Helsinki talk: ‘Professional Challenges for Further ...



Professional Challenges for Further Education Teachers in the UK

by

Jocelyn Robson, University of Greenwich, U.K.

Introduction

This paper examines the current status of the further education (FE) teaching profession in the UK. The arguments are set broadly within the context of sociological work on the professions and the reported experiences of some trainee FE teachers from a range of professional and vocational backgrounds are used for illustrative purposes. Several recent policy changes are briefly assessed in terms of their likely contribution to an improved professional status for the FE teacher.

Defining professions

In the 1950s and 1960s, sociological approaches to the professions were strongly influenced by functionalist theory and were largely concerned with identifying the ‘traits’ or characteristics of professionalism. (Macdonald, 1995) Attributes that were typically identified (e.g. by Lieberman (1956), Goode (1957)) included such things as ‘altruism’, ‘specialist intellectual knowledge’ and ‘a self-governing body’. This approach to defining professions, however, has some serious limitations and is considered to be self-fulfilling. (Hoyle & John, 1995) The lists of attributes are typically derived from the high status professions (such as medicine) which, by definition, then meet all the given criteria. Some professions have some but not all of the attributes. Thus, it becomes difficult to know where the line should be drawn between professions and non-professions. In addition, the work of professional groups differs so markedly that the same criteria are not wholly relevant to them all.

By the early 1970s, criticisms of the ‘attribute approach’ were increasing. Most of the traits were now seen to have an ideological basis and doctors, for example, appeared as wielders of power rather than altruistic servants of the public good. This led to a group of writers taking what has been termed ‘the power approach’. (Macdonald, 1995) Included here are those who focused on professional power in various ways (e.g. Johnson, 1972) and who analysed the manner in which professions attained power and held onto dominance. These approaches which focus on the activities rather than the characteristics of professions are broadly termed ‘interactionist’. (Macdonald, 1995) Other important writers within the interactionist tradition include Freidson (1970) and Larson (1977). The emphasis here is on the circumstances in which people in an occupation attempt to turn it into profession (and themselves into professional people) and on what professions actually do in everyday life to negotiate and maintain their special position.

Professions as ‘social actors’

A view of professions as protagonists or ‘actors’ in a complex struggle for social status is put forward by Burrage et al (1990). Their work is consistent with the interactionist tradition and effectively draws attention to the other stakeholders or players in the professionalisation process. It is briefly summarised here with a view to providing a backdrop to the later discussion of recent events affecting the status of FE teachers in the U.K.

In Burrage’s model, there are four ‘actors’: the practising professionals, the state, the users and the universities. Each actor has its own interests to pursue and its own resources to draw on. The practising professionals themselves, for example, are chiefly concerned to protect their interests as a group, to control entry to their ranks and to preserve their autonomy. They need the co-operation of the other stakeholders to do this and they use various forms of organisation (including trade unions, professional bodies, regulatory bodies). They also use their professional knowledge as a resource, for example, in the socialisation of new members through the training process. States and governments are crucially important and are directly involved in every facet of professional existence. Their main interest is to establish their authority. They have political interests (for example, in the promotion of particular political ideals) and fiscal interests too (as payers for the services of professionals). Their main resources are policy, regulation and legislation. The users or clients have an obvious interest in that they need the services of the professionals. There are many different types of users and clients, each with different resources, but in the case of the further education teacher, for example, we could identify as users the students (whose chief resource is the funding they bring with them). The FE college as a public employer is also a user of the teaching profession. The fourth ‘actor’ identified by Burrage is the university. Tensions between academics and practising professionals may arise since academics may be interested in interrogating the professional knowledge base, challenging, disseminating or extending it and universities may be more interested in recruiting students than in restricting entry to the ranks of the profession. The universities’ chief resources are knowledge, of course, and the status that their degree or professional qualification may provide.

As the occupation seeks to turn itself into a profession or the profession seeks to extend or hold onto its power, in other words, to pursue its ‘professional project’ (Larson, 1977), a complex process of interaction amongst the four parties takes place. This process is not stable over time, it varies with different professional groups, and it is subject to constant shifts, to checks and balances. It does not take place in a vacuum either but may change according to cultural or socio-economic shifts, to political change, to the nature of successive governments, and so on.

