Stepping Out Programme Professionalism in Lifelong Learning sector Teacher Education Supporting Teacher Educators Partnership

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Stepping Out ProgrammeProfessionalism in
Lifelong Learning sector Teacher
EducationSupporting Teacher Educators
Partnership
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• Professionalism in LL Teacher Education
• Gender balance
• FE teachers in general are, in addition to being
  mainly white and middle-aged, predominantly
  female.
• As FE teacher educators are overwhelmingly drawn
  from this constituency, in some ways it would
  seem logical that they too are mainly women.
  (Simmons and Thompson 2007)
• LLUK workforce data (LLUK 2010) - percentage of
  FT FE teaching staff who are female has been
  about 59 since 2004/5.
• Teacher Ed some 77 of LLS Teacher Educators
  are female (Crawley 2010)

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• Professionalism in LL Teacher Education
• The LL Sector context
• The FE teacher educator is highly likely to be a
  woman to have a heavy and varied teaching load
  to be implementing a curriculum over which she
  has had little influence and to be grappling
  with the problems imposed by limited resources.
• Although she may value the consonance between the
  qualities perceived to be required by her role
  and her constructions of feminine professional
  identity, she is positioned as an operative
  within an increasingly mechanistic,
  performatively focused model of teacher
  education. (Simmons and Thompson 2007 p 530)

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• Professionalism in LL Teacher Education
• The LL Sector context
• Critically, unlike schools ITT, where the
  pre-service model predominates, FE teacher
  training is predominantly based upon an
  in-service system, as is HE. ITT is a consequence
  of becoming employed in a college, usually after
  many years of gaining experience in another
  occupation.
• FE teacher training qualifications have evolved
  to meet the needs of a much more diverse group of
  trainees.(Lucas and Nasta 2011 p 446)
• The fragmented and impoverished professional
  culture in FE is well documented many college
  workplaces present a barrier to professional
  development. (Lucas and Nasta 2011 pp46.7)

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• Professionalism in LL Teacher Education
• The making and taking of professionalism
• Both present and past governments have tried to
  professionalise teachers by imposing national
  standards and regulations.(Lucas and Nasta 2011
  p 448)
• Gleeson (2005 p 446) uses the term making to
  refer to the external structural forces, most
  significantly interventions by government to
  shape professionalism.
• The term taking refers to the role of the
  agency of FE teachers as unwitting recipients of
  external policy imperatives in shaping and
  defining their own definitions of what it means
  to be a professional FE teacher.

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• Bibliography
• Crawley, J. (2010) Infinite patience and the
  capacity to challenge self and others' actions
  and values . Presentation at UCET National
  Conference. London UCET
• Gleeson, D. 2005a. On the making and taking of
  professionalism in the further education
  workplace. British Journal of Sociology of
  Education 26, no. 4 23946.
• Lucas, Norman and Nasta, Tony(2010) 'State
  regulation and the professionalisation of further
  education teachers a comparison with schools and
  HE', Journal of Vocational Education Training,
  62 4, 441 454
• Simmons, R. and Thompson R. (2007) Teacher
  educators in post-compulsory education gender,
  discourse and power. Journal of Vocational
  Education and Training Vol. 59, No. 4, December
  2007, pp. 517533