Drawing on current and recent research into the working lives of teachers and trainers in further and adult education and training, this book brings together a series of key contemporary debates regarding what it means to be a professional in further or adult education. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Research in Post-Compulsory Education.

Jonathan Tummons is Associate Professor of Education at Durham University, UK. He has researched and published widely on a range of issues relating to professional, further, and higher education. His current research focuses on professional learning within medical education, and on the use of Learning Architectures theory in higher education.

Introduction Part I: Professionalism - standards and policies 1. Performativity and professional development: the gap between policy and practice in the English further education sector 2. One step forward, two steps back? The professionalisation of further education teachers in England 3. Professional versus occupational models of work competence 4. Professionalism in vocational education: international perspectives Part II: Professional Identities 5. 'Square peg - round hole': the emerging professional identities of HE in FE lecturers working in a partner college network in south-west England 6. Professionalism, identity and the self: the de-moralisation of teachers in English sixth form colleges 7. The state of professional practice and policy in the English further education system: a view from below 8. The impact of lecturers' initial teacher training on continuing professional development needs for teaching and learning in post-compulsory education Part III: Constructions of Professionalism 9. 'Nothing will prevent me from doing a good job'. The professionalisation of part-time teaching staff in further and adult education 10. Expansive and restrictive approaches to professionalism in FE colleges: the observation of teaching and learning as a case in point 11. Professionalism: doing a good job! 12. Locating post-16 professionalism: public spaces as dissenting spaces