Coping and caring: the development of professional identity amongst FE trainee lecturers

This paper explores conceptualisations of teaching and learning amongst lecturers training to teach in further education. The paper is based on a small-scale study involving interviews with trainee lecturers at a university in the English Midlands. The trainees' discussions of their own educational biography, their move into FE teaching, and their perceptions of working in FE are examined as a means of gaining insight into their emerging identities as FE lecturers. The possibilities and limitations for democratic and critical forms of professionalism are considered.