Teacher Educators in Vocational and Further Education

This book includes a range of empirical-based international contributions by the global community of teacher educators and related researchers on the Further Education/post-compulsory, vocational/occupational and lifelong learning sector.It offers theoretical frameworks and empirical data to delineate issues relating to teacher educators and training in areas regarding policy, programmes, and pedagogic activities. Some of these areas include the education of teachers in vocational education, the professionalization of teacher educators in a neoliberal education system, and teacher educators' perspectives of a training programme for vocational education and training. Additionally, the areas cover the relevance of coherence in vocational teacher education for teacher educators, the use of questioning strategies for teacher educators, teacher educators and their initial disciplines, journeys and job titles, the relevance of craft and reflectivity of teacher educators, and the importance of teacher education and mentoring scheme. The rationale for this book is that there is a comparative lack of research and related publications on teacher educators and the delivery and design of teacher education facilitation in the sector internationally. Also, the FE sector is viewed as a backwater of educational research compared to the other sectors.

“This collection of eight contributions … on challenges facing teacher educators is unquestionably well timed, reflecting struggles over the future of VET. … Loo’s own contribution to the eight core chapters revisits an earlier UK-based study to explore the relationship between its participants’ initial disciplines, pathways to becoming teachers and current roles. Such a study has interest in a landscape that many educators enter by accident and travel in unexpected directions … .” (Bill Esmond, Journal of Vocational Education & Training, June 13, 2022)

Dr Sai Loo is an academic at University College London and an author and editor of research monographs. Before joining UCL, he worked as a Chartered Accountant and taught accounting and finance at higher education institutions on undergraduate, postgraduate and professional programmes and vocational areas in further education. His research area is occupational education from an epistemological approach in work, teaching and learning settings across the pre-university, higher and professional education levels. He has written about further and higher education sectors, professional education, and the digital economy with over 140 publications, conference papers and keynotes including eight research monographs.