Chapter 1
Researching the further education teacher educatorsâ landscape
Introduction
This research monograph is a continuation of Simonâs (1981) exploration questioning the lack of pedagogy in England. The other related research monographs include Teachers and Teaching in Vocational and Professional Education (Loo, 2018) and Further Education, Professional and Occupational Pedagogy: Knowledge and Experiences (Loo, 2019a). The former monograph is about vocational/occupational pedagogy, and the latter focuses on teachers and their emotional ecologies, identities, and widening participation.
In this monograph, the topic of investigation is focused on teacher educators in the further education (FE) sector in England, and specifically on their journeys or pathways to becoming teacher educators; the relevant knowledge, attributes, experiences, and skill sets that are needed to carry out their roles as educators; their professional identities; and their needs concerning their continuous professional development. This study is based on empirical evidence from 33 participants.
This chapter is structured into six sections. Following the initial introduction, the next section offers a reminder of some of the salient characteristics of the sector in England. These characteristics are useful reminders in reading this monograph and are also helpful for those international readers who are new to the English contexts (Loo and Jameson, 2017) of the sector. The third section provides salient details of the empirical data on which this book is based. Theorizing and discussing the data offer a greater understanding of the topic under investigation. Here, it includes the research questions and the forms of quantitative and qualitative research methods that were employed to capture data for analysis and application regarding the main research questions. The fourth section provides a comparison of the similar monographs on teacher educators that are related to the other educational sectors. The fifth section seeks to highlight the chapters in this research monograph, and the final part provides a summary of the chapter.
Characteristics of the further education sector
For international readers (and even for those in England!) who might not be au fait with the English FE sector, perhaps a brief explanation would be helpful. The FE sector is also known as FE and Skills, post-compulsory and lifelong learning. The sector covers a wide range of teaching settings. These include FE colleges, voluntary and community organizations, commercial organizations, independent training providers, adult and community learning providers, industry, specialist colleges, armed and uniformed services, prisons and offender learning institutions, and other public-sector organizations (Education and Training Foundation, 2014). The Department for Business and Skills (BIS, 2016, p. 4) refers the FE sector in England as âany study taken after the age of 16 that is not part of higher education (that is, not taken as part of an undergraduate or a postgraduate degree). It is delivered by a range of public, private, and voluntary sector providers and, in general, equips a learner for further learning, including Higher Education, or employment. It also plays an important role in reaching out to disadvantaged groups to encourage their participation in learning when they otherwise might notâ.
FE colleges have 2.2 million learners in 257 colleges (as in February 2019), where 174 are in further education, 57 in sixth form colleges, 14 in land-based, 10 in specialists designated, and 2 in art, design, and performing arts colleges. Of the 2.2 million students, 1.4 million are adults, 685,000 are 16- to 18-year-olds, and 76,000 are 16- to 18-year-olds undertaking apprenticeships. The average age of a college learner is 29 years (Association of Colleges, 2019).
Regarding the deliverers/lecturers/teachers in the FE colleges, 71.3 per cent of the lecturers deliver work-related subjects (Frontier Economics Limited, 2016, Table 17). This data is based on the estimated number of teachers (a total of 35,438) in the subject listing in the academic year 2014â2015. The top five subjects concerning the estimated percentage number of deliverers are visual and performing arts and media (11.5); foundation programmes (9.2); health, social care, and public services (9.2); business administration, management, and professional (8.0); and hospitality, sports, leisure, and travel (7.8). The top five occupational subjects account for 45 per cent, and the rest are made up of subjects such as Information Communications Technology (ICT); engineering, technology, and manufacturing; construction; hairdressing and beauty therapy; retail, customer service, and transportation; and land-based provisions.
The above data provides us with the scope and scale of this eclectic education sector. The varied providers, educational settings, learnersâ profiles and learning needs, and the preponderance of work-related programmes have implications for educational activities in the sector. As this research monograph is centred on the teacher educator community, the above characteristics of the sector will undoubtedly test their teaching approaches regarding their roles as trainers in the teacher education programmes, the appropriateness of the curriculum, the ability to reflect the significant work-related programmes in the sector in training their charges, etc. Thus, the expertise of the teacher educators, their abilities/capacities, experiences, knowledge and skill sets â know-how â to teach teaching, and model teaching, negotiating the policies and regulations from macro (national) and meso (institutional) contexts, the relevant pathways into this select community of practitioners, and their continuous professional development are some of the topics for investigation in this research monograph. The next section offers some salient aspects of the research project on which this study is based.
Research questions and salient project details
The research questions are as follows:
1 What are the routes to becoming teacher educators/trainers in the sector?
2 How do teacher educators train others to become teachers?
3 What knowledge(s) do they draw upon and apply in their work?
4 How do they maintain their professional development?
5 How do they view themselves?
One of the aims of this project was to build research capabilities, and all the investigators would be included in the project sample. The Principal Investigator (PI), Dr Sai Loo (University College London), and the Co-investigators (CIs), Dr Gordon Ade-Ojo (University of Greenwich), Heather Booth-Martin (Craven College), Dr John Bostock (Edge Hill University), Dr Jim Crawley (Bath Spa University), Baiba Eberte (Carlton Training), Nicola Sowe (NBS Teacher Training, Professional Development and Consultancy), and Sonia Spencer (North Hertfordshire College), have experiences as teacher educators in the sector. They worked in different work settings of higher education institutions, further education colleges, and private providers using different teacher education-related specifications.
The research methodologies included a range of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The methods included the use of a survey/questionnaire, one-to-one semi-structured interviews, documentary research, and âTalking Headsâ. A questionnaire survey (Appendix 6) was used to elicit quantitative data such as gender, age group, academic qualifications, teaching experiences as an educator and a teacher, and occupational and relevant life experiences. Interviews (Appendix 7) were used as an approach to capture rich textured data on the intervieweesâ journeys to be teacher educators, nature of their work, relevant pedagogic knowledge and its application, and perceptions of themselves as teacher educators. Documentary research included related government reports and programme specifications. âTalking Headsâ (Appendix 8) were digital audio recordings of the participantsâ narratives of being and becoming teacher educators. The Talking Head recordings provided a sense of ownership and means of professional identification for the participants. These audio recordings were anonymized to safeguard personal and institutional information and prevent identification to specific individuals. There were 33 participants included the researchers. The targeted participants were teacher educators in the post-compulsory/lifelong learning sector who had either volunteered to be a PI, CIs, or participants via approaches from CIs. Details of the research methodologies are included in Appendix 1.
Comparison of the project with other projects of teacher educators
Perhaps, at this stage, a review of the related book publications would be useful as this will offer the readers an overview of the existing publication landscape that this research monograph is operating. As with the rest of the chapters in this research monograph, the literature review on the intended subject is not meant to be a comprehensive literature review but one where only the relevant literature sources are investigated to provide deeper understandings of the topic. Similarly, the theories of individual writers that are reviewed are not meant to be exhaustive but circumscribed accounts to reflect the relevance of their theories to the topic of study.
There might be three groups of books. The first group refers to the books that offer guidance to teacher educators and are not necessarily empirically based. The next group consists of an eclectic mix of self-study/action research and institutionally focused books. The final group offers books nearest to this research monograph.
In the first group, there are four âhandbooksâ. The handbook by McEwen-Atkins and Merryfield (1996) catered to teacher educators in the compulsory sector. It is a collection of contributions by teacher educators that covers science teaching, international perspectives, and professional development. The book by Philpott (2014) was advertised as a guide to some critical theories of professional learning for educationists who were involved in teacher education in the non-post-compulsory sectors. The third book by editor Crawley (2016) is the only book that focuses on teacher educators in the FE sector to date. It has 80 pages. The book is a collection of think pieces and informed practitionersâ experiences by teacher educators covering areas of professional recognition of these educators, collaborative nature of the community, and strategies for the professionalization of these educators. This handbook is discounted from this investigation, as the criterion of this monograph is to refer to empirical-evidence findings rather than non-empirical findings and these can include think pieces, contributions of experiences by teacher educators, blogs, and conceptual delineations.1 Of course, these contributions are valid in understanding the professional developments of FE teacher educators, and there are other spaces to including these contributions. However, for the purposes of this research monograph, they do not provide a valid comparison with empirical-evidenced findings.
The fourth book is by Czerniawski (2018) that offers a more conceptual approach to teacher educators. It is posited in the compulsory education sectors with an emphasis as a teaching resource for teacher educators than one for academic researchers. The book has 80 pages, and it covers identities, continuous professional development (CPD), action research, and international perspectives. These topics are based on recent research.
The second group of books consists of four monographs. The self-study monograph of a teacher educator by Berry (2008) covers topics concerning the role of teacher educators and their professional development, abilities, and challenges in the compulsory education sector in Australia. The edited book by Bates and Swennen (2012) is a collection of contributions by authors from over ten countries. The edited book consists of narrative, self-study, and empirical research. The topics include policy, practice, and structures. Daveyâs (2013) monograph is a phenomenological study of teacher educators in the higher education sector. The issues investigated in this book include professional identity, becoming a teacher educator, roles, and knowledge base. To an extent, this monograph has resonances to this research monograph concerning the coverage of the topics. The final monograph by Hadar and Brody (2018) offers an institutional approach to learning to be a teacher educator. It addresses organizational aspects of the teacher educators, such as professional learning and the process of transition towards change.
The final group has one research monograph by Lunenberg, Dengerink and Korthagen (2014) on the compulsory education sector in the Netherlands. This heavily research book is focused on Dutch teacher educators and it represents a systematic review of literature of 137 publications. The study focuses on professional roles, knowledge, and identities. The book by Lunenberg et al. (2014) is the nearest one to this research monograph, which offers a coherent body of new knowledge from a single project on teacher educators in the FE sector, covering journeys, pathways, teaching knowledge, professional identities, and professional development.
Both of these research monographs seek to answer the first four questions posed by Knight et al. (2014):
1 Who are teacher educators and what are the current knowledge, skills, and dispositions that they possess? What practice characterizes the work of teacher educators?
2 What forms of knowledge do teacher educators use that differ from those used by teachers in general, and how do these forms of knowledge develop?
3 What influences shape the roles and practices of teacher educators? Who prepares teacher educators? And how? How do teacher educators learn to do their work? What might high-quality preparation of teacher educators entail?
4 How do contexts matter in the ways teacher educators learn and develop?
To answer these questions, there needs to be a âlanguage of articulationâ to help frame the discussions on FE teacher educators. Swart, de Graaff, Onstenk and Knezic (2017, p. 2) advocate a language to articulate these teacher educatorsâ activities where they view this language âas that which is used in classroom communication to teach, speak, and interact about their professional topics, which as a consequence feeds into both student-teachersâ and teacher educatorsâ own learning processâ. One of the implicit aims of this research monograph is to start to create a teacher educatorâs language to articulate, define, and discuss their roles, activities, know-how, journeys to becoming and being teacher educators, and professional development inside and outside of their teaching settings. One may see this proposed language as a form of knowledge base of and for teacher educators and their communities of practice. These communities may include especially teachers, trainee teachers, and managerial staff. This language can offer ways of understanding in the various pedagogic communities.
Lastly, this section will provide a brief description of the non-book publications, which relate to the FE sector. These are by Noel (2006), Simmons and Thompson (2007), Crawley (2013), Exley and Ovenden-Hope (2013), and Springbett (2018)...
