons for undertaking a teaching qualification at a time when the sector is undergoing yet another period of political intervention with the deregulation of the FE workforce. The onus has been firmly put at the feet of employers to determine appropriate teaching qualifications for their employees. At the start of my study College A was requiring its staff to have a teaching qualification, but, by the time this study was coming to an end, this was no longer the case. I adopted a case study approach to interview both trainee teachers and senior managers within my own organisation to ascertain whether having a full teaching qualification is seen as both necessary and more importantly fundamental to making an FE teacher ‘professional’. The findings reveal that the concept of professionalism is complex, and that there is a wide range of both definition and meaning. Using life histories, I was able to identify the impact of experience and other factors which contribute to the life trajectory of trainee FE teachers, and which determine their own view of what it means to be professional.