Further Education and Teacher Professionalization in the UK

Introduction: Teaching the Teachers

Teaching primary and secondary school children is one of the most challenging careers in existence. One of the most significant challenges of the profession is that the classroom teacher — who spends her or his days surrounded by children or adolescents — can find the job supremely isolating. Inspired each day to do the best she can for her students, the classroom teacher can sometimes feel that she is struggling entirely on her own, forced to reinvent every pedagogical wheel without assistance.

This feeling of isolation is likely to be exacerbated by at least two factors. The first is that the profession of education, like all human endeavors, is subject to fads and fashions. The practical effect of this is that each new generation of teachers — and in fact each new cohort of teachers — enters the job with new ideas about best practices for the profession. This constant churn of ideas, even when motivated by the best of intentions and even when new techniques genuinely are better at conveying knowledge to the widest possible range of students, can leave even only slightly senior teachers feeling like strangers in their own profession.

The second factor that often aggravates the sense of isolation affecting teachers at all career stages is that the parents of so many students are deeply disengaged from the education of their own children. Teachers are — one can only hope — generally happy to spend a large percentage of their professional lives in the company of young people. This does not mean, however, that they do not also need connections with other adults in order to do their jobs as efficiently as possible. The lack of parental support for teachers' hard work is one of the reasons many teachers cite for leaving the profession. Especially for teachers who do not feel that their school administrators are supportive, the lack of connection with and support from students' families may prove to be a devastating feature of their jobs.

The difficulty of teacher retention is a well-recognized problem — acknowledged by school administrators, teachers themselves, teacher-training program designers, and labor unions alike. Ways to retain good teachers, and ways to improve all teachers so that retaining them is in the best interest of students, have been debated, negotiated, and revisited repeatedly since teaching began to be organized into its modern professional form.

But, as is true of the reforms that constantly reshape what happens in the classroom itself, ideas about how best to support teachers in their professional choices and goals are also in constant flux. This should not be a surprise. Teaching is a complex, demanding profession, and thus providing support for teachers must also necessarily be complex and demanding on those who teach the teachers. Furthermore, while some aspects of teaching have been constant since at least the time of Socrates, other aspects of the profession have seen — and continue to see — rapid change. The demographics of British society have changed dramatically over the past several decades. As the student body has become more diverse, the task of teaching has become more demanding, and thus greater demands must be made on those whose job it is to keep teachers engaged in and rewarded by their positions.^[1]

Even as student bodies have become more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, and country of origin, they have also become more differentiated in terms of learning style.^[2] Far more children and adolescents are now diagnosed with learning disabilities and communicative disabilities such as autism. There are also increasing numbers of students with physical challenges that require additional work on the part of teachers, who must now perform tasks such as injecting insulin for children with diabetes.

Challenges such as working with students with autism are substantial. Even in the absence of any other difficulty during the day, the challenges that a child with autism can pose may make any teacher — from novice to veteran — feel at least somewhat lost in their own profession. Even as teachers give their students a sense of security and help them find a healthy direction for their lives, the teachers themselves may feel that they are becoming more and more adrift with each passing day.

Before proceeding, it is worth noting that in the field of education — as is true of all human endeavors — nothing occurs in isolation. Changes in further education programs and requirements for teachers are aligned with, and arise from the same political and cultural wellspring as, pushes to redefine what constitutes a competent or qualified teacher.

Because these different changes in the teaching profession are intermingled with each other both in terms of formal political policy and in terms of what one might simply call the overall political zeitgeist, this paper examines both further education and changes in licensure together, since the two cannot be meaningfully examined in isolation from each other.

Guidance and Support for the Teaching Profession

How can teachers be best supported — not only to withstand the challenges and frictions of their profession but in fact to embrace each new school year with enthusiasm and even joy? The current thinking on the issue within the teaching profession in the United Kingdom is that there are at least two distinct needs that must be met for teachers to do their best work on a consistent basis. First, teachers need access to ever-current information on the latest research and program developments in pedagogy. Second, teachers must be provided with a mechanism that can offer what might be termed — with no attempt to diminish its serious importance — emotional support.

A large body of psychological research demonstrates that one of the most stressful aspects of human experience is isolation: the feeling that one is utterly alone in whatever endeavor one is pursuing. Well-planned and intelligently instituted programs for continuing teacher education can help support a teacher throughout the entire course of her career, not only exposing her to the most current research and creativity within the field of education but also allowing her to feel a continuous connection to others in the field.^[3]

This paper examines the state of further education in the United Kingdom as it applies to the field of teacher education. After briefly exploring the history of further education programs in the United Kingdom and how they relate to the field of education in particular, the paper goes on to examine the key concepts in the field at present. The particular focus of this research is on the ways in which intelligently designed further education programs can support a diverse and egalitarian teaching workforce capable of embracing and supporting a diverse student body.

It is useful to begin an examination of further education within the field of teacher training with a broader look at the history of further education — which is at times also called "continuing education," using the American term for the analogous process — for professionals in the United Kingdom. All further education is post-compulsory education in the United Kingdom: it always follows the secondary education that all children are required to obtain. It is entirely distinct, in terms of its design, purpose, and goals, from education received in a university program. It is aimed at professionals who wish both to maintain the highest levels of skill within their chosen career and who require further education courses to maintain the currency of a license or certificate. There are different levels of further education programs, ranging from basic training in a number of different fields to a Higher National Diploma (which can be used as a qualification for entrance into a British university and may be considered equivalent to the first two years of a university study plan) or a Foundation Degree, which is equivalent in status to a Higher National Diploma but is assessed for students in vocational educational programs.

A distinction is made within the educational and professional worlds between further education programs and higher education. Higher education programs are based in distinct institutions such as universities — although this is becoming somewhat less the case than it was traditionally, as more and more higher-education institutions provide "virtual university" programs. In summary: further education as currently configured in the United Kingdom is provided for people over the age of sixteen who are enrolled in non-university post-secondary education.

Although further education courses can be offered at traditional universities, they are generally taught through colleges that serve exclusively as venues for further education. These institutions are sometimes called "community colleges" after the analogous American institutions — though American community colleges offer both post-secondary education and further or continuing education courses. Other institutions that offer further education courses may provide a variety of work-based learning classes, while adult and community learning campuses also frequently offer further education coursework.

As is appropriate — and indeed perhaps necessary — for further education programs designed to improve the skills of a profession as important as teaching (as well as other professions such as social work, medicine, or law), there is an agency tasked with ensuring that teacher further education aligns with national goals for the profession's standards. The Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS, formerly titled the "Quality Improvement Agency and Centre for Excellence in Leadership") has the authority and responsibility to develop "excellent and sustainable" further education programs and courses that apply to all teachers. In general, the goals of the LSIS include instilling in every teacher in the United Kingdom a desire to achieve and maintain excellence.

Crucially, the goal of the LSIS and further education teacher programs is not simply aimed at "improving" or changing individual teachers, but at driving improvement across the entire learning and skills sector. Its aim is to accelerate the drive for excellence and, working in partnership with all parts of the sector, to build on all institutions in society that can support the educational process. This includes schools themselves, of course, but also any other public and private institutions in the United Kingdom that can be recruited to support teachers, students, and the nation's commitment to educating each new generation of students to meet their responsibilities as both citizens and workers.