‘Nothing will prevent me from doing a good job’. The professionalisation of part‐time teaching staff in further and adult education

Abstract

Approximately 85,000 part-time teaching staff working in further education (FE) and adult and community learning (ACL) are often seen as 'a problem'. The intrinsic 'part-timeness' of these staff tends to marginalise them: they remain under-recognised and largely unsupported. Yet this picture is over-simplified. This article examines how part-time staff make creative use of professional autonomy and agency to mitigate problematic 'casual employment' conditions, reporting on results from Learning and Skills Development Agency-sponsored research (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006) with 700 part-time staff in the learning and skills sector. The question of agency was reported as a key factor in part-time employment. Change is necessary for the professional agency of part-timers to be harnessed as the sector responds to ambitious sectoral 'improvement' agendas following the Foster Report and FE White Paper. Enhanced professionalisation for part-time staff needs greater recognition and inclusion in change agendas.

Developing teacher expertise at work: in‐service trainee teachers in colleges of further education in England

“…There are a number of detailed studies of the way FE teachers develop their professional expertise and identities (see, inter alia, Robson 1996;Lucas 2004;Harkin 2005;Bathmaker and Avis 2007), but they focus primarily on the teacher as an individual, grappling with the challenges of teaching a diverse range of students and having to adjust to the frequent changes imposed on curricula and qualifications by government (see also Hill 2000;Smith 2007;Spours, Coffield, and Gregson 2007;Jameson and Hillier 2008;Jephcote, Salisbury, and Rees 2008). There are also studies examining teaching and learning within colleges, some of which highlight the importance of the cultural dimension in relation to subjects and their associated occupational cultures, student identities, and the inter-play between teachers and learners within the multifaceted context of the FE environment (see, inter alia, Hodkinson and James 2003;Lucas 2004).…”

Critical practitioners, developing researchers: the story of practitioner research in the lifelong learning sector

“…How sustainable is the ability to conduct research in an environment of reduced resources, increased learner numbers and continuing change? One of us, together with Jill Jameson has argued elsewhere (Hillier and Jameson 2003;Jameson and Hillier 2008) that research is a fundamental component of reflective practice which in turn can lead to testing out individual hunches all with the goal of improving professional practice and the ultimate aim of helping people learn effectively and fairly. There is no evidence that the LSRN failed in its attempt to help foster this approach, although more needs to be done.…”

Professionalism in vocational education: international perspectives

“…Such instrumental and reductive conceptualisations of what it means to be professional pose a number of wicked problems (Trowler, 2012). Firstly, they fail to acknowledge the agency of individuals who are trying to do 'a good job' (Jameson and Hillier, 2008). Secondly, they constrain practitioners to a particular set of behaviours which can be associated with neoliberal concepts of managerialism and performativity, whilst simultaneously denying practitioners the opportunities to develop and enact more democratic or emancipatory notions of professionalism, since the standards themselves lack any real conceptual underpinning.…”

“…Despite the reductive nature of the curriculum, and the neo-liberal ethos which permeates education in both England and Australia, it is apparent that many teachers still develop those notions of professionalism which are more in keeping with Petrie's (2015) description (e.g. Jameson and Hillier, 2008;Davies and Ferguson, 1998, see also Evetts' discussion of professionalism in relation to Foucauldian concepts of legitimacy, 2013) and which are associated with more abstract notions of what it means to be professional focussing on autonomy and responsibility. It is possible that the process of acquisition of these more critical and reflexive understandings owes less to instrumental forms of teacher training and more to engagement with communities of practice adopting particular understandings or discourses around different aspects of the teacher's role, and 13 | P a g e which are more consistent with notions of the 'extended' rather than 'restricted' professional (e.g.…”