Further Education Teacher Educators’ Initial Disciplines, Journeys and Titles: From Their Perspectives in Higher Education Institutions, Further Education Colleges and Private Providers

Abstract

This chapter relates to the ‘professionalisation of teacher educators’ theme in the Call for Papers. The specific topics examined here are the initial disciplines, pathways of becoming these educationists, and the related titles. The empirical data that is used relates to an investigation of English further education (FE) teacher educators (Loo in Professional development of teacher educators in further education: pathways, knowledge, identities, and vocationalism. Abingdon, Routledge, 2020), which draws on 33 participants using a mixed-method approach of a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews and Talking Heads (a narrative method). The teacher educators-participants were from higher education institutions, FE colleges and private providers. The data is analysed to seek out the similarities and differences on the three themes of the participants’ initial disciplines, pathways/journeys to becoming educators and their current role titles from the perspectives of their work settings of higher education institutions, FE colleges and private providers. The reason to approach this chapter based on institutions is to ascertain a nuanced picture that has not been researched before. The literature review is structured into three themes: initial disciplines, pathways of becoming teacher educators, and related job titles. Some of the salient sources regarding the initial disciplines include Becher (The significance of disciplinary differences. Studies in Higher Education, 19:151–161, 1994) and Smeby (Disciplinary differences in university teaching. Studies in Higher Education, 21:69–79, 1996) to facilitate the classifications of disciplinary areas. With the pathways theme, publications by Noel (The secret life of teacher educators: Becoming a teacher educator in the learning and skills sector. Journal of Vocational Education and Training 58(2):151–170) and Mayer, Mitchell, Santoro and White (Teacher educators and ‘accidental’ careers in academe: An Australian perspective. Journal of Education for Teaching 37(3):247–260, 2011) are used to typologies the journeys of these educationists. In the last theme on titles, the reference to job titles in the ‘Training to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector’ document by the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (Training to teach in the lifelong learning sector, LSIS, 2011) is used. The findings from this empirical data centre on the similarities and differences of the three themes: initial disciplines, journeys and job titles, as viewed from the perspectives of the three different sectors: FE colleges, higher education institutions and private providers. The commonalities may be explained by the collective educational contexts of working in the FE sector, and the differences, by the differing priorities of these educationists working in their diverse organisations. Finally, the findings are reviewed regarding their implications to the related stakeholders and their contributions to the sector.KeywordsEnglandFurther educationTeacher educatorsInitial disciplinesJourneysTitles