State regulation and the professionalisation of further education teachers: a comparison with schools and HE

Abstract

Over the last few decades, governments of all political hues have introduced measures to regulate the development of the professional status of teachers in England. In the first part of the article, we compare and contrast how teachers from schools, colleges and universities are regulated by the state and the nature of the ITT qualifications and curricula that have been developed in response. We further explore the separate qualification tracks and pedagogical traditions that Bailey and Robson highlighted suggesting that the separate traditions of training school, college and HE teachers appear to be as strong as ever, as is a trend of ever‐greater and more complex forms of regulation. In the second part of the article, we turn to a more theoretical examination of the state's attempt to professionalise teachers across the three sectors. We focus particularly on how national standards and the imposition of regulated forms of professional status are mediated by the workplace environments and historical traditions of the three sectors. Throughout, we attempt to evaluate the factors that help explain why the professionalisation of FE teachers has taken such contrasting forms to those of school and university teachers.