‘Below the surface’: power and professionalism in the further education sector

ABSTRACT

Professionalism in the English Further Education (FE) system has been traditionally discussed in terms of superior teaching practices, attitudes and behaviours. The concept of ‘good work’ is therefore central to this paper’s analysis. Following a Bourdieusian tradition, professionalism is treated as a ‘site of struggle’ between FE teachers and managers, where managers hold the power to change the definition and substance of ‘good work’. This has implications for how teachers understand and speak about professionalism and highlights the discord that arises when teachers hold different viewpoints from managers. Drawing on a survey of 461 responses, the analysis makes three contributions: first, professionalism is theorised as a form of symbolic capital which actors attain by acquiring and deploying cultural, social and economic capital. Second, it shows how inequalities in capital can affect teachers’ perceived opportunities for professional recognition. Finally, it reveals that senior managers, with the greatest power, enforce a compliance model of professionalism based on the production of ‘good data’, which is the legitimate capital in the FE field, even when this is shown to be deprofessionalising to teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Professionalism
• professional status
• further education
• autonomy
• managerialism
• Bourdieu
• capital
• field
• habitus
• teacher
• contestation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Tully

Paul Tully is an independent researcher and writer. He has twenty-five years working in Further and Higher Education as a lecturer, teacher trainer, manager and consultant. This article is based on data from his PhD thesis at the University of Brighton.