This article engages in an examination of reflecting upon a researcher's honesties within the context of conducting an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The purpose of this article is to outline how a researcher's reflexivity and awareness of emotions is central to IPA research which investigates Further Education practitioners' lived…

This small-scale qualitative research project is located within post-compulsory education in England and explores some of the strategies and responses employed by three initial teacher educators to carry out their professional role while responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The central argument is that teacher identity was significant as a…

This paper explores the enterprises artist-teachers in adult community learning (ACL) engage with and how these form their identity. This is significant to consider as artist-teachers in ACL are overlooked in the published literature. ACL is comprised of community-based learning delivered by local authorities and general further education…

Since policy changes in 2014 about who studies mathematics post-16 in England, the mathematics teaching workforce in further education (FE) colleges has grown and diversified. The question of how best to develop the professional practice of this changing workforce is, however, unresolved. Teachers in a recent national study report the benefits of…

This article reports the results of a qualitative study whose purpose was to explore the teacher identity construction experiences of one group of vocational education English language teachers in China. The study uses narrative methods of inquiry to examine how English language teachers construct their professional identities within a…

The dominant public discourse regarding the recruitment and retention of teachers is one that is often framed in terms such as 'crisis'. Data from the Department for Education, the National Audit Office and bodies such as the Education and Training Foundation highlight challenges in filling vacancies across each part of the education sector. This…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unexpected challenges to the lives and professional practice of teachers regardless of their institutional context. Our understanding of how teachers viewed their impact on their perceived sense of professional identity is largely unexplored, especially concerning teachers working in the post-compulsory sector. This…

Higher education lecturers who have moved into teaching on professional education programmes from careers in professional practice are an under-researched group. Questions related to self-concept combined with wider social and sectoral issues relating to perceptions about the nature and purpose of higher education can affect the development of…

The changes produced in higher education as a consequence of neoliberal influences have had a considerable impact on the university world. As a consequence, there has been a growing research interest in how such changes have affected academics. However, recent review studies related to this issue are scarce in the literature. Therefore, this…

A notion of being a professional and acting with professionalism suggests particular standards associated with identity and practice. For vocational education and training (VET) educators in Australia, the notion of 'professional' that is encased within association and registration does not apply. Yet these educators operate in contexts where a…

The re-professionalisation of those who work in education is a common theme explored in the literature. This paper reports on research undertaken at an English Business School that was concerned with how academics responded to external accreditation and the introduction of five categories that demarcated them according to their academic…

Critical pedagogy in the UK has traditionally been practised in the Lifelong Learning sector. However, the sector has become constrained by funding cuts, instrumental curricula and accountability measures, and teachers can feel that they have little room for professional autonomy and therefore the practice of critical pedagogy. Yet some do…

This article investigates the perceptions of former in-service Initial Teacher Training (ITT) trainees in the post-compulsory sector of the United Kingdom (UK), and identifies how they intellectualised the contribution that successful completion of ITT had made to their practice as teachers. Former trainees reported perceptions of such…

The paper captures the professionalisation of teachers in the further education sector by shining a light on their everyday struggle to uphold their ethical goals in support of their students in a climate of performative and regulatory expectations. It reports on a small-scale qualitative study in which the six participants were either on the…

Using the concepts of practice architecture, organisational and occupational professionalism, this research looks at the rites of passage from being a fully trained teacher to being a middle manager in the further education sector. It argues that teacher training at an academic level is a basis for being an excellent teacher but that what is more…