Like most models, this ‘actor-based framework’ has its limitations and its detractors. Some suggest that a fifth player or actor is needed which is the media or society itself. A further criticism is that, in this model, the state has not been accorded the special position that much empirical work would suggest it should have. (Macdonald, 1995) Nevertheless, the model does highlight the complexity of the professionalisation process

and it identifies those agencies and organisations with which the professional group must engage in its struggle for status.

Sources of professional prestige

I turn now to a more detailed examination of some of the strategies that professional and occupational groups use to seek improved status. Three concepts appear to me to be particularly relevant to a discussion of the current position of UK further education teachers. Although these are not the only factors we should consider, they are all key to an understanding of the relative status of professions. The concepts are ‘social closure’, ‘professional knowledge’ and ‘autonomy’. Each of these concepts will be considered in turn, its importance will be briefly described and its relevance to teachers and prospective teachers in FE will be illustrated with some quotes that were gathered from respondents in recent research. These respondents were student teachers, from a range of occupational and professional backgrounds, who had just entered FE colleges for the first time. They were not randomly selected and the data is highly specific to them as individuals. Nevertheless, these student teachers were at an important point in their professional lives and their experiences do illustrate the kinds of tensions and issues that may arise in relation to these key determinants of professional status.

Social closure

This concept is generally ascribed to the work of Max Weber but has been developed since by sociologists of social class and of the professions. Broadly, it refers to one of the key strategies that the possessors of assets in society employ to exert and secure their power. These assets may be economic, organisational or cultural. Groups that have an interest to pursue (however those groups have originated) will typically endeavour to achieve monopoly and to close economic and social opportunities to outsiders.

Through processes such as developing and ‘credentialling’ the knowledge and skills associated with a profession’s work, the professional group secures (or closes) its boundaries or it attempts to do that. Further, by including (for example, all those who possess appropriate credentials) it also excludes those who do not.

With regard to the FE teaching profession in the UK, however, the very diversity of entry routes creates, in sociological terms, a weak professional boundary. As a result, the profession as a whole lacks closure. Those who present themselves for training come from extremely varied backgrounds. I have argued elsewhere (Robson, 1998) that the existence of such diversity ought to be a source of strength and richness both for the individuals and for the profession as a whole. More often than not, however, it is experienced as fragmentation and as a lack of any sense of collective status or identity.

A student teacher that had joined the training programme from a background in personnel management made the following observation about her new colleagues:

“They do have staff meetings…they do have team teaching…there is still that gap…that…isolation if you like…it’s sort of like a series of islands that do come together at low tide, you know, but they don’t actually operate together necessarily…”

It was her strong impression that FE teachers lacked a sense of professional community. They came from diverse backgrounds and appeared to her to remain ‘attached’ to those backgrounds rather to any collective sense of purpose as teachers.

Professional knowledge

As noted earlier, a systematic body of intellectual knowledge is one of the key criteria associated with professional status. Professional groups work to ensure closure and exclusivity and an important aspect of this is cognitive exclusivity. Laying claim to a distinct body of knowledge is critical to the success of the professional project. To the extent that other professional groups may encroach on a profession’s knowledge domain or cross its boundaries or to the extent that knowledge may become separated from technique or a profession’s knowledge may be difficult to define clearly, or be ‘integrated’ in some sense, then a profession’s status or social standing is likely to be affected. As Macdonald (1995) notes, ‘Professional knowledge is only what the occupational group can annexe and hold onto.’ (p.186)

Becher (1989) has argued that there appear to be hierarchies of knowledge in our society. There appears to be an important distinction between the impersonal, the so-called value-free nature of scientific knowledge (sometimes referred to as ‘pure’ or ‘hard’ knowledge) and the personal, overtly value-laden domain of the humanities and social sciences (sometimes called ‘soft’ or applied knowledge). Hard, pure knowledge tends to carry high prestige. Accordingly, professions which emphasise the practice component of their knowledge (such as nursing, with its stress on caring) or professions where the knowledge base is thought to be indeterminate (involving judgement rather than the application of knowledge) may suffer in the prestige stakes. Social work and teaching are therefore both affected since here the knowledge may appear to be ‘everyday’ (or common sense) rather than professional knowledge.

The following extract is from an interview with a student teacher in FE who had previously worked as a business consultant:

“When I worked in a bank….(that) actually a lot of what we did was say very normal things in dressed up terms and it’s the other way round now [laughs]…You’ve got to say very normal things in very normal terms somehow…if people are paying a lot of money for your services, they don’t expect you to talk to them really in everyday language…So you sort of feel somehow you’ve got to dress up what you’re giving them…package it in such a way.”

And again, this is a student who had worked as a solicitor for a local authority

talking about his placement college:

“ When I was employed, I was employed for my management skill…..( ) I had a secretary and a secretarial assistant, I had an IT manager, you know, I had people who could make overhead slides for me, somebody else did that because I was better employed doing what I do…erm.. with the teachers here…they have to do all of it ( ) I mean they certainly have to make all their own resources, learning resources…they make all their own phone calls, I’ve actually heard tutors on the phone, when students haven’t turned up in the morning…sit at the telephone for 25 minutes.. and phone 30 students…( ) they shouldn’t have to do that, they shouldn’t have to go and scout up their own class…they have to find their own rooms because the timetable’s a mess you know, everything they do themselves.. and they do it.. apparently cheerfully and uncomplainingly...”

The impression both these student teachers give is that the FE teacher’s professional knowledge is currently not well-defined. There seems to be little agreement about how it should be expressed and it is not clear where the teacher’s work ends and other people’s work begins.

Autonomy

Professional autonomy is, of course, a limited form of autonomy and it is always constrained. Professional practitioners do not have licence but a licence. The licence to practice is based upon demonstrated competence and is conditional. Limitations are also inherent in codes of professional ethics.

Professional autonomy is variable over time and place. Some school-teachers in the UK argued, for example, that the advent of the national curriculum would reduce their autonomy in the classroom (over such things as lesson aims and choice of topics). In FE in the UK, the claim is often made that competence-based curricula (notably, our National Vocational Qualifications or NVQs) have de-skilled professional practice by reducing the scope for autonomous decision-making.

The other side of the autonomy ‘coin’, however, is accountability and this is an important tension. Accountability and autonomy will always be the subject of negotiation between the professional groups and the other stakeholders that were identified earlier. As far as FE teachers are concerned, key stakeholders include their students (as clients or users) and the state (government and its agencies).

This is a further extract from the interview with the solicitor who had just begun his teacher training in an FE college:

“…the systems and structure that I would expect to see in place…er…you’d expect to see in place in any organisation, are here virtually vestigial…so it’s a complete reversal of my own work experience prior to this…I had systems in place which were designed to remove the personal from the process.. and to make the system work regardless of who, who was in post doing what job…everything had a system, and only exceptionally when the system failed did you call upon an individual to exercise more than usual flexibility, to plug the gap…here the system is utterly reversed.. the whole, the whole, eh, educational system in this college hinges on…is contingent upon…the individual staff flexibility, and it’s personal…you do something for somebody that you wouldn’t do for somebody else…and ..er.. the result of that is…resentment….because some people are more flexible, some people are more flexible than others…and er…it causes difficulty…er because the whole system being dependent upon individual flexibility, there is nothing to fall back on…if individuals don’t play….”

There are different kinds of accountability, of course. Consideration should not be restricted to the kind of accountability line managers in corporations may or may not expect (or get). In the context of looking at professions, more important is accountability in a collective sense, to a professional group, to a professional ideal or a code of professional ethics, to a title, or to a professional organisation.

To conclude this discussion of some key sources of professional prestige, it is clear that there are significant professional challenges currently facing FE teachers in the UK in relation to social closure, professional knowledge and autonomy. As a group, they have yet to achieve a meaningful degree of social closure. Their professional knowledge is not well-defined and there seems little consensus about the nature of their work. They lack professional autonomy for a wide variety of reasons but at least partly because they do not feel themselves to be accountable in any collective sense to a professional body or code.

New opportunities

In several significant ways, however, things appear to be changing and arguably some important opportunities for the FE teachers to enhance their status are now being presented.

Compulsory training & introduction of standards for FE teachers

The most significant of these changes is the requirement for most new FE teachers in England to become fully trained. From September 2001, all new full-time teachers must complete an approved award within 2 years of appointment and those with a substantial part-time load must complete it within 4 years. Although lecturers already working in colleges will not be required to gain teaching qualifications in the same way as newly appointed staff, most colleges are expected to insist that they do (TES, 20/4/01).

Approved awards will be those that carry endorsement from FENTO (the UK’s employer-led Further Education National Training Organisation). To obtain this endorsement, they must be based on FENTO’s occupational standards for teaching and learning.

At the time of writing, there is some lack of clarity about the position of a growing number of part-time staff (who may teach as little as two hours a week in the FE system but who nevertheless teach a greater percentage of the work overall than full-timers) and about agency staff. In addition, Scottish FE teachers are not yet required to hold a teaching qualification and the National Assembly for Wales has yet to indicate whether it intends to follow England’s example (TES, 20/4/01).

Despite these anomalies, however, the introduction of this requirement to train represents an important professional gain. In terms of Burrage’s model discussed earlier, it is a state-led initiative with the state acting to protect its own and client interests.

Arguably, the potential now exists for the FE teachers to improve considerably the closure and status of their professional group. Similarly, the requirement for initial teacher training awards to meet occupational standards represents an important attempt to define and specify the FE teacher’s professional knowledge. As indicated, questions remain about the implementation of these changes, particularly in relation to the huge number of part-timers now employed in the colleges and in relation to other parts of the UK, where very different frameworks or sets of ‘standards’ are in place. Political devolution means that consistent UK-wide approaches may be harder to achieve.

Nevertheless, there are significant opportunities here for a neglected profession to begin to enhance its status and to improve its cohesion.

Bursary payments for trainees

In September 2000, the government began paying a bursary to graduates in England who entered full-time teacher training programmes for FE. These payments of £6000 per trainee effectively put those seeking to teach in FE on a par with those seeking to teach in schools. The early omission of non-graduates from the scheme created, in effect, a two-tier system but from September 2001, payments will be made to all prospective FE teachers, including those with non-degree level vocational qualifications. Wales will begin making these payments from September 2001 and in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where no full-time training provision exists, the issue does not arise.

In terms of the profession’s standing, the decision is significant. Through direct payment to trainees, the status of the training has been raised and put on an equal footing with training for the compulsory school sector. This is another important gain for the professional group as a whole.

New professional body for FE

The government has now given approval for the setting up of a professional body for FE teachers. School-teachers already have their own professional body in the UK as do university lecturers, so to many involved in further education, it seemed a positive step.

This body will come into existence later in 2001 and will eventually be self-regulating and independent. Currently, FENTO is overseeing its development but the Institute for Learning (FE) will eventually be run by its members. Thus, it is yet another state-led initiative but it has the potential to improve professional accountability and therefore to enhance the profession’s standing.

However, on 1st April 2001, a new Learning and Skills sector came into existence in England. The new Learning and Skills Councils have planning and funding responsibilities for the whole of post-16 education and training. FENTO is currently developing standards for support workers and managers, to put alongside those it has developed for FE teachers and it is their intention to extend membership of the new professional body to all those who support and manage learning in the post-16 phase. The kind of organisation currently proposed by FENTO will be a large diverse group, with several different entry routes and such flexible boundaries as to make cohesion and unified action unlikely. Members will have few common interests. A professional body can, by definition, admit only those who are members of the profession. It is only through closure and exclusivity that professional groups achieve status. Unfortunately, the professional body for FE teachers, as it is currently conceived, will do little to improve their position.

Conclusion

This discussion of the professional challenges facing FE teachers in the UK has shown that, in many ways, it is a crucially important time. After long years of neglect, there have been several recent gains in the FE teachers’ struggles for proper recognition and status. It remains to be seen whether these can be successfully built upon in the interests of a secure future.

References

Becher, T. (1989) Academic tribes and territories: intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines, Milton Keynes: Open University Press/SRHE.

Burrage, M., Jarausch, K. & Seigrist, H. (1990) ‘An Actor-based framework for the study of the professions’ in M. Burrage & R. Torstendahl (eds) Professions in Theory and History: rethinking the study of the professions London: Sage.

Freidson, E. (1970) The Profession of Medicine, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

Goode, W (1957) ‘Community within a community: the professions’ American Sociological Review, 22, pp.194-200.

Hoyle, E. & John, P. (1995) Professional Knowledge and Professional Practice, London: Cassell.

Johnson, T (1972) Professions and Power, London & Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Larson (1977) The Rise of Professionalism: a sociological analysis, California: University of California Press.

Lieberman, M (1956) Education as a Profession, Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Macdonald, K (1995) The Sociology of the Professions, London: Sage.

Robson, J (1998) ‘A Profession in Crisis: , status, culture and identity in the further education college’ Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 50,4, pp.585-607.

Times Educational Supplement, ‘Existing staff face persuasion to qualify as teachers’ 20/4/01, p.27.

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