Learners, Care Work and Wellbeing: VET Trainee Teachers

The paper draws on a small scale case study of English pre- and in-service VET trainee teachers from a northern university. It explores their understanding of wellbeing and health. In particular, it examines trainees’ orientation to care as well as their constructions of learners. It analyses two contradictory but overlapping discourses, one that constructs learners as in need of care and support, whilst the other utilises a ‘pathological’ model. This is followed by an analysis of the labour process within further education and the emotional labour involved in supporting students as well as meeting the range of demands faced by those working in the sector. Whilst the trainees reflect models of the dual and learning professional characteristic of teachers in the sector which is marked by an expanded professionalism, they have as yet not developed a fully politicised notion of teaching